BYRON AND THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI
In 1812, when he was in his twenty-fourth year, Lord Byron was moretalked of than any other man in London. He was in the first flush of hisbrilliant career, having published the early cantos of "Childe Harold."Moreover, he was a peer of the realm, handsome, ardent, and possessing apersonal fascination which few men and still fewer women could resist.
Byron's childhood had been one to excite in him strong feelings ofrevolt, and he had inherited a profligate and passionate nature. Hisfather was a gambler and a spendthrift. His mother was eccentric to adegree. Byron himself, throughout his boyish years, had been morbidlysensitive because of a physical deformity--a lame, misshapen foot.This and the strange treatment which his mother accorded him left himheadstrong, wilful, almost from the first an enemy to whatever wasestablished and conventional.
As a boy, he was remarkable for the sentimental attachments which heformed. At eight years of age he was violently in love with a young girlnamed Mary Duff. At ten his cousin, Margaret Parker, excited in him astrange, un-childish passion. At fifteen came one of the greatestcrises of his life, when he became enamored of Mary Chaworth, whosegrand-father had been killed in a duel by Byron's great-uncle. Young ashe was, he would have married her immediately; but Miss Chaworth wastwo years older than he, and absolutely refused to take seriously thedevotion of a school-boy.
Byron felt the disappointment keenly; and after a short stay atCambridge, he left England, visited Portugal and Spain, and traveledeastward as far as Greece and Turkey. At Athens he wrote the prettylittle poem to the "maid of Athens"--Miss Theresa Macri, daughter ofthe British vice-consul. He returned to London to become at one leap themost admired poet of the day and the greatest social favorite. He waspossessed of striking personal beauty. Sir Walter Scott said of him:"His countenance was a thing to dream of." His glorious eyes, hismobile, eloquent face, fascinated all; and he was, besides, a genius ofthe first rank.
With these endowments, he plunged into the social whirlpool, denyinghimself nothing, and receiving everything-adulation, friendship, andunstinted love. Darkly mysterious stories of his adventures in the Eastmade many think that he was the hero of some of his own poems, suchas "The Giaour" and "The Corsair." A German wrote of him that "he waspositively besieged by women." From the humblest maid-servants up toladies of high rank, he had only to throw his handkerchief to makea conquest. Some women did not even wait for the handkerchief to bethrown. No wonder that he was sated with so much adoration and that hewrote of women:
I regard them as very pretty but inferior creatures. I look on them asgrown-up children; but, like a foolish mother, I am constantly the slaveof one of them. Give a woman a looking-glass and burnt almonds, and shewill be content.
The liaison which attracted the most attention at this time was thatbetween Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron has been greatly blamed forhis share in it; but there is much to be said on the other side. LadyCaroline was happily married to the Right Hon. William Lamb, afterwardLord Melbourne, and destined to be the first prime minister of QueenVictoria. He was an easy-going, genial man of the world who placed toomuch confidence in the honor of his wife. She, on the other hand, wasa sentimental fool, always restless, always in search of some newexcitement. She thought herself a poet, and scribbled verses, whichher friends politely admired, and from which they escaped as soon aspossible. When she first met Byron, she cried out: "That pale face is myfate!" And she afterward added: "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know!"
It was not long before the intimacy of the two came very near the pointof open scandal; but Byron was the wooed and not the wooer. This woman,older than he, flung herself directly at his head. Naturally enough,it was not very long before she bored him thoroughly. Her romanticimpetuosity became tiresome, and very soon she fell to talking alwaysof herself, thrusting her poems upon him, and growing vexed and peevishwhen he would not praise them. As was well said, "he grew moody and shefretful when their mutual egotisms jarred."
In a burst of resentment she left him, but when she returned, she wasworse than ever. She insisted on seeing him. On one occasion she madeher way into his rooms disguised as a boy. At another time, when shethought he had slighted her, she tried to stab herself with a pair ofscissors. Still later, she offered her favors to any one who would killhim. Byron himself wrote of her:
You can have no idea of the horrible and absurd things that she has saidand done.
Her story has been utilized by Mrs. Humphry Ward in her novel, "TheMarriage of William Ashe."
Perhaps this trying experience led Byron to end his life of dissipation.At any rate, in 1813, he proposed marriage to Miss Anne Millbanke,who at first refused him; but he persisted, and in 1815 the two weremarried. Byron seems to have had a premonition that he was making aterrible mistake. During the wedding ceremony he trembled like a leaf,and made the wrong responses to the clergyman. After the wedding wasover, in handing his bride into the carriage which awaited them, he saidto her:
"Miss Millbanke, are you ready?"
It was a strange blunder for a bridegroom, and one which many regardedat the time as ominous for the future. In truth, no two persons couldhave been more thoroughly mismated--Byron, the human volcano, and hiswife, a prim, narrow-minded, and peevish woman. Their incompatibilitywas evident enough from the very first, so that when they returned fromtheir wedding-journey, and some one asked Byron about his honeymoon, heanswered:
"Call it rather a treacle moon!"
