I have been almost obliged to run away with a married woman. But with some difficulty, and many internal struggles, I reconciled the lady with her lord, and cured the fever of the child with bark, and my own with cold water. I think of setting out for England by the Tyrol in a few days, so that I could wish you to direct your next letter to Calais.1 . . . My present determination to quit Italy was unlooked for; but I have explained the reasons in letters to my sister and Douglas K. a week or two ago ". He had arranged everything, the very day for departure was fixed, when he heard alarming accounts from Ravenna of Teresa's health. She was fretting and pining; the threatened consumption was again brought into play; her father and uncle grew alarmed; they withdrew all opposition to her wishes, and obtained the husband's sanction for renewed intercourse with Byron, who was to be invited to Ravenna. A letter detailing these plans was written by Count Gamba; and at the time it was written, this was what was happening in Venice: "He was ready dressed for the journey [to England], his gloves and cap on, and even his little cane in his hand. Nothing was now waited for but his coming downstairs-his boxes being already on board the gondola. At this moment, my Lord, by way of pretext, declares that if it should strike one o'clock before everything was in order (his arms being the one thing not ready) he would not go that day. The hour strikes-and he remains!" This account is from a letter written to Teresa by a friend, who adds: “It is evident he had not the heart to go ". The next day came the summons to Ravenna. Byron wrote to Teresa, in Italian : "F*** will already have told you, with her accustomed sublimity, that Love has gained the victory. I could not summon up resolution enough to leave the country where you are, without, at least, once more seeing you. On yourself, perhaps, it will depend, whether I ever again shall leave you. Of the rest we shall speak when we meet. You ought, by this time, to know which is most conducive to your welfare, my presence or my absence. For myself, I am a citizen of the world-all countries are alike to me. You have ever been, since our first acquaintance, the sole object of my thoughts. My opinion was, that the best course I could adopt, both for your peace and that of all your family, would have been to depart and go far, far away from you; -since to have been near and not approach you would have been, for me, impossible. You have however decided that I 1 This was the time of the Return Scare in England, which we have seen, from that side, in Chapter XVI. She lived until 1873. am to return to Ravenna. I shall accordingly return-and shall do and be all that you wish. I cannot say more.' Then, on December to to Murray, the famous words: "Your Blackwood accuses me of treating women harshly: it may be so, but I have been their martyr. My whole life has been sacrificed to them and by them". Yet still the dream of a return to England persisted. "Perhaps I may take a journey to you in the spring; but I have been ill, and am indolent and indecisive, because few things interest me ". There is a P.S.: "Pray let my sister be informed that I am not coming as I intended: I have not the courage to tell her so myself, at least as yet; but I will soon, with the reasons". On December 23 from Bologna, on his way to Ravenna, he did tell her; but (in the letter we are shown) without the reasons. We have seen how she regarded the prospect of his return: "Luckily, or unluckily perhaps, I do not die easily, or I think this stroke would about finish me"; seen that her resolution to receive him, if he did return, was nevertheless unalterable," though I trust I may be spared the trial-I scarcely know of any greater that could befall me "; and seen, too, that this resolution was the cause of a much-lessened intercourse between her and Lady Byron. He reached Ravenna on December 24, 1819. Venice was done with for ever-Venice, "that now empty oyster-shell", as he wrote to Hoppner; Venice, the Gehenna of the waters, the Sea-Sodom, of Marino Faliero. "I hate the place and all that it inherits ". " CHAPTER XXII RAVENNA-1820-1821 Letters to Hoppner and Moore-Installed at the Palazzo Guiccioli— Drilling very hard "-Mazeppa and The Prophecy of Dante-Third Canto of Don Juan Translations-Blackwood manifesto-Allegra-A breeze with Hobhouse-Dissatisfaction-Carbonarist troubles, and separation of Count and Countess Guiccioli-Teresa leaves the City-Byron remains at the Palace-Carbonarist movement collapses-Teresa flies to Florence-Byron remains behind HE first letter from Ravenna was to Hoppner, on December 31, 1819. TH "I have been here this week, and was obliged to put on my armour and go the night after my arrival to the Marquis Cavalli's, where there were between two and three hundred of the best company I have seen in Italy. . . . The G.'s object appeared to be to parade her foreign lover as much as possible, and, faith, if she seemed to glory in the scandal, it was not for me to be ashamed of it. Nobody seemed surprised; -all the women, on the contrary, were, as it were, delighted with the excellent example. The vice-legate, and all the other vices, were as polite as could be ;-and I, who had acted on the reserve, was fairly obliged to take the lady under my arm, and look as much like a cicisbeo as I could on so short a notice,-to say nothing of the embarrassment of a cocked hat and sword, much more formidable to me than ever it will be to the enemy. "I can understand nothing of all this; but it seems as if the G. had been presumed to be planted, and was determined to show that she was not,-plantation, in this hemisphere, being the greatest moral misfortune. But this is mere conjecture, for I know nothing about it-except that everybody are very kind to her, and not discourteous to me. Fathers, and all relations, quite agreeable". On January 2 of the New Year, anniversary of his weddingday five years before, he wrote to Moore, leading off with a rhymed epigram. "Here's a happy new year! but with reason, I beg you'll permit me to say Wish me many returns of the season, But as few as you please of the day". A shower of similar jeux d'esprit followed-on Lord Castlereagh, Pitt, Tom Paine; and then Moore got the naked truth about the situation. "For my own part, I had a sad scene since you went. Count Gu. came for his wife, and none of those consequences which Scott prophesied ensued. There was no damages, as in England, and so Scott lost his wager. But there was a great scene, for she would not, at first, go back with him-at least, she did go back with him; but he insisted, reasonably enough, that all communication should be broken off between her and me. So, finding Italy very dull, and having a fever tertian, I packed up my valise, and prepared to cross the Alps; but my daughter fell ill, and detained me. "After her arrival at Ravenna, the Guiccioli fell ill again too; and at last, her father (who had, all along, opposed the liaison most violently till now) wrote to me to say that she was in such a state that he begged me to come and see her,—and that her husband had acquiesced, in consequence of her relapse, and that he (her father) would guarantee all this, and that there would be no further scenes in consequence between them, and that I should not be compromised in any way. I set out soon after, and have been here ever since. I found her a good deal altered, but getting better:-all this comes of reading Corinna ". In the early days he put up at an hotel; but the Count, resolute to make his profit out of the English Milord's infatuation, if not in one way then in another, arranged that he should hire a suite of apartments in the Palazzo Guiccioli itself. Here are some extracts from letters to Hoppner at this time. "RAVENNA, January 20, 1820 "I have not decided anything about remaining at Ravenna. I may stay a day, a week, a year, all my life; but all this depends upon what I can neither see nor foresee. I came because I was called, and will go the moment that I perceive what may render my departure proper. My attachment has neither the blindness of the beginning, nor the microscopic accuracy of the close to such liaisons; but time and the hour' must decide upon what I do". Towards the end: "Perhaps we may meet in the spring yet, if you are for England"; but he was gradually being tamed. “I am drilling very hard to learn how to double a shawl, and should succeed to admiration if I did not always double it the wrong side out; and then I sometimes confuse and bring away two, so as to put all the Serventi out, besides keeping their Servite in the cold till everybody can get back their property. But it is a dreadfully moral place, for you must not look at anybody's wife except your neighbour's, if you go to the next door but one, you are scolded, and presumed to be perfidious. And then a relazione or an amicizia seems to be a regular affair of from five to fifteen years, at which period, if there occur a widowhood, it finishes by a sposalizio; and in the meantime it has so many rules of its own, that it is not much better. A man actually becomes a piece of female property,-they won't let their Serventi marry until there is a vacancy for themselves". " Mazeppa had been published on June 28, 1819, with the Ode on Venice and A Fragment—that is, the fragment of his Vampire story.1 The volume was reviewed by Blackwood, and the Monthly and Eclectic Reviews; but on the whole it may be said to have fallen quite flat. Thus, with the outcry against Don Juan, he was, as he confessed to Murray, hurt. "I have not written con amore this time ", he adds of the Third Juan; very decent I believe, but do not know". By February 1820 he did know, or thought he did. "It is very decent and as dull". It is decent but by no means dull, for it contains the scene which Coleridge compared to Nicolas Poussin's pictures-the return of Lambro to the island; and the undying "Isles of Greece " -an interpolated lyric giving us the lovely stanza on Marathon. "The mountains look on Marathon, And Marathon looks on the sea : I dream'd that Greece might still be free; I could not deem myself a slave ".' 1 Of this scrap, Byron said: "I began it in an old account-book of Miss Milbanke's, which I kept because it contains the word ' Household' written by her twice on the inside blank page of the cover; being the only two scraps I have in the world of her writing, except her name to the Deed of Separation". He wrote the same thing to her in an unsent letter of November 17, 1821, acknowledging a lock of Ada's hair. This letter he enclosed in a note to Lady Blessington on May 6, 1823, and it is printed by Moore. Mr. Prothero thinks that possibly the date was 1822. Byron wrote his wife many letters which he did not send. The Third Canto of Byron's letters is the third and fourth cantos of the poem. "I have copied, and cut the third canto of Don Juan into two, because it was too long "; and he confessed this coram publico in stanza III of canto iii. Canto iv. contains the death of Haidee, the departure of Juan from the island, and his meeting with the Italian Opera troupe. " I told you long |