Exile.
It was on the 25th of April, 1816 (he being then in his twenty-eighth year), that he bade England adieu forever, and among the tenderest of his leave-takings was that from his sister, who had vainly sought to make smooth the difficulties in his home, and who (until Lady Byron had fallen into the blindness of dotage) retained her utmost respect. I cannot forbear quoting two verses from a poem addressed to this devoted sister:
“Though the rock of my last hope is shivered
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is delivered
To pain—it shall not be its slave;
There is many a pang to pursue me;
They may crush—but they shall not contemn,
They may torture, but shall not subdue me,
’Tis of thee that I think—not of them.
“From the wreck of the past, which hath perished,
Thus much I at least may recall,
It hath taught me that what I most cherished
Deserved to be dearest of all;
In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste, there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.”
Never was a man pelted away from his native shores with more anathemas; never one in whose favor so few appealing voices were heard. It was not so much a memory of his satirical thrusts, as a jealousy begotten by his late extraordinary successes, which had alienated nearly the whole literary fraternity. Only Rogers, Moore, and Scott were among the better known ones who had forgiven his petulant verse, and were openly apologetic and friendly; while such kind wishers as Lady Holland and Lady Jersey were half afraid to make a show of their sympathies. Creditors, too, of that burdened estate of his, had pushed their executions one upon another—in those days when his torments were most galling—into what was yet called with poor significance his home; only his title of peer, Moore tells us, at one date saved him from prison.
Yet when he lands in Belgium, he travels—true to his old recklessness—like a prince; with body servants and physician, and a lumbering family coach, with its showy trappings. Waterloo was fresh then, and the wreck and the blood, and the glory of it were all scored upon his brain, and shortly afterward by his fiery hand upon the poem we know so well, and which will carry that streaming war pennon in the face of other generations than ours. Then came the Rhine, with its castles and traditions, glittering afresh in the fresh stories that he wove; and after these his settlement for a while upon the borders of Lake Geneva—where, in some one of these talks of ours we found the studious Gibbon, under his acacia-trees, and where Rousseau left his footprints—never to be effaced—at Clarens and Meillerie. One would suppose that literature could do no more with such outlooks on lake and mountain, as seem to mock at language.
And yet the wonderful touch of Byron has kindled new interest in scenes on which the glowing periods of Rousseau had been lavished. Even the guide-books can none of them complete their record of the region without stealing descriptive gems from his verse; and his story of the Prisoner of Chillon will always—for you and for me—lurk in the shadows that lie under those white castle walls, and in the murmur of the waters that ebb and flow—gently as the poem—all round about their foundations. I may mention that at the date of the Swiss visit, and under the influences and active co-operation of Madame de Staël—then a middle-aged and invalid lady residing at her country seat of Coppet, on the borders of Geneva Lake—Byron did make overtures for a reconciliation with his wife. They proved utterly without avail, even if they were not treated with scorn. And it is worthy of special note that while up to this date all mention of Lady Byron by the poet had been respectful, if not relenting and conciliatory—thereafter the vials of his wrath were opened, and his despairing scorn knew no bounds. Thus, in the “Incantation”—thrust into that uncanny work of Manfred—with which he was then at labor—he says:
“Though thou seest me not pass by,
Thou shalt feel me with thine eye,
As a thing that, though unseen,
Must be near thee, and hath been;
And when, in that secret dread,
Thou hast turned around thy head,
Thou shalt marvel I am not
As thy shadow on the spot;
And the power which thou dost feel
Shall be what thou must conceal.”