Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
Lord Byron to John Murray, 25 October 1820
“Pray forward the enclosed to Lady
Byron. It is on business.
“In thanking you for the Abbot, I made four grand mistakes. Sir John Gordon was not of Gight, but of Bogagicht, and
a son of Huntley’s. He suffered not for his loyalty, but in an insurrection. He
had nothing to do with Loch Leven, having been dead some time at
the period of the Queen’s confinement: and,
fourthly, I am not sure that
† I had mistaken the name of the lady he inquired after,
and reported her to him as dead. But, on the receipt of the above letter, I
discovered that his correspondent was Madame Sophie
Gay, mother of the celebrated poetess and beauty, Mademoiselle Delphine Gay. |
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| 360 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1820. |
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he was the Queen’s paramour or no, for Robertson does not allude to this, though Walter Scott does, in the list he gives of her admirers (as
unfortunate) at the close of ‘the
Abbot.’
“I must have made all these mistakes in recollecting my
mother’s account of the matter, although she was more accurate than I am, being
precise upon points of genealogy, like all the aristocratical Scotch. She had a long
list of ancestors, like Sir Lucius
O’Trigger’s, most of whom are to be found in the old Scotch
Chronicles, Spalding, &c. in arms and doing
mischief. I remember well passing Loch Leven, as well as the Queen’s Ferry: we
were on our way to England in 1798.
“Yours.
“You had better not publish Blackwood and the Roberts’ prose, except what regards Pope;—you have let the time slip by.”
Marie Françoise Sophie Gay (1776-1852)
French novelist and musician who published a memoir,
Souvenirs d'une
vielle fille (1834). She was the mother of Delphine Gay de Girardin.
Delphine de Girardin (1804-1855)
French poet and novelist, the daughter of Sophie Gay and wife of Emile de Girardin
(1806-1881).
Sir John Gordon of Ogilvy (d. 1562)
The son of George Gordon, fourth earl of Huntly; he was hanged at Aberdeen three days
after the battle of Corrichie.
Queen Mary of Scotland (1542-1587)
The controversial queen of Scotland (1561-1567) who found a number of champions in the
romantic era; Sir Walter Scott treats her sympathetically in
The
Abbott (1820).
John Murray II (1778-1843)
The second John Murray began the
Quarterly Review in 1809 and
published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
English poet and satirist; author of
The Rape of the Lock (1714)
and
The Dunciad (1728).
William Roberts (1767-1849)
Educated at Eton, St. Paul's School, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he was a Tory
lawyer, editor of the
British Review (1811-22), and biographer of
Hannah More.
William Robertson (1721-1793)
Educated at Edinburgh University of which he became principal (1762), he was a
highly-regarded historian, the author of
History of Scotland in the Reign
of Queen Mary and of King James VI (1759) and
The History of the
Reign of Charles V (1769).
