Chapter VIII—Journal: November 14, 1813-April 19, 1814
If this had been begun ten years ago, and faithfully kept!!!—heigho! there are too many things I wish never to have remembered, as it is. Well,—I have had my share of what are called the pleasures of this life, and have seen more of the European and Asiatic world than I have made a good use of. They say "Virtue is its own reward,"—it certainly should be paid well for its trouble. At five-and-twenty, when the better part of life is over, one should be
something
;—and what am I? nothing but five-and-twenty—and the odd months. What have I seen? the same man all over the world,—ay, and woman too. Give
me
a Mussulman who never asks questions, and a she of the same race who saves one the trouble of putting them. But for this same plague—yellow fever—and Newstead delay, I should have been by this time a second time close to the Euxine. If I can overcome the last, I don't so much mind your pestilence; and, at any rate, the spring shall see me there,—provided I neither marry myself, nor unmarry any one else in the interval. I wish one was—I don't know what I wish. It is odd I never set myself seriously to wishing without attaining it—and repenting. I begin to believe with the good old Magi, that one should only pray for the nation, and not for the individual;—but, on my principle, this would not be very patriotic.
No more reflections.—Let me see—last night I finished "Zuleika," my second Turkish Tale. I
the composition of it kept me alive—for it was written to drive my thoughts from the recollection of:
"Dear sacred name, rest ever unreveal'd."[1]
At least, even here, my hand would tremble to write it. This afternoon I have burnt the scenes of my commenced comedy. I have some idea of expectorating a romance, or rather a tale in prose;—
what romance could equal the events:
"quæque ipse......vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui."[2]
Henry Byron
called on me with my little cousin Eliza. She will grow up a beauty and a plague; but, in the mean time, it is the prettiest child! dark eyes and eyelashes, black and long as the wing of a raven. I think she is prettier even than my niece, Georgina,—yet I don't like to think so neither: and though older, she is not so clever.
Dallas
before I was up, so we did not meet. Lewis
, too,—who seems out of humour with every thing.
What can be the matter? he is not married—has he lost his own mistress, or any other person's wife? Hodgson, too, came. He is going to be married, and he is the kind of man who will be the happier. He has talent, cheerfulness, every thing that can make him a pleasing companion; and his intended is handsome and young, and all that. But I never see any one much improved by matrimony. All my coupled contemporaries are bald and discontented. W[ordsworth] and S[outhey] have both lost their hair and good humour; and the last of the two had a good deal to lose. But it don't much signify what falls
off
a man's temples in that state.
Mem. I must get a toy to-morrow for Eliza, and send the device for the seals of myself and ——
. too, to call on the Stael and Lady Holland to-morrow, and on ——, who has advised me (without seeing it, by the by) not to publish "Zuleika;"
I believe he is right, but experience might have taught him that not to print is
physically
impossible. No one has seen it but Hodgson and Mr. Gifford. I never in my life
read
a composition, save to Hodgson, as he pays me in kind. It is a horrible thing to do too frequently;—better print, and they who like may read, and if they don't like, you have the satisfaction of knowing that they have, at least,
purchased
the right of saying so.
I
declined presenting the Debtors' Petition
, being sick of parliamentary mummeries. I have spoken thrice; but I doubt my ever becoming an orator. My first was liked; the second and third—I don't know whether they succeeded or not. I have never yet set to it
con amore
;—one must have some excuse to one's self for laziness, or inability, or both, and this is mine. "
, villanous company, hath been the spoil of me;"
—and then, I "have drunk medicines," not to make me love others, but certainly enough to hate myself.
Two nights ago I saw the tigers sup at Exeter 'Change. Except Veli Pacha's lion in the Morea,—who followed the Arab keeper like a dog,—the fondness of the hyæna for her keeper amused me most. Such a conversazione! —There was a "hippopotamus," like Lord Liverpool in the face; and the "Ursine Sloth" had the very voice and manner of my valet—but the tiger talked too much. The elephant took and gave me my money again—took off my hat—opened a door—
trunked
a whip—and behaved so well, that I wish he was my butler. The handsomest animal on earth is one of the panthers; but the poor antelopes were dead. I should hate to see one
here:
— the sight of the
camel
made me pine again for Asia Minor.
"Oh quando te aspiciam?
"
"Dear fatal name! rest ever unrevealed,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence sealed."
