Byron: The Last Phase

by Richard Edgcumbe

‘Lord Byron professed a deep-rooted antipathy to the English, though he was always surrounded by Englishmen, and, in reality, preferred them (as he did Italian women) to all others. I one day accused him of ingratitude to his countrymen. For many years, I observed, he had been, in spite of his faults, and although he had shocked all her prejudices, the pride, and I might almost say the idol, of Britain. He said they must be a stupid race to worship such an idol, but he had at last cured their superstition, as far as his divinity was concerned, by the publication of his “Cain.” It was true, I replied, that he had now lost their favour. This remark stung him to the soul, for he wished not only to occupy the public mind, but to command, by his genius, public esteem.

‘This extraordinary person, whom everybody was as anxious to see, and to know, as if he had been a Napoleon, the conqueror of the world, had a notion that he was hated, and avoided like one who had broken quarantine. He used often to mention to me the kindness of this or that insignificant individual, for having given him a good and friendly reception. In this particular Lord Byron was capricious, for at Genoa he would scarcely see anyone but those who lived in his own family; whereas at Cephalonia he was to everyone and at all times accessible. At Genoa he acted the misanthropist; at Cephalonia he appeared in his genuine character, doing good, and rather courting than shunning society.

‘Lord Byron conceived that he possessed a profound knowledge of mankind, and of the working of their passions. In this he judged right. He could fathom every mind and heart but his own, the extreme depths of which none ever reached. On my arrival from England at Cephalonia, his lordship asked me what new publications I had brought out. Among others I mentioned “The Springs of Action.” “Springs of Action!” said Lord Byron, stamping with rage with his lame foot, and then turning sharply on his heel, “I don’t require to be taught on this head. I know well what are the springs of action.” Some time afterwards, while speaking on another subject, he desired me to lend him “The Springs of Action.” He then suddenly changed the conversation to some humorous remarks for the purpose of diverting my attention. I could not, however, forbear reminding him of his former observations and his furious stamp.

‘Avarice and great generosity were among Lord Byron’s qualities; these contrarieties are said not unfrequently to be united in the same person. As an instance of Lord Byron’s parsimony, he was constantly attacking Count Gamba, sometimes, indeed, playfully, but more often with the bitterest satire, for having purchased for the use of his family, while in Greece, 500 dollars’ worth of cloth. This he used to mention as an instance of the Count’s imprudence and extravagance. Lord Byron told me one day, with a tone of great gravity, that this 500 dollars would have been most serviceable in promoting the siege of Lepanto; and that he never would, to the last moment of his existence, forgive Gamba for having squandered away his money in the purchase of cloth. No one will suppose that Lord Byron could be serious in such a denunciation; he entertained, in reality, the highest opinion of Count Gamba, who both on account of his talents and devotedness to his friend merited his lordship’s esteem.

‘Lord Byron’s generosity is before the world; he promised to devote his large income to the cause of Greece, and he honestly acted up to his pledge. It was impossible for Lord Byron to have made a more useful, and therefore a more noble, sacrifice of his wealth, than by devoting it, with discretion, to the Greek cause. He set a bright example to the millionaires of his own country, who certainly show but little public spirit. Most of them expend their fortunes in acts of ostentation or selfishness. Few there are of this class who will devote, perchance, the hundredth part of their large incomes to acts of benevolence or bettering the condition of their fellow-men. None of our millionaires, with all their pride and their boasting have had the public virtue, like Lord Byron, to sacrifice their incomes or their lives in aid of a people struggling for liberty.

‘Lord Byron’s reading was desultory, but extensive; his memory was retentive to an extraordinary extent. He was partial to the Italian poets, and is said to have borrowed from them. Their fine thoughts he certainly associated with his own, but with such skill that he could not be accused of plagiarism. Lord Byron possessed, indeed, a genius absolutely boundless, and could create with such facility that it would have been irksome to him to have become a servile imitator. He was original in all things, but especially as a poet.

‘The study of voyages and travels was that in which he most delighted; their details he seemed actually to devour. He would sit up all night reading them. His whole soul was absorbed in these adventures, and he appeared to personify the traveller. Lord Byron had a particular aversion to business; his familiar letters were scrawled out at a great rate, and resembled his conversations. Rapid as were his tongue and his pen, neither could keep pace with the quick succession of ideas that flashed across his mind. He hated nothing more than writing formal official letters; this drudgery he would generally put off from day to day, and finish by desiring Count Gamba, or some other friend, to perform the task. No wonder that Lord Byron should dislike this dry antipoetic work, and which he, in reality, performed with so much difficulty. Lord Byron’s arduous yet unsuccessful labours in this barren field put me in mind of the difficulty which one of the biographers of Addison describes this politician to have experienced, when attempting to compose an official paragraph for the Gazette announcing the death of the Queen. This duty, after a long and ineffectual attempt, the Minister, in despair, handed over to a clerk, who (not being a genius, but a man of business) performed it in an instant.

‘Not less was Lord Byron’s aversion to reading than to writing official documents; these he used to hand over to me, pretending, spite of all my protestations to the contrary, that I had a passion for documents. When once Lord Byron had taken any whim into his head, he listened not to contradiction, but went on laughing and satirizing till his joke had triumphed over argument and fact. Thus I, for the sake of peace, was sometimes silent, and suffered him to good-naturedly bully me into reading over, or, rather, yawning over, a mass of documents dull and uninteresting.

‘Lord Byron once told me, in a humorous tone, but apparently quite in earnest, that he never could acquire a competent knowledge of arithmetic. Addition and subtraction he said he could, though with some difficulty, accomplish. The mechanism of the rule of three pleased him, but then division was a puzzle he could not muster up sufficient courage to unravel. I mention this to show of how low a cast Lord Byron’s capacity was in some commonplace matters, where he could not command attention. The reverse was the case on subjects of a higher order, and in those trifling ones, too, that pleased his fancy. Moved by such themes, the impulses of his genius shot forth, by day and night, from his troubled brain, electric sparks or streams of light, like blazing meteors.

‘Lord Byron loved Greece. Her climate and her scenery, her history, her struggles, her great men and her antiquities, he admired. He declared that he had no mastery over his own thoughts. In early youth he was no poet, nor was he now, except when the fit was upon him, and he felt his mind agitated and feverish. These attacks, he continued, scarcely ever visited him anywhere but in Greece; there he felt himself exhilarated—metamorphosed into another person, and with another soul—in short, never had he, but in Greece, written one good line of poetry. This is a fact exaggerated, as facts often are, by the impulses of strong feelings. It is not on that account less calculated to convey to others the character of Lord Byron’s mind, or to impress it the less upon their recollections.