Reading for Everybody.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2580, 14 August 1909, Page 3 (Supplement)

Reading for Everybody.

JPAMOUS AFFINITIES OF HISTORY

BYRON AND THE COUNTESS f GUICCIOLI. I jLi (|y Lyndonwiir, in “Munsey’s.”)

H 1812, when he was in his twentyfoujjtli year, Lord Byron was more talMjd of than any other man in London! He was in the first flush of his brilliant career, having published the earli cantos of “Child© Harold.” MGrooved, he was a peer of the realm, handsome, ardent, and possessing a personal fascination which few men and fewer woiaon could resist. bltoh’s childhood had been one to ■excite in him strong feelings of revolt, and| he had inherited a profligate and passionate nature. His father was a gambler and a spendthrift. His mother was! eccentric to'a degree. Byron himself,’ throughout his boyish years, had beeii morbidly sensitive because of a physical deformity—a lame, misshapen foot; This and the strange treatment which his mother accorded him left him headstrong, wilful, almost from thefirst an enemy to whatever wits established and conventional.

As a boy he was remarkable for the sentimental attachments which he formed. At eight years of ago he was violently in love with a young girl named Mary Duff. At ten his cousin, Margaret Parker, excited in him a strange, unchiklisli passion. At fifteen came the greatest crises of his life, when he became enamored of Mary Chaworth, whose grandfather had been killed in a duel by Byron’s great-uncle. Young ns he was, he would' have married her immediately: but Miss Chawortli was two .years older than ho, and absolutely refilled to take seriously the devotion of ai schoolboy. Byron felt the disappointment keenly ; and after a short stay at CamLrid&e. he left England, visited Portugal and Spain, and travelled eastward as far as Greece and Turkey. At Athens .he wrote the pretty little poem to the “maid of Athens”—bliss Theresa -Maori, daughter of the British viceConsul. He returned to London to become at one leap the most admired poet! of the day and the greatest social favorite. {LSe was of striking persertad beauty. Sir Walter Scot! said of him: “His countenance was a thing to dream of.” His glorious eyes,! his mobile, eloquent face, fascinated! and he was, besides, a genius of the first rank.

BYRON AND LADY CAROLINE LAMB. Wijth these endowments, he plunged into the social whirlpool, denying himself nothing, and receiving everything —adulation, friendship, and. unstinted love. : Darkly mysterious stories of Lis adventures in the East made many think! that he was the hero of some of Lis own poems, such as “The Giaour” and fThe Corsiar.” A German wrote of him jihat “lie was positively besieged by women.” From the humblest maidservants up to ladies of high rank, lie had. only to throw his handkerchief to make a conquest. Some women did not even wait for the handkerchief to

■ tlrown. Nq wonder tliat he was ■sated with so much adoration and that he w] ote of women: “I regard them as very pretty but inferior creatures. I look on them as grow] -up children; but, like a foolish moth- r, I am constantly the slave of -one o : them. Give a woman a lookingglass, and burnt almonds, and she will he corfcent.” Th< liaison which attracted the most atten ion at this time was that between Byroi and Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron has 1 sen greatly blamed for his share in it? but there was much to be said on the o‘her side. Lady Caroline was happily named to the Right Hon. William ' iamb, afterward Lord Melbourne, and c 'stined to be the first Prime Minister ' h Queen Victoria, tie was an -easygoing, genial man of the world who J laced too much confidence in the LonoWof his wife. She, on the other hand] was a sentimental fool, always restlejss, always in search of some new excitfnent. She thought herself a poet,land scribbled verses, which her frien® politely admired, and from whicifthey escaped as soon as possible. When she first met Byron, she cried out: 4 That paleface is my fate!” And {me added: "Mad, bad, and Jqngerous to know!” Itl las not long before the intimacy of th two came very near the point of op n scandal; but Byron was wooed and iot the wooer. This woman, older th: n he, flung herself directly at his Lead. Naturally enough, it was not long? efore she bored him thoroughly. Her pmantic impetuosity became tiresome! and very soon she fell to talking a.lway of herself, thrusting her poems upon dim, and growing vexed and peevish wen he would not praise them. As well 6 id, "he grew moody and she fretful wih their mutual egotisms jarred.” In i burst of resentment, she left him, >nt when she returned, she was worse than ever. She insisted on seeing hm. On one occasion she made her yay into the his rooms disguised us a oy. At another time, when she thoug it he had slighted her, she tried to st£ a herself with a pair of scissors. Still a ter, she offered her favors to anyorwho would kill him. Byron himse t wrote of her : "Y<u can have no idea of the horrible md absurd things that she has said aid done.” Her dory has been utilised by Mrs. Humjhry Ward in .her novel, "The Marri go of William Ashe.” JYRON’S ILL-STARRED MARRIAGE. Perhaps this trying experience led Byron to end his life of dissipation. At any ide, in 1813, he proposed marriage to Miss Millbanke, who at ■$ -first efusod hirn; but be persisted, and h 1815 the two were married. Byron s<ems to have had a premonition that 1® was iha'king a terrible mistake. During the ceremony he trenail Lied hke a made wrong re- - sponsds to the clergyman. After the weddijig was ever, in banding bis bride into the carriage which awaited them, he saijl to her: "]\fos Millbanke, are you ready?’ It was a. strange blunder for a bridegi'oom, and one which may be xe crar4 G d as ominous for the future. In truth, no two persons could have been more jhoroughly mismated—Byron, the huma-ii volcano, and his wife, a prim, - aril peevish woman.

