The Life of Lord Byron
Anonymous letter to John Galt, 3 June 1830
“Dear Galt, “Edinburgh, June 3, 1830.
“Though I shall always retain a lively general
recollection of my agreeable interview with Lord
Byron, at Genoa, in May, 1823, so long a time has since elapsed that
much of the aroma of the pleasure has evaporated, and I can but recall
generalities. At that time there was an impression in Genoa that he was averse to
receive visits from Englishmen, and I was indeed advised not to think of calling on
him, as I might run the risk of meeting with a savage reception. However, I
resolved to send your note, and to the surprise of every one the messenger brought
a most polite answer, in which, after expressing the satisfaction of ![]()
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hearing of his old friend and fellow-traveller, he added that
he would do himself the honour of calling on me the next day, which he accordingly
did; but owing to the officious blundering of an Italian waiter, who mentioned I
was at dinner, his Lordship sent up his card with his compliments that he would not
deranger the party. I was determined,
however, that he should not escape me in this way, and drove out to his residence
next morning, when, upon his English valet taking up my name, I was immediately
admitted.
“As every one forms a picture to himself of remarkable
characters, I had depicted his Lordship in my mind as a tall, sombre, Childe Harold personage, tinctured somewhat with
aristocratic hauteur. You may therefore guess my surprise when the door opened, and
I saw leaning upon the lock, a light animated figure, rather petite than otherwise, dressed in a nankeen hussar-braided jacket,
trousers of the same material, with a white waistcoat; his countenance pale but the
complexion clear and healthful, with the hair coming down in little curls on each
side of his fine forehead.
“He came towards me with an easy cheerfulness of manner,
and after some preliminary inquiries concerning yourself, we entered into a
conversation which lasted two hours, in the course of which I felt myself perfectly
at ease, from his Lordship’s natural and simple manners; indeed, so much so,
that, forgetting all my anticipations, I found myself conversing with him with as
fluent an intercourse of mind as I ever experienced, even with yourself.
“It is impossible for me at present to overtake a detail
of what passed, but as it produced a kind of scene, I may mention one incident.
“Having remarked that in a long course of desultory
reading, I had read most of what had been said by English travellers concerning
Italy; yet, on coming to it I found there was no country of which I had less ![]()
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accurate notions: that among other things I was much struck
with the harshness of the language. He seemed to jerk at this, and immediately
observed, that perhaps in going rapidly through the country, I might not have had
many opportunities of hearing it politely spoken. ‘Now,’ said he,
‘there are supposed to be nineteen dialects of the Italian language, and
I shall let you hear a lady speak the principal of them, who is considered to
do it very well.’ I pricked up my ears at hearing this, as I
considered it would afford me an opportunity of seeing the far-famed Countess Guiccioli. His Lordship immediately rose
and left the apartment, returning in the course of a minute or two leading in the
lady, and while arranging chairs for the trio, he said to me, ‘I shall
make her speak each of the principal dialects, but you are not to mind how I
pronounce, for I do not speak Italian well.’ After the scene had been
performed he resumed to me, ‘Now what do you think?’ To which I
answered, that my opinion still remained unaltered. He seemed at this to fall into
a little revery, and then said, abruptly, ‘Why ’tis very odd,
Moore thought the
same.’
‘Does your Lordship mean Tom Moore?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah, then, my Lord, I shall adhere with more pertinacity to my opinion,
when I hear that a man of his exquisite taste in poetry and harmony was also of
that opinion.’
“You will be asking what I thought of the lady; I had
certainly heard much of her high personal attractions, but all I can say is, that
in my eyes her graces did not rank above mediocrity. They were youth, plumpness,
and good-nature.”
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— . . .
Teresa Guiccioli (1800-1873)
Byron's lover, who in 1818 married Alessandro Guiccioli. She composed a memoir of Byron,
Lord Byron,
Jugé par les Témoines de sa Vie (1868).
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Irish poet and biographer, author of the
Irish Melodies (1807-34),
The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), and
Lalla
Rookh (1817); he was Byron's close friend and designated biographer.
