The Love Affairs of Lord Byron

by Francis Henry Gribble

CHAPTER IX

RETURN TO ENGLAND—PUBLICATION OF “CHILDE HAROLD”

July 1811 saw Byron back in England after two years’ absence, but in no hurry, for various reasons, to return to Newstead. The “venerable pile” had been desecrated by the invasion of bailiffs in connection with an unpaid upholsterer’s bill; and Mrs. Byron was living there, and was, as usual, quarrelling with her neighbours. Byron, in one of his letters from the Levant, tells her that she cannot deny that she is a “vixen,” and suggests that she is in the habit of drinking more champagne than is good for her. It was only to be expected that she would rattle the fire-irons, and throw the tongs, as furiously as ever—even if a little less accurately—under the stimulating influence. He lingered, therefore, at Reddish’s Hotel, Saint James’s Street; and it was there that the news of her sudden illness—the result, it is said, of shock caused by the magnitude of the afore-mentioned upholsterer’s bill—surprised him. He hurried to her, but the news of her death met him on his way.

He had not loved her. We have passed many proofs of that, and many others could be given. She had taunted him with his deformity, and he believed—so he told Lord Sligo—that he owed it to her “false delicacy” at his birth. She had not understood him, and he had fled before her violence. Unable to love her, he had missed a precious emotion to which he felt himself entitled—that may be one of the secrets of his persistent view of himself as a lonely man, without a friend in a lonely world. If he was shaken by the sudden sundering of the tie, it would have been too much to expect him to be prostrated by his grief, or to do more than pay his brief tribute to the solemnity of death, remembering that there had been signs of tenderness in the midst of, or in the intervals between, the storms of passion.

“Oh, Mrs. By,” he exclaimed to his mother’s maid. “I had but one friend in the world, and she is gone”; but he always said that of every friend who died—of Skinner Matthews who was drowned in the Cam; of John Wingfield who was drowned off Coimbra; and of Eddleston, the choir boy, whom he had admitted to his intimacy at Cambridge. He said it quite sincerely, giving emotion its hour, and then let his thoughts flow in other directions. On the day of Mrs. Byron’s funeral he told his servant to fetch the gloves and spar with him; and the boy thought that he hit harder than usual. Then he threw down the gloves and left the room without a word, with the air of a man disgusted with himself for trying to kill devils like that; and presently he was in the thick of his preparations for the production of “Childe Harold.”

He had brought the manuscript of “Childe Harold” home with him, together with the manuscript of “Hints from Horace.” He believed “Hints from Horace” to be much the greater work of the two; and his reasons for thinking so are easy to understand. “Hints from Horace” was a satire based on the best models, and composed on conventional lines. It could be compared with the models, and judged and “marked,” like a schoolboy’s theme. “Childe Harold” was an experiment. It expressed a personality—the personality of a very young man who was not yet quite sure of himself and, except when his temper was up, was afraid of being laughed at. Hobhouse—that candid, trusty, matter-of-fact friend—had seen it, and had criticised it pretty much in the spirit in which Mark Twain’s jumping frog was criticised. He had failed to see any points in that poem different from any other poem. Byron, consequently, was sensitive and timorous about it. “Childe Harold,” he felt, like “Hours of Idleness,” would put him on his defence, whereas in “Hints from Horace,” as in “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,” he would have the advantage of attacking. He needed the encouragement of flattery.

One Dallas, a distant relative who now introduced himself and, for a season, doubled the parts, as it were, of literary mentor and literary valet, supplied the flattery, recognising that, whereas “Hints from Horace” was just a satire like another, “Childe Harold” was the expression of a new sentiment, hitherto unheard in English literature. “Hints from Horace,” he thought, might be published, if the author wished it—it did not much matter one way or the other; but “Childe Harold” must be published. It was interesting; it was romantic; it would please. It was not merely a narrative, but a manifesto. It ignored conventions, lifted a mask, and revealed a man—a new and unsuspected type of man—beneath it.

So Dallas spoke and wrote; and Byron let himself be persuaded. He yielded, at first, with reluctance—or perhaps it was only with a pretence of reluctance; but, after he had yielded, he entered into the spirit of the situation. He would not only publish, but he would publish with éclat. If he could not command success, he would deserve it, and would be careful not to throw away a chance. He would not be contented with a publisher who merely printed a few copies of the poem, pushed them outside the back-door, and waited to see what would happen. The minds of men—and women—should be duly prepared for the sensation in store for them. Whatever the mountain might be destined to bring forth, at least it should be visibly in labour. Publication should be preluded by a noise as of the rolling of logs.

The money did not matter. The “magnificent man”—and there was a good deal of Aristotle’s “magnificent man” about Byron at this period—could not soil his hands by taking money for a poem even for the purpose of discharging his debt to the upholsterers whose bills were frightening his mother out of her life. Perish the mean thought! If there was money in the poem, Dallas might have it for himself. All that the author wanted was glory—a “boom,” as we vulgar moderns say—and that arresting noise already referred to, as of the rolling of logs. Dallas must see to that to the best of his ability, and he himself would lend a hand. Above all, there must be no hole-and-corner publishing. Cawthorne must on no account have the book—his status was not good enough. Miller was the man, and, failing Miller, Murray. On the whole it was to Murray that it would be best to go. Murray was the coming man—one could divine him as the publisher of the future, and he had, on his side divined Byron as the poet of the future, and expressed a wish to “handle” some of his work.

So Dallas went to Murray, and got five hundred guineas for the copyright; and then the sound of the rolling of the logs began. Galt heard it. Galt, being himself a man of letters as well as a commercial traveller, knew what it was that he heard. Galt, who was now back in London, tells us that “various surmises to stimulate curiosity were circulated,” and he continues: