Er. 31. COUNTESS GUICCIOLI. -con evils of his late libertine course of life had broken upon him, that an attachment differing altogether, both in duration and devotion, from any of those that, since the dream of his boyhood, had inspired him, gained an influence over his mind which lasted through his few remaining years; and, undeniably wrong and immoral (even allowing for the Italian estimate of such frailties) as was the nature of the connection to which this attachment led, we can hardly perhaps, taking into account the far worse wrong from which it rescued and preserved him, sider it otherwise than as an event fortunate both for his reputation and happiness. The fair object of this last, and (with one signal exception) only real love of his whole life, was a young Romagnese lady, the daughter of Count Gamba, of Ravenna, and married, but a short time before Lord Byron first met her, to an old and wealthy widower, of the same city, Count Guiccioli. Her husband had in early life been the friend of Alfieri, and had distinguished himself by his zeal in promoting the establishment of a National Theatre, in which the talents of Alfieri and his own wealth were to be combined. Notwithstanding his age, and a character, as it appears, by no means reputable, his great opulence rendered him an object of ambition among the mothers of Ravenna, who, according to the too frequent maternal practice, were seen vying with each other in attracting so rich a purchaser for their daughters; and the young Teresa Gamba, not yet sixteen, and just emancipated from a convent, was the selected victim. The first time Lord Byron had ever seen this lady was in the autumn of 1818, when she made her appearance, three days after her marriage, at the house of the Countess Albrizzi, in all the gaiety of bridal array, and the first delight of exchanging a convent for the world. At this time, however, no acquaintance ensued between them; it was not till the spring of the present year that, at an evening party of Madame Benzoni's, they were introduced to each other. The love that sprung out of this meeting was instantaneous and mutual, though with the usual disproportion of sacrifice between the 1 "Nell' Aprile del 1819, io feci la conoscenza di Lord Byron; e mi fu presentato a Venezia dalla Contessa Benzoni nella di lei società. Questa presentazione che ebbe tante consequenze per tutti i due fu fatta contro la volontà d'entrambi, e solo per condiscendenza l'abbiamo permessa. Io stanca più che mai quella sera par le ore tarde che si costuma fare in Venezia andai con molta ripugnanza e solo per ubbidire al Conte Guiccioli in quella società. Lord Byron che scansava di fare nuove conoscenze, dicendo sempre che aveva interamente rinunciato alle passioni e che non voleva esporsi più alle loro 393 parties; such an event being, to the man, but one of the many scenes of life, while, with woman, it generally constitutes the whole drama. The young Italian found herself suddenly inspired with a passion, of which, till that moment, her mind could not have formed the least idea;-she had thought of love but as an amusement, and now became its slave. If at the outset, too, less slow to be won than an Englishwoman, no sooner did she begin to understand the full despotism of the passion than her heart shrunk from it as something terrible, and she would have escaped, but that the chain was already around her. No words, however, can describe so simply and feelingly as her own, the strong impression which their first meeting left upon her mind : : "I became acquainted (says Madame Guiccioli) with Lord Byron in the April of 1819:- he was introduced to me at Venice, by the Countess Benzoni, at one of that lady's parties. This introduction, which had so much influence over the lives of us both, took place contrary to our wishes, and had been permitted by us only from courtesy. For myself, more fatigued than usual that evening on account of the late hours they keep at Venice, I went with great repugnance to this party, and purely in obedience to Count Guiccioli. Lord Byron, too, who was averse to forming new acquaintances,— alleging that he had entirely renounced all attachments, and was unwilling any more to expose himself to their consequences, — on being requested by the Countess Benzoni to allow himself to be presented to me, refused, and, at last, only assented from a desire to oblige her. His noble and exquisitely beautiful countenance, the tone of his voice, his manners, the thousand enchantments that surrounded him, rendered him so different and so superior a being to any whom I had hitherto seen, that it was impossible he should not have left the most profound impression upon me. From that evening, during the whole of my subsequent stay at Venice, we met every day."1 consequenze, quando la Contessa Benzoni lo pregò di volersi far presentare a me egli recusò, e solo per la compiacenza glielo permise. La nobile e bellissima sua fisonomia, il suono della sua voce, le sue maniere, i mille incanti che lo circondavano lo rendevano un essere cost differente, così superiore a tutti quelli che io aveva sino allora veduti che non potei a meno di non provarne la più profonda impressione. Da quella sera in poi in tutti i giorni che mi fermai in Venezia ei siamo sempre veduti." - MS. LETTER 328. TO MR. MURRAY. "Venice, May 15. 1819. There "I have got your extract, and the Vampire.' I need not say it is not mine. is a rule to go by: you are my publisher (till we quarrel), and what is not published by you is not written by me. "Next week I set out for Romagna - at least, in all probability. You had better go on with the publications, without waiting to hear farther, for I have other things in my head. Mazeppa' and the 'Ode' separate? what think you? Juan anonymous, without the Dedication; for I won't be shabby, and attack Southey under cloud of night. Yours, &c." 66 In another letter on the subject of the Vampire, I find the following interesting particulars : "TO MR. MURRAY. "The story of Shelley's agitation is true.' I can't tell what seized him, for he don't want courage. He was once with me in a gale of wind, in a small boat, right under the rocks between Meillerie and St. Gingo. We were five in the boat -a servant, two boatmen, and ourselves. The sail was mismanaged, and the boat was filling fast. He can't swim. I stripped off my coat, made him strip off his, and take hold of an oar, telling him that I thought (being myself an expert swimmer) I could save him, if he would not struggle when I took hold of him—unless we got smashed against the rocks, which were high and sharp, with an awkward surf on them at that minute. We were then about a hundred yards from shore, and the boat in peril. He answered me with the greatest coolness, that he had no notion of being saved, and that I would have enough to do to save myself, and begged not to trouble me.' Luckily, the boat righted, and, This story, as given in the Preface to the "Vampire," is as follows: "It appears that one evening Lord B., Mr. P. B. Shelley, two ladies, and the gentleman before alluded to, after having perused a German work called Phantasmagoria, began relating ghost stories, when his Lordship having recited the beginning of Christabel, then unpublished, the whole took so strong a hold of Mr. Shelley's mind, that he suddenly started up, and ran out of the room. The physician and Lord Byron followed, and discovered him leaning against a mantel-piece, with cold drops of perspiration trickling down his face. After having given him something to refresh him, upon enquiring into the cause of his alarm, they found that his wild imagination having pictured to him the bosom of one of the ladies with eyes (which was reported of a lady bailing, we got round a point into St. Gingo, where the inhabitants came down and embraced the boatmen on their escape, the wind having been high enough to tear up some huge trees from the Alps above us, as we saw next day. And yet the same Shelley, who was as cool as it was possible to be in such circumstances, (of which I am no judge myself, as the chance of swimming naturally gives selfpossession when near shore,) certainly had the fit of phantasy which Polidori describes, though not exactly as he describes it. "The story of the agreement to write the ghost-books is true; but the ladies are not sisters. Mary Godwin (now Mrs. Shelley) wrote Frankenstein, which you have reviewed, thinking it Shelley's. Methinks it is a wonderful book for a girl of nineteen, — not nineteen, indeed, at that time. I enclose you the beginning of mine, by which you will see how far it resembles Mr. Colburn's publication. If you choose to publish it in the Edinburgh Magazine, you may, stating why, and with such explanatory proem as you please. I never went on with it, as you will perceive by the date. 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 covers, being the only two scraps I have in the world in her writing, except her name to the Deed of Separation. Her letters I sent back except those of the quarrelling correspondence, and those, being documents, are placed in the hands of a third person, with copies of several of my own; so that I have no kind of memorial whatever of her, but these two words, and her actions. I have torn the leaves containing the part of the Tale out of the book, and enclose them with this sheet. What do you mean? First you seem hurt by my letter, and then, in your next, you talk of its 'power,' and so forth. This is a d-d blind story, Jack; but never mind, in the neighbourhood where he lived), he was obliged to leave the room in order to destroy the impression." 2 [In Blackwood's Magazine, of which Mr. Murray was then a co-proprietor, there appeared an article on Frankenstein by Sir Walter Scott, in which the reviewer says, "The author seems to us to disclose uncommon powers of poetic imagination. It is no slight merit in our eyes, that the tale, though wild in incident, is written in plain and forcible English, without exhibiting that mixture of hyperbolical Germanisms with which tales of wonder are usually told, as if it were necessary that the language should be as extravagant as the fiction. The ideas of the author are always clearly as well as forcibly expressed; and his descriptions of landscape have in them the choice requisites of truth, freshness, precision, and beauty."-See Scott's Miscell. Prose Works, vol. xvii. p. 250.] go on.' You may be sure I said nothing on purpose to plague you; but if you will put me in a frenzy, I will never call you Jack again.' I remember nothing of the epistle at present. "What do you mean by Polidori's Diary? Why, I defy him to say any thing about me, but he is welcome. I have nothing to reproach me with on his score, and I am much mistaken if that is not his own opinion. But why publish the names of the two girls? and in such a manner? - what a blundering piece of exculpation! He asked Pictet, &c. to dinner, and of course was left to entertain them. I went into society solely to present him (as I told him), that he might return into good company if he chose; it was the best thing for his youth and circumstances: for myself, I had done with society, and, having presented him, withdrew to my own way of life.' It is true that I returned without entering Lady Dalrymple Hamilton's, because I saw it full. It is true that Mrs. Hervey (she writes novels) fainted at my entrance into Coppet, and then came back again. On her fainting, the Duchesse de Broglie exclaimed, "This is too much at sixty-five years of age!'-I never gave the English' an opportunity of avoiding' me; but I trust that, if ever I do, they will seize it. With regard to Mazeppa and the Ode, you may join or separate them, as you please, from the two Cantos. of "Don't suppose I want to put you out of humour. I have a great respect for your good and gentlemanly qualities, and return your personal friendship towards me; and although I think you a little spoilt by villanous company,' wits, persons honour about town, authors, and fashionables, together with your 'I am just going to call at Carlton House, are you walking that way?'-I say, notwithstanding pictures, taste, Shakspeare, and the musical glasses,' you deserve and possess the esteem of those whose esteem is worth having, and of none more (however useless it may be) than yours very truly, &c. "B. "I have received no proofs by the last post, and shall probably have quitted Venice before the arrival of the next. There wanted a few stanzas to the termination of Canto first in the last proof; the next will, I presume, contain them, and the whole or a portion of Canto second; but it will be idle to wait for further answers from me, as I have directed that my letters wait for my return (perhaps in a month, and probably so); therefore do not wait for further advice from me. You may as well talk to the wind, and better- for it will at least convey your accents a little further than they would otherwise have gone; whereas I shall neither echo nor acquiesce in your 'exquisite reasons.' You may omit the note of reference to Hobhouse's travels, in Canto second, and you will put as motto to the whole ago "Difficile est proprie communia dicere.'- HORACE. "A few days Polidori's Vampire. He may do, say, or I sent you all I know of write what he pleases, but I wish he would not attribute to me his own compositions. If he has any thing of mine in his possession, the MS. will put it beyond controversy; but I scarcely think that any one who knows me would believe the thing in the Magazine to be mine, even if they saw it in my own hieroglyphics. "I write to you in the agonies of a sirocco, which annihilates me; and I have been fool enough to do four things since dinner, which are as well omitted in very hot weather: 1stly, ****; 2dly, to play at billiards from 10 to 12, under the influence of lighted lamps, that doubled the heat; 3dly, to go afterwards into a red-hot conversazione of the Countess Benzoni's; and, 4thly, to begin this letter at three in the morning: but being begun, it must be finished. Ever very truly and affectionately yours, "B. "P. S. I petition for tooth-brushes, powder, magnesia, Macassar oil (or Russia), the sashes, and Sir Nl. Wraxall's Memoirs of his own Times. I want, besides, a bulldog, a terrier, and two Newfoundland dogs; and advertised by Longman long, long, long ago; I want (is it Buck's?) a Life of Richard 3d, I asked you for it at least three years since. See Longman's advertisements." About the middle of April, Madame Guiccioli had been obliged to quit Venice with her husband. Having several houses on the road from Venice to Ravenna, it was his habit to stop at these mansions, one after the other, in his journeys between the two cities; and from all these places the enamoured young Countess now wrote to Lord Byron, expressing, in the most pas sionate and pathetic terms, her despair at leaving him. So utterly, indeed, did this feeling overpower her, that three times, in the course of her first day's journey, she was seized with fainting fits. In one of her letters, which I saw when at Venice, dated, if I recollect right, from " Cà Zen, Cavanelle di Po," she tells him that the solitude of this place, which she had before found irksome, was, now that one sole idea occupied her mind, become dear and welcome to her, and promises that, as soon as she arrives at Ravenna, "she will, according to his wish, avoid all general society, and devote herself to reading, music, domestic occupations, riding on horseback,-every thing, in short, that she knew he would most like." What a change for a young and simple girl, who, but a few weeks before, had thought only of society and the world, but who now saw no other happiness but in the hope of making herself worthy, by seclusion and self-instruction, of the illustrious object of her devotion! On leaving this place, she was attacked with a dangerous illness on the road, and arrived half dead at Ravenna; nor was it found possible to revive or comfort her till an assurance was received from Lord Byron, expressed with all the fervour of real passion, that, in the course of the ensuing month, he would pay her a visit. Symptoms of consumption, brought on by her state of mind, had already shown themselves; and, in addition to the pain which this separation had caused her, she was also suffering much grief from the loss of her mother, who, at this time, died in giving birth to her fourteenth child. Towards the latter end of May she wrote to acquaint Lord Byron that, having prepared all her relatives and friends to expect him, he might now, she thought, venture to make his appearance at Ravenna. Though, on the lady's account, hesitating as to the prudence of such a step, he, in obedience to her wishes, on the 2d of June, set out from La Mira (at which place he had again taken a villa for the summer), and proceeded towards Romagna. A clerk of the English Consulate, whom he at this time employed to control his accounts. 