“Here I am, alone, instead of dining at Lord H.’s, where I was asked,—but not inclined to go any where. Hobhouse says I am growing a loup garou,—a solitary hobgoblin. True;—‘I am myself alone.’ The last week has been passed in reading—seeing plays—now and then, visitors—sometimes yawning and sometimes sighing, but no writing,—save of letters. If I could always read, I should never feel the want of society. Do I regret it?—um!—‘Man delights not me’ and only one woman—at a time.
“There is something to me very softening in the presence of a woman,—some strange influence, even if one is not in love with them,—which I cannot at all account for, having no very high opinion of the sex. But yet,—I always feel in better humour with myself and every thing else, if there is a woman within ken. Even Mrs. Mule*, my fire-lighter,—the most ancient and withered of her kind,—and (except
* This ancient housemaid, of whose gaunt and witch-like appearance it would be impossible to convey any idea but by the pencil, furnished one among the numerous instances of Lord Byron’s proneness to attach himself to any thing, however homely, that had once inlisted his good-nature in its behalf, and become associated with his thoughts. He first found this old woman at his lodgings in Bennet-street, where, for a whole season, she was the perpetual scarecrow of his visitors. When, next year, he took chambers in Albany, one of the great advantages which his friends looked to in the change was, that they should get rid of this phantom. But, no,—there she was again—he had actually brought her with him from Bennet-street. The following year saw him married, and, with a regular establishment of servants, in Piccadilly; and here,—as Mrs. Mule had not appeared to any of the visitors,—it was concluded, rashly, that the witch had vanished. One of those friends, however, who had most fondly indulged in this persuasion, happening to call one day when all the male part of the establishment were abroad, saw, to his dismay, the door opened by the same grim personage, improved considerably in point of habiliments since he last saw her, and keeping pace with the increased scale of her master’s |
| A. D. 1814. | LIFE OF LORD BYRON. | 503 |
“Heigho! I would I were in mine island!—I am not well; and yet I look in good health. At times I fear, ‘I am not in my perfect mind;’—and yet my heart and head have stood many a crash, and what should ail them now? They prey upon themselves, and I am sick—sick—‘Prithee, undo this button—why should a cat, a rat, a dog, have life—and thou no life at all?’ Six-and-twenty years, as they call them,—why, I might and should have been a Pasha by this time. ‘I ’gin to be a weary of the sun.’
“Buonaparte is not yet beaten; but has rebutted Blucher, and repiqued Swartzenburg. This it is to have a head. If he again wins, ‘Væ victis!’
