“You will have now received all the Acts, corrected, of the Marino Faliero. What you say of the ‘bet of 100 guineas’ made by some one who says that he saw me last week reminds me of what happened in 1810; you can easily ascertain the fact, and it is an odd one.
“In the latter end of 1811, I met one evening at the Alfred
my old school and form-fellow (for we were within two of each other, he the higher,
though both very near the top of our remove) Peel,
the Irish secretary. He told me that, in 1810, he met me, as he thought, in St.
James’s-street, but we passed without speaking. He mentioned this, and it was
denied as impossible, I being then in Turkey. A day or two
| A. D. 1820. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 349 |
“But if they are, are their coats and waistcoats also seen? I do not disbelieve that we may be two by some unconscious process, to a certain sign, but which of these two I happen at present to be, I leave you to decide. I only hope that t’other me behaves like a gemman.
“I wish you would get Peel asked how far I am accurate in my recollection of what he told me; for I don’t like to say such things without authority.
“I am not sure that I was not spoken with; but this also you can ascertain. I have written to you such letters that I stop.
“P.S. Last year (in June, 1819) I met at Count Mosti’s, at Ferrara, an Italian who asked
me ‘if I knew Lord Byron?’ I told him no (no
one knows himself, you know). ‘Then,’ says he, ‘I do; I met him
at Naples the other day.’ I pulled out my card and asked him if that was
the way he spelt his name: be answered, yes. I suspect that it
was a blackguard navy surgeon, who attended a young travelling madam about, and
passed himself for a lord at the post-houses. He was a vulgar dog—quite of the
cock-pit order—and a precious representative I must have had of him, if it was even
so; but I don’t know. He passed himself off as a gentleman, and squired about a
Countess * *
| 350 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1820. |
