The Life of Lord Byron
Chapter XLVIII
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CHAPTER XLVIII.
The funeral preparations and final obsequies.
The death of Lord Byron was felt
by all Greece as a national misfortune. From the moment it was known that fears were
entertained for his life, the progress of the disease was watched with the deepest anxiety and
sorrow. On Easter Sunday, the day on which he expired, thousands of the inhabitants of
Missolonghi had assembled on the spacious plain on the outside of the city, according to an
ancient custom, to exchange the salutations of the morning; but on this occasion it was
remarked, that instead of the wonted congratulations, “Christ is risen,” they
inquired first, “How is Lord Byron?”
On the event being made known, the Provisional Government assembled, and a
proclamation, of which the following is a translation, was issued
“Provisional Government of Western Greece.
“The day of festivity and rejoicing is turned into one of
sorrow and morning.
“The Lord Noel Byron
departed this life at eleven* o’clock last night, after an illness of ten
days. His death was caused by an inflammatory fever. Such was the effect of his
Lordship’s illness on the public mind, that all classes had forgotten their
usual recreations of Easter, even before the afflicting event was apprehended.
*
Fletcher’s
Narrative implies at six that evening, the 19th April 1824.
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“The loss of this illustrious individual is undoubtedly
to be deplored by all Greece; but it must be more especially a subject of
lamentation at Missolonghi, where his generosity has been so conspicuously
displayed, and of which he had become a citizen, with the ulterior determination of
participating in all the dangers of the war.
“Everybody is acquainted with the beneficent acts of his
Lordship, and none can cease to hail his name as that of a real benefactor.
“Until, therefore, the final determination of the
national Government be known, and by virtue of the powers with which it has been
pleased to invest me, I hereby decree:
“1st. To-morrow morning, at daylight, thirty-seven
minute-guns shall be fired from the grand battery, being the number which
corresponds with the age of the illustrious deceased.
“2d. All the public offices, even to the tribunals, are
to remain closed for three successive days.
“3d. All the shops, except those in which provisions or
medicines are sold, will also be shut; and it is strictly enjoined that every
species of public amusement and other demonstrations of festivity at Easter may be
suspended.
“4th. A general mourning will be observed for twenty-one
days.
“5th. Prayers and a funeral service are to be offered up
in all the churches.
“A. MAVROCORDATOS.
“Georgis Praidis,
“Secretary.
“Given at Missolonghi, this 19th of April, 1824.”
The funeral oration was written and delivered on the occasion, by Spiridion Tricoupi, and ordered by the government to be
published. No token of respect that ![]()
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reverence could suggest, or custom
and religion sanction, was omitted by the public authorities, nor by the people.
Lord Byron having omitted to give directions for the
disposal of his body, some difficulty arose about fixing the place of interment. But after
being embalmed it was sent, on the 2d of May, to Zante, where it was met by Lord Sidney Osborne, a relation of Lord
Byron, by marriage—the secretary of the senate at Corfu.
It was the wish of Lord Sidney Osborne,
and others, that the interment should be in Zante; but the English opposed the proposition in
the most decided manner. It was then suggested that it should be conveyed to Athens, and
deposited in the temple of Theseus, or in the Parthenon—Ulysses
Odysseus, the Governor of Athens, having sent an express to Missolonghi, to
solicit the remains for that city; but, before it arrived, they were already in Zante, and a
vessel engaged to carry them to London, in the expectation that they would be deposited in
Westminster Abbey or St Paul’s.
On the 25th of May, the Florida left Zante with the body, which Colonel Stanhope accompanied; and on the 29th of June it reached
the Downs. After the ship was cleared from quarantine, Mr.
Hobhouse, with his Lordship’s solicitor, received it from
Colonel Stanhope, and, by their directions it was removed to the house
of Sir E. Knatchbull, in Westminster, where it lay in
state several days.
