by Thomas Moore
While thus busily engaged in his literary projects, and having, besides, some law affairs to transact with his agent, he was called suddenly away to Newstead by the intelligence of an event which seems to have affected his mind far more deeply than, considering all the circumstances of the case, could have been expected. Mrs. Byron, whose excessive corpulence rendered her, at all times, rather a perilous subject for illness, had been of late indisposed, but not to any alarming degree; nor does it appear that, when the following note was written, there existed any grounds for apprehension as to her state.
“Reddish’s Hotel, St. James’s Street, London, July 23. 1811.
“My dear Madam,
“I am only detained by Mr. H * * to sign some copyhold papers, and will give you timely notice of my approach. It is with great reluctance I remain in town. I shall pay a short visit as we go on to Lancashire on Rochdale business. I shall attend to your directions, of course, and am,
“With great respect, yours ever,”
“BYRON.
“P.S. — You will consider Newstead as your house, not mine; and me only as a visitor.”
On his going abroad, she had conceived a sort of superstitious fancy that she should never see him again; and when he returned, safe and well, and wrote to inform her that he should soon see her at Newstead, she said to her waiting-woman, “If I should be dead before Byron comes down, what a strange thing it would be!” — and so, in fact, it happened. At the end of July, her illness took a new and fatal turn; and, so sadly characteristic was the close of the poor lady’s life, that a fit of rage, brought on, it is said, by reading over the upholsterer’s bills, was the ultimate cause of her death. Lord Byron had, of course, prompt intelligence of the attack. But, though he started instantly from town, he was too late, — she had breathed her last.
The following letter, it will be perceived, was written on his way to Newstead.
LETTER 55. TO DR. PIGOT.
“Newport Pagnell, August 2. 1811.
“My dear Doctor,
“My poor mother died yesterday! and I am on my way from town to attend her to the family vault. I heard one day of her illness, the next of her death. Thank God her last moments were most tranquil. I am told she was in little pain, and not aware of her situation. I now feel the truth of Mr. Gray’s observation, ‘That we can only have one mother.’ Peace be with her! I have to thank you for your expressions of regard; and as in six weeks I shall be in Lancashire on business, I may extend to Liverpool and Chester, — at least I shall endeavour.
“If it will be any satisfaction, I have to inform you that in November next the Editor of the Scourge will be tried for two different libels on the late Mrs. B. and myself (the decease of Mrs. B. makes no difference in the proceedings); and as he is guilty, by his very foolish and unfounded assertion, of a breach of privilege, he will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour.
“I inform you of this as you seem interested in the affair, which is now in the hands of the Attorney-general.
“I shall remain at Newstead the greater part of this month, where I shall be happy to hear from you, after my two years’ absence in the East.
“I am, dear Pigot, yours very truly,
“BYRON.”
It can hardly have escaped the observation of the reader, that the general tone of the noble poet’s correspondence with his mother is that of a son, performing, strictly and conscientiously, what he deems to be his duty, without the intermixture of any sentiment of cordiality to sweeten the task. The very title of “Madam,” by which he addresses her, — and which he but seldom exchanges for the endearing name of “mother,” — is, of itself, a sufficient proof of the sentiments he entertained for her. That such should have been his dispositions towards such a parent, can be matter neither of surprise or blame, — but that, notwithstanding this alienation, which her own unfortunate temper produced, he should have continued to consult her wishes, and minister to her comforts, with such unfailing thoughtfulness as is evinced not only in the frequency of his letters, but in the almost exclusive appropriation of Newstead to her use, redounds, assuredly, in no ordinary degree, to his honour; and was even the more strikingly meritorious from the absence of that affection which renders kindnesses to a beloved object little more than an indulgence of self.
But, however estranged from her his feelings must be allowed to have been while she lived, her death seems to have restored them into their natural channel. Whether from a return of early fondness and the all-atoning power of the grave, or from the prospect of that void in his future life which this loss of his only link with the past would leave, it is certain that he felt the death of his mother acutely, if not deeply. On the night after his arrival at Newstead, the waiting-woman of Mrs. Byron, in passing the door of the room where the deceased lady lay, heard a sound as of some one sighing heavily from within; and, on entering the chamber, found, to her surprise, Lord Byron, sitting in the dark, beside the bed. On her representing to him the weakness of thus giving way to grief, he burst into tears, and exclaimed, “Oh, Mrs. By, I had but one friend in the world, and she is gone!”
While his real thoughts were thus confided to silence and darkness, there was, in other parts of his conduct more open to observation, a degree of eccentricity and indecorum which, with superficial observers, might well bring the sensibility of his nature into question. On the morning of the funeral, having declined following the remains himself, he stood looking, from the abbey door, at the procession, till the whole had moved off; — then, turning to young Rushton, who was the only person left besides himself, he desired him to fetch the sparring-gloves, and proceeded to his usual exercise with the boy. He was silent and abstracted all the time, and, as if from an effort to get the better of his feelings, threw more violence, Rushton thought, into his blows than was his habit; but, at last, — the struggle seeming too much for him, — he flung away the gloves, and retired to his room.
