The Life of Lord Byron
Chapter XII
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CHAPTER XII.
Audience appointed with Ali Pashaw.—Description of the
Vizier’s person.—An audience of the Vizier of the Morea.
The progress of no other poet’s mind can be to clearly traced
to personal experience as that of Byron’s. The minute
details in the Pilgrimage of Childe Harold are
the observations of an actual traveller. Had they been given in prose, they could not have been
less imbued with fiction. From this fidelity they possess a value equal to the excellence of
the poetry, and ensure for themselves an interest as lasting as it is intense. When the manners
and customs of the inhabitants shall have been changed by time and the vicissitudes of society,
the scenery and the mountains will bear testimony to the accuracy of Lord
Byron’s descriptions.
The day after the travellers’ arrival at Tepellené was fixed by
the vizier for their first audience; and about noon, the time appointed, an officer of the
palace with a white wand announced to them that his highness was ready to receive them, and
accordingly they proceeded from their own apartment, accompanied by the secretary of the
vizier, and attended by their own dragoman. The usher of the white rod led the way, and
conducted them through a suite of meanly-furnished apartments to the presence chamber.
Ali when they entered was standing, a courtesy of
marked distinction from a Turk. As they advanced towards him, he seated himself, and requested
them to sit near ![]()
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him. The room was spacious and handsomely fitted up,
surrounded by that species of continued sofa which the upholsterers call a divan, covered with
richly-embroidered velvet; in the middle of the floor was a large marble basin, in which a
fountain was playing.
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In marble-paved pavilion, where a spring
Of living water from the centre rose,
Whose bubbling did a genial freshness fling,
And soft voluptuous couches breathed repose,
Ali reclined; a man of
war and woes.
Yet in his lineaments ye cannot trace,
While Gentleness her milder radiance throws
Along that aged, venerable face,
The deeds that lurk beneath and stain him with disgrace.
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It is not that yon hoary, lengthening beard,
Ill suits the passions that belong to youth;
Love conquers age—so Hafiz
hath averr’d: So sings the Teian, and he sings in
sooth— But crimes that scorn the tender voice of Ruth,
Beseeming all men ill, but most the man
In years, have mark’d him with a tiger’s tooth;
Blood follows blood, and through their mortal span,
In bloodier acts conclude those who with blood began.
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When this was written Ali Pashaw was
still living; but the prediction which it implies was soon after verified, and he closed his
stern and energetic life with a catastrophe worthy of its guilt and bravery. He voluntarily
perished by firing a powder-magazine, when surrounded, beyond all chance of escape, by the
troops of the sultan his master, whose authority he had long contemned.
Mr. Hobhouse describes him at this audience as a short
fat man, about five feet five inches in height; with a very pleasing face, fair and round; and
blue fair eyes, not settled into a Turkish gravity. His beard was long and hoary, and such a
one as any other Turk would have been proud of; nevertheless, he, who was more occupied in
attending to his guests than him-![]()
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self, neither gazed at it, smelt it, nor
stroked it, according to the custom of his countrymen, when they seek to fill up the pauses in
conversation. He was not dressed with the usual magnificence of dignitaries of his degree,
except that his high turban, composed of many small rolls, was of golden muslin, and his
ataghan studded with diamonds.
He was civil and urbane in the entertainment of his guests, and requested
them to consider themselves as his children. It was on this occasion he told Lord Byron, that he discovered his noble blood by the smallness of
his hands and ears: a remark which has become proverbial, and is acknowledged not to be without
truth in the evidence of pedigree.
The ceremonies on such visits are similar all over Turkey, among personages
of the same rank; and as Lord Byron has not described in
verse the details of what took place with him, it will not be altogether obtrusive here to
recapitulate what happened to myself during a visit to Velhi
Pashaw, the son of Ali: he was then Vizier
of the Morea, and residing at Tripolizza.
In the afternoon, about four o’clock, I set out for the seraglio with
Dr. Teriano, the vizier’s physician, and the
vizier’s Italian secretary. The gate of the palace was not unlike the entrance to some of
the closes in Edinburgh, and the court within reminded me of Smithfield, in London; but it was
not surrounded by such lofty buildings, nor in any degree of comparison so well constructed. We
ascended a ruinous staircase, which led to an open gallery, where three or four hundred of the
vizier’s Albanian guards were lounging. In an antechamber, which opened from the gallery,
a number of officers were smoking, and in the middle, on the floor, two old Turks were
seriously engaged at chess.
My name being sent in to the vizier, a guard of ceremony was called, and
after they had arranged themselves in the presence chamber, I was admitted. ![]()
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The doctor and the secretary having, in the meantime, taken off their shoes, accompanied me
in to act as interpreters.
