Presently we shall see Byron exaggerating it; and we shall also see how he came to do so—how the boy’s occasional pose became the determining reality of the man’s life. But before we come to that, we must turn back.
CHAPTER V
REVELRY AT NEWSTEAD—“ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS”
One watches the swelling of Byron’s indebtedness with morbid interest. It is like the rapid rising of a Spring tide which threatens to submerge a city. Already, in his second term at Cambridge, as we have seen, he besought his sister to pledge her credit for his loans. At the beginning of his third year, we find him making a confession to his solicitor:
“My debts amount to three thousand, three hundred to Jews, eight hundred to Mrs. B. of Nottingham, to coachmaker and other tradesmen a thousand more, and these must be much increased before they are lessened.”
They were increased before they were lessened—unless the explanation be that Byron only told the truth about them in instalments. Three months later this is his confession to the Reverend John Becher:
“Entre nous, I am cursedly dipped; my debts, everything inclusive, will be nine or ten thousand before I am twenty-one.”
But, even so, the high-water mark is not yet reached. Towards the end of the same year, when Byron is contemplating his “grand tour,” he once more calls his solicitor into council: