The Life of Lord Byron
Chapter XXXIV
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CHAPTER XXXIV.
Removes to Ravenna.—The Countess Guiccioli.
Although Lord Byron resided
between two and three years at Venice, he was never much attached to it. “To see a
city die daily, as she does,” said he, “is a sad contemplation. I sought to
distract my mind from a sense of her desolation and my own solitude, by plunging into a
vortex that was anything but pleasure. When one gets into a mill-stream, it is difficult to
swim against it, and keep out of the wheels.” He became tired and disgusted with
the life he led at Venice, and was glad to turn his back on it. About the close of the year
1819 he accordingly removed to Ravenna; but before I proceed to speak of the works which he
composed at Ravenna, it is necessary to explain some particulars respecting a personal affair,
the influence of which on at least one of his productions is as striking as any of the many
instances already described upon others. I allude to the intimacy which he formed with the
young Countess Guiccioli.
This lady, at the age of sixteen, was married to the Count, one of the richest noblemen in Romagna, but far
advanced in life. “From the first,” said Lord Byron, in his
account of her, “they had separate apartments, and she always called him, Sir! What
could be expected from such a preposterous connection. For some time she was an Angiolina and he a Marino Faliero, a good old man;
but young Italian women are not satisfied with good old men, and the venerable Count did
not object to her availing herself of the privileges of her country in selecting a
cicisbeo; ![]()
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an Italian would have made it quite agreeable: indeed, for
some time he winked at our intimacy, but at length made an exception against me, as a
foreigner, a heretic, an Englishman, and, what was worse than all, a Liberal.
“He insisted—Teresa was as
obstinate—her family took her part. Catholics cannot get divorces; but to the scandal
of all Romagna, the matter was at last referred to the Pope, who ordered her a separate
maintenance on condition that she should reside under her father’s roof. All this was
not agreeable, and at length I was forced to smuggle her out of Ravenna, having discovered
a plot laid with the sanction of the legate, for
shutting her up in a convent for life.”
The Countess Guiccioli was at this
time about twenty, but she appeared younger; her complexion was fair, with large, dark,
languishing eyes; and her auburn hair fell in great profusion of natural ringlets over her
shapely shoulders. Her features were not so regular as in their expression pleasing, and there
was an amiable gentleness in her voice which was peculiarly interesting. Leigh Hunt’s account of her is not essentially dissimilar from any other
that I have either heard of or met with. He differs, however, in one respect, from every other,
in saying that her hair was yellow; but considering the curiosity which
this young lady has excited, perhaps it may be as well to transcribe his description at length,
especially as he appears to have taken some pains on it, and more particularly as her destiny
seems at present to promise that the interest for her is likely to be revived by another
unhappy English connection.
“Her appearance,” says Mr. Hunt, “might
have reminded an English spectator of Chaucer’s heroine:
Yclothed was she, fresh for to devise, Her yellow hair was braided in a tress Behind her back, a yarde long I guess, And in the garden (as the same uprist) She walketh up and down, where as her list. |
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And then, as Dryden has it:
At every turn she made a little stand, And thrust among the thorns her lily hand. |
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Madame Guiccioli, who was at that time about twenty,
was handsome and lady-like, with an agreeable manner, and a voice not partaking too much of
the Italian fervour to be gentle. She had just enough of it to give her speaking a
grace—none of her graces appeared entirely free from art; nor, on the other hand, did
they betray enough of it to give you an ill opinion of her sincerity and good-humour* * *.
Her hair was what the poet has described, or rather blond, with an
inclination to yellow; a very fair and delicate yellow, at all events, and within the
limits of the poetical. She had regular features of the order properly called handsome, in
distinction to prettiness or piquancy; being well proportioned to one another, large,
rather than otherwise, but without coarseness, and more harmonious than interesting. Her
nose was the handsomest of the kind I ever saw; and I have known her both smile very
sweetly, and look intelligently, when Lord Byron has
said something kind to her. I should not say, however, that she was a very intelligent
person. Both her wisdom and her want of wisdom were on the side of her feelings, in which
there was doubtless mingled a good deal of the self-love natural to a flattered beauty.* *
* * In a word, Madame Guiccioli was a kind of buxom parlour-boarder, compressing
herself artificially into dignity and elegance, and fancying she walked, in the eyes of the
whole world, a heroine by the side of a poet. When I saw her at Monte Nero, near Leghorn,
she was in a state of excitement and exultation, and had really something of this look. At
that time, also, she looked no older than she was; in which respect, a rapid and very
singular change took place, to the surprise of everybody. In the course of a few months she
seemed to have lived as many years.”
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This is not very perspicuous portraiture, nor does it show that Mr. Hunt was a very discerning observer of character. Lord Byron himself is represented to have said, that extraordinary
pains were taken with her education: “Her conversation is lively without being
frivolous; without being learned, she has read all the best authors of her own and the
French language. She often conceals what she knows, from the fear of being thought to know
too much; possibly because she knows I am not fond of blues. To use an expression of
Jeffrey’s, ‘If she has blue
stockings, she contrives that her petticoats shall hide them.’”
Lord Byron was at one time much attached to her; nor could
it be doubted that their affection was reciprocal; but in both, their union outlived their
affection, for before his departure to Greece his attachment had perished, and he left her, as
it is said, notwithstanding the rank and opulence she had forsaken on his account, without any
provision. He had promised, it was reported, to settle two thousand pounds on her, but he
forgot the intention, or died before it was carried into effect.* On her part, the estrangement
was of a different and curious kind—she had not come to hate him, but she told a lady,
the friend of a mutual acquaintance of Lord Byron and mine, that she
feared more than loved him.
Mr. Hobhouse has assured me that this information is
not correct. “I happen,” says he, “to know that
Lord Byron offered to give the
Guiccioli a sum of money outright, or to leave it to her by his will. I
also happen to know that the lady would not hear of any such present or provision; for
I have a letter in which Lord Byron extols her disinterestedness,
and mentions that he has met with a similar refusal from another female. As to the
being in destitute circumstances, I cannot believe it; for
Count Gamba, her brother, whom I knew very well after Lord
Byron’s death, never made any complaint or mention of such a fact:
add to which, I know a maintenance was provided for her by her husband, in consequence
of a law process before the death of Lord Byron.”
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Leigh Hunt,
Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries (London: Henry Colburn, 1828)
An article was
written in “The Westminster
Review” (Medwin says
by Mr. Hobhouse) to show that the Conversations were altogether unworthy of
credit. There are doubtless many inaccuracies in the latter; but the spirit remains
undoubted; and the author of the criticism was only vexed, that such was the fact. He
assumes, that Lord Byron could not have made this or that statement to
Captain Medwin, because the statement was erroneous or untrue; but
an anonymous author has no right to be believed in preference to one who speaks in his own
name: there is nothing to show that Mr. Hobhouse might not have been
as mistaken about a date or an epigram as Mr. Medwin; and when we find
him giving us his own version of a fact, and Mr. Medwin asserting that
Lord Byron gave him another, the only impression left upon the
mind of any body who knew his Lordship is, that the fault most probably lay in the loose
corners of the noble Poet’s vivacity. Such is the impression made upon the author of
an unpublished Letter to Mr.
Hobhouse, which has been shown me in print; and he had a right to it. The
reviewer, to my knowledge, is mistaken upon some points, as well as the person he reviews.
The assumption, that nobody can know any thing about Lord Byron but
two or three persons who were conversant with him for a certain space of time, and whom he
spoke of with as little ceremony, and would hardly treat with more confidence than he did a
hundred others, is ludicrous; and can only end, as the criticism has done, in doing no good
either to him or them. . . .
John Galt,
“Pot versus Kettle” in Fraser’s Magazine
Vol. 2
No. 11 (December 1830)
“Dear Sir;—Amongst the
agreeable things which you say of me in your life of Lord Byron, you conjecture that I
‘condemned’
Childe Harold
previously to its publication. There is not the slightest foundation for this
supposition—nor is it true as you state, ‘that I was the only person
who had seen the poem in manuscript, as I was with Lord
Byron whilst he was writing it.’ I had left
Lord Byron before he had finished the two cantos, and,
excepting a few fragments, I had never seen them until they were printed. My own
persuasion is, that the story told in Dallas’s Recollections of some
person, name unknown, having dissuaded Lord Byron from
publishing Childe Harold, is a
mere fabrication, for it is at complete variance with all Lord
Byron himself told me on the subject. At any rate, I was not that
person; if I had been, it is not very likely that the poem which I had endeavoured
to stifle in its birth, should, in its complete, or, as Lord
Byron says, in its ‘concluded state,’ be dedicated to
me. I must, therefore, request you will take the earliest opportunity of relieving
me from this imputation, which, so far as a man can be written down by any other
author than himself, cannot fail to produce a very prejudicial effect, and to give
me more uneasiness than I think it can be your wish to inflict on any man who has
never given you provocation or excuse for injustice. . . .
