‘“But what Liberals?” I asked. Did he borrow his notions of free men from the Italians? Lord Byron said: “No; from the Hunts, Cartwrights, etc.” “And still,” said I, “you presented Cartwright’s Reform Bill, and aided Hunt by praising his poetry and giving him the sale of your works.”
‘Lord Byron exclaimed: “You are worse than Wilson,[18] and should quit the army.” I replied that I was a mere soldier, but never would abandon my principles. Our principles,’ continues Stanhope, ‘are diametrically opposite. If Lord Byron acts up to his professions, he will be the greatest—if not, the meanest—of mankind. He said he hoped his character did not depend on my assertions. “No,” said I, “your genius has immortalized you. The worst could not deprive you of fame.”
‘Lord Byron replied: “Well, you shall see; judge me by my acts.”
‘When he wished me good-night, I took up the light to conduct him to the passage, but he said: “What! hold up a light to a Turk!”’
It would be difficult indeed to find anything in the wide range of literature dealing with that period which would throw a stronger light upon both these men. Imagine the agent appointed by the London Committee wasting his precious time in writing such a letter as this for the information of its chairman. Stanhope meant no harm, we feel sure of that; but such a letter was little calculated to advance either his own reputation or Byron’s, and it was above all things necessary for the London Committee to have a good opinion of both. But Stanhope was decidedly impetuous, and lacked all sense of humour.
Millingen tells us that it soon became evident that little co-operation could be expected between Byron and Colonel Stanhope. Byron was fully persuaded that, in the degraded state of the Greek nation, a republican form of Government was totally unsuited, as well as incompatible with her situation, in respect to the neighbouring States of Europe. Colonel Stanhope, whose enthusiasm for the cause was extreme, supposed the Greeks to be endowed with the same virtue which their ancestors displayed. We, who live in the twentieth century, are able by the light of subsequent events to decide which of these two men held the sounder view; and we can honestly deplore that a mere matter of opinion should have caused any disagreements between two men who had sacrificed so much in a common cause.
Gamba, who seems to have been present during the altercation above alluded to, says that Colonel Stanhope, in accusing Lord Byron of being an enemy to the press, laid himself open to a rejoinder which is not recorded in the report of these proceedings. Byron’s reply was to the point: ‘And yet, without my money, where would your Greek newspaper be?’ And he concluded the sentence, ‘Judge me by my actions,’ cited by Stanhope, with, ‘not by my words.’
Colonel Stanhope could not understand Byron’s bantering moods. They seemed to him to be entirely out of place. The more Byron laughed and joked, the more serious Stanhope became, and their discussions seldom ended without a strong reproof, which irritated Byron for the moment. But so far from leaving any unfavourable impression on Byron’s mind, it increased his regard for an antagonist of such evident sincerity:
‘When parting from him one evening, after a discussion of this nature, Lord Byron went up to him, and exclaimed: “Give me that honest right hand.” Two such men were worthy of being friends, and it is to be regretted that an injudicious champion of the one should, by a partial detail of their trifling differences, try to raise him at the expense of the other.’
With the money provided by Byron, Colonel Stanhope’s pet scheme, the Greek Chronicle, printed in Greek type, came into being. Its editor, ‘a hot-headed republican’ named Jean Jacques Meyer, who had been a Swiss doctor, was particularly unfitted for the post, and soon came to loggerheads with Byron for publishing a violent attack on the Austrian Government. In a letter to Samuel Barff, Byron says: