Part 18
"With regard to E., you will perceive a most irregular, extravagant account, without proper documents to support it. He demanded an increase of salary, which made me suspect him; he supported an outrageous extravagance of expenditure, and did not like the dismission of the cook; he never complained of him--as in duty bound--at the time of his robberies. I can only say, that the house expense is now under _one half_ of what it then was, as he himself admits. He charged for a comb _eighteen_ francs,--the real price was _eight_. He charged a passage from Fusina for a person named Iambelli, who paid it _herself_, as she will prove if necessary. He fancies, or asserts himself, the victim of a domestic complot against him;--accounts are accounts--prices are prices;--let him make out a fair detail. _I_ am not prejudiced against him--on the contrary, I supported him against the complaints of his wife, and of his former master, at a time when I could have crushed him like an earwig; and if he is a scoundrel, he is the greatest of scoundrels, an ungrateful one. The truth is, probably, that he thought I was leaving Venice, and determined to make the most of it. At present he keeps bringing in _account after account_, though he had always money in hand--as I believe you know my system was never to allow longer than a week's bills to run. Pray read him this letter--I desire nothing to be concealed against which he may defend himself.
"Pray how is your little boy? and how are you?--I shall be up in Venice very soon, and we will be bilious together. I hate the place and all that it inherits.
"Yours," &c.
[Footnote 58: "This language" (says Mr. Hoppner, in some remarks upon the above letter) "is strong, but it was the language of prejudice; and he was rather apt thus to express the feelings of the moment, without troubling himself to consider how soon he might be induced to change them. He was at this time so sensitive on the subject of Madame * *, that, merely because some persons had disapproved of her conduct, he declaimed in the above manner against the whole nation. I never" (continues Mr. Hoppner) "was partial to Venice; but disliked it almost from the first month of my residence there. Yet I experienced more kindness in that place than I ever met with in any country, and witnessed acts of generosity and disinterestedness such as rarely are met with elsewhere."]
* * * * *
LETTER 343. TO MR. HOPPNER.
"October 28. 1819.
"I have to thank you for your letter, and your compliment to Don Juan. I said nothing to you about it, understanding that it is a sore subject with the moral reader, and has been the cause of a great row; but I am glad you like it. I will say nothing about the shipwreck, except that I hope you think it is as nautical and technical as verse could admit in the octave measure.
"The poem has _not sold well_, so Murray says--'but the best judges, &c. say, &c.' so says that worthy man. I have never seen it in print. The third Canto is in advance about one hundred stanzas; but the failure of the two first has weakened my _estro_, and it will neither be so good as the two former, nor completed, unless I get a little more _riscaldato_ in its behalf. I understand the outcry was beyond every thing.--Pretty cant for people who read Tom Jones, and Roderick Random, and the Bath Guide, and Ariosto, and Dryden, and Pope--to say nothing of Little's Poems! Of course I refer to the _morality_ of these works, and not to any pretension of mine to compete with them in any thing but decency. I hope yours is the Paris edition, and that you did not pay the London price. I have seen neither except in the newspapers.
"Pray make my respects to Mrs. H., and take care of your little boy. All my household have the fever and ague, except Fletcher, Allegra, and my_sen_ (as we used to say in Nottinghamshire), and the horses, and Mutz, and Moretto. In the beginning of November, perhaps sooner, I expect to have the pleasure of seeing you. To-day I got drenched by a thunder-storm, and my horse and groom too, and his horse all bemired up to the middle in a cross-road. It was summer at noon, and at five we were bewintered; but the lightning was sent perhaps to let us know that the summer was not yet over. It is queer weather for the 27th October.
"Yours," &c.
* * * * *
LETTER 344. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Venice, October 29. 1819.
"Yours of the 15th came yesterday. I am sorry that you do not mention a large letter addressed to _your care_ for Lady Byron, from me, at Bologna, two months ago. Pray tell me, was this letter received and forwarded?
"You say nothing of the vice-consulate for the Ravenna patrician, from which it is to be inferred that the thing will not be done.
"I had written about a hundred stanzas of a _third_ Canto to Don Juan, but the reception of the two first is no encouragement to you nor me to proceed.
"I had also written about 600 lines of a poem, the Vision (or Prophecy) of Dante, the subject a view of Italy in the ages down to the present--supposing Dante to speak in his own person, previous to his death, and embracing all topics in the way of prophecy, like Lycophron's Cassandra; but this and the other are both at a stand-still for the present.
"I gave Moore, who is gone to Rome, my Life in MS., in seventy-eight folio sheets, brought down to 1816. But this I put into his hands for _his_ care, as he has some other MSS. of mine--a Journal kept in 1814, &c. Neither are for publication during my life; but when I am cold you may do what you please. In the mean time, if you like to read them you may, and show them to anybody you like--I care not.
"The Life is _Memoranda_, and not _Confessions_ I have left out all my _loves_ (except in a general way), and many other of the most important things (because I must not compromise other people), so that it is like the play of Hamlet--'the part of Hamlet omitted by
## particular desire.' But you will find many opinions, and some fun,
with a detailed account of my marriage, and its consequences, as true as a party concerned can make such account, for I suppose we are all prejudiced.
"I have never read over this Life since it was written, so that I know not exactly what it may repeat or contain. Moore and I passed some merry days together.
"I probably must return for business, or in my way to America. Pray, did you get a letter for Hobhouse, who will have told you the contents? I understand that the Venezuelan commissioners had orders to treat with emigrants; now I want to go there. I should not make a bad South-American planter, and I should take my natural daughter, Allegra, with me, and settle. I wrote, at length, to Hobhouse, to get information from Perry, who, I suppose, is the best topographer and trumpeter of the new republicans. Pray write.
"Yours ever.
"P.S. Moore and I did nothing but laugh. He will tell you of 'my whereabouts,' and all my proceedings at this present; they are as usual. You should not let those fellows publish false 'Don Juans;' but do not put _my name_, because I mean to cut R----ts up like a gourd, in the preface, if I continue the poem."
* * * * *
LETTER 345. TO MR. HOPPNER.
"October 29. 1819.
"The Ferrara story is of a piece with all the rest of the Venetian manufacture,--you may judge. I only changed horses there since I wrote to you, after my visit in June last. '_Convent_' and '_carry off_', quotha! and '_girl_.' I should like to know _who_ has been carried off, except poor dear _me_. I have been more ravished myself than anybody since the Trojan war; but as to the arrest and its causes, one is as true as the other, and I can account for the invention of neither. I suppose it is some confusion of the tale of the F * * and of Me. Guiccioli, and half a dozen more; but it is useless to unravel the web, when one has only to brush it away. I shall settle with Master E. who looks very blue at your _in-decision_, and swears that he is the best arithmetician in Europe; and so I think also, for he makes out two and two to be five.
"You may see me next week. I have a horse or two more (five in all), and I shall repossess myself of Lido, and I will rise earlier, and we will go and shake our livers over the beach, as heretofore, if you like--and we will make the Adriatic roar again with our hatred of that now empty oyster-shell, without its pearl, the city of Venice.
"Murray sent me a letter yesterday: the impostors have published _two_ new _third_ Cantos of _Don Juan_;--the devil take the impudence of some blackguard bookseller or other _therefor_! Perhaps I did not make myself understood; he told me the sale had been great, 1200 out of 1500 quarto, I believe (which is nothing after selling 13,000 of the Corsair in one day); but that the 'best judges,' &c. had said it was very fine, and clever, and
## particularly good English, and poetry, and all those consolatory
things, which are not, however, worth a single copy to a bookseller: and as to the author, of course I am in a d----ned passion at the bad taste of the times, and swear there is nothing like posterity, who, of course, must know more of the matter than their grandfathers. There has been an eleventh commandment to the women not to read it, and, what is still more extraordinary, they seem not to have broken it. But that can be of little import to them, poor things, for the reading or non-reading a book will never * * * *.
"Count G. comes to Venice next week, and I am requested to consign his wife to him, which shall be done. What you say of the long evenings at the Mira, or Venice, reminds me of what Curran said to Moore:--'So I hear you have married a pretty woman, and a very good creature, too--an excellent creature. Pray--um! _how do you pass your evenings?_' It is a devil of a question that, and perhaps as easy to answer with a wife as with a mistress.
"If you go to Milan, pray leave at least a _Vice-Consul_--the only vice that will ever be wanting in Venice. D'Orville is a good fellow. But you shall go to England in the spring with me, and plant Mrs. Hoppner at Berne with her relations for a few months. I wish you had been here (at Venice, I mean, not the Mira) when Moore was here--we were very merry and tipsy. He _hated_ Venice, by the way, and swore it was a sad place.[59]
"So Madame Albrizzi's death is in danger--poor woman! Moore told me that at Geneva they had made a devil of a story of the Fornaretta:--'Young lady seduced!--subsequent abandonment!--leap into the Grand Canal!'--and her being in the 'hospital of _fous_ in consequence!' I should like to know who was nearest being made '_fou_,' and be d----d to them I Don't you think me in the interesting character of a very ill used gentleman? I hope your little boy is well. Allegrina is flourishing like a pomegranate blossom. Yours," &c.
[Footnote 59: I beg to say that this report of my opinion of Venice is coloured somewhat too deeply by the feelings of the reporter.]
* * * * *
LETTER 346. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Venice, November 8. 1819.
"Mr. Hoppner has lent me a copy of 'Don Juan,' Paris edition, which he tells me is read in Switzerland by clergymen and ladies with considerable approbation. In the second Canto, you must alter the 49th stanza to
"'Twas twilight, and the sunless day went down Over the waste of waters, like a veil Which if withdrawn would but disclose the frown Of one whose hate is mask'd but to assail; Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was shown, And grimly darkled o'er their faces pale And the dim desolate deep; twelve days had Fear Been their familiar, and now Death was here.
"I have been ill these eight days with a tertian fever, caught in the country on horseback in a thunderstorm. Yesterday I had the fourth attack: the two last were very smart, the first day as well as the last being preceded by vomiting. It is the fever of the place and the season. I feel weakened, but not unwell, in the intervals, except headach and lassitude.
"Count Guiccioli has arrived in Venice, and has presented his spouse (who had preceded him two months for her health and the prescriptions of Dr. Aglietti) with a paper of conditions, regulations of hours and conduct, and morals, &c. &c. &c. which he insists on her accepting, and she persists in refusing. I am expressly, it should seem, excluded by this treaty, as an indispensable preliminary; so that they are in high dissension, and what the result may be I know not, particularly as they are consulting friends.
"To-night, as Countess Guiccioli observed me poring over 'Don Juan,' she stumbled by mere chance on the 137th stanza of the first Canto, and asked me what it meant. I told her, 'Nothing--but "your husband is coming."' As I said this in Italian, with some emphasis, she started up in a fright, and said, '_Oh, my God, is_ he _coming_?' thinking it was _her own_, who either was or ought to have been at the theatre. You may suppose we laughed when she found out the mistake. You will be amused, as I was;--it happened not three hours ago.
"I wrote to you last week, but have added nothing to the third Canto since my fever, nor to 'The Prophecy of Dante.' Of the former there are about 100 octaves done; of the latter about 500 lines--perhaps more. Moore saw the third Juan, as far as it then went. I do not know if my fever will let me go on with either, and the tertian lasts, they say, a good while. I had it in Malta on my way home, and the malaria fever in Greece the year before that. The Venetian is not very fierce, but I was delirious one of the nights with it, for an hour or two, and, on my senses coming back, found Fletcher sobbing on one side of the bed, and La Contessa Guiccioli[60] weeping on the other; so that I had no want of attendance. I have not yet taken any physician, because, though I think they may relieve in chronic disorders, such as gout and the like, &c. &c. &c. (though they can't cure them)--just as surgeons are necessary to set bones and tend wounds--yet I think fevers quite out of their reach, and remediable only by diet and nature.
"I don't like the taste of bark, but I suppose that I must take it soon.
"Tell Rose that somebody at Milan (an Austrian, Mr. Hoppner says) is answering his book. William Bankes is in quarantine at Trieste. I have not lately heard from you. Excuse this paper: it is long paper shortened for the occasion. What folly is this of Carlile's trial? why let him have the honours of a martyr? it will only advertise the books in question. Yours, &c.
"P.S. As I tell you that the Guiccioli business is on the eve of exploding in one way or the other, I will just add that, without attempting to influence the decision of the Contessa, a good deal depends upon it. If she and her husband make it up, you will, perhaps, see me in England sooner than you expect. If not, I shall retire with her to France or America, change my name, and lead a quiet provincial life. All this may seem odd, but I have got the poor girl into a scrape; and as neither her birth, nor her rank, nor her connections by birth or marriage are inferior to my own, I am in honour bound to support her through. Besides, she is a very pretty woman--ask Moore--and not yet one and twenty.
"If she gets over this and I get over my tertian, I will, perhaps, look in at Albemarle Street, some of these days, _en passant_ to Bolivar."