The presence chamber was about forty feet square, showy and handsome: round
the walls were placed sofas, which, from being covered with scarlet, reminded me of the
woolsacks in the House of Lords. In the farthest corner of the room, elevated on a crimson
velvet cushion, sat the vizier, wrapped in a superb pelisse: on his head was a vast turban, in
his belt a dagger, incrusted with jewels, and on the little finger of his right hand he wore a
solitaire as large as the knob on the stopper of a vinegar-cruet, and which was said to have
cost two thousand five hundred pounds sterling. In his left hand he held a string of small
coral beads, a comboloio which he twisted backwards and forwards during the greater part of the
visit. On the sofa beside him lay a pair of richly-ornamented London-made pistols. At some
distance, on the same sofa, but not on a cushion, sat Memet, the Pashaw of
Napoli Romania, whose son was contracted in marriage to the vizier’s daughter. On the
floor, at the foot of this pasha, and opposite to the vizier, a secretary was writing
despatches. These were the only persons in the room who had the honour of being seated; for,
according to the etiquette of this viceregal court, those who received the vizier’s pay
were not allowed to sit down in his presence.
On my entrance, his highness motioned to me to sit beside him, and through
the medium of the interpreters began with some commonplace courtly insignificancies, as a
prelude to more interesting conversation. In his manners I found him free and affable, with a
considerable tincture of humour and drollery. Among other questions, he inquired if I had a
wife: and being answered in the negative, he replied to me himself in Italian, that I was a
happy man, for he found his very troublesome: considering their pro-![]()
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bable
number, this was not unlikely. Pipes and coffee were in the mean-time served. The pipe
presented to the vizier was at least twelve feet long; the mouth-piece was formed of a single
block of amber, about the size of an ordinary cucumber, and fastened to the shaft by a broad
hoop of gold, decorated with jewels. While the pipes and coffee were distributing, a musical
clock, which stood in a niche, began to play, and continued doing so until this ceremony was
over. The coffee was literally a drop of dregs in a very small china cup, placed in a golden
socket. His highness was served with his coffee by Pashaw Bey, his
generalissimo, a giant, with the tall crown of a dun-coloured beaver-hat on his head. In
returning the cup to him, the vizier elegantly eructated in his face. After the regale of the
pipes and coffee, the attendants withdrew, and his highness began a kind of political
discussion, in which, though making use of an interpreter, he managed to convey his questions
with delicacy and address.
On my rising to retire, his highness informed me, with more polite
condescension than a Christian of a thousandth part of his authority would have done, that
during my stay at Tripolizza horses were at my command, and guards who would accompany me to
any part of the country I might choose to visit.
Next morning, he sent a complimentary message, importing, that he had
ordered dinner to be prepared at the doctor’s for me and two of his officers. The two
officers were lively fellows; one of them in particular seemed to have acquired, by instinct, a
large share of the ease and politeness of Christendom. The dinner surpassed all count and
reckoning, dish followed dish, till I began to fancy that the cook either expected I would
honour his highness’s entertainment as Cæsar did
the supper of Cicero, or supposed that the party were not
finite beings. During the course of this amazing service, the principal singers and musicians
of the seraglio ![]()
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arrived, and sung and played several pieces of very sweet
Turkish music. Among others was a song composed by the late unfortunate sultan Selim, the air of which was pleasingly simple and pathetic. I had heard
of the sultan’s poetry before, a small collection of which has been printed. It is said
to be interesting and tender, consisting chiefly of little sonnets, written after he was
deposed; in which he contrasts the tranquillity of his retirement with the perils and anxieties
of his former grandeur. After the songs, the servants of the officers, who were Albanians,
danced a Macedonian reel, in which they exhibited several furious specimens of Highland
agility. The officers then took their leave, and I went to bed, equally gratified by the
hospitality of the vizier and the incidents of the entertainment.
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— . . .
Ali Pasha of Yannina (1740-1822)
Albanian warlord who expanded his territories during the Napoleonic wars but was
eventually suppressed by the Ottoman Turks; he entertained Byron in 1809.
Anacreon (582 BC.-485 BC)
Greek lyric poet of whose writings little survives;
anacreontic
verse celebrates love and wine.
Hafiz (1325 c.-1390 c.)
Persian poet, author of the
Divan,; his poems were popularized by
the translations of Sir William Jones.
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).
Sultan Selim III (1761-1808)
Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1789 to 1807 and an accomplished poet.
Dr. Teriano (1809 fl.)
Veli Pasha's Italian physician who published a book on medicine at Malta.
Veli Pasha (d. 1822)
Son of Ali Pasha; he was Vizier of the Morea before he was executed during his father's
struggle with the Turks.