John Galt,
“Pot versus Kettle” in Fraser’s Magazine
Vol. 2
No. 11 (December 1830)
I am glad to find my college
stories administered relief to your nerves, when we were together in the Malta
packet some one and twenty years ago; and I am not sorry that my wearing a red
coat at Cagliari, and cutting my finger in the quarries of Pentelicus, should
have furnished materials for your present volume; but to repay me for having
supplied these timely episodes, as well as for your copious extracts from my
travels in Albania, and also for inserting my note about Madame Guiccioli without my leave, you must
positively cancel the passage respecting Childe Harold
in page 161 of your little volume. . . .
John Galt,
“Pot versus Kettle” in Fraser’s Magazine
Vol. 2
No. 11 (December 1830)
I wonder that even common policy did not induce you to be
more cautious in making statements which might be so easily disproved, and
which have, indeed, been already incontrovertibly refuted. The very
conversation, which you have judiciously selected from Medwin, as one of those parts of his trumpery book to the truth of which you
can speak, I know to be a lie; for I never went the tour of the lake of Geneva
with Lord Byron. . . .
John Galt,
“Pot versus Kettle” in Fraser’s Magazine
Vol. 2
No. 11 (December 1830)
You tell me that your wish has
been to give only an outline of his intellectual character. I am at a loss to
understand how your gossip about him and me, and the silly anecdotes you have
copied from very discreditable authorities, can be said to be fairly comprised
in such an outline. But your plan ought certainly to have compelled you to make
yourself thoroughly acquainted with his poetry, and to quote him just as he
wrote. Nevertheless, you have misrepresented him at least nine times in the ten
stanzas of that poem which you call the last, and which was not the last, he
ever wrote. Oh, for shame! stick to your acknowledged fictions—there you
are safe—you may deal with Leddy
Grippy and Laurie Todd as
you please, but not with those who have really lived, or who are still
alive. . . .
[John Wilson et. al.],
“Noctes Ambrosianae XVII” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
Vol. 16
No. 94 (November 1824)
And there was another funny thing o’ his, till a queer looking lad, one
Mr. Skeffington, that wrote a tragedy, that was called
“The Mysterious Bride,” the whilk
thing made the Times newspaper for once witty—for it
said no more o’t, than just “Last night a play called The Mysterious
Bride, by the Honorable Mr. Skeffington, was performed at Drury Lane.
The piece was damned.” Weel, ye see it happened that there was a masquerade some nights after,
and Mr. Cam Hobhouse gaed till’t in the disguise
o’ a Spanish nun, that had been ravished by the French army— . . .
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 c.-1400)
English Poet, the author of
The Canterbury Tales (1390 c.).
John Dryden (1631-1700)
English poet laureate, dramatist, and critic; author of
Of Dramatick
Poesie (1667),
Absalom and Achitophel (1681),
Alexander's Feast; or the Power of Musique (1697),
The Works of Virgil translated into English Verse (1697), and
Fables (1700).
Pietro Gamba (1801-1827)
The brother of Teresa Guiccioli and member of Carbonieri. He followed Byron to Greece and
left a memoir of his experiences.
Alessandro Guiccioli (1761-1840)
The richest man in the Romagna and patron of the arts, who in 1818 married Teresa
Guiccioli as his third wife.
Teresa Guiccioli (1800-1873)
Byron's lover, who in 1818 married Alessandro Guiccioli. She composed a memoir of Byron,
Lord Byron,
Jugé par les Témoines de sa Vie (1868).
John Cam Hobhouse, baron Broughton (1786-1869)
Founder of the Cambridge Whig Club; traveled with Byron in the orient, radical MP for
Westminster (1820); Byron's executor; after a long career in politics published
Some Account of a Long Life (1865) later augmented as
Recollections of a Long Life, 6 vols (1909-1911).
James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
English poet, journalist, and man of letters; editor of
The
Examiner and
The Liberal; friend of Byron, Keats, and
Shelley.
Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773-1850)
Scottish barrister, Whig MP, and co-founder and editor of the
Edinburgh
Review (1802-29). As a reviewer he was the implacable foe of the Lake School of
poetry.