Of Mrs. Byron, sufficient, perhaps, has been related in these pages to enable the reader to form fully his own opinion, as well with respect to the character of this lady herself, as to the degree of influence her temper and conduct may have exercised on those of her son. It was said by one of the most extraordinary of men, — who was himself, as he avowed, principally indebted to maternal culture for the unexampled elevation to which he subsequently rose, — that “the future good or bad conduct of a child depends entirely on the mother.” How far the leaven that sometimes mixed itself with the better nature of Byron, — his uncertain and wayward impulses, — his defiance of restraint, — the occasional bitterness of his hate, and the precipitance of his resentments, — may have had their origin in his early collisions with maternal caprice and violence, is an enquiry for which sufficient materials have been, perhaps, furnished in these pages, but which every one will decide upon, according to the more or less weight he may attribute to the influence of such causes on the formation of character.
That, notwithstanding her injudicious and coarse treatment of him, Mrs. Byron loved her son, with that sort of fitful fondness of which alone such a nature is capable, there can be little doubt, — and still less, that she was ambitiously proud of him. Her anxiety for the success of his first literary essays may be collected from the pains which he so considerately took to tranquillise her on the appearance of the hostile article in the Review. As his fame began to brighten, that notion of his future greatness and glory, which, by a singular forecast of superstition, she had entertained from his very childhood, became proportionably confirmed. Every mention of him in print was watched by her with eagerness; and she had got bound together in a volume, which a friend of mine once saw, a collection of all the literary notices, that had then appeared, of his early Poems and Satire, — written over on the margin, with observations of her own, which to my informant appeared indicative of much more sense and ability than, from her general character, we should be inclined to attribute to her.
Among those lesser traits of his conduct thr
ough which an observer can trace a filial wish to uphold, and throw respect around, the station of his mother, may be mentioned his insisting, while a boy, on being called “George Byron Gordon” — giving thereby precedence to the maternal name, — and his continuing, to the last, to address her as “the Honourable Mrs. Byron,” — a mark of rank to which, he must have been aware, she had no claim whatever. Neither does it appear that, in his habitual manner towards her, there was any thing denoting a want of either affection or deference, — with the exception, perhaps, occasionally, of a somewhat greater degree of familiarity than comports with the ordinary notions of filial respect. Thus, the usual name he called her by, when they were on good-humoured terms together, was “Kitty Gordon;” and I have heard an eye-witness of the scene describe the look of arch, dramatic humour, with which, one day, at Southwell, when they were in the height of their theatrical rage, he threw open the door of the drawing-room, to admit his mother, saying, at the same time, “Enter the Honourable Kitty.”
The pride of birth was a feeling common alike to mother and son, and, at times, even became a point of rivalry between them, from their respective claims, English and Scotch, to high lineage. In a letter written by him from Italy, referring to some anecdote which his mother had told him, he says,— “My mother, who was as haughty as Lucifer with her descent from the Stuarts, and her right line from the old Gordons, — not the Seyton Gordons, as she disdainfully termed the ducal branch, — told me the story, always reminding me how superior her Gordons were to the southern Byrons, notwithstanding our Norman, and always masculine, descent, which has never lapsed into a female, as my mother’s Gordons had done in her own person.”
If, to be able to depict powerfully the painful emotions, it is necessary first to have experienced them, or, in other words, if, for the poet to be great, the man must suffer, Lord Byron, it must be owned, paid early this dear price of mastery. Few as were the ties by which his affections held, whether within or without the circle of relationship, he was now doomed, within a short space, to see the most of them swept away by death. Besides the loss of his mother, he had to mourn over, in quick succession, the untimely fatalities that carried off, within a few weeks of each other, two or three of his most loved and valued friends. “In the short space of one month,” he says, in a note on Childe Harold, “I have lost her who gave me being, and most of those who made that being tolerable.” Of these young Wingfield, whom we have seen high on the list of his Harrow favourites, died of a fever at Coimbra; and Matthews, the idol of his admiration at college, was drowned while bathing in the waters of the Cam.
The following letter, written immediately after the latter event, bears the impress of strong and even agonised feeling, to such a degree as renders it almost painful to read it: —
LETTER 56. TO MR. SCROPE DAVIES.
“Newstead Abbey, August 7. 1811.
“My dearest Davies,
“Some curse hangs over me and mine. My mother lies a corpse in this house; one of my best friends is drowned in a ditch. What can I say, or think, or do? I received a letter from him the day before yesterday. My dear Scrope, if you can spare a moment, do come down to me — I want a friend. Matthews’s last letter was written on Friday, — on Saturday he was not. In ability, who was like Matthews? How did we all shrink before him? You do me but justice in saying, I would have risked my paltry existence to have preserved his. This very evening did I mean to write, inviting him, as I invite you, my very dear friend, to visit me. God forgive * * * for his apathy! What will our poor Hobhouse feel? His letters breathe but or Matthews. Come to me, Scrope, I am almost desolate — left almost alone in the world — I had but you, and H., and M., and let me enjoy the survivors whilst I can. Poor M., in his letter of Friday, speaks of his intended contest for Cambridge, and a speedy journey to London. Write or come, but come if you can, or one or both.
