The mention of Aurora Raby, to whom Juan in the first instance proposed, and by whom he was refused, suggests an incident in his life which is well known. Aurora was very young, and knew but little of the world’s ways. In her indifference she confounded him with the crowd of flatterers by whom she was surrounded. Her mind appears to have been of a serious caste; with poetic vision she ‘saw worlds beyond this world’s perplexing waste,’ and
‘those worlds
Had more of her existence; for in her
There was a depth of feeling to embrace
Thoughts, boundless, deep, but silent too as Space.’
She had ‘a pure and placid mien’; her colour was ‘never high,’
‘Though sometimes faintly flushed—and always clear
As deep seas in a sunny atmosphere.’
We cannot be positive, but perhaps Byron had Aurora Raby in his mind when he wrote:
‘I’ve seen some balls and revels in my time,
And stayed them over for some silly reason,
And then I looked (I hope it was no crime)
To see what lady best stood out the season;
And though I’ve seen some thousands in their prime
Lovely and pleasing, and who still may please on,
I never saw but one (the stars withdrawn)
Whose bloom could after dancing dare the Dawn.’[58]
Perhaps Aurora Raby may have been drawn from his recollection of Miss Mercer Elphinstone, who afterwards married Auguste Charles Joseph, Comte de Flahaut de la Billarderie, one of Napoleon’s Aides-de-Camp, then an exile in England. This young lady was particularly gracious to Byron at Lady Jersey’s party, when others gave him a cold reception. We wonder how matters would have shaped themselves if she had accepted the proposal of marriage which Byron made to her in 1814! But it was not to be. That charming woman passed out of his orbit, and as he waited upon the shore, gazing at the dim outline of the coast of France, the curtain fell upon the first phase of Byron’s existence. The Pilgrim of Eternity stood on the threshold of a new life:
‘Between two worlds life hovers like a star,
’Twixt Night and Morn, upon the horizon’s verge.
How little do we know that which we are!
How less what we may be! The eternal surge
Of Time and Tide rolls on and bears afar
Our bubbles; as the old burst, new emerge,
Lashed from the foam of Ages.’
And after eight years of exile, in his ‘Last Words on Greece,’ written in those closing days at Missolonghi, with the shadow of Death upon him, his mind reverts to one whom, in 1816, he had called ‘Soul of my thought’:
‘What are to me those honours or renown
Past or to come, a new-born people’s cry?
Albeit for such I could despise a crown
Of aught save laurel, or for such could die.
I am a fool of passion, and a frown
Of thine to me is as an adder’s eye—
To the poor bird whose pinion fluttering down
Wafts unto death the breast it bore so high—
Such is this maddening fascination grown,
So strong thy magic or so weak am I.’
‘The flowers and fruits of Love are gone; the worm,
The canker, and the grief, are mine alone!’