The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 by Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

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I also passed a fortnight on the Troad. The tombs of Achilles and
Æsyetes still exist in large barrows, similar to those you have
doubtless seen in the North. The other day I was at Belgrade (a
village in these environs), to see the house built on the same site as
Lady Mary Wortley's.[1] By-the-by, her ladyship, as far as I can
judge, has lied, but not half so much as any other woman would have
done in the same situation.

I have been in all the principal mosques by the virtue of a firman:
this is a favor rarely permitted to Infidels, but the ambassador's
departure obtained it for us. I have been up the Bosphorus into the
Black Sea, round the walls of the city, and, indeed, I know more of it
by sight than I do of London. I hope to amuse you some winter's
evening with the details, but at present you must excuse me;--I am not
able to write long letters in June. I return to spend my summer in
Greece. I write often, but you must not be alarmed when you do not
receive my letters; consider we have no regular post farther than
Malta, where I beg you will in future send your letters, and not to
this city.

Fletcher is a poor creature, and requires comforts that I can dispense
with. He is very sick of his travels, but you must not believe his
account of the country. He sighs for ale, and idleness, and a wife,
and the devil knows what besides. I have not been disappointed or
disgusted. I have lived with the highest and the lowest. I have been
for days in a Pacha's palace, and have passed many a night in a
cowhouse, and I find the people inoffensive and kind. I have also
passed some time with the principal Greeks in the Morea and Livadia,
and, though inferior to the Turks, they are better than the Spaniards,
who, in their turn, excel the Portuguese. Of Constantinople you will
find many descriptions in different travels; but Lady Mary Wortley
errs strangely when she says, "St. Paul's would cut a strange figure
by St. Sophia's." [2] I have been in both, surveyed them inside and
out attentively. St. Sophia's is undoubtedly the most interesting from
its immense antiquity, and the circumstance of all the Greek emperors,
from Justinian, having been crowned there, and several murdered at the
altar, besides the Turkish Sultans who attend it regularly. But it is
inferior in beauty and size to some of the mosques, particularly
"Soleyman," etc., and not to be mentioned in the same page with St.
Paul's (I speak like a _Cockney_). However, I prefer the Gothic
cathedral of Seville to St. Paul's, St. Sophia's, and any religious
building I have ever seen.

The walls of the Seraglio are like the walls of Newstead gardens, only
higher, and much in the same _order_; but the ride by the walls of the
city, on the land side, is beautiful. Imagine four miles of immense
triple battlements, covered with ivy, surmounted with 218 towers, and,
on the other side of the road, Turkish burying-grounds (the loveliest
spots on earth), full of enormous cypresses. I have seen the ruins of
Athens, of Ephesus, and Delphi. I have traversed great part of Turkey,
and many other parts of Europe, and some of Asia; but I never beheld a
work of nature or art which yielded an impression like the prospect on
each side from the Seven Towers to the end of the Golden Horn. [3]

Now for England. I am glad to hear of the progress of 'English Bards',
etc. Of course, you observed I have made great additions to the new
edition. Have you received my picture from Sanders, Vigo Lane, London?
It was finished and paid for long before I left England: pray, send
for it. You seem to be a mighty reader of magazines: where do you pick
up all this intelligence, quotations, etc., etc.? Though I was happy
to obtain my seat without the assistance of Lord Carlisle, I had no
measures to keep with a man who declined interfering as my relation on
that occasion, and I have done with him, though I regret distressing
Mrs. Leigh, [4] poor thing!--I hope she is happy.

It is my opinion that Mr. B----ought to marry Miss R----. Our first
duty is not to do evil; but, alas! that is impossible: our next is to
repair it, if in our power. The girl is his equal: if she were his
inferior, a sum of money and provision for the child would be some,
though a poor, compensation: as it is, he should marry her. I will
have no gay deceivers on my estate, and I shall not allow my tenants a
privilege I do not permit myself--_that_ of debauching each other's
daughters. God knows, I have been guilty of many excesses; but, as I
have laid down a resolution to reform, and lately kept it, I expect
this Lothario to follow the example, and begin by restoring this girl
to society, or, by the beard of my father! he shall hear of it. Pray
take some notice of Robert, who will miss his master; poor boy, he was
very unwilling to return. I trust you are well and happy. It will be a
pleasure to hear from you.

Believe me, yours very sincerely,

BYRON.

P.S.--How is Joe Murray?

P.S.--I open my letter again to tell you that Fletcher having
petitioned to accompany me into the Morea, I have taken him with me,
contrary to the intention expressed in my letter.

[Footnote 1: Alluding to his having swum across the Thames with Henry
Drury, after the Montem, to see how many times they could make the
passage backwards and forwards without touching land. In this trial
Byron was the conqueror.]

[Footnote 2: Lady Mary describes the village of Belgrade in a letter to
Pope, dated June 17, 1717 ('Letters', edit. 1893, vol. i. pp. 331-333).
But Walsh ('Narrative of a Residence in Constantinople', vol. ii. 108,
109), who visited Belgrade in 1821, says that no trace of her
description was then to be seen--no view of the Black Sea, no houses of
the wealthy Christians, no fountains, and no fruit-trees. "The very
tradition" of the house, which had disappeared before Dallaway visited
Belgrade in 1794, had perished.]

[Footnote 3: Lady Mary does not compare St. Paul's with St. Sophia's,
but with the mosque of the Valide,

"the largest of all, built entirely of marble, the most prodigious,
and, I think, the most beautiful structure I ever saw, be it spoken to
the honour of our sex, for it was founded by the mother of Mahomet IV.
Between friends, "St. Paul's Church would make a pitiful figure near
it"

('Letters', vol. i. p. 356).

[Footnote 4:

"The European with the Asian shore
Sprinkled with palaces; the ocean stream
Here and there studded with a seventy-four;
Sophia's cupola with golden gleam;
The cypress groves; Olympus high and hoar;
The twelve isles, and the more than I could dream,
Far less describe, present the very view
Which charm'd the charming Mary Montagu."

_Don Juan_, Canto V. stanza 3.]

[Footnote 5: For Mrs. Leigh, 'née' Augusta Byron, see page 18 [Letter
7], [Foot]note 1.]

142.--To his Mother.

Constantinople, July 1, 1810.

My dear Mother,--I have no wish to forget those who have any claim
upon me, and shall be glad of the good wishes of R----when he can
express them in person, which it seems will be at some very indefinite
date. I shall perhaps essay a speech or _two_ in the House when I
return, but I am not ambitious of a parliamentary career, which is of
all things the most degrading and unthankful. If I could by my own
efforts inculcate the truth, that a man is not intended for a despot
or a machine, but as an individual of a community, and fit for the
society of kings, so long as he does not trespass on the laws or rebel
against just governments, I might attempt to found a new Utopia; but
as matters are at present, in course you will not expect me to
sacrifice my health or self to your or anyone's ambition.

To quit this new idea for something you will understand better, how
are Miss R's, the W's, and Mr. R's blue bastards? for I suppose he
will not deny their _authorship_, which was, to say the least,
imprudent and immoral. Poor Miss----: if he does not marry, and marry
her speedily, he shall be no tenant of mine from the day that I set
foot on English shores.

I am glad you have received my portrait from Sanders. It does not
_flatter_ me, I think, but the subject is a bad one, and I must even
do as Fletcher does over his Greek wines--make a face and hope for
better. What you told me of----is not _true_, which I regret for
your sake and your gossip-seeking neighbours, whom present with my
good wishes, and believe me,

Yours, etc.,

BYRON.

143.--To Francis Hodgson.

Constantinople, July 4, 1810.

My Dear Hodgson,--Twice have I written--once in answer to your last,
and a former letter when I arrived here in May. That I may have
nothing to reproach myself with, I will write once more--a very
superfluous task, seeing that Hobhouse is bound for your parts full of
talk and wonderment. My first letter went by an ambassadorial express;
my second by the _Black John_ lugger; my third will be conveyed by
Cam, the miscellanist.

I shall begin by telling you, having only told it you twice before,
that I swam from Sestos to Abydos. I do this that you may be impressed
with proper respect for me, the performer; for I plume myself on this
achievement more than I could possibly do on any kind of glory,
political, poetical, or rhetorical. Having told you this, I will tell
you nothing more, because it would be cruel to curtail Cam's
narrative, which, by-the-by, you must not believe till confirmed by
me, the eye-witness. I promise myself much pleasure from contradicting
the greatest part of it. He has been plaguily pleased by the
intelligence contained in your last to me respecting the reviews of
his hymns. I refreshed him with that paragraph immediately, together
with the tidings of my own third edition, which added to his
recreation. But then he has had a letter from a Lincoln's Inn Bencher,
full of praise of his harpings, and vituperation of the other
contributions to his _Missellingany_, which that sagacious person is
pleased to say must have been put in as FOILS (_horresco referens!_);
furthermore he adds that Cam "is a genuine pupil of Dryden,"
concluding with a comparison rather to the disadvantage of Pope.

I have written to Drury by Hobhouse; a letter is also from me on its
way to England intended for that matrimonial man. Before it is very
long, I hope we shall again be together; the moment I set out for
England you shall have intelligence, that we may meet as soon as
possible. Next week the frigate sails with Adair; I am for Greece,
Hobhouse for England. A year together on the 2nd July since we sailed
from Falmouth. I have known a hundred instances of men setting out in
couples, but not one of a similar return. Aberdeen's [1] party split;
several voyagers at present have done the same. I am confident that
twelve months of any given individual is perfect ipecacuanha.

The Russians and Turks are at it, [2] and the Sultan in person is soon
to head the army. The Captain Pasha cuts off heads every day, and a
Frenchman's ears; the last is a serious affair. By-the-by I like the
Pashas in general. Ali Pasha called me his son, desired his
compliments to my mother, and said he was sure I was a man of birth,
because I had "small ears and curling hair." He is Pasha of Albania
six hundred miles off, where I was in October--a fine portly person.
His grandson Mahmout, a little fellow ten years old, with large black
eyes as big as pigeon's eggs, and all the gravity of sixty, asked me
what I did travelling so young without a _Lala_ (tutor)?

Good night, dear H. I have crammed my paper, and crave your
indulgence. Write to me at Malta. I am, with all sincerity,

Yours affectionately,

BYRON.

[Footnote 1: George Hamilton Gordon, Earl of Aberdeen (1784-1860),
afterwards Prime Minister (1852-55), succeeded his grandfather as fourth
earl in 1801. Grandson of the purchaser of Mrs. Byron's old home of
Gight, and writer of an article in the 'Edinburgh Review' (July, 1805)
on Gell's 'Topography of Troy,' he has a place in 'English Bards, and
Scotch Reviewers' (lines 508, 509). He also appears as "sullen
Aberdeen," in a suppressed stanza of 'Childe Harold', Canto II., which
in the MS. follows stanza xiii., among those who

"----pilfer all the Pilgrim loves to see,
All that yet consecrates the fading scene."

After leaving Harrow, and before entering St. John's College, Cambridge,
he spent two years (1801-3) in Greece. On his return he founded the
Athenian Society, and became President of the Society of Antiquaries
from 1812 to 1846. It may be added that he was Foreign Secretary when
the Porte acknowledged the independence of Greece by the Treaty of
Adrianople (1829).]

[Footnote 2: In this war, the scene of which lay chiefly in Wallachia,
Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Servia, the main episodes were the two battles of
Rustchuk (July 4 and October 14, 1811), the recapture of Silistria by
the Russians, and the Convention of Giurgevo between the contending
forces (October 28, 1811).]g

144.--To his Mother.

Athens, July 25, 1810.

Dear Mother,--I have arrived here in four days from Constantinople,
which is considered as singularly quick, particularly for the season
of the year. I left Constantinople with Adair, at whose adieux of
leave I saw Sultan Mahmout, [1] and obtained a firman to visit the
mosques, of which I gave you a description in my last letter, now
voyaging to England in the _Salsette_ frigate, in which I visited the
plains of Troy and Constantinople. Your northern gentry can have no
conception of a Greek summer; which, however, is a perfect frost
compared with Malta and Gibraltar, where I reposed myself in the shade
last year, after a gentle gallop of four hundred miles, without
intermission, through Portugal and Spain. You see, by my date, that I
am at Athens again, a place which I think I prefer, upon the whole, to
any I have seen.

My next movement is to-morrow into the Morea, where I shall probably
remain a month or two, and then return to winter here, if I do not
change my plans, which, however, are very variable, as you may
suppose; but none of them verge to England.