“Yours ever.”
Of this remarkable young man, Charles Skinner Matthews, I have already had occasion to speak; but the high station which he held in Lord Byron’s affection and admiration may justify a somewhat ampler tribute to his memory.
There have seldom, perhaps, started together in life so many youths of high promise and hope as were to be found among the society of which Lord Byron formed a part at Cambridge. Of some of these, the names have since eminently distinguished themselves in the world, as the mere mention of Mr. Hobhouse and Mr. William Bankes is sufficient to testify; while in the instance of another of this lively circle, Mr. Scrope Davies, the only regret of his friends is, that the social wit of which he is such a master should in the memories of his hearers alone be like to leave any record of its brilliancy. Among all these young men of learning and talent, (including Byron himself, whose genius was, however, as yet, “an undiscovered world,”) the superiority, in almost every department of intellect, seems to have been, by the ready consent of all, awarded to Matthews; — a concurrence of homage which, considering the persons from whom it came, gives such a high notion of the powers of his mind at that period, as renders the thought of what he might have been, if spared, a matter of interesting, though vain and mournful, speculation. To mere mental pre-eminence, unaccompanied by the kindlier qualities of the heart, such a tribute, however deserved, might not, perhaps, have been so uncontestedly paid. But young Matthews appears, — in spite of some little asperities of temper and manner, which he was already beginning to soften down when snatched away, — to have been one of those rare individuals who, while they command deference, can, at the same time, win regard, and who, as it were, relieve the intense feeling of admiration which they excite by blending it with love.
To his religious opinions, and their unfortunate coincidence with those of Lord Byron, I have before adverted. Like his noble friend, ardent in the pursuit of Truth, he, like him too, unluckily lost his way in seeking her,— “the light that led astray” being by both friends mistaken for hers. That in his scepticism he proceeded any farther than Lord Byron, or ever suffered his doubting, but still ingenuous, mind to persuade itself into the “incredible creed” of atheism, is, I find (notwithstanding an assertion in a letter of the noble poet to this effect), disproved by the testimony of those among his relations and friends, who are the most ready to admit and, of course, lament his other heresies; — nor should I have felt that I had any right to allude thus to the religious opinions of one who had never, by promulgating his heterodoxy, brought himself within the jurisdiction of the public, had not the wrong impression, as it appears, given of those opinions, on the authority of Lord Byron, rendered it an act of justice to both friends to remove the imputation.
In the letters to Mrs. Byron, written previously to the departure of her son on his travels, there occurs, it will be recollected, some mention of a Will, which it was his intention to leave behind him in the hands of his trustees. Whatever may have been the contents of this former instrument, we find that, in about a fortnight after his mother’s death, he thought it right to have a new form of will drawn up; and the following letter, enclosing his instructions for that purpose, was addressed to the late Mr. Bolton, a solicitor of Nottingham. Of the existence, in any serious or formal shape, of the strange directions here given, respecting his own interment, I was, for some time, I confess, much inclined to doubt; but the curious documents here annexed put this remarkable instance of his eccentricity beyond all question.
TO —— BOLTON, ESQ.
“Newstead Abbey, August 12. 1811.
“Sir,
“I enclose a rough draught of my intended will, which I beg to have drawn up as soon as possible, in the firmest manner. The alterations are principally made in consequence of the death of Mrs. Byron. I have only to request that it may be got ready in a short time, and have the honour, to be,
“Your most obedient, humble servant,
“BYRON.”
“Newstead Abbey, August 12. 1811.
“DIRECTIONS FOR, THE CONTENTS OF A WILL TO BE DRAWN UP IMMEDIATELY.
; “The estate of Newstead to be entailed (subject to certain deductions) on George Anson Byron, heir-at-law, or whoever may be the heir-at-law on the death of Lord B. The Rochdale property to be sold in part or the whole, according to the debts and legacies of the present Lord B.
“To Nicolo Giraud of Athens, subject of France, but born in Greece, the sum of seven thousand pounds sterling, to be paid from the sale of such parts of Rochdale, Newstead, or elsewhere, as may enable the said Nicolo Giraud (resident at Athens and Malta in the year 1810) to receive the above sum on his attaining the age of twenty-one years.
“To William Fletcher, Joseph Murray, and Demetrius Zograffo (native of Greece), servants, the sum of fifty pounds pr. ann. each, for their natural lives. To Wm. Fletcher, the Mill at Newstead, on condition that he payeth rent, but not subject to the caprice of the landlord. To Rt. Rushton the sum of fifty pounds per ann. for life, and a further sum of one thousand pounds on attaining the age of twenty-five years.
“To Jn. Hanson, Esq. the sum of two thousand pounds sterling.
“The claims of S.B. Davies, Esq. to be satisfied on proving the amount of the same.
