Dallas's Memoir of the Life of Byron
The Recollections is at
once one of the most valuable and most disappointing of the Byron memoirs. Dallas
(1754-1824) was a friend, a family member, and advisor who knew the poet before he
became famous and who gives a detailed account of the process of the events
surrounding the publication and reception of Childe Harold. Dallas, to whom
Byron assigned several the copyrights of English Bards, Childe
Harold, and The Corsair, knew most of the people who were significant in
the poet’s early years, including his madcap father who died in 1791. As an
experienced novelist intimate with his subject he should have been an ideal
biographer. In the event most of details of the poet’s life were suppressed
and what Dallas did write tells us more about himself than about his Byron.
Dallas announced that he had
completed the Recollections in a letter to Byron of 10 November 1819,
stating that he had been moved to undertake the work after reading the manuscript
journal that Byron kept in 1813-14: “I remember well that after one or two
slight sketches you concluded with, ‘This morning Mr. Dallas was here,
&c. &c.’” Since then their friendship had soured and Dallas,
unwilling to leave his own character to such hazard, tells Byron that he had
elected to tell the story in his own way. The Dallas memoir was to be published
after Byron’s death, presumably some decades in the future. Byron did not
reply to the letter, which he merely passed on to John Murray for safe-keeping.
Contrary to expectations, Byron
predeceased the seventy-year-old Dallas, who immediately took steps to publish the
memoir and what he possessed of Byron’s correspondence, which included the
letters Byron had written to his mother describing his first sojourn abroad. The
premature appearance of the Recollections necessitated considerable
adjustments where they touched upon persons still living; in a letter of 30 June
1824, written while the book was in press, Dallas offered Augusta Leigh
reassurance: “I wished as much as possible to avoid giving pain, even to
those that deserved it, and I curtailed my MS. nearly a half.”
The Recollections was
destined to be trimmed even farther once John Cam Hobhouse and Byron’s
executors filed a successful chancery action that halted publication only a few
days before it was to have appeared. The history of the lawsuit is related in a
“Prefatory Statement” that occupies nearly a third of what remained
after the volume had been stripped of Byron’s correspondence. This narrative,
which reflects badly enough on all concerned, is not without interest. It was
written by the author’s son Alexander after Dallas senior had died in France
shortly before the Recollections appeared in November 1824. The Rev.
Alexander Dallas (1791-1869) had once been on friendly terms with Byron and
Hobhouse, though it is clear from both his prefatory statement and appended
conclusion that any such friendship had long since dissipated.
Excerpts from the
Recollections appeared in The Courier for 20 November 1824,
indicating that its date of publication followed that of Medwin’s
Conversations of Lord Byron by four weeks. The Conversations was
much the more successful venture not only because it appeared first but because it
contained more controversial personal information than the Dallas volume. In 1825
the suppressed Byron letters were belatedly published by Galignani (Paris) in a
3-volume edition of the Recollections that was beyond the reach of English
law; a copy of the suppressed English edition survives in the Morgan library in New
York.
The Recollections have been
quarried by all later biographers and the dramatic passages describing the
publication of Childe Harold and Byron’s installation in the House of
Lords are often reprinted. What remains, if less compelling (apart from obvious
padding, Dallas was reduced to summarizing the forbidden letters) is not
unimportant for what it reveals about Byron’s extended family for which
Dallas assumes the role of spokesman.
They were an ambitious and
patriotic lot, admirals, sea-captains, heroes. After inheriting Lord Byron’s
title Dallas’s English nephew George Anson Byron pursued a successful career
at court; Dallas’s American nephew George Mifflin Dallas became
vice-president of the United States (Dallas Texas is named for him). Robert Charles
Dallas expected greater things from Lord Byron than just poetry. The memoirist took
his role as literary and moral censor seriously and he was commensurately
disappointed when his charge inclined towards the more sinister side of the family
legacy. Not that he presents matters that light: Lord Byron, seduced by heady
praise and admiration had merely fallen into bad company. In his last, unanswered
letter of 1819 Dallas is still imploring the poet to change his ways, make up with
Lady Byron, and assume his proper role in the House of Lords.
One begins to see why
Recollections is as much about Dallas as about Byron: the author felt
that he had much to answer for; he may even have been sincere when on his deathbed
he told his son Alexander that he had come to regret his part in the publication of
Childe Harold. If so, this was no small concession considering the large
role Dallas assigns to himself in that life-changing event. While his hectoring and
condescension render Dallas the least amiable of Byron’s biographers, one can
understand and almost sympathize with his deep disappointment. He was angry that
the sale of Newstead Abbey had deprived George Anson Byron of his patrimony and
bitter that Lord Byron’s bad behavior had betrayed his tutelage and thwarted
all his hopes.
It was none of it my fault, the
memoir implies; I loved him: I write only to defend Byron from his detractors.
Readers may well demur, but it is worth recalling that in 1819 when Dallas wrote
the Recollections Byron’s reputation was fast approaching its nadir
and that its recovery had but just begun when the book was rushed to press in the
summer of 1824. If Dallas’s motives are transparently mercenary and
self-serving, it is also true that his account of Byron, however tepid and
unsatisfactory, was written at a time when few in England had a good word to say
for the poet, and when the author himself was smarting under Byron’s
rejection. Under similar circumstances Leigh Hunt, though a more amiable writer,
would prove a less kind friend.
David Hill Radcliffe
Charles Knight’s account of
the publication of the Recollections, given in his Passages of a Working
Life (1864-65), is worth quoting at length:
At the time of Lord Byron’s funeral I was involved in a matter of public
interest connected with the career of the deceased poet. I was enduring a
disappointment, such as I had scarcely contemplated as a possible incident of my
publishing career. I will relate, as briefly as I can, the story of a Chancery
Injunction to restrain me from publishing certain Letters of Lord Byron, which was
served upon me five days before the funeral procession which I witnessed on the
12th of July.