Pope's
Eloisa to Abelard
, lines 9, 10.
Virgil,
Æneid
, ii. 5:
". ... quœque ipse miserrima vidi
Et quorum pars magna fui."
The Rev. Henry Byron, second son of the Rev. and Hon. Richard Byron, and nephew of William, fifth Lord Byron, died in 1821. His daughter Eliza married, in 1830, George Rochford Clarke. Byron's "niece Georgina" was the daughter of Mrs. Leigh.
Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), intended by his father for the diplomatic service, was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Weimar, and Paris. He soon showed his taste for literature. At the age of seventeen he had translated a play from the French, and written a farce, a comedy called
The East Indian
(acted at Drury Lane, April 22, 1799), "two volumes of a novel, two of a romance, besides numerous poems" (
Life, etc., of M. G. Lewis
, vol. i. p. 70). In 1794 he was attached to the British Embassy at the Hague. There, stimulated (
ibid
., vol. i. p. 123) by reading Mrs. Radcliffe's
Mysteries of Udolpho
, he wrote
Ambrosio, or the Monk
. The book, published in 1795, made him famous in fashionable society, and decided his career. Though he sat in Parliament for Hindon from 1796 to 1802, he took no part in politics, but devoted himself to literature.
The moral and outline of
The Monk
are taken, as Lewis says in a letter to his father (
Life, etc.
, vol. i. pp. 154-158), and as was pointed out in the
Monthly Review
for August, 1797, from Addison's "Santon Barsisa" in the
Guardian
(No. 148). The book was severely criticized on the score of immorality. Mathias (
Pursuits of Literature
, Dialogue iv.) attacks Lewis, whom he compares to John Cleland, whose
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
came under the notice of the law courts:
"Another Cleland see in Lewis rise.
Why sleep the ministers of truth and law?"
An injunction was, in fact, moved for against the book; but the proceedings dropped.
Lewis had a remarkable gift of catching the popular taste of the day, both in his tales of horror and mystery, and in his ballads. In the latter he was the precursor of Scott. Many of his songs were sung to music of his own composition. His
Tales of Terror
(1799) were dedicated to Lady Charlotte Campbell, afterwards Bury, with whom he was in love. To his
Tales of Wonder
(1801) Scott, Southey, and others contributed. His most successful plays were
The Castle Spectre
(Drury Lane, December 14, 1797), and
Timour the Tartar
(Covent Garden, April 29, 1811).
In 1812, by the death of his father, "the Monk" became a rich man, and the owner of plantations in the West Indies. He paid two visits to his property, in 1815-16 and 1817-18. On the voyage home from the last visit he died of yellow fever, and was buried at sea. His
Journal of a West Indian Proprietor
, published in 1834, is written in sterling English, with much quiet humour, and a graphic power of very high order.
Among his
Detached Thoughts
Byron has the following notes on Lewis:
"Sheridan was one day offered a bet by M. G. Lewis: 'I will bet you, Mr. Sheridan, a very large sum—I will bet you what you owe me as Manager, for my Castle Spectre.'
'I never make large bets,' said Sheridan, 'but I will lay you a very small one. I will bet you what it is worth!'"
"Lewis, though a kind man, hated Sheridan, and we had some words upon that score when in Switzerland, in 1816. Lewis afterwards sent me the following epigram upon Sheridan from Saint Maurice:Lewis at Oatlands was observed one morning to have his eyes red, and his air sentimental; being asked why? he replied 'that when people said anything kind to him, it affected him deeply, and just now the Duchess had said something so kind to him' —here tears began to flow again. 'Never mind, Lewis,' said Col. Armstrong to him, 'never mind—don't cry, she could not mean it.'"'For worst abuse of finest parts
Was Misophil begotten;
There might indeed be blacker hearts,
But none could be more rotten.'"