2 The Po. From Padua he addressed a letter to Mr. Hoppner, chiefly occupied with matters of household concern which that gentleman had undertaken to manage for him at Venice, but, on the immediate object of his journey, expressing himself in a tone so light and jesting, as it would be difficult for those not versed in his character to conceive that he could ever bring himself, while under the influence of a passion so sincere, to assume. But such is ever the wantonness of the mocking spirit, from which nothing, - not even love,-remains sacred; and which, at last, for want of other food, turns upon himself. The same horror, too, of hypocrisy that led Lord Byron to exaggerate his own errors, led him also to disguise, under a seemingly heartless ridicule, all those natural and kindly qualities by which they were redeemed. This letter from Padua concludes thus: "A journey in an Italian June is a conscription; and if I was not the most constant of men, I should now be swimming from the Lido, instead of smoking in the dust of Padua. Should there be letters from England, let them wait my return. And do look at my house and (not lands, but) waters, and scold;- and deal out the monies to Edgecombe with an air of reluctance and a shake of the head- and put queer questions to him—and turn up your nose when he answers. "Make my respect to the Consulessand to the Chevalier - and to Scotin and to all the counts and countesses of our acquaintance. "And believe me ever "Your disconsolate and affectionate, &c." As a contrast to the strange levity of this letter, as well as in justice to the real earnestness of the passion, however censurable in all other respects, that now engrossed him, I shall here transcribe some stanzas which he wrote in the course of this journey to Romagna, and which, though already published, are not comprised in the regular collection of his works. "River 2, that rollest by the ancient walls, Where dwells the lady of my love, when she Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls A faint and fleeting memory of me," &c. &c. 3 3 [For the remaining stanzas see Works, p. 571. edit. 1837.] "I am at length joined to Bologna, where I am settled like a sausage, and shall be broiled like one, if this weather continues. Will you thank Mengaldo on my part for the Ferrara acquaintance, which was a very agreeable one. I stayed two days at Ferrara, and was much pleased with the Count Mosti, and the little the shortness of the time permitted me to see of his family. I went to his conversazione, which is very far superior to any thing of the kind at Venice the women almost all young several pretty and the men courteous and cleanly. The lady of the mansion, who is young, lately married, and with child, appeared very pretty by candlelight (I did not see her by day), pleasing in her manners, and very lady-like, or thorough-bred, as we call it in England, - a kind of thing which reminds one of a racer, an antelope, or an Italian greyhound. She seems very fond of her husband, who is amiable and accomplished; he has been in England two or three times, and is young. The sister, a Countess somebody--I forget what-(they are both Maffei by birth, and Veronese of course) is a lady of more display; she sings and plays divinely; but I thought she was a d-d long time about it. Her like [The Honourable Margaret Mercer Elphinstone, now Baroness Keith. In 1817 she was married to Count Flahaut, and on the demise of her father, in 1823, she succeeded to the peerage.] ness to Madame Flahaut (Miss Mercer that was) is something quite extraordinary. I had but a bird's eye view of these people, and shall not probably see them again; but I am very much obliged to Mengaldo for letting me see them at all. Whenever I meet with any thing agreeable in this world, it surprises me so much, and pleases me so much (when my passions are not interested one way or the other), that I go on wondering for a week to come. I feel, too, in great admiration of the Cardinal Legate's red stockings. 66 "I found, too, such a pretty epitaph in the Certosa cemetery, or rather two one was, the other, "Martini Luigi Implora pace;' "Lucrezia Picini Implora eterna quiete.' That was all; but it appears to me that these two and three words comprise and compress all that can be said on the subject, -and then, in Italian, they are absolute music. They contain doubt, hope, and humility; nothing can be more pathetic than the implora' and the modesty of the request; they have had enough of lifethey want nothing but rest- they implore it, and 'eterna quiete.' It is like a Greek inscription in some good old heathen City of the Dead.' Pray, if I am shovelled into the Lido churchyard in your time, let me have the implora pace,' and nothing else, for my epitaph. I never met with any, ancient or modern, that pleased me a tenth part so much. "In about a day or two after you receive this letter, I will thank you to desire Edgecombe to prepare for my return. I shall go back to Venice before I village on the Brenta. I shall stay but a few days in Bologna. I am just going out to see sights, but shall not present my introductory letters for a day or two, till I have run over again the place and pictures; nor perhaps at all, if I find that I have books and sights enough to do without the inhabitants. After that I shall return to Venice, where you may expect me about the eleventh, or perhaps sooner. Pray make my thanks acceptable to Mengaldo: my respects to the Consuless, and to Mr. Scott. I hope my daughter is well. "Ever yours, and truly. 2 ["Oh! may my shade behold no sculptur'd urns, Hours of Idleness. See Works, p. 378.] |