Fortunately not all the poets of England let themselves be frightened into reaction by the French revolution.
George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born in 1788. His father was a rake and blackguard. “Your mother is a fool,” said a schoolmate; and Byron answered, “I know it.” This, you must admit, was a poor start in life for a boy. He had a club foot, concerning which he was frightfully sensitive; but in other ways he was divinely handsome, and much sought after by the ladies; so he alternated between fits of solitude and melancholy, and other fits of amorous excess. Being a lord, he was a great person all his life. Being a man of genius, he enormously increased his greatness. He lived always before the world, in one sublime pose or another, and composed whole epics about himself and his moods.
He traveled, and became a cosmopolitan figure, and wild tales were spread concerning his adventures in Europe. Then he came back to England, and published a poem, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” which made such a sensation as Britain had never known before. “I awoke one morning and found myself famous,” he said. But he affected to despise this fame; he, a noble lord, must not be confused with vulgar writing fellows. He would toss a manuscript to his publishers with a careless gesture—though the manuscript might be worth one or two thousand pounds. I cannot recall any high-up aristocrat who achieved literary greatness to compare with Byron; he was the first lord of letters of that age and of all ages.
He composed a series of verse romances, tales of Eastern despots and their crimes, in the fashion of the day. They were full of melody and rhythm, and their heroes were always that melancholy, sublime, outlaw figure which we known as “Byronic.” This autobiographic hero was eagerly taken up by the fashionable world, especially the female part. One great lady, already supplied with a husband, adored the poet wildly, then despised him, threatened to kill him, attacked him in a novel, and finally, when she met his funeral cortege in the street, fainted and went insane.
He married an heiress, quite cynically for her money, spent the money, and had everything he owned attached by his creditors. Then his wife left him, with hints of mysterious wickedness. He was overwhelmed by a storm of abuse, and went into exile for the rest of his life. The wife never told her story, but many years later the American novelist, Harriet Beecher Stowe, published what she claimed was the truth, that Byron had been guilty of incest with his half-sister. His lordship had by that time become a “standard author,” and the critics were outraged by Mrs. Stowe’s indiscretion; even now they do not speak out loud about the matter.
In Switzerland the poet met Shelley, the best influence that ever came into his life. He recognized this new friend as the purest soul he knew, and praised his character ardently in his letters, though he never paid the public tribute to Shelley’s writings which they deserved. Shelley turned Byron’s thoughts to politics, and he wrote “The Prisoner of Chillon,” one of the noblest of his poems. But then he went off to Venice, and amused himself with numerous intrigues, and got fat. He began “Don Juan,” a new kind of epic poem, mocking itself, as well as everything else. It is a hateful picture of a hateful world, but it has almost infinite verve and energy, and we recognize in it a great spirit trying to lift itself above an age of corruption by the instrument of scorn.
It was the time of the “Holy Alliance,” and the few men who cared for freedom were living in exile or hiding from the police. Byron associated with these revolutionists, and gave them both money and his name. He became a neighbor of Shelley’s, and again immersed himself in politics and literature. He wrote his drama “Cain,” in which he deals with the problems of human fate from the revolutionary point of view. To the religionists of the time, this was most awful blasphemy; the poet Southey frothed at the mouth, and wrote his “Vision of Judgment,” portraying the damnation of Byron. His angry lordship came back with a poem of the same name—so effective that the publisher was jailed for six months! One stanza, describing the poet laureate, will serve for a sample of Byron’s fighting mood:
He had written praises of a regicide;
He had written praises of all kings whatever;
He had written for republics far and wide,
And then against them bitterer than ever:
For pantisocracy he once had cried
Aloud, a scheme less moral than ’twas clever;
Then grew a hearty anti-jacobin—
Had turned his coat—and would have turned his skin.
Byron had now become the voice of liberty against reaction throughout Europe. And this was a brand new thing, seeming a kind of insanity to the Tories. There had been an abundance of dissipated lords, but never before a lord of revolt! Byron joined the secret society of the Carbonari, and took part in their attempt to free Italy. When they failed, he was not discouraged, but wrote: “There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist; but the peoples will conquer in the end.” In those words we know the voice of a thinker and a man.
He was now thirty-five years of age, restless, tormented by a sense of futility. The Greek people were carrying on a war for liberation against the Turks, and Byron went to help them, and thus set a crown upon his life. He died of a fever, early in the campaign; and so today, when we think of him, we think not merely of a nobleman and a poet, but of a man who laid down wealth and fame and worldly position for the greatest of all human ideals.