BOOKS.
THE NEW BYRON LETTERS.*
THE reading public cannot fail to be delighted with Mr. Murray's two volumes of new Byron letters. In the first place, they ani a real contribution to our literature, for Byron was an astonish- ingly good letter writer. Next, they throw light upon Byron's character at a time when he was most interesting—the time when he took society by storm, the time when half the women of England were in love with him, though they had never seen him, the time when Walter Scott could describe his beautiful face as looking "like an alabaster lamp with a light shining through it."
A great deal of the Byronic craze was due to the poet's love of posing supplemented by the chaotic sentimentalism then in fashion. In the new letters, however, Byron does not attempt to feed the flame in this particular. The fascinating and worldly-wise Lady Melbourne was nob a person with whom diabolic and mysterious moonshine would have gone down. In the letters to her we see Byron as an accomplished, somewhat cynical, man of the world who is much more anxious to be regarded as a fashionable viveur than as a restless and unhappy poet. At the -same time, putting wholly aside for the moment the Astarte controversy, and making every allowance for the special circumstances under which Byron entered society, the letters make an unpleasant impression. The notion that Byron was by nature a man of fine feelings and good instincts, corrupted by a vicious age and spoilt by the fact that he became famous too young, will not fit the fads. When all these excuses are allowed for Byron remains a cynical woman- hunter of a bad type. The cynicism of a middle-aged or old man is intelligible, and, therefore, in a sense ex- cusable, but there is something horrible and unnatural In the cynioism of youth, such as we find in Byron. He knew neither pity nor generosity when he was in pursuit of his prey. What was worse, this mercilessness was due, not so much to an overmastering animal passion, as to pride and vanity. He wanted scalps. The spectacle of Burns playing "the old hawk" is disagreeable enough, but Byron doing so at a time of life when most people are finishing their education -makes one's blood run cold.
It is curious to find that this repulsion, this sense of indignation, was felt by the most proffigate man of his own epoch. Byron suffered the supreme humiliation of having genuinely shocked the Prince Regent by the way in which he con- ducted his amours. To have accomplished that before he was twenty-six is to fill one of the front pages in the records of infamy. The Regent's words are worth recalling. They are to be found in Lady Airlie's recent book, In 1Vhig Society (Hodder and Stoughton, 15s. net). Lady Bessborough, writing to Lady Melbourne apparently in the year 1814, though the date is not given, describes a conversation which she had with the Regent at the Pavilion. The Regent began by saying that Lord Melbourne had told him that Byron "had bewitch'd the whole family, mothers and daughters and all." In describing Lord Byron's behaviour the Prince, says Lady Bessborough, kept on interrupting himself now and then with the exclamation, "I never heard of such a thing—taking the Mothers for con- fidantes 1 What would you have thought of my going to talk to Ly. Spencer in former times ! " Lady Bessborough ends as follows :—
"I could not get away from IA. Byr„ when once he began talking to me—he was part of the time very pleasant and talking of other things—but he did tell me some things so terrifying and so extraordinary!! To be sure if he does mean to deceive he takes the strangest way of doing it I ever knew—unless a shocking notion the P. has, can be true—but I do think it impossible it is too diabolick."
In the last sentence in this passage " he " clearly means Byron. We shall not make any suggestions as to what the words mean. Lady Bessborough, as Lady Caroline Lamb's mother, is, of
Lord Byron's Correspondence. Edited by John Murray. vols. London: John Murray. [253. net.' !ourse, a bad witness when Byron is concerned, quite apart from her being a foolish woman. The opinion of the Regent is, however, a very good indication as to the verdict of London Society on Byron after he had lived in the middle of it for three or four years. The male part had come to believe, rightly or wrongly, that he was "the limit," or rather that he had gone a great deal beyond the limit in the matter of morals. It is possible, of course, to argue that this was because Byron loved to play the "fat boy" and to make people's blood freeze with the stories of his awful wicked- ness. It was nothing to him, when in one of his impish moods, to tell shivering maidens that he had committed the three unforgivable sins or generally to paint himself as the Devil incarnate. This perpetual posing as the supremely wicked man made the ordinary man about town in the Regency period as disgusted with him as the equivalent persons of our time would be in like case. There is a kind of freemasonry among the worldly in the matter of behaviour. One of the strongest conventions of this freemasonry is to forbid posing. You must no more swagger about your vices than you must about your virtues or your prowess or your lineage.
In a word, by 1814, London Society had got to the point of saying that it could not stand Byron much longer. He and his biting tongue and gentleman-devil airs and graces were bad enough, but there was also, no doubt, a strong strain of jealousy running through the world of the Dandies. Where a woman was concerned Byroa could always beat them hollow. There are, no doubt, excuse3 for Byron in this fact, but there is also, we fear, good ground for believing that Byron was very near being what he pretended to be—a man hopelessly depraved in head and heart.