The dignitaries of the Abbey and of St. Paul’s having, as it was said,
refused permission to deposit the remains in either of these great national receptacles of the
illustrious dead, it was determined that they should be laid in the ancestral vault of the
Byrons. The funeral, instead of being public, was in consequence
private, and attended by only a few select friends to Hucknell, a small village about two miles
from Newstead Abbey, in the church of which the vault is situated; there the ![]()
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coffin was deposited, in conformity to a wish early expressed by the
poet, that his dust might be mingled with his mother’s. Yet, unmeet and plain as the
solemnity was in its circumstances, a remarkable incident gave it interest and distinction: as
it passed along the streets of London, a sailor was observed walking uncovered near the hearse,
and on being asked what he was doing there, replied that he had served Lord Byron in the Levant, and had come to pay his last respects to his remains;
a simple but emphatic testimony to the sincerity of that regard which his Lordship often
inspired, and which with more steadiness might always have commanded.
The coffin bears the following inscription:
Lord Byron, of Rochdale,
Born in London, January 22, 1788;
Died at Missolonghi,
In Western Greece,
April 19, 1824.
Beside the coffin the urn is placed, the inscription on which is,
Within this urn are deposited the heart, brains, &c. of the deceased
Lord Byron.
Leigh Hunt,
Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries (London: Henry Colburn, 1828)
An article was
written in “The Westminster
Review” (Medwin says
by Mr. Hobhouse) to show that the Conversations were altogether unworthy of
credit. There are doubtless many inaccuracies in the latter; but the spirit remains
undoubted; and the author of the criticism was only vexed, that such was the fact. He
assumes, that Lord Byron could not have made this or that statement to
Captain Medwin, because the statement was erroneous or untrue; but
an anonymous author has no right to be believed in preference to one who speaks in his own
name: there is nothing to show that Mr. Hobhouse might not have been
as mistaken about a date or an epigram as Mr. Medwin; and when we find
him giving us his own version of a fact, and Mr. Medwin asserting that
Lord Byron gave him another, the only impression left upon the
mind of any body who knew his Lordship is, that the fault most probably lay in the loose
corners of the noble Poet’s vivacity. Such is the impression made upon the author of
an unpublished Letter to Mr.
Hobhouse, which has been shown me in print; and he had a right to it. The
reviewer, to my knowledge, is mistaken upon some points, as well as the person he reviews.
The assumption, that nobody can know any thing about Lord Byron but
two or three persons who were conversant with him for a certain space of time, and whom he
spoke of with as little ceremony, and would hardly treat with more confidence than he did a
hundred others, is ludicrous; and can only end, as the criticism has done, in doing no good
either to him or them. . . .
John Galt,
“Pot versus Kettle” in Fraser’s Magazine
Vol. 2
No. 11 (December 1830)
“Dear Sir;—Amongst the
agreeable things which you say of me in your life of Lord Byron, you conjecture that I
‘condemned’
Childe Harold
previously to its publication. There is not the slightest foundation for this
supposition—nor is it true as you state, ‘that I was the only person
who had seen the poem in manuscript, as I was with Lord
Byron whilst he was writing it.’ I had left
Lord Byron before he had finished the two cantos, and,
excepting a few fragments, I had never seen them until they were printed. My own
persuasion is, that the story told in Dallas’s Recollections of some
person, name unknown, having dissuaded Lord Byron from
publishing Childe Harold, is a
mere fabrication, for it is at complete variance with all Lord
Byron himself told me on the subject. At any rate, I was not that
person; if I had been, it is not very likely that the poem which I had endeavoured
to stifle in its birth, should, in its complete, or, as Lord
Byron says, in its ‘concluded state,’ be dedicated to
me. I must, therefore, request you will take the earliest opportunity of relieving
me from this imputation, which, so far as a man can be written down by any other
author than himself, cannot fail to produce a very prejudicial effect, and to give
me more uneasiness than I think it can be your wish to inflict on any man who has
never given you provocation or excuse for injustice. . . .