"Lewis was a good man—a clever man, but a bore—a damned bore, one may say. My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with some vivacious person who hated bores especially—Me. de Staël or Hobhouse, for example. But I liked Lewis; he was a Jewel of a Man had he been better set, I don't mean personally, but less tiresome, for he was tedious, as well as contradictory to everything and everybody. Being short-sighted, when we used to ride out together near the Brenta in the twilight in summer, he made me go before to pilot him. I am absent at times, especially towards evening, and the consequence of this pilotage was some narrow escapes to the Monk on horseback. Once I led him into a ditch, over which I had passed as usual, forgetting to warn my convoy; once I led him nearly into the river instead of on the moveable bridge which incommodes passengers; and twice did we both run against the diligence, which, being heavy and slow, did communicate less damage than it received in its leaders, who were terrasséd by the charge. Thrice did I lose him in the gray of the gloaming and was obliged to bring to, to his distant signals of distance and distress. All the time he went on talking without intermission, for he was a man of many words. Poor fellow, he died a martyr to his new riches— of a second visit to Jamaica."Lewis said to me, 'Why do you talk Venetian (such as I could talk, not very fine to be sure) to the Venetians, and not the usual Italian?' I answered, partly from habit and partly to be understood, if possible. 'It may be so,' said Lewis, 'but it sounds to me like talking with a brogue to an Irishman.'"'I'd give the lands of Deloraine
Dark Musgrave were alive again!'
that is
'I would give many a Sugar Cane
Monk Lewis were alive again!'
"'For worst abuse of finest parts
Was Misophil begotten;
There might indeed be blacker hearts,
But none could be more rotten.'"
'I'd give the lands of Deloraine
Dark Musgrave were alive again!'
that is
'I would give many a Sugar Cane
Monk Lewis were alive again!'
In a MS. note by Sir Walter Scott on these passages from Byron's
Detached Thoughts
, he says,
"Mat had queerish eyes; they projected like those of some insect, and were flattish in their orbit. His person was extremely small and boyish; he was, indeed, the least man I ever saw to be strictly well and neatly made. I remember a picture of him by Saunders being handed round at Dalkeith House. The artist had ungenerously flung a dark folding mantle round the form, under which was half hid a dagger, or dark lanthorn, or some such cut-throat appurtenance. With all this the features were preserved and ennobled. It passed from hand to hand into that of Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, who, hearing the general voice affirm that it was very like, said aloud, 'Like Mat Lewis? Why, that picture is like a man.' He looked, and lo! Mat Lewis's head was at his elbow. His boyishness went through life with him. He was a child, and a spoiled child, but a child of high imagination, so that he wasted himself in ghost stories and German nonsense. He had the finest ear for the rhythm of verse I ever heard—finer than Byron's.
Lewis was fonder of great people than he ought to have been, either as a man of talent or a man of fortune. He had always dukes and duchesses in his mouth, and was particularly fond of any one who had a title. You would have sworn he had been a parvenu of yesterday, yet he had been all his life in good society.
He was one of the kindest and best creatures that ever lived. His father and mother lived separately. Mr. Lewis allowed his son a handsome income; but reduced it more than one half when he found that he gave his mother half of it. He restricted himself in all his expenses, and shared the diminished income with his mother as before. He did much good by stealth, and was a most generous creature.
I had a good picture drawn me, I think by Thos. Thomson, of Fox, in his latter days, suffering the fatigue of an attack from Lewis. The great statesman was become bulky and lethargic, and lay like a fat ox which for sometime endures the persecution of a buzzing fly, rather than rise to get rid of it; and then at last he got up, and heavily plodded his way to the other side of the room."
Referring to Byron's story of Lewis near the Brenta, Scott adds,
"I had a worse adventure with Mat Lewis. I had been his guide from the cottage I then had at Laswade to the Chapel of Roslin. We were to go up one side of the river and come down the other. In the return he was dead tired, and, like the Israelites, he murmured against his guide for leading him into the wilderness. I was then as strong as a poney, and took him on my back, dressed as he was in his shooting array of a close sky-blue jacket, and the brightest red pantaloons I ever saw on a human breech. He also had a kind of feather in his cap. At last I could not help laughing at the ridiculous figure we must both have made, at which my rider waxed wroth. It was an ill-chosen hour and place, for I could have served him as Wallace did Fawden—thrown him down and twisted his head off. We returned to the cottage weary wights, and it cost more than one glass of Noyau, which he liked in a decent way, to get Mat's temper on its legs again."
The Bride of Abydos
was originally called
Zuleika
.
The petition, directed against Lord Redesdale's Insolvent Debtors Act, was presented by Romilly in the House of Commons, November 11, 1813, and by Lord Holland in the House of Lords, November 15, 1813.
[cross-reference: return to Footnote 4 of Journal entry for December 1st, 1813]
Henry IV.
, Part I. act in. sc. 3.
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