The Life of Lord Byron
Lord Byron to Leicester Stanhope, 31 December 1823
“Scrofer, or some such name, on board a
Cephaloniate Mistice, Dec. 31, 1823.
“My Dear Stanhope,
“We are just arrived here—that is, part of my
people and I, with some things, &c., and which it may be as well not to specify
in a letter (which has a risk of being intercepted, perhaps); but Gamba and my horses, negro, steward, and the
press, and all the committee things, also some eight thousand dollars of mine (but
never mind, we have more left—do ![]()
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you understand?) are
taken by the Turkish frigates; and my party and myself in another boat, have had a
narrow escape, last night (being close under their stern, and hailed, but we would
not answer, and bore away) as well as this morning. Here we are, with sun and
charming weather, within a pretty little port enough; but whether our Turkish
friends may not send in their boats, and take us out (for we have no arms, except
two carbines and some pistols, and, I suspect, not more than four fighting people
on board), is another question; especially if we remain long here, since we are
blocked out of Missolonghi by the direct entrance. You had better send my friend
George Drake, and a body of Suliotes, to
escort us by land or by the canals, with all convenient speed.
Gamba and our Bombard are taken into Patras, I suppose,
and we must take a turn at the Turks to get them out. But where the devil is the
fleet gone? the Greek, I mean—leaving us to get in without the least
intimation to take heed that the Moslems were out again. Make my respects to
Mavrocordato, and say that I am here at
his disposal. I am uneasy at being here. We are very well.—Yours, &c.
“P.S. The Bombard was twelve
miles out when taken; at least, so it appeared to us (if taken she actually be,
for it is not certain), and we had to escape from another vessel that stood
right in between us and the port.”
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— . . .
Pietro Gamba (1801-1827)
The brother of Teresa Guiccioli and member of Carbonieri. He followed Byron to Greece and
left a memoir of his experiences.
Prince Alexander Mavrocordatos [Αλεξανδρος Μαβροκορδατος] (1791-1865)
Greek statesman and diplomat with Byron at Missolonghi; after study at the University of
Padua he joined the Greek Revolution in 1821 and in 1822 was elected by the National
Assembly at Epidaurus. He commanded forces in western Central Greece and retired in 1826
after the Fall of Messolonghi.