John Galt,
“Pot versus Kettle” in Fraser’s Magazine
Vol. 2
No. 11 (December 1830)
I am glad to find my college
stories administered relief to your nerves, when we were together in the Malta
packet some one and twenty years ago; and I am not sorry that my wearing a red
coat at Cagliari, and cutting my finger in the quarries of Pentelicus, should
have furnished materials for your present volume; but to repay me for having
supplied these timely episodes, as well as for your copious extracts from my
travels in Albania, and also for inserting my note about Madame Guiccioli without my leave, you must
positively cancel the passage respecting Childe Harold
in page 161 of your little volume. . . .
John Galt,
“Pot versus Kettle” in Fraser’s Magazine
Vol. 2
No. 11 (December 1830)
I wonder that even common policy did not induce you to be
more cautious in making statements which might be so easily disproved, and
which have, indeed, been already incontrovertibly refuted. The very
conversation, which you have judiciously selected from Medwin, as one of those parts of his trumpery book to the truth of which you
can speak, I know to be a lie; for I never went the tour of the lake of Geneva
with Lord Byron. . . .
John Galt,
“Pot versus Kettle” in Fraser’s Magazine
Vol. 2
No. 11 (December 1830)
You tell me that your wish has
been to give only an outline of his intellectual character. I am at a loss to
understand how your gossip about him and me, and the silly anecdotes you have
copied from very discreditable authorities, can be said to be fairly comprised
in such an outline. But your plan ought certainly to have compelled you to make
yourself thoroughly acquainted with his poetry, and to quote him just as he
wrote. Nevertheless, you have misrepresented him at least nine times in the ten
stanzas of that poem which you call the last, and which was not the last, he
ever wrote. Oh, for shame! stick to your acknowledged fictions—there you
are safe—you may deal with Leddy
Grippy and Laurie Todd as
you please, but not with those who have really lived, or who are still
alive. . . .
[John Wilson et. al.],
“Noctes Ambrosianae XVII” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
Vol. 16
No. 94 (November 1824)
And there was another funny thing o’ his, till a queer looking lad, one
Mr. Skeffington, that wrote a tragedy, that was called
“The Mysterious Bride,” the whilk
thing made the Times newspaper for once witty—for it
said no more o’t, than just “Last night a play called The Mysterious
Bride, by the Honorable Mr. Skeffington, was performed at Drury Lane.
The piece was damned.” Weel, ye see it happened that there was a masquerade some nights after,
and Mr. Cam Hobhouse gaed till’t in the disguise
o’ a Spanish nun, that had been ravished by the French army— . . .
William Fletcher (1831 fl.)
Byron's valet, the son of a Newstead tenant; he continued in service to the end of the
poet's life, after which he was pensioned by the family. He married Anne Rood, formerly
maid to Augusta Leigh, and was living in London in 1831.
John Cam Hobhouse, baron Broughton (1786-1869)
Founder of the Cambridge Whig Club; traveled with Byron in the orient, radical MP for
Westminster (1820); Byron's executor; after a long career in politics published
Some Account of a Long Life (1865) later augmented as
Recollections of a Long Life, 6 vols (1909-1911).
Francis Osborne, fifth duke of Leeds (1751-1799)
He was the son of the fourth duke and was foreign secretary under Pitt (1783-91). His
first wife, Lady Amelia Darcy, eloped with Captain John Byron, the poet's father.
Leicester Fitzgerald Charles Stanhope, fifth earl of Harrington (1784-1862)
The third son of the third earl; in 1823 he traveled to Greece as the Commissioner of the
London Greek Committee; there he served with Byron, whom he criticizes in
Greece in 1823 and 1824 (1824). He inherited the earldom from his brother in
1851.
Spiridon Trikoupis (1788-1873)
Son of Ioannis Trikoupis, Primate of Missolonghi; educated at Paris, he was private
secretary to Francis North, Lord Guilford and composed a widely-reprinted funeral oration
for Byron.