[Footnote 60: The following curious particulars of his delirium are given by Madame Guiccioli:--"At the beginning of winter Count Guiccioli came from Ravenna to fetch me. When he arrived, Lord Byron was ill of a fever, occasioned by his having got wet through;--a violent storm having surprised him while taking his usual exercise on horseback. He had been delirious the whole night, and I had watched continually by his bedside. During his delirium he composed a good many verses, and ordered his servant to write them down from his dictation. The rhythm of these verses was quite correct, and the poetry itself had no appearance of being the work of a delirious mind. He preserved them for some time after he got well, and then burned them."--"Sul cominciare dell' inverno il Conte Guiccioli venne a prendermi per ricondurmi a Ravenna. Quando egli giunse Ld. Byron era ammalato di febbri prese per essersi bagnato avendolo sorpreso un forte temporale mentre faceva l' usato suo esercizio a cavallo. Egli aveva delirato tutta la notte, ed io aveva sempre vegliato presso al suo letto. Nel suo delirio egli compose molti versi che ordinò al suo domestico di scrivere sotto la sua dittatura. La misura dei versi era esatissima, e la poesia pure non pareva opera di una mente in delirio. Egli la conservò lungo tempo dopo restabilito--poi l' abbrucciò."
I have been informed, too, that, during his ravings at this time, he was constantly haunted by the idea of his mother-in-law,--taking every one that came near him for her, and reproaching those about him for letting her enter his room.]
* * * * *
LETTER 347. TO MR. BANKES.
"Venice, November 20. 1819.
"A tertian ague which has troubled me for some time, and the indisposition of my daughter, have prevented me from replying before to your welcome letter. I have not been ignorant of your progress nor of your discoveries, and I trust that you are no worse in health from your labours. You may rely upon finding every body in England eager to reap the fruits of them; and as you have done more than other men, I hope you will not limit yourself to saying less than may do justice to the talents and time you have bestowed on your perilous researches. The first sentence of my letter will have explained to you why I cannot join you at Trieste. I was on the point of setting out for England (before I knew of your arrival) when my child's illness has made her and me dependent on a Venetian Proto-Medico.
"It is now seven years since you and I met;--which time you have employed better for others and more honourably for yourself than I have done.
"In England you will find considerable changes, public and private,--you will see some of our old college contemporaries turned into lords of the Treasury, Admiralty, and the like,--others become reformers and orators,--many settled in life, as it is called,--and others settled in death; among the latter, (by the way, not our fellow collegians,) Sheridan, Curran, Lady Melbourne, Monk Lewis, Frederick Douglas, &c. &c. &c.; but you will still find Mr. * * living and all his family, as also * * * * *.
"Should you come up this way, and I am still here, you need not be assured how glad I shall be to see you; I long to hear some part from you, of that which I expect in no long time to see. At length you have had better fortune than any traveller of equal enterprise (except Humboldt), in returning safe; and after the fate of the Brownes, and the Parkes, and the Burckhardts, it is hardly less surprise than satisfaction to get you back again.
"Believe me ever
"And very affectionately yours,
"BYRON."
* * * * *
LETTER 348. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Venice, December 4. 1819.
"You may do as you please, but you are about a hopeless experiment. Eldon will decide against you, were it only that my name is in the record. You will also recollect that if the publication is pronounced against, on the grounds you mention, as _indecent and blasphemous_, that _I_ lose all right in my daughter's _guardianship_ and _education_, in short, all paternal authority, and every thing concerning her, except * * * * * * * * It was so decided in Shelley's case, because he had written Queen Mab, &c. &c. However, you can ask the lawyers, and do as you like: I do not inhibit you trying the question; I merely state one of the consequences to me. With regard to the copyright, it is hard that you should pay for a nonentity: I will therefore refund it, which I can very well do, not having spent it, nor begun upon it; and so we will be quits on that score. It lies at my banker's.
"Of the Chancellor's law I am no judge; but take up Tom Jones, and read his Mrs. Waters and Molly Seagrim; or Prior's Hans Carvel and Paulo Purganti: Smollett's Roderick Random, the chapter of Lord Strutwell, and many others; Peregrine Pickle, the scene of the Beggar Girl; Johnson's _London_, for coarse expressions; for instance, the words '* *,' and '* *;' Anstey's Bath Guide, the 'Hearken, Lady Betty, hearken;'--take up, in short, Pope, Prior, Congreve, Dryden, Fielding, Smollett, and let the counsel select passages, and what becomes of _their_ copyright, if his Wat Tyler decision is to pass into a precedent? I have nothing more to say: you must judge for yourselves.
"I wrote to you some time ago. I have had a tertian ague; my daughter Allegra has been ill also, and 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. Excuse my writing in great haste and late in the morning, or night, whichever you please to call it. The third Canto of 'Don Juan' is completed, in about two hundred stanzas; very decent, I believe, but do not know, and it is useless to discuss until it be ascertained if it may or may not be a property.
"My present determination to quit Italy was unlooked for; but I have explained the reasons in letters to my sister and Douglas Kinnaird, a week or two ago. My progress will depend upon the snows of the Tyrol, and the health of my child, who is at present quite recovered; but I hope to get on well, and am
"Yours ever and truly.