THE
MAN BEHIND THE MASK:
BYRON
IN HIS LETTERS AND JOURNALS
M.
S. KUSHWAHA
I
Byron
has received more biographical attention than any of his famous contemporaries,
but he still continues to defy all attempts at defining his character in
universally acceptable terms. For, as Peter Quennell
rightly observes, “Although Byron is the most alluring of themes, and although
there is no other great man who appears at first sight to reveal himself more
readily, his character, if we study him closely enough, and follow him hard
enough, often seems, as our knowledge increases, to be among the most elusive.”
(Byron: A self-Portrait) One of the
basic reasons for this intractability of Byron’s character lies in his own dual
personality which found expression, on the one hand, in his fierce denunciation
of all cant and insincerity, and, on the other, in his love of affectation and
mystification. One of his contemporaries and acquaintances, Lady Blessington, has made some interesting remarks on this
point which are worth quoting. “It is difficult to judge” she writes, “when Lord Byron is serious or not. He has a habit
of mystifying, that might impose upon many but that can be detected by
examining his physiognomy; for a sort of mock gravity, now and then broken by a
malicious smile, betrays when he is speaking for effect, and not giving
utterance to his real sentiments. If he sees he is detected, he appears angry
for a moment, and then laughingly admits that it amuses him to hoax people, as he calls it, and that
when each person, at some future day, will give their different statements of
him, they will be so contradictory, that all
will be doubted,–an idea that gratifies him exceedingly!” (Conversations
of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington) That Byron has been greatly
successful in his game of “hoaxing people” is clear from the numerous
contemporary accounts of his life and personality which are at variance with
one another. Even Lady Blessington, who speaks of
seeing through the game, cannot be credited with infallibility on all
occasions. Moreover, the authenticity of these contemporary accounts has been
further undermined by the fact that they are, more or less, tainted by the
personal prejudices and idiosyncracies of their
respective authors. All later biographers, who depend on these accounts for
their information, are thus confronted with the herculean
task of “disentangling the real Byron from the false Byron.” (Frederic I
Carpenter, ed., Selections from the
poetry of Lord Byron.) It is true that Leslie A. Marchand,
in his monumental Byron: A Biography (New York and London,
1957), has, to a large extent, performed this task admirably well, but his
book, owing to its bulk and diffusiveness, has failed to make any noticeable
impact on an average student of Byron’s works; he still continues to carry in
his mind the stale and antiquated notions about Byron’s character, put forth by
Byron’s Contemporaries and the author of Astarte: A Fragment of Truth (London, 1905; rev. ed., 1921). There is, as such, a need for
a compact and succinct account of Byron’s personal life, highlighting the broad
characteristics of Byron the man as distinguished from Byron the poseur.
In
the following pages an attempt has been made in this direction by approaching
Byron through his letters and journals. Written on the spur of the moment or
for emotional relief, they are least affected by Byron’s penchant for
affectation, and offer more reliable and better clues to his real being than do
the contemporary accounts or the studies based on them. Not that Byron’s
biographers have been unaware of this fact. Almost all of them have drawn on
Byron’s letters and journals in some measure, but these are invariably
subordinated to, or, mixed up with, materials drawn from other sources. No
effort has so far been made to represent Byron exclusively on the strength of
his letters and journals. The present study, which is based on a close and
objective analysis of the whole corpus of Byron’s letters and journals, is just
intended to fill in this gap.
The
first thing that strikes a reader of these letters and journals is Byron’s
unhappy relationship with his mother, of whom he speaks in a language
unbecoming of a Son. In a letter to
However,
the treatment he received from his mother did leave, besides the immediate
misery it had caused, an unwholesome effect on the whole of his life. He
himself, in a letter to Augusta (August 30, 1811), says: “You must excuse my
being a little cynical, knowing how my temper
was tried in my non-age; the manner in which I was brought up must
necessarily have broken a meek spirit, or rendered a fiery one ungovernable;
the effect it has had on mine I need not state.”
Byron’s
stay at the university did not make the matters any better. The life at the
Theatre-going
was another of his hobbies which engaged Byron throughout his life. His letters
and journals, from 1804 onwards, make frequent references to his visits to the
theatrical world. Whether in
These
letters and journals also offer an early evidence of some of the
characteristics which distinguish Byron’s personality and temperament. For
instance, there is a clear indication of his strong sense of honour in his letter to his mother, dated May 1, 1803.
Speaking of his quarrel with Henry Drury, takes exception to the latter’s
calling him a “blackguard”, adding
“Better let him take away my life than ruin my character.” In
another letter to her (September, 1803) he underlines the word “honour” in order to emphasise its
unusual significance to him. This was, to a great extent, a necessary
concomitant of his blood-consciousness which he could never shake off
completely in spite of his earnest championship of the underdog. He was a
democrat in his sentiments, but an aristocrat in his manners. In a letter to
John Murray (February 21, 1819) be says openly, “I am out of all patience to
see my friends sacrifice themselves for a pack of blackguards, who disgust one
with their cause, although I have always been a friend to and a voter for
reform.” Such a mixture of heterogeneous elements, however, made his character
difficult to understand.
Similarly,
there are signs of his spirit of independence and undaunted courage. His words
to John Hanson, in this respect, are quite remarkable. “I am by no means
disposed,” he writes to him (December 7, 1806). “to bear insult, and the
consequences what they may, I will declare in plain and explicit terms, my
grievance, nor will I overlook the slightest mark of disrespect, and silently
brood over affronts from a mean and interested dread of injury to my person or
property. The former I have strength and resolution to protect; the latter is
too trifling by its loss to occasion a moment’s uneasiness.”
More
important, however, than the intimations of these traits is the revelation that
Byron was not a gloomy sentimentalist as he is popularly taken to be. The man
who emerges from these letters and journals is the man who likes society and
laughter, conversation and wine, plays and players, not a Childe Harold who loves solitude or a Manfred who shuns the company of his
fellow-men. The letters written during the composition of these sombre poems offer a vivid contrast. As John D. Jump
rightly observes, “In the letters of those earlier years, we have glimpses of
Dallas, Fletcher, Madame De Stael, Annabella Milbanke, Wedderburn Webster, Pindemonte
and Polidori, in the verse of the same period we
encounter only such attitudinizing dummies as Childe Harold, Conrad the
Corsair, and Manfred.” (“Byron’s letter,” Essays
and Studies). Byron himself, more than once, points out
his penchant “for the ridiculous than for anything serious.” In a letter to
William Harness (December 15, 1811) he says, “You know I am not one of your
dolorous gentlemen: so now let us laugh again.” Again, in a letter to Thomas
Moore (October 2, 1813), he openly disclaims his reputation of “gloom” saying
that “thou know’st that I can be a right merry and
conceited fellow and rarely larmoyant.” Similarly in another letter to the
same correspondent (March 10, 1827), he desires him to tell Jeffrey “that I was
not, and, am not even now, the misanthropical and gloomy gentleman be takes me for, but a
facetious companion, well to do with those with whom I am intimate, and as
loquacious and laughing as if I were a much cleverer fellow.” In fact, we do
not hear in his letters any lachrymose or self-pitying voice. Even his
misfortunes or troubles, as a rule, are presented in a lighter vein. Whether
they are descriptions of his mother’s treatment of him or the accounts of his
own illness, they are always couched in a language or interpersed
with remarks which cannot fail to provoke laughter. Here is, for instance, his
narration of the fever he had had at Lerici:
“The
doctor made his debut by talking of Hippocrete; in
consequence of which, I sent him away; but the women being clamorous as usual,
and myself, as Fribble says, in ‘exquisite torter’ he was recalled; and after several formidable
administrations of medicines which would not remain in the stomach; and of glysters which would not be persuaded to quit it again,
Nature, I presume, did the business and saved me from threatened inflammation
of the bowels; during which (by way of rocking my cradle) we had a slight shock
of an earthquake, such as we felt at Athens, probably an echo of that of
Aleppo.” (Letter to Hobhouse)
This,
of course, is Byron’s usual style. He is not so much concerned with conveying
his suffering as amusing the correspondent by underlining the comic aspects of
the situation. However, this is not to suggest that grief or sorrow never
crossed his way. In a letter to Augusta (August 6, 1805) he himself observes,
“Your sympathetic correspondence must
be some alleviation to my sorrows, which however are too ludicrous for me to
regard them very seriously; but they are really
more uncomfortable than amusing.”
In fact, it was his “relish for the ridiculous,” as he tells Hobhouse, which made “my life supportable.” His own
circumstances were far from being satisfactory, and there was also an
undeniable strain of melancholy in his composition. But all this never made him
grumble or whine, or present in life a pageant of the bleeding heart.