Their imeompatibility was evident enough from the very first, eo that when they returned from their wed-ding-journey, and someone asked Byron about his honeymoon, he answered: “Call it rather a treacle moon!” ■

It is hardly necessary here to tell over the story of their domestic troubles. Only five weeks after his daughter’s birth thev parted. Lady Byron declared that her husband was insane; while after trying many times to win from her something more than a tepid affection, he gave up the task in a sort of despairing anger. It should be mentioned here, for the benefit of those who recall the hideous charges made many decades afterwards by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe on the authority of Lady Byron, that the latter remained on terms of friendly intimacy with Agusta Leigh, Lord Byron’s sister, and that even on her death-bed she eent an amicable message to Mrs. Leigh. Byron, however, stung by the bitter attacks that were made upon him, left England, and after travelling down the Rhine through Switzerland, lie took up his abode in Venice. His joy at leaving England and ridding himself of the annoyances which had clustered thick about him, lie expressed in these lines:

Once more upon the waters! yet once more! And the waves that bound beneath me as a steed That knows its rider, vv elcome to the roar I

Meanwhile, he enjoyed himself in a reckless fashion. Money poured in upon him from his English publisher. For two cantos of “Child© Harold” and

“Manfred,” Murray paid him twenty thousand dollars. In Italy he lived on friendly terms with Shelly, and Thomas Moore; but eventually he parted from them both, for he was about to enter a new phase of his curious career. He was 110 longer the Byron of 1815. Four years of high living and much brandy-and-water had robbed his features of their refinement. His look was no longer spiritual. He was beginning to grow stout. Yet the change had not be"en altogether unfortunate. He had lost spmething. of his wild impetuosity, and his sense of humor had developed. In his thirtieth year, in fact, he had at last become a man.

THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI. It was soon after this that he met a woman who was to be to him for the remainder, of his life what a well-known waiter has called “a star on the stormy horizon of the poet.” . This woman was Theresa, Countess Guiceioli, whom she came to know in Venice. She was then only nineteen years of age, and she was married to a man who was more than forty years her senior. Unlike the typical Italian woman, she was a blonde, with dreamy eyes and abundance of golden Lair, and her manner was at once modest and graceful. She had known Byron but a very short time when she found herself thrilling with a passion of which until then she had never dreamed. It was written of her: ,

She had thought of love but as an amusement; yet she now became its slave.

To this love Byron gave an immediate response, and from that time until his death he cared for no other woman. The two were absolutely mated. Nevertheless, there were difficulties which might be expected. Count Guiccioli, while he seemed to admire Byron, watched him with Italian subtlety. The English poet and the Italian countess met frequently. While Byron was prostrated with an attack of fever, the countess remained beside him, and he was just recovering when Count Guiccioli appeared on the scene and carried off his wife. Byron was in despair. He exchanged the most ardent letters with the countess,-'yet he dreaded 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 was remarkablo. He wrote some of. his most- famous poems at this time, and he hoped for the day when he and the woman whom he loved might be united once for all. This came about in the end through the persistence of the pair. The Countess Guiccioli openly took up her abode with him, not to be separated, until the poet sailed for Greece to aid the Greeks in their struggle for independence. This was in 1822, when-Byron was in his thirty-fifth year. He never returned to Italy, but died in the historic land for which he gave his life as trulv as if he had fallen upon the field of battle.

Teresa Guiccioli had been, in all but name, his wife for just three years. Much has been said in condemnation of this love, affair: but in many ways it is less censurable than almost anything in his career. It was an instance of genuine love, a love which purified and exalted this man of dark and moody moments. It saved him from those fitful passions and orgies of selfindulgence which had exhausted him. It proved to be an inspiration which at last led him to die for a causfe approved by all the world. .As for. the woman, what- shall we say of her? She came to him unspotted by the world. A demand for divonoe which the husband made was rejected. A pontifical brief pronounced a formal separation between tbe two. The countess gladly left behind “her palaces, her equipages, society, and riches, for the love of a poet who had won her heart.”

Unlike the other women who had cared for him, she was unselfish in her devotion. She thought more of bis fame than did he himself. Emilio Castel'ar has" written: "Sho restored him and elevated him. She drew liim from the mire and set the crown of puritv upon his brow.Then, when she had recovered. this great heart, instead' of keeping it in her own possession, sho gave it to humanity.” 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 de Boissy; but the marriage was purely one of convenience. Her heart was always Byron’s, whom she defended with vivacity. In 1863, she published her memoirs of the poet, filled with interesting and affecting recollections. She died as late as 1873. k

Some time between the year 1866 and that of her death, she is said to have visited Newstead Abbey, which had once been Byron’s home. She was very old 7 a widow, and alone; hut her affect-

«on for the poet-lover of her youth was still as strong as ever.

Byron’s life was short, if measured by years only. Measured by achievement, it was filled to the very full. His genius blazes like a meteor in the records of English poetry; and some of that splendor gleams about the lovely woman who turned him away from vice and folly and made him worthy of his historic ancestry, of his country, and of himself.