marriage of this lady, not only shows the extreme Notwithstanding this schism, they for some time quickness and vehemence of her feelings, but, if it continued to visit, and even to drink tea with each be true that she had never at the time seen Captain other; but the elements of discord were strong on Byron, is not a little striking. Being at the Edin- both sides, and their separation was, at last, comburgh theatre one night when the character of Isa- plete and final. He would frequently, however, bella was performed by Mrs.Siddons, so affected was accost the nurse and his son in their walks, and she by the powers of this great actress, that, to expressed a strong wish to have the child for a wards the conclusion of the play, she fell into violent day or two, on a visit with him. To this refits, and was carried out of the theatre, screaming quest Mrs. Byron was, at first, not very willing to loudly, "Oh my Biron, my Biron." accede, but, on the representation of the nurse, that "if he kept the boy one night, he would not do so another," she consented. The event proved as the nurse had predicted; on inquiring next morning after the child, she was told by Captain Byron that he had had quite enough of his young visitor, and she might take him home again. It should be observed, however, that Mrs. Byron, at this period, was unable to keep more than one servant, and that, sent as the boy was on this occasion to encounter the trial of a visit, without the Soon after the marriage, which took place, I believe, at Bath, Mr. Byron and his lady removed to their estate in Scotland; and the extent of that chasm of debt, in which her fortune was to be swallowed up,now opened upon the eyes of the ill-fated heiress. The creditors of Mr. Byron lost no time in pressing their demands; and not only was the whole of her ready money,Bank shares, fisheries, etc.,sacrificed to satisfy them, but a large sum raised by mortgage on the estate for the same purpose. In the summer of 1786, she and her husband left Scotland, to pro-accustomed surperintendence of his nurse, it is ceed to France; and in the following year the estate not so wonderful that he should have been found, of Gight itself was sold, and the whole of the pur- under such circumstances, rather an unmanagechase-money applied to the further payment of debts, able guest. That, as a child, his temper was vio-with the exception of a small sum vested in trus-lent, or rather sullenly passionate, is certain. tees for the use of Mrs. Byron; who thus found her-Even when in petticoats, he showed the same unself, within the short space of two years, reduced controllable spirit with his nurse, which he afterfrom competence to a pittance of 1507. per annum.wards exhibited, when an author, with his critics. From France Mrs. Byron returned to England at Being angrily reprimanded by her, one day, for the close of the year 1787, and on the 22d of Ja- having soiled or torn a new frock in which he had nuary, 1788, gave birth, in Holles-street, London, been just dressed, he got into one of his "silent to her first and only child, George Gordon Byron. rages" (as he himself has described them), seized The name of Gordon was added in compliance the frock with both his hands, rent it from top to with a condition imposed by will on whoever bottom, and stood in sullen stillness, setting his should become husband of the heiress of Gight; censurer and her wrath at defiance. and at the baptism of the child, the Duke of Gordon, and Colonel Duff of Fetteresso stood god-ruly outbreaks-in which he was but too much fathers. From London Mrs. Byron proceeded with her infant to Scotland, and, in the year 1790, took up her residence in Aberdeen, where she was soon after joined by Captain Byron. Here for a short time they lived together in lodgings at the house of a person named Anderson, in Queen-street. But their union being by no means happy, a separation took place between them, and Mrs. Byron removed to lodgings at the other en dofthe street. (1 (1) It appears that she several times changed her residence during her stay at Aberdeen, as there are two other houses pointed out, where she lodged for some time; one situated in But, notwithstanding this, and other such un encouraged by the example of his mother, who frequently, it is said, proceeded to the same extremities with her caps, gowns, etc.—there was in his disposition, as appears from the concurrent testimony of nurses, tutors, and all who were employed about him, a mixture of affectionate sweetness and playfulness, by which it was impossible not to be attached; and which rendered him then. as in his riper years, easily manageable, by those who loved and understood him sufficiently to be at Virginia-street, and the other, the house of a Mr. Leslie, I think, in Broad-street. once gentle and firm enough for the task. The female attendant of whom we have spoken, as well as her sister, May Gray, who succeeded her, gained an influence over his mind against which he very rarely rebelled; while his mother, whose capricious excesses, both of anger and of fondness, left her little hold on either his respect or affection, was indebted solely to his sense of filial duty for any small portion of authority she was ever able to acquire