And if salons in general were powerless to exercise any bad influence over him, this impossibility was still greater with regard to London salons. Without adopting as exact the picture drawn of them by a learned academician,[120] in a book more witty than true, wherein we read:—"that under pain of passing for eccentric, of giving scandal or exciting alarm, English people are forbidden to speak of others or themselves, of politics, religion, or intellectual things or matters of taste; but only of the environs, the roundabouts, a picnic, a visit to some ruin, a fashionable preacher, a fox-hunt, and the rain,—that never-ending theme kindly furnished by the inconstant climate;" without, I say, adopting this picture as true, for in England it must be considered a clever caricature, it is nevertheless certain, that the discipline of fashionable London salons requires independence of mind to be in a measure sacrificed. The tone reigning in these salons, which are only opened during the season, is quite different from that produced by the open-hearted hospitality which renders English country residences so very agreeable. Could Lord Byron long take pleasure in the salons of the metropolis, where every thing is on the surface and noisy, where one may say that people are content with simply showing themselves, intending concealment all the while; or where they show themselves what they are not; where set forms, or a vocabulary of their own, so far limits allowable subjects of conversation, that fools may easily have the advantage over clever men (for intellect is looked upon as suspicious, dangerous, bold, and called an eccentricity). Lord Byron, so frank, and open-hearted, loving fame, and having a sort of presentiment that Heaven would not accord him sufficient time to reap his full harvest of genius, consequently regretting the moments he was forced to lose; must he not, after seeking amusement in these assemblies, soon have found that they lasted too long, and were too fatiguing? Must he not often have well-nigh revolted against himself, felt something cold and heavy restraining his outburst of soul, something like a sort of slavery; must he not have understood that it was requisite for him to escape from such useless pastimes in order to re-invigorate himself by study, in the society of his own thoughts, and those of the master-spirits of ages? Yes, Lord Byron did experience all that. Ennui of the world called him back to solitude. We can not doubt it, he said so himself:—
"Last night, party at Lansdowne House; to-night, party at Lady Charlotte Greville's—deplorable waste of time, and loss of temper, nothing imparted, nothing acquired—talking without ideas—if any thing like thought were in my mind, it was not on the subjects on which we were gabbling. Heigho! and in this way half London pass what is called life. To-morrow, there is Lady Heathcote's—shall I go? Yes; to punish myself for not having a pursuit."
And, elsewhere:—
"Shall I go to Lansdowne's? to the Berry's? They are all pleasant; but I don't know, I don't think that soirées improve one."
He will not go into the world:—
"I don't believe this worldly life does any good; how could such a world ever be made? Of what use are dandies, for instance, and kings, and fellows at college, and women of a certain age, and many men of my age, myself foremost?"
Having changed his apartments, he had not yet got all his books; was reading without order, composing nothing; and he suffered in consequence. "I must set myself to do something directly; my heart already begins to feed on itself." He accuses himself of not profiting enough by time. "Twenty-six years of age! I might and ought to be a Pasha at that age. 'I 'gin to be weary of the sun.'" But let him be with a clever friend, like Moore, for instance, and, oh! then the ennui of salons becomes metamorphosed into pleasure for him, without taking away his clearsightedness as to the world's worth.
"Are you going this evening," writes he to Moore, "to Lady Cahir's? I will, if you do; and wherever we can unite in follies, let us embark on the same ship of fools. I went to bed at five, and got up at nine."
And elsewhere, after having expressed his disappointment at seeing Moore so little during the season, he calls London "a populous desert, where one should be able to keep one's thirst like the camel. The streams are so few, and for the most part so muddy."
And ten years later, in the fourteenth canto of "Don Juan," he said, speaking of fashionable London society:—