Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
Lord Byron to John Murray, 9 November 1820
“The talent you approve of is an amiable one, and might
prove a ‘national service,’ but unfortunately I must be angry with a man
before I draw his real portrait; and I can’t deal in ‘generals,’ so that I trust never to have provocation enough to make a Gallery. If ‘the parson’ had
not by many little dirty sneaking traits provoked it, I should have been silent, though
I had observed him. Here follows an alteration: put
“Devil, with such delight in damning, That if at the resurrection Unto him the free election Of his future could be given, ’Twould be rather Hell than heaven; |
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| A. D. 1820. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 379 |
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that is to say, if these two new lines do not too much
lengthen out and weaken the amiability of the original thought and expression. You have
a discretionary power about showing. I should think that Croker would not disrelish a sight of these light little humorous things,
and may be indulged now and then.
“Why, I do like one or two vices, to be sure; but I can back
a horse and fire a pistol ‘without thinking or blinking’ like
Major Sturgeon; I have fed at times for two
months together on sheer biscuit and water (without metaphor); I can get over seventy or
eighty miles a day riding post, and swim
five at a stretch, as at Venice, in 1818, or at least I could do, and have done it once.
“I know Henry
Matthews; he is the image, to the very voice, of his brother Charles, only darker—his cough his in particular. The
first time I ever met him was in Scrope
Davies’s rooms after his brother’s death, and I nearly
dropped, thinking that it was his ghost. I have also dined with him in his rooms at
King’s College. Hobhouse once purposed a
similar Memoir; but I am afraid that the letters of Charles’s
correspondence with me (which are at Whitton with my other papers) would hardly do for
the public; for our lives were not over strict, and our letters somewhat lax upon most
subjects†.
* * * * * *
“Last week I sent you a correspondence with Galignani, and some documents on your property. You have
now, I think, an opportunity of checking, or at least limiting, those French republications. You
may let all your authors publish what they please against me and
mine. A publisher is not, and cannot be, responsible for all
the works that issue from his printer’s.
“The ‘White Lady of
Avenel,’ is not quite so good as a real well
authenticated (‘Donna Bianca’) White Lady of
Colalto, or spectre in the Marca Trivigiana, who has been repeatedly seen.
There is a man (a huntsman) now alive who saw her also. Hoppner could tell you all about her, and so can Rose, perhaps. I myself have no
doubt of the fact,
† Here follow some details respecting his friend
Charles S. Matthews, which have already
been given In the First Volume of this work. |
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| 380 | NOTICES OF THE | A. D. 1820. |
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historical and spectral. She always appeared on
particular occasions, before the deaths of the family, &c. &c. I heard Madame Benzoni say, that she knew a gentleman who had
seen her cross his room at Colalto Castle. Hoppner saw and spoke with the huntsman, who met her at the chase, and
never hunted afterwards. She was a girl attendant, who, one day
dressing the hair of a Countess Colalto, was seen by her mistress
to smile upon her husband in the glass. The Countess had her shut up in the wall of the
castle, like Constance de Beverley. Ever after, she
haunted them and all the Colaltos. She is described as very beautiful and fair. It is
well authenticated.”
John Wilson Croker (1780-1857)
Secretary of the Admiralty (1810) and writer for the
Quarterly
Review; he edited an elaborate edition of Boswell's
Life of
Johnson (1831).
Scrope Berdmore Davies (1782-1852)
Byron met his bosom friend while at Cambridge. Davies, a professional gambler, lent Byron
funds to pay for his travels in Greece and Byron acted as second in Davies' duels.
Giovanni Antonio Galignani (1757-1821)
Bookseller and from 1814 publisher of
Galignani's Messenger, an
English newspaper issued from Paris.
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).
Richard Belgrave Hoppner (1786-1872)
The son of John Hoppner, R.A. (1758-1810) and likewise a painter; he was English consul
at Venice (1814-25). He married Marie Isabella May, of Bern, in 1814.
Charles Skinner Matthews (1785-1811)
The libertine friend of Byron and Hobhouse at Trinity College, Cambridge; he was drowned
in the Cam.
Henry Matthews (1789-1828)
Brother of Charles Skinner Matthews; he was Byron's Cambridge friend, member of King's
College, and author of
The Diary of an Invalid (1820), afterwards a
judge in Ceylon.
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.
William Stewart Rose (1775-1843)
Second son of George Rose, treasurer of the navy (1744-1818); he introduced Byron to
Frere's
Whistlecraft poems and translated Casti's
Animale parlante (1819).