over him. By an accident which, it is said, occurred at the time of h ́s birth, one of his feet was twisted out of its natural position, and this defect (chiefly from the contrivances employed to remedy it) was a source of much pain and inconvenience to him during his early years. The expedients used at this period to restore the limb to shape were adopt ed by the advice, and under the direction, of the celebrated John Hunter, with whom Doctor Livingstone of Aberdeen corresponded on the subject; and his nurse, to whom fell the task of putting on these machines or bandages, at bed- time, would often, as she herself told my informant, sing him to sleep, or tell him stories and legends, in which, like most other children, he took great delight. She also taught him, while yet an infant, to repeat a great number of the Psalms; and the first and twenty-third Psalms were among the earliest that he committed to memory. It is a remarkable fact, indeed, that through the care of this respectable woman, who was herself of a very religious disposition, he attained a far earlier and more intimate acquaintance with the Sacred Writings than falls to the lot of most young people. In a letter which he wrote to Mr. Murray, from Italy, in 1821, after requesting of that gentleman to send him, by the first opportunity, a Bible, he adds-" Don't forget this, for I am a great reader and admirer of those books, and had read them through and through before I was eight years old,-that is to say, the Old Testament, for the New struck me as a task, but the other as a pleasure. I speak as a boy, from the recollected impression of that period at Aberdeen, in 1796. ” The malformation of his foot was, even at this childish age, a subject on which he showed peculiar sensitiveness. I have been told by a gentleman of Glasgow, that the person who nursed his wife, and (1) In Long Acre. The present master of this school is Mr. David Grant, the ingenious editor of a collection of Battles who still lives in his family, used often to join the nurse of Byron when they were out with their respective charges, and one day said to her, as they walked together, "What a pretty boy Byron is! what a pity he has such a leg!" On hearing this allusion to his infirmity, the child's eyes flashed with anger, and, striking at her with a little whip which he held in his hand, he exclaimed impatiently, "Dinna speak of it!" Sometimes, however, as in after life, he could talk indifferently, and even jestingly, of this lameness; and there being another little boy in the neighbourhood, who had a similar defect in one of his feet, Byron would say, laughingly, "Come and see the twa laddies with the twa club feet going up the Broad-street." Among many instances of his quickness and energy at this age, his nurse mentioned a little incident that one night occurred, on her taking him to the theatre to see the Taming of the Shrew. He had attended to the performance, for some time, with silent interest; but, in the scene between Catherine and Petruchio, where the following dialogue takes place, Cath. I know it is the moon. Pet. Nay, then, you lie,-it is the blessed sun, little Geordie (as they called the child), starting from his seat, cried out boldly, “But I say it is the moon, sir." The short visit of Captain Byron to Aberdeen has already been mentioned, and he again passed two or three months in that city, before his last departure for France. On both occasions, his chief object was to extract still more money, if possible, from the unfortunate woman whom he had beggared; and so far was he successful, that, during his last visit, narrow as were her means, she contrived to furnish him with the money necessary for his journey to Valenciennes, where, in the following year, 1791, he died. When not quite five years old, young Byron was sent to a day-school at Aberdeen, taught by Mr. Bowers,(1) and remained there, with some interruptions, during a twelvemonth, as appears by the following extract from the day-book of the school : "George Gordon Byron. 19th November, 1793-paid one guinea." The terms of this school for reading were only and War Pieces,” and of a work of much utility entitled “ ClassBook of Modern Poetry. five shillings a quarter, and it was evidently less with a view to the boy's advance in learning than as a cheap mode of keeping him quiet, that his mother had him sent to it. Of the progress of his infantine studies at Aberdeen, as well under Mr. Bowers as under the various other persons that instructed him, we have the following interesting particulars communicated by himself, in a sort of journal which he once began, under the title of My Dictionary," and which is preserved in one of his manuscript books. Latin, in Ruddiman's grammar, and continued till I went to the Grammar School' (Scoticè, schule;' Aberdonicè, 'squeel') where I threaded all the classes to the fourth, when I was recalled to England (where I had been hatched) by the demise of my uncle. I acquired this hand-writing, which I can hardly read myself, under the fair copies of Mr. Duncan of the same city: I don't think he would plume himself much upon my progress. However, I wrote much better then than I have ever done since. Haste and agitation of one kind or another have quite