Robert Charles Dallas was connected by marriage with the family of the poet.
Captain George Anson Byron, the uncle of Lord Byron, married the sister of Mr.
Dallas. In 1824, through the intervention of my kind friend, the Rev. Charles
Richard Sumner, then residing at Windsor as Domestic Chaplain to George IV., I was
offered the publication of a book to be entitled “Correspondence of Lord Byron.”
Upon receiving intelligence of the death at Missolonghi of the eminent man of whom
he had some interesting memorials, Mr. Dallas came from Paris to England to arrange
for the publication of some work in which should be exhibited his “Recollections of
the Life of Lord Byron from 1808 to the end of 1814.” I saw him at the house of his
son Alexander, who, having been formerly in the army, had taken orders, and was in
1824 in the ministerial charge of the village of Wooburn, near Beaconsfield. The
elder Dallas was then in his seventieth year—a handsome old man, of refined
manners, of varied and extensive information; manifesting an affectionate
attachment to the memory of the poet, but with a strong religious feeling as to his
moral aberrations since the period of their intimate acquaintance, which in some
respects might have been called friendship. That intimacy ceased after 1814. Mr.
Dallas had many times heard Lord Byron read portions of a book in which he inserted
his opinion of the persons with whom he mixed, which book, he said, be intended for
publication after his death. This, I conceive, was the Memoir upon which Mr. Murray
advanced two thousand guineas to Thomas Moore; and which was torn and burned, under
advice, in the presence of Moore, the advance being repaid to Mr. Murray. Such is
Mr. Moore’s account of this mysterious transaction. From hearing some of Lord
Byron’s opinions of his contemporaries, Mr. Dallas took the hint of writing a
volume to be published after his own death and that of Lord Byron, which should
present a faithful delineation of the poet’s character as he had known him.
The judicious advice of the elder author—for Dallas had been a not unsuccessful
historian and novelist—was useful to Byron in his tentative walk to fame; and the
obligation was amply repaid by the present of the copyright of the first two cantos
of “Childe Harold,” which, strange to say, Byron was unwilling to publish till
encouraged by the judgment of his experienced friend. Byron died at the age of
thirty-seven; Dallas could have scarcely contemplated to have been his survivor.
The world was eager to learn all it could about the man who had filled so large a
space in its thoughts for fourteen years; and Mr. Dallas, not from mere sordid
motives, remodelled his Memoir into “Correspondence of Lord Byron.” I purchased the
manuscript for a large sum; and in June it was advertised for publication. On the
30th of that month Mr. Hobhouse called on me with a friend who, as it subsequently
appeared, was to be a witness to our conversation. I was not aware of the
disadvantage under which the presence of a witness was intended to place me, but
immediately after the interview I made a full note of what took place. Mr. Hobhouse
came to protest, as one of the executors of Lord Byron, against the publication of
this correspondence. I stated that I had read the manuscript carefully, and that
the family and the executors need feel no apprehension as to its tendency, as the
work was intended to elevate Lord Byron’s moral and intellectual character.
Mr. Hobhouse observed, that if individuals were not spoken of with bitterness, and
if opinions were not very freely expressed in these letters, they were not like
Lord Byron’s letters in general. The result was, that the Vice-Chancellor
granted an injunction upon the affidavits of Mr. Hobhouse and Mr. Hanson,
co-executors, that such contemplated publication was “a breach of private
confidence, and a violation of the rights of property.” There was an appeal. Our
counter-affidavits affirmed that the letters were not of a confidential character.
After two months of anxiety, Lord Eldon, the Chancellor, decided “that if A. writes
a letter to B., B. has the property in that letter for the purpose of reading and
keeping it, but no property in it to publish it.” The unfortunate quarto volume, as
printed to p. 168, is before me. In a few years, Mr. Moore, in his “Life of Byron,”
gave his testimony to the value of “a sort of Memoir of the noble Poet, published
soon after his death, which, from being founded chiefly on original correspondence,
is the most authentic and trustworthy of any that have yet appeared.” That Memoir
was published by me at the end of 1824, after the death of Mr. Dallas on the 21st
of October. It was edited by his son, the Reverend Alexander Dallas, who,
throughout the whole of this affair, acted in the most honourable and conscientious
spirit. In the omission of passages of the original manuscript, he evinced a truly
Christian temper of moderation towards those who had endeavoured to damage his
father’s character, by the imputation of unworthy motives in seeking to
publish this Correspondence. I was never brought so near to Lord Eldon as during
the hours when this case was argued in his private room. I observed with admiration
the patient spirit of inquiry; the desire to uphold the authority of previous
cases; but with a strong inclination not to decide against the right of
publication, when no satisfactory reason could be shown but that of individual
caprice or self-interest for suppressing the work. Mr. Kindersley, now a
Vice-Chancellor, was our Counsel, and most ably did he perform his duty. At times I
thought that the “I doubt” of the great Chancellor would have terminated in our
favour. He seemed, even in pronouncing judgment, to have some hesitation about
affirming the principle upon which he ultimately decided as to the property in
letters, as settled by the law. “Whether that was a decision that could very well
have stood at first or not I will not undertake to say.” But for most purposes of
public utility his judgment was valuable. “It is a very different thing, as it
appears to me, publishing as information what these letters contain, and publishing
the letters themselves.” Upon this principle we acted, in regard to the volume
which was published at the end of 1824, as “Recollections of Lord Byron.” Mr. Moore
reaped the full advantage of the suppressed Correspondence, by filling many pages,
in 1829, with the letters of Dallas and Byron that the executors had thought fit to
suppress in 1824. (2:11-16)
