Byron: The Last Phase. Edgcumbe Richard
from which we have largely quoted, Byron’s pre-eminence as a poet gives an interest to details which otherwise would not be worth mentioning. She tells us, for instance, that one of the strongest anomalies in Byron was the exquisite taste displayed in his descriptive poetry, and the total want of it that was so apparent in his modes of life.
‘Fine scenery seemed to have no effect upon him, though his descriptions are so glowing, and the elegancies and comforts of refined life Byron appeared to as little understand as value.’
Byron appeared to be wholly ignorant of what in his class of life constituted its ordinary luxuries.
‘I have seen him,’ says Lady Blessington, ‘apparently delighted with the luxurious inventions in furniture, equipages, plate, etc., common to all persons of a certain station or fortune, and yet after an inquiry as to their prices – an inquiry so seldom made by persons of his rank – shrink back alarmed at the thought of the expense, though there was nothing alarming in it, and congratulate himself that he had no such luxuries, or did not require them. I should say that a bad and vulgar taste predominated in all Byron’s equipments, whether in dress or in furniture. I saw his bed at Genoa, when I passed through in 1826, and it certainly was the most vulgarly gaudy thing I ever saw; the curtains in the worst taste, and the cornice having his family motto of “Crede Byron” surmounted by baronial coronets. His carriages and his liveries were in the same bad taste, having an affectation of finery, but mesquin in the details, and tawdry in the ensemble. It was evident that he piqued himself on them, by the complacency with which they were referred to.’
In one of Byron’s expansive moods – and these were rare with men, though frequent in the society of Lady Blessington – Byron, speaking of his wife, said:
‘I am certain that Lady Byron’s first idea is, what is due to herself; I mean that it is the undeviating rule of her conduct. I wish she had thought a little more of what is due to others. Now, my besetting sin is a want of that self-respect which she has in excess; and that want has produced much unhappiness to us both. But though I accuse Lady Byron of an excess of self-respect, I must in candour admit, that if any person ever had an excuse for an extraordinary portion of it, she has; as in all her thoughts, words, and deeds, she is the most decorous woman that ever existed, and must appear a perfect and refined gentlewoman even to her femme-de-chambre. This extraordinary degree of self-command in Lady Byron produced an opposite effect on me. When I have broken out, on slight provocations, into one of my ungovernable fits of rage, her calmness piqued, and seemed to reproach me; it gave her an air of superiority, that vexed and increased my wrath. I am now older and wiser, and should know how to appreciate her conduct as it deserved, as I look on self-command as a positive virtue, though it is one I have not the courage to adopt.’
In speaking of his sister, shortly before his departure for Greece, Byron maintained that he owed the little good which he could boast, to her influence over his wayward nature. He regretted that he had not known her earlier, as it might have influenced his destiny.
‘To me she was, in the hour of need, as a tower of strength. Her affection was my last rallying point, and is now the only bright spot that the horizon of England offers to my view.’ ‘Augusta,’ said Byron, ‘knew all my weaknesses, but she had love enough to bear with them. She has given me such good advice, and yet, finding me incapable of following it, loved and pitied me the more, because I was erring. This is true affection, and, above all, true Christian feeling.’
But we should not be writing about Byron and his foibles eighty-four years after his death, if he had not been wholly different to other men in his views of life. Shortly after his marriage, for no sufficient, or at least for no apparent reason, Byron chose to immolate himself, and took a sort of Tarpeian leap, passing the remainder of his existence in bemoaning his bruises, and reviling the spectators who were not responsible for his fall. One of the main results of this conduct was his separation from his child, for whom he seems to have felt the deepest affection. We find him, at the close of his life, constantly speaking of Ada, ‘sole daughter of his heart and house,’ and prophesying the advent of a love whose consolations he could never feel.
‘I often, in imagination, pass over a long lapse of years,’ said Byron, ‘and console myself for present privations, in anticipating the time when my daughter will know me by reading my works; for, though the hand of prejudice may conceal my portrait from her eyes,9 it cannot hereafter conceal my thoughts and feelings, which will talk to her when he to whom they belonged has ceased to exist. The triumph will then be mine; and the tears that my child will drop over expressions wrung from me by mental agony – the certainty that she will enter into the sentiments which dictated the various allusions to her and to myself in my works – consoles me in many a gloomy hour.’
This prophecy was amply fulfilled. It appears that, after Ada’s marriage to Lord King, Colonel Wildman met her in London, and invited her to pay him a visit at Newstead Abbey. One morning, while Ada was in the library, Colonel Wildman took down a book of poems. Ada asked the name of the author of these poems, and when shown the portrait of her father – Phillips’s well-known portrait – which hung upon the wall, Ada remained for a moment spell-bound, and then remarked ingenuously: ‘Please do not think that it is affectation on my part when I declare to you that I have been brought up in complete ignorance of all that concerns my father.’ Never until that moment had Ada seen the handwriting of her father, and, as we know, even his portrait had been hidden from her. When Byron’s genius was revealed to his daughter, an enthusiasm for his memory filled her soul. She shut herself up for hours in the rooms which Byron had used, absorbed in all the glory of one whose tenderness for her had been so sedulously concealed by her mother. On her death-bed she dictated a letter to Colonel Wildman, begging that she might be buried at Hucknall-Torkard, in the same vault as her illustrious father. And there they sleep the long sleep side by side – separated during life, united in death – the prophecy of 1816 fulfilled in 1852:
‘Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught,
I know that thou wilt love me; though my name
Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught
With desolation, and a broken claim:
Though the grave closed between us, – ’twere the same,
I know that thou wilt love me; though to drain
My blood from out thy being were an aim
And an attainment, – all would be in vain, —
Still thou wouldst love me, still that more than life retain.’
CHAPTER V
There is no doubt that Byron had a craving for celebrity in one form or another. In the last year of his life his thoughts turned with something like apathy from the fame which his pen had brought him10 towards that wider and nobler fame which might be attained by the sword. In the spirit of an exalted poet who has lately passed from us, if such prescience were possible, Byron might have applied these stirring lines to himself:
‘Up, then, and act! Rise up and undertake
The duties of to-day. Thy courage wake!
Spend not life’s strength in idleness, for life
Should not be wasted in Care’s useless strife.
No slothful doubt let work’s place occupy,
But labour! Labour for posterity!
‘Up, then, and sing! Rise up and bare the sword
With which to combat suffering and wrong.
Console all those that suffer with thy word,
Defend Man’s heritage with sword and song!
Combat intrigue, injustice, tyranny,
And in thine efforts God will be with thee.’
‘I have made as many sacrifices to liberty,’ said Byron, ‘as most people of my age; and the one I am about
Lady Noel left by her will to the trustees a portrait of Byron, with directions that it was not to be shown to his daughter Ada till she attained the age of twenty-one; but that if her mother were still living, it was not to be so delivered without Lady Byron’s consent.
It was at this time that Byron endeavoured to suppress the fact that he had written ‘The Age of Bronze.’