The Marquis of Sligo, [2] my old fellow-collegian, is here, and wishes
to accompany me into the Morea. We shall go together for that purpose;
but I am woefully sick of travelling companions, after a year's
experience of Mr. Hobhouse, who is on his way to Great Britain. Lord
S. will afterwards pursue his way to the capital; and Lord B., having
seen all the wonders in that quarter, will let you know what he does
next, of which at present he is not quite certain. Malta is my
perpetual post-office, from which my letters are forwarded to all
parts of the habitable globe:--by the bye, I have now been in Asia,
Africa, and the east of Europe, and, indeed, made the most of my time,
without hurrying over the most interesting scenes of the ancient
world. Fletcher, after having been toasted and roasted, and baked, and
grilled, and eaten by all sorts of creeping things, begins to
philosophise, is grown a refined as well as a resigned character, and
promises at his return to become an ornament to his own parish, and a
very prominent person in the future family pedigree of the Fletchers,
who I take to be Goths by their accomplishments, Greeks by their
acuteness, and ancient Saxons by their appetite. He (Fletcher) begs
leave to send half-a-dozen sighs to Sally his spouse, and wonders
(though I do not) that his ill-written and worse spelt letters have
never come to hand; as for that matter, there is no great loss in
either of our letters, saving and except that I wish you to know we
are well, and warm enough at this present writing, God knows. You must
not expect long letters at present, for they are written with the
sweat of my brow, I assure you. It is rather singular that Mr. Hanson
has not written a syllable since my departure. Your letters I have
mostly received as well as others; from which I conjecture that the
man of law is either angry or busy.

I trust you like Newstead, and agree with your neighbours; but you
know _you_ are a _vixen_--is not that a dutiful appellation? Pray,
take care of my books and several boxes of papers in the hands of
Joseph; and pray leave me a few bottles of champagne to drink, for I
am very thirsty;--but I do not insist on the last article, without you
like it. I suppose you have your house full of silly women, prating
scandalous things. Have you ever received my picture in oil from
Sanders, London? It has been paid for these sixteen months: why do you
not get it? My suite, consisting of two Turks, two Greeks, a Lutheran,
and the nondescript, Fletcher, are making so much noise, that I am
glad to sign myself

Yours, etc., etc.,

BYRON.

[Footnote 1: On July 10, 1810, the British ambassador, Robert Adair, had
his audience of Sultan Mahmoud II, and on the 14th the 'Salsette' set
sail. She touched at the island of Zea to land Byron, who thence made
his way to Athens.

It was in making war against Mahmoud II, the conqueror of Ali Pasha and
the destroyer of the Janissaries, that Byron lost his life. The
following description of the Sultan is given by Hobhouse ('Travels in
Albania, etc.,' vol. ii. pp. 364, 365):--

"The chamber was small and dark, or rather illumined with a gloomy
artificial light, reflected from the ornaments of silver, pearls, and
other white brilliants, with which it is thickly studded on every side
and on the roof. The throne, which is supposed the richest in the
world, is like a four-posted bed, but of a dazzling splendour; the
lower part formed of burnished silver and pearls, and the canopy and
supporters encrusted with jewels. It is in an awkward position, being
in one corner of the room, and close to a fireplace.

"Sultan Mahmoud was placed in the middle of the throne, with his feet
upon the ground, which, notwithstanding the common form of squatting
upon the hams, seems the seat of ceremony. He was dressed in a robe of
yellow satin, with a broad border of the darkest sable; his dagger,
and an ornament on his breast, were covered with diamonds; the front
of his white and blue turban shone with a large treble sprig of
diamonds, which served as a buckle to a high, straight plume of
bird-of-paradise feathers. He, for the most part, kept a hand on each
knee, and neither moved his body nor head, but rolled his eyes from
side to side, without fixing them for an instant upon the ambassador
or any other person present. Occasionally he stroked and turned up his
beard, displaying a milk-white hand glittering with diamond rings. His
eyebrows, eyes, and beard, being of a glossy jet black, did not appear
natural, but added to that indescribable majesty which it would be
difficult for any but an Oriental sovereign to assume; his face was
pale, and regularly formed, except that his nose (contrary to the
usual form of that feature in the Ottoman princes) was slightly turned
up and pointed; his whole physiognomy was mild and benevolent, but
expressive and full of dignity. He appeared of a short and small
stature, and about thirty years old, which is somewhat more than his
actual age."

Byron, at the audience, claimed some precedence in the procession as a
peer. On May 23, 1819, Moore sat at dinner next to Stratford Canning
(afterwards Lord Stratford de Redcliffe), who

"gave a ludicrous account of Lord Byron's insisting upon taking
precedence of the 'corps diplomatique' in a procession at
Constantinople (when Canning was secretary), and upon Adair's refusing
it, limping, with as much swagger as he could muster, up the hall,
cocking a foreign military hat on his head. He found, however, he was
wrong, and wrote a very frank letter acknowledging it, and offering to
take his station anywhere"

('Journals, etc., of Thomas Moore', vol. ii. p. 313).

