“About the 20th I leave Venice, to take a journey into Romagna; but shall probably return in a month.”
This to Murray, as early as May 6. On May 20, we find him still going, but not yet gone: “Next week I set out for Romagna, at least in all probability.” On June 2, a letter addressed to Hoppner from Padua shows that he has started, but that, the favours he sought having been accorded to him at Venice, he is not very anxious to take a hot and dusty journey for the purpose of following up the intrigue:
“Now to go to Cuckold a Papal Count, who, like Candide, has already been ‘the death of two men, one of whom was a priest,’ in his own house is rather too much for my modesty, when there are several other places at least as good for the purpose. She says they must go to Bologna in the middle of June, and why the devil then drag me to Ravenna? However I shall determine nothing till I get to Bologna, and probably take some time to decide when I am there, so that, the Gods willing, you may probably see me again soon. The Charmer forgets that a man may be whistled anywhere before, but that after, a journey in an Italian June is a Conscription, and therefore she should have been less liberal in Venice, or less exigent at Ravenna.”
That letter is the first which throws light on the vexed question whether Byron really loved Madame Guiccioli, or merely viewed her as an eligible mistress. It is to be observed, however, that his conduct was less cynical than his correspondence, and that the Countess, on her part, saw no reason for suspecting insincerity. “I shall stay but a few days at Bologna,” is his announcement when he gets there; and the Countess relates his arrival:
“Dante’s tomb, the classical pine wood, the relics of antiquity which are to be found in that place, afforded a sufficient pretext for me to invite him to come, and for him to accept my invitation. He came, in fact, in the month of June ... while I, attacked by a consumptive complaint, which had its origin from the moment of my quitting Venice, appeared on the point of death.... His motives for such a visit became the subject of discussion, and these he himself afterwards involuntarily divulged; for having made some inquiries with a view to paying me a visit, and being told that it was unlikely he would ever see me again, he replied, if such were the case, he hoped that he should die also; which circumstance, being repeated, revealed the object of his journey.”
The narrative adds that Count Guiccioli himself begged Byron to call in the hope that his society might be beneficial to his wife’s health; and it is, at all events, certain that Byron’s arrival was followed by a remarkably rapid recovery, explicable from the fact, set forth by Byron, that her complaint, after all, was not consumption but a “fausse couche.” The husband’s attitude, however, puzzled him. “If I come away with a Stiletto in my gizzard some fine afternoon,” he writes, “I shall not be astonished;” and he proceeds:
“I cannot make him out at all, he visits me frequently, and takes me out (like Whittington the Lord Mayor) in a coach and six horses.... By the aid of a Priest, a Chambermaid, a young negro-boy, and a female friend, we are enabled to carry on our unlawful loves, as far as they can well go, though generally with some peril, especially as the female friend and priest are at present out of town for some days, so that some of the precautions devolve upon the Maid and Negro.”
That, it will be agreed, is rather the language of Don Juan than of a really devout lover; but there is more of the lover and less of the Don Juan in the letters which succeed. In the letter to Murray, for instance, dated June 29:
“I see my Dama every day at the proper and improper hours; but I feel seriously uneasy about her health, which seems very precarious. In losing her I should lose a being who has run great risks on my account, and whom I have every reason to love, but I must not think this possible. I do not know what I should do if she died, but I ought to blow my brains out, and I hope that I should. Her husband is a very polite personage, but I wish he would not carry me out in his Coach and Six, like Whittington and his Cat.”
And still more in a letter to Hoppner dated July 2: