CHAPTER XIV

THE MAN'S MAN-1812-1814

Social glories-Presentation to the Prince Regent-Sir Walter ScottByron's beauty-Venetia-Affectations-His relation to the world— The Man's Man: his letters-Lack of literary jealousy-Don Juan— Hodgson and Webster contrasted-Mrs. Mule-The Prince Regent : Fracas at Carlton House-Lines to a Lady Weeping-Hysterics of the Press-The gloom of Byron's Journal-Byron as lover-His engage

ment.

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HROUGH his friendship with Moore, and the consequent widening of his social relations, Byron first became in the lesser but not wholly ignoble sense of the word, civilised. It was odd that he should enter his natural spheres, both intellectual and social, by favour of the son of an obscure Irish tradesman-the old English Baron chaperoned, as it were, by little Tommy Moore; and his earlier friends regarded the paradoxical development with differing sensations. This ", writes the jealous and exacting Dallas, "was the trying moment of virtue, and no wonder it was shaken ". "For some time", says Galt, "after the publication of Childe Harold, the noble author appeared to more advantage than I ever afterwards saw him ". William Bankes, remote and touchy, continually nagged him in letters which Byron answered with extraordinary patience and gentleness; Hodgson and Hobhouse, more genial and more worldly, accepted the new state of things with amusement and interest. Hobhouse, for that matter, belonged to the same set, though his place in it was naturally less conspicuous. There was no one whom they did not meet; and for all whom they met, no matter how eagerly those were courted, Byron was the cynosure. Glory darted thick upon him from all sides ", continues Dallas; .. he was the wonder of greybeards, and the show of fashionable parties

One of these, in the June of 1812, was so fashionable that the Prince Regent was among the earliest guests, and, noticing Byron, asked who he was. On being told, he at once desired that Lord Byron should be presented to him. In connection with this social triumph-His Royal Highness was very gracious-a striking instance of how delightful Byron could be with men (for with men

he was delightful) shows forth. The illustrious dialogue naturally turned upon poetry, and "after some sayings peculiarly pleasing from royal lips, as to my own attempts", the Prince referred to Walter Scott. About him he was so enthusiastic that a day or two afterwards, Byron called upon John Murray, " merely ", wrote Murray to Scott, "to let off the raptures of the Prince concerning you, thinking, as he said, that . . . it might not be ungrateful to you to hear of his praises". This at once produced a letter from Scott to Byron, wherein he thanked him very warmly for his flattering communication, and added a kindly reference to the measure of praise and blame which had been awarded him in English Bards. He had been praised for his poetry, but blamed for writing Marmion "on contract for a sum of money". Scott showed, with equal dignity and gentleness, that he had not done this. Byron's answer was worthy of the explanation, and a firm friendship thus began between the great poetic rivals of the age. But the rivalry was entirely vicarious-a device of the reviewers and debating-societies to add savour to their articles and discussions; 1 for Scott and Byron could not be brought to regard one another with any sort of jealousy. Jealousy in literary matters was indeed a thing that never troubled Byron from first to last. He knew this. "I really have no literary envy ", he wrote to Moore in 1814.

His interview with the Regent turned his thoughts for a moment towards Court-circles. Soon afterwards Dallas found him," with his fine black [sic] hair in powder, which by no means suited his countenance ", ready, in full dress, to attend a levee at Carlton House. But the levee was put off, and he never again donned the livery of the courtier-partly from genuine disinclination, partly because an incident of his literary life (soon to be detailed) made it impossible to present himself.

Among the most interesting notes upon him at this time of lionising is one by Jane Porter, author of The Scottish Chiefs, a novel which to a period within our own memories enjoyed a sentimental vogue. She met him at the house of William Sotheby, a man of letters and of fortune, whom in 1818 Byron was to immortalise (in Beppo) as Botherby, the " solemn, antique gentleman of rhyme ". Miss Porter made the following note of Byron's appearance, and after his death sent it to Augusta Leigh. "I was not aware of his being in the room, or even that he had been invited, when I was arrested from listening to the person conversing with me by the Sounds of the most melodious. Speaking Voice I had ever heard. . . . I turned round . . . and

1 "At the time when they were the two lions of London, Hookham Frere observed, 'Great poets formerly (Homer and Milton) were blind; now they are lame '"' (Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers).

saw a Gentleman in black, of an elegant form (for nothing of his lameness could be discovered), and with a face I shall never forget. . . . The Eye deep set, but mildly lustrous; and the Complexion . . . a sort of moonlight paleness. It was so pale, yet with all so Softly brilliant ".

"How very pale you are!" wrote Caroline Lamb to him at the same period. ... E la beltà della morte. . . . I never see you without wishing to cry". Upon other women of the Devonshire House set he made a less terribly sentimental impression. Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire, thought his face sickly but handsome, and his figure bad; Harriet Cavendish (then Lady H. Leveson-Gower) found him agreeable, but wished for nothing further than mere acquaintance. "His countenance is fine when it is in repose; but the moment it is in play, suspicious, malignant, and consequently repulsive. His manner is either remarkably gracious and conciliatory, with a tinge of affectation, or irritable and impetuous, and then, I am afraid, perfectly natural ".

He must often, in this hour of electric triumph, have found it difficult to be natural in any way. Round him at each gathering there was always to be seen a circle of star-gazers. Lord Beaconsfield, in his Venetia, inimitably presents to us the "new poet, Cadurcis ", as he appeared at the evening parties of 1812.

"Watch Cadurcis', said Mr. Horace Pole to a fine lady. 'Does not he look sublime? . . . Alone in a crowd, as he says in his last poem. Very interesting!'

"Wonderful creature!' exclaimed the dame.

Charming!' said Mr. Pole. Perhaps you will be fortunate enough to be handed in to dinner by him. . . . You must take care, however, not to eat; he cannot endure a woman who eats.'

I never do', said the lady simply; at least, at dinner '".

He must be a man of genius', said Mr. Pole; he is so unlike everybody; the very tie of his cravat proves it. And his hair, so savage and dishevelled; none but a man of genius would not wear powder. Watch him to-day, and you will observe that he will not condescend to perform the slightest act like an ordinary mortal'.

"Dear me !' said the lady. 'I am delighted to see him; and yet I hope that I shall not sit by him at dinner'".

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She did sit by him, and he was the most entertaining member of the party. Lady Monteagle" was the hostess—she stands, in Venetia, for Caroline Lamb; and Lady Monteagle was quite delighted, for now "everybody would circulate throughout the

world that it was only at her house that Lord Cadurcis condescended to be amusing ".

"

Mr. Horace Pole's sardonic comments were not unjustified. Moore describes Byron's demeanour as" that of one whose better thoughts were elsewhere, and who looked with melancholy abstraction on the gay crowd around him ". He attributes it in part to shyness; but admits that a love of effect may also have contributed. In the Diary for 1813 Byron records a criticism made by Mme de Staël. She told Lewis... that I was affected, in the first place; and that in the next place, I committed the heinous offence of sitting at dinner with my eyes shut, or half-shut. I wonder if I really have this trick. I must cure myself of it, if true. One insensibly acquires awkward habits, which should be broken in time. If this is one, I wish I had been told of it before". Thus we see that an apparent affectation of a peculiarly irritating kind was quite unconscious. The truth is, I think, that the Byronic poise suffered from an excess of the qualities both of poises and poses. It was at once too sincere and too effective. Precisely as Byron looked, he felt-alone in a crowd; but then self-consciousness arrived to show him how sublime he appeared in this betrayal of his feeling, and thenceforth, though sincerity survived, it was sincerity under the limelight-hardly, like a good actor in a similar plight, to be recognised for the thing it was.

"Nothing", says Moore," could be more amusing and delightful than the contrast which his manners afterwards when we were alone, presented to his proud reserve in the brilliant circle we had just left. It was like the bursting gaiety of a boy let loose from school, and seemed as if there was no extent of fun or tricks of which he was not capable. Finding him thus invariably lively when we were together, I often rallied him on the gloomy tone of his poetry, as assumed; but his constant answer was (and I soon ceased to doubt of its truth) that, though thus merry and full of laughter with those he liked, he was, at heart, one of the most melancholy wretches in existence".

"Most of his life ", observes Mr. Arthur Symons 1 in a penetrating analysis of his mind," he was a personality looking out for its own formula. Byron was at once the victim and the master of the world . . . [he] and the world seem to touch at all points, and to maintain a kind of equilibrium by the equality of their strength. . . . Never, in English verse, has a man been seen who was so much a man and so much an Englishman. It is not man in the elemental sense, so much as the man of the world, whom we find reflected . . . in this poet for whom (like Arthur Symons, The Romantic Movement in English Poetry. Constable, 1909.

..

the novelists, and unlike all other poets) society exists as well as human nature".

Beside that profound explanation of him, a shallower one may blush to place itself; but this has its small excuse for existence. There is an everyday side to everything—even to Byron. When he got away with Moore or another intimate, he turned into a merry, happy boy; and the reason for it was that he was a man's man. Where women ruled he was a blighted being-in a meaning different from the usual meaning of that phrase. Everything that was delightful, even (one might go so far as to say) everything that was good in him, emerged for men alone. A woman, perceiving this, becomes aware of a stirring of envy. He would have been so well worth loving like that; but like that no woman, of all those in his life, ever knew him. We are more fortunate nowadays. Men show us the man's side sometimes; and hence it is that one often finds the modern woman in love with Byron's ghost. She is persuaded-and not without justification-that if Byron had lived to-day, he would have liked women better; and that women, liking him better, would more wisely and more happily have loved him. However that may be, it is the man's side to which in this chapter I wish to draw attention.

His letters are its best exposition. By this time they had become incomparable, in their kind, with any but his own later ones. Vivid, witty-with a sort of unconscious wit that comes of their amazing gusto-spontaneous, human, they vibrate with the sound of him as his first reckonable verse does, but far more than that does-for, as he was to find later, this natural prose way of telling things was the way for him in verse as well as in life. Since his day, we have had our gifts from great letterwriters-Edward FitzGerald, Robert Louis Stevenson, T. E. Brown, to mention only a few; in my opinion, Byron surpasses them all. His range is wider, his diapason richer; his voice has a thrilling quality, a boldness and freedom in the launching, which makes the other voices seem like those of brilliant amateurs beside a great singer's. He has the audacity of Casanova (though he yields him a good deal in gauloiserie); the wit of Voltaire; the intensity of Rousseau-and, beyond and away from all this cosmopolitan brotherhood, he has the peculiar "salt" of the Englishman. None of the names above cited stands for such almost visible delight in the wielding of the word as Byron's does. So soon as the early days in Southwell, this emerged. As I then pointed out, the lamentations over his wretched familylife broke down almost in laughter; his pen, as he describes, seems to shake its sides. This-a part of the generic literary spirit, it is true, in one way of regarding it—seems to me a peculiar