In
fact, he was an antithesis of the popular image of a poet as represented by Shaw
in his Candida. He himself never liked to be thought
of as a mere poet. “I prefer,” he writes in a letter to Miss Milbanke (November 10, 1813). “the talents of action–of war
or the senate, or even of science–to all the speculations of those mere dreamers
of another existence (I don’t mean religiously but fancifully) and spectators
of this apathy.” He was rather amused to see that people were often
disappointed in their expectations of him as a poet. Speaking of one Mr.
Coolidge who paid a visit to him, he humorously observes, “I suspect that he
did not quite take so much to me, from his having expected to meet a misanthropical gentleman, in wolf skin breeches, and
answering in fierce monosyllables instead of a man of this world.” But he was,
of course, a man of this world, as his letters and journals demonstrate
unmistakably. His readings of the Greek and the Italian insurrections speak of
his astute commonsense and understanding. Not only did he take an active part
in worldly affairs, but he was also a shrewd observer of men and manners. As he
said to Lady Melbourne (October 1, 1813), “anything that confirms, or extends
one’s observations on life and character”, delighted him. Instead of being a
filmy-eyed recluse, he was worldly even to an unhealthy extent. His love of
money in his later life is a well-known fact. However, it will be wrong to
accuse him of avarice or miserliness. In spite of his assertion that “every
guinea is a philosopher’s stone, or at least his touchstone.’ (Letter to Douglas Kinkaird) he declined to accept a legacy of two thousand
pounds left by Shelley. It is true that he tried to effect economy in his
personal and household expenditure, but he was always ready to help the needy
and poor. His charity remained undiminished till the end of his life. In a
letter to Douglas Kinkaird (February 25, 1822), he
says: “Whenever I find a poor man suffering for his opinions–and there are many
such in this country – I always let him have a shilling out of a guinea.”
Again, ‘I never in my life gave a mistress so much as I have sometimes given a
poor man in honest distress.” While at Revenna, he
put several poor people on a weekly pension, and at Cephalonia
provided a Moreote family with a house and decent
maintenance “besides sending a sum of two hundred and fifty dollars to the
resident in Ithaca” for the refugees there. However, there are but a few
instances of his bounteous charity which was open even to the people he did not
like. In a letter to john Murray (October 8, 1822) he writes “It is strange
enough, but the rascaille English, who calumniate me
in every direction and on every score, whenever they are in great distress,
recur to me for assistance: if I have had one example of this, I have had
letters from a thousand, and, as far as in my power, have tried to repay good
for evil, and purchase a shilling’s worth of salvation, as long as my pocket
can hold out.” But he did not like that his money should be spent to promote
any selfish interest. As such, he took exception to Count Gamba’s
spending five hundred dollars on dress and other fripperies, adding that “I do
not grudge any expense for the cause, but to throw away as much as would equip,
or at least maintain, a corps of excellent ragamuffins with arms in their
hands” was “rather beyond my endurance,” (Letter to Charles Hancock) But when
there was a noble cause, he could willingly sacrifice all that he had; his
services to the Greek in their struggle for freedom leave us in no doubt.
His
love of liberty is too well-known to need any elaboration; what one should
emphasize is that he had also a warm and sympathetic heart. Far from being a misanthropical being, he always did his best to relieve the
sufferings of humanity. He accepted war only as a means of liberating people
from the yoke of tyranny. “It is a difficult part,” he writes about his
association with the Carbonari, “to play amongst such
a set of assassins and blockheads–but, when the scum is skimmed off, or has
boiled over, good may come of it,” adding that “I abhor cruelty more than I
abhor the Austrians.” His principal object after arriving in Greece was “to
alleviate as much as possible the miseries incident to a warfare so cruel as
the present,” “When the dictates of humanity are in question,” he adds, “I know
no difference between Turks and Greeks. It is enough that those who want
assistance are men, in order to claim the pity and protection of the meanest
pretender to humane feelings,” (Letter to Mr. Mayer) He succeeded in obtaining
the release of twenty-eight Turks, out of which he sent twenty-four to Prevesa at his own expense. (Letter to Samuel Barff)
All
this is not to suggest, however, that Byron was an epitome of all the virtues
as G. Wilson Knight seems to do
in his book, Lard Byron: Christian
Virtues (London, 1952). Nor is it intended to serve as a full-length
portrait of Byron the man. The few aspects of Byron’s character that have been
touched upon here are largely those which have either been overlooked or
distorted by his biographers in general. The foregoing account, as such, may
serve as a corrective to the popular impression of Byron’s personality, and
provide a new perspective for those who are accustomed to looking at him
through the eyes of others. In any case, it will help us, in a modest way, in
our continuing search for Byron’s identity.