The essential difference between him and Shelley was that Shelley did wrong because he believed it to be right, whereas Byron did wrong because he believed it to be wrong—because pure wickedness gave him something extra to swagger about. The fact that a thing was forbidden by all laws moral or divine gave an extra zest to transgressions. He was like the man who wanted to be a Jew because he liked ham so much and would fain add to the pleasures of eating it the joys of sinful- ness. Though Byron was generally greatly disliked by the men of his own time and of his own station in life, was even looked upon by them as a theatrical sort of cad, he had a small coterie of devoted worshippers. These men, however, were somewhat of the toady order, except Hobhouse—one of those sane, sensible men who, if they once form a friendship, will stand by a man through thick and thin. The worse a man's behaviour gets the more strong in defence becomes the friend, touched, of course, by the feeling that if he deserts the errant soul the poor creature may sink in the flood without a human being to hold out a helping hand. Hobhouse was always, so to speak, on the pounce to save Byron from himself.
And now for the letters to Lady Melbourne. Lady Melbourne was obviously fascinated by Byron, as she well might have been, for she was a woman who had been in her time a " grande amour- rase." It must have been indeed delightful to a woman of sixty-two to have the beautiful young poet at her feet. Byron, on the other hand, was quite clever enough to realize what a help she would be to him in London Society, for, remember, that when Byron first came back from the East, he was distinctly in the position of "a climber." Though well-born from the mere pedigree maker's point of view, he was not in the least
in Society." His mother was an eccentric Highlander and his father a man of no account in Society, and he had no well- placed near relations. His guardian, the bogy, Lord Carlisle, was of no particular use to him.
Though Byron probably began his friendship with Lady Melbourne in order to open the oyster of the inner ring of London Society, he soon became fascinated by her. When he had reached this point of making a conquest of her head—for she was too old and too sensible to talk or even think about her heart—Byron saw that the proper way to attain the ascendancy over her was to pose as a supremely debauched man of the world. He made her his oracle, or rather, the patron confidante to whom he might bring all his confessions and tell the whole tale of his amours. It was a very subtle piece of flattery. Further, in the course of his intrigue with Lady Caroline Lamb and the long series of persecutions which that aPpallin' g lady inflicted upon him, Lady Melbourne was of the greatest possible assistance. She did much to keep the foe• at arms' leasth. It is a curious proof of how much
more attractive imagination is than fact, that when Byron. is romancing about his gallantries, he is much more interesting than when he is relating the hard, practical facts concerned with Lady Caroline Lamb's intolerable infatuation. All the part of the letters devoted to Lady Caroline is, indeed, very tedious. Fortunately, however, it is only a part. The rest is excellent reading. It is difficult to know what to quote from the enormous number of passages that are worth quoting, but perhaps the most characteristic, and certainly the most humorous, is the account which Byron gives to Lady Melbourne of one of his love affairs.
"In the autumn of 1809 in the Mediterranean I was seized with an everlasting passion considerably more violent on my part than this has ever been—everything was settled—and we (the we of that day) were to set off for the Friuli : but, lo ! the Peace spoilt everything, by putting this in possession of the French, and some particular occurrences in the interim, deter- mined me to go to Constantinople. However we were to meet next year at a certain time though I told my arnica there was no time like the present, and that I could not answer for the future. She trusted to her power, and I at the moment had certainly much greater doubts of her than myself. A year sped, and on my return downwards I found at Smyrna and Athens despatches, requiring the performance of this "ben billet qu' a la Chatre," (sic) and tolling me that one of us had returned to the spot on purpose. But things had altered, as I foresaw, and I proceeded very leisurely, not arriving till some months after, pretty sure that in the interim my idol was in no want of worshippers. But she was there, and we met at the Palace. The Governor (the most accommodating of all possible chief magistrates) was kind enough to leave us to come to the most diabolical of explanations. It was in the dog-days, during a sirocco (I almost perspire now with the thoughts of it), during the intervals of my intermittent fever (my love had also intermitted with my malady), and I certainly feared the ague and my passion would both return in full force. I, however, got the better of both, and she sailed up the Adriatic and I .down to the Straits. I had, aeries, a good deal to contend against, for the lady (who was a select friend of the Queen of Naples) had something to gain in a few points, and nothing to lose in reputation, and was a woman perfectly mistress of herself and every art of intrigue, personal or political—not at all in love, but very able to persuade me that she was so, and sure that I should make a most convenient and complaisani fellow-traveller. She is now, I am told, writing her memoirs at Vienna, in which I shall cut a very indifferent figure • and nothing survives of this most ambrosial amour, which made me on one occasion risk my life, and on another almost drove me mad, but a few Duke of Yorkiah letters and certain baubles, which I dare swear by this time have decorated the hands of half Hungary and all Bohemia. Cosi finica la musics."
That scene of sham passion hi a sweating sirocco is in truth the epitome of Byron's biographia erotica. He may be pardoned a good deal for realizing, as we shrewdly suspect he did, what excellent copy it all made !
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