It is hardly necessary here to tell over the story of their domestictroubles. Only five weeks after their daughter's birth, they parted.Lady Byron declared that her husband was insane; while after trying manytimes to win from her something more than a tepid affection, he gave upthe task in a sort of despairing anger. It should be mentioned here, forthe benefit of those who recall the hideous charges made many decadesafterward by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe on the authority of Lady Byron,that the latter remained on terms of friendly intimacy with AugustaLeigh, Lord Byron's sister, and that even on her death-bed she sent anamicable message to Mrs. Leigh.
Byron, however, stung by the bitter attacks that were made upon him,left England, and after traveling down the Rhine through Switzerland,he took up his abode in Venice. His joy at leaving England and riddinghimself of the annoyances which had clustered thick about him, heexpressed in these lines:
Once more upon the waters! yet once more! And the waves bound beneath me as a steed That knows his rider. Welcome to the roar!
Meanwhile he enjoyed himself in reckless fashion. Money poured in uponhim from his English publisher. For two cantos of "Childe Harold" and"Manfred," Murray paid him twenty thousand dollars. For the fourthcanto, Byron demanded and received more than twelve thousand dollars.In Italy he lived on friendly terms with Shelley and Thomas Moore; buteventually he parted from them both, for he was about to enter upon anew phase of his curious career.
He was no longer the Byron of 1815. Four years of high living and muchbrandy-and-water had robbed his features of their refinement. His lookwas no longer spiritual. He was beginning to grow stout. Yet the changehad not been altogether unfortunate. He had lost something of his wildimpetuosity, and his sense of humor had developed. In his thirtiethyear, in fact, he had at last become a man.
It was soon after this that he met a woman who was to be to him forthe rest of his life what a well-known writer has called "a star on thestormy horizon of the poet." This woman was Teresa, Countess Guiccioli,whom he first came to know in Venice. She was then only nineteen yearsof age, and she was married to a man who was more than forty years hersenior. Unlike the typical Italian woman, she was blonde, with dreamyeyes and an abundance of golden hair, and her manner was at once modestand graceful. She had known Byron but a very short time when she foundherself thrilling with a passion of which until then she had neverdreamed. It was written of her:
She had thought of love but as an amusement; yet she now became itsslave.
To this love Byron gave an immed
iate response, and from that time untilhis death he cared for no other woman. The two were absolutely mated.Nevertheless, there were difficulties which might have been expected.Count Guiccioli, while he seemed to admire Byron, watched him withItalian subtlety. The English poet and the Italian countess metfrequently. When Byron was prostrated by an attack of fever, thecountess remained beside him, and he was just recovering when CountGuiccioli appeared upon the scene and carried off his wife. Byron was indespair. He exchanged the most ardent letters with the countess, yet hedreaded assassins whom he believed to have been hired by her husband.Whenever he rode out, he went armed with sword and pistols.
Amid all this storm and stress, Byron's literary activity wasremarkable. He wrote some of his most famous poems at this time, and hehoped for the day when he and the woman whom he loved might be unitedonce for all. This came about in the end through the persistence of thepair. The Countess Guiccioli openly took up her abode with him, not tobe separated until the poet sailed for Greece to aid the Greeks intheir struggle for independence. This was in 1822, when Byron was in histhirty-fifth year. He never returned to Italy, but died in the historicland for which he gave his life as truly as if he had fallen upon thefield of battle.
Teresa Guiccioli had been, in all but name, his wife for just threeyears. Much, has been said in condemnation of this love-affair; but inmany ways it is less censurable than almost anything in his career. Itwas an instance of genuine love, a love which purified and exalted thisman of dark and moody moments. It saved him from those fitful passionsand orgies of self-indulgence which had exhausted him. It proved to bean inspiration which at last led him to die for a cause approved by allthe world.
As for the woman, what shall we say of her? She came to him unspotted bythe world. A demand for divorce which her husband made was rejected.A pontifical brief pronounced a formal separation between the two. Thecountess gladly left behind "her palaces, her equipages, society, andriches, for the love of the poet who had won her heart."
Unlike the other women who had cared for him, she was unselfish inher devotion. She thought more of his fame than did he himself. EmilioCastelar has written:
She restored him and elevated him. She drew him from the mire and setthe crown of purity upon his brow. Then, when she had recovered thisgreat heart, instead of keeping it as her own possession, she gave it tohumanity.
For twenty-seven years after Byron's death, she remained, as it were,widowed and alone. Then, in her old age, she married the Marquis deBoissy; but the marriage was purely one of convenience. Her heart wasalways Byron's, whom she defended with vivacity. In 1868, she publishedher memoirs of the poet, filled with interesting and affectingrecollections. She died as late as 1873.
Some time between the year 1866 and that of her death, she is said tohave visited Newstead Abbey, which had once been Byron's home. She wasvery old, a widow, and alone; but her affection for the poet-lover ofher youth was still as strong as ever.
Byron's life was short, if measured by years only. Measured byachievement, it was filled to the very full. His genius blazes likea meteor in the records of English poetry; and some of that splendorgleams about the lovely woman who turned him away from vice and follyand made him worthy of his historic ancestry, of his country, and ofhimself.