"I hope, on my return, to lead a quiet, recluse life; but God knows and does best for us all; at least so they say, and I have nothing to object, as, on the whole, I have no reason to complain of my lot. I trust this will find you well, and as happy as one can be; you will, at least, be pleased to hear I am so."
It was in this admirable frame of mind that he often went from Athens to Cape Colonna. And amid these ruins, washed by the blue waves of the Ægean Sea, immortalized by Plato, who here taught his half-Christian philosophy, Lord Byron took his seat at the celestial banquet spread by the great master, and entered into full possession of his genius. For, although he ignored its great power and extent, it is impossible that he should not have had in hours like these, some vision of the future, some presentiment of coming glory, which, piercing through the veils that yet shrouded his genius, gave moments of ineffable delight. When he bathed in some solitary spot, he tells us in his memoranda that one of his greatest delights was to sit on a rock overlooking the waves, and to remain there whole hours lost in admiration of sky and sea, "absorbed," says Moore, "in that sort of vague reverie, which, however formless and indistinct at the moment, settled afterward on his pages into those clear, bright pictures which will endure forever."
One day, while he was swimming under the rocks of Cape Colonna, a vessel from the coast of Attica drew near. On board, going from London to Athens, were two celebrated personages—Lady Hester Stanhope and Mr. Bruce. The first object that greeted their eyes, on nearing Sanium, was Lord Byron, playing all alone with his favorite element. Some days after, his friend Lord Sligo wished him to make their acquaintance, and he saw a great deal of them at Athens. In his memoranda the following words are applied to them:—"It was the commencement (their meeting at Cape Colonna) of the most delightful acquaintance I have made in Greece." And he wished to assure Mr. Bruce, in case these lines should ever fall under his notice, of the pleasure he experienced in recalling the time they had passed together at Athens. Now I do not see any symptom of melancholy in all this, nor in all preceding, and yet Bruce thought there was. Did he, then, also consider the joy Lord Byron felt in solitude, and his indifference for the false conventional enthusiasm his countrymen affected to display at sight of the ruins of Greece, as so many other tokens of melancholy? In reality Lord Byron was averse to all kinds of affectation, made no exception in favor of the artistic pretensions which constitute the hypocrisy of taste, and only gave the sincere, ardent homage of his soul to those things of antiquity that recall great names or great actions, and to sublime scenes in nature. Notwithstanding his fine intelligence, it is not impossible that Mr. Bruce also may have shared the errors of superficial minds; and it is likewise possible that Lord Byron may really, during the last period of his sojourn at Athens, have sometimes been melancholy, for causes of grief were certainly not wanting. His man of business wished Lord Byron at this time to sell Newstead, so as to get his affairs into some definite order. Perhaps it would have been wise, but such a determination was extremely repugnant to him, for he was very fond of Newstead, and had even written to his mother, before leaving, that she might be quite easy on this head, as he would never part with it. However, his agent, wishing to get him back to England, then affected negligence, would not write, and made him wait for money. Lord Byron grew uneasy and alarmed, was out of humor, and often seemed capricious, because these circumstances obliged him to change his travelling plans, and finally left him no other alternative but to return to England, where, as he wrote to a friend, his first interview would be with a lawyer, the second with a creditor; and then would come discussions with miners, farmers, stewards and all the disagreeables consequent on a ruined property and disputed mines.
After having resisted all these fears for some time, he was obliged to decide on returning. Behold him, then, on the road to England.
At Malta he had attacks of fever to which his state of mind was certainly not wholly foreign. "We have seen," says Moore, "from the letters written by him on his passage homeward (on board the 'Volage' frigate) how far from cheerful or happy was the state of mind in which he returned. In truth, even for a disposition of the most sanguine cast, there was quite enough in the discomfort that now awaited him in England to sadden its hopes and check its buoyancy."
And yet in these letters, melancholy at bottom, which he addressed to his mother and friends during this tiresome voyage of more than six weeks, we still perceive, overriding all, his kind, sensitive, playful nature. He told them that if one can not be happy, one must at least try to be a little gay; that if England had ceased to smile on him, there were other skies more serene; that he was coming back shaken by fever morally and physically, but with a firm, intrepid spirit. And, in short, pleasantry never failed him.
Always admirable toward his mother, he spoke of his apathy, but re-assured her directly, adding:—
"Dear mother" (he wrote to her on the 'Volage' frigate), "within that apathy I certainly do not comprise yourself, as I will prove by every means in my power.
"P.S.—You will consider Newstead as your house, not mine, and me only as a visitor."[175]
He had hardly arrived in London when Mr. Dallas hastened to greet him, and instead of finding him changed, thought he was in excellent health, with a countenance that betrayed neither melancholy nor any trace of discontent at his return. The truth is, that those sorrows which did not reach his heart were never very deep with Lord Byron. But already a most formidable tempest was gathering on the horizon of his fate, for it was one that would cruelly wound his heart. Perhaps it was some vague, inexplicable presentiment of what was threatening him that saddened his return to his native country. The storm burst as soon as he set foot in London; for he was summoned in haste to Newstead, his mother's life being declared in danger. He set out instantaneously, but on arriving found only a corpse! This spectacle was still before his eyes; he had hardly quitted the chamber of death, where, in the obscurity of night and alone, believing himself free from all observation, he had given way in silence and darkness to the real sentiments of his heart, weeping bitterly the loss of a mother who had idolized him, when in rapid succession news arrived of the deaths of his dearest friends. Matthews, his mind's idol, had just been drowned in the river Cam, at Cambridge; Wingfield, one of his heart-idols, was dying of fever at Coimbra; his dear Eddlestone was in the last stage of consumption; and, finally, he learned the death of another loved, mysterious being. Six deaths within a few short weeks!