An incident of the voyage from Constantinople to Zea is mentioned by
Moore ('Life', p. 110). Picking up a Turkish dagger on the deck, Byron
looked at the blade, and then, before replacing it in the sheath, was
overheard to say to himself, "I should like to know how a person feels
after committing a murder." In 'Firmilian; a Spasmodic Tragedy' (scene
ix.) the sentiment is parodied. Firmilian determines to murder his
friend, in order to shriek "delirious at the taste of sin!" He had
already blown up a church full of people; but--

"I must have
A more potential draught of guilt than this
With more of wormwood in it! ...
...
Courage, Firmilian! for the hour has come
When thou canst know atrocity indeed,
By smiting him that was thy dearest friend.
And think not that he dies a vulgar death--
'Tis poetry demands the sacrifice!"

And he hurls Haverillo from the summit of the Pillar of St. Simeon
Stylites.

[Footnote 3: For Lord Sligo, see page 100 [Letter 51], [Foot]note 2 [4].
Lord Sligo was at Athens with a 12-gun brig and a crew of fifty men. At
Athens, also, were Lady Hester Stanhope and Michael Bruce, on their way
through European Turkey. As the party were passing the Piraeus, they saw
a man jump from the mole-head into the sea. Lord Sligo, recognizing the
bather as Byron, called to him to dress and join them. Thus began what
Byron, in his Memoranda, speaks of as "the most delightful acquaintance
which I formed in Greece." From Lord Sligo Moore heard the following
stories:--

Weakened and thinned by his illness at Patras, Byron returned to Athens.
There, standing one day before a looking-glass, he said to Lord Sligo,
"How pale I look! I should like, I think, to die of a consumption." "Why
of a consumption?" asked his friend. "Because then," he answered, "the
women would all say, 'See that poor Byron--how interesting he looks in
dying!'"

He often spoke of his mother to Lord Sligo, who thought that his feeling
towards her was little short of aversion. "Some time or other," he said,
"I will tell you why I feel thus towards her." A few days after, when
they were bathing together in the Gulf of Lepanto, pointing to his naked
leg and foot, he exclaimed,

"Look there! It is to her false delicacy at my birth I owe that
deformity; and yet as long as I can remember, she has never ceased to
taunt and reproach me with it. Even a few days before we parted, for
the last time, on my leaving England, she, in one of her fits of
passion, uttered an imprecation upon me, praying that I might prove as
ill formed in mind as I am in body!"

Relics of ancient art only appealed to Byron's imagination among their
original and natural surroundings. For collections and collectors he had
a contempt which, like everything he thought or felt, was unreservedly
expressed. Lord Sligo wished to spend some money in digging for
antiquities, and Byron offered to act as his agent, and to see the money
honestly applied. "You may safely trust 'me'" he said; "I am no
dilettante. Your connoisseurs are all thieves; but I care too little for
these things ever to steal them."

His system of thinning himself, which he had begun before he left
England, was continued abroad. While at Athens, where he stayed at the
Franciscan Convent, he took a Turkish bath three times a week, his usual
drink being vinegar and water, and his food seldom more than a little
rice. The result was that, when he returned to England, he weighed only
9 stone 11-1/2 lbs. (see page 127 [Letter 71], [Foot]note 1).

Moore's account of the "cordial friendship" between Byron and Lady
Hester Stanhope requires modification. Lady Hester (see page 302, note
I) thus referred in after-life to her meeting with Byron, if her
physician's recollection is to be trusted ('Memoirs', by Dr. Meryon,
vol. iii. pp. 218, 219)--

"'I think he was a strange character: his generosity was for a motive,
his avarice for a motive; one time he was mopish, and nobody was to
speak to him; another, he was for being jocular with everybody. Then
he was a sort of Don Quixote, fighting with the police for a woman of
the town; and then he wanted to make himself something great ... At
Athens I saw nothing in him but a well-bred man, like many others;
for, as for poetry, it is easy enough to write verses; and as for the
thoughts, who knows where he got them? ... He had a great deal of vice
in his looks--his eyes set close together, and a contracted brow--so'
(imitating it). 'Oh, Lord! I am sure he was not a liberal man,
whatever else he might be. The only good thing about his looks was
this part' (drawing her hand under the cheek down the front of her
neck), 'and the curl on his forehead.'"

Michael Bruce, with the help of Sir Robert Wilson and Capt. Hutchinson,
assisted Count Lavallette to escape from Paris in January, 1816. For an
account, see Wilson's intercepted letter to Lord Grey ('Memoires du
Comte Lavallette', vol. ii. p. 132) and the story of their trial,
conviction, and sentence before the Assize Court of the Department of
the Seine (April 22-24, 1816), given in the 'Annual Register' for 1816,
pp. 329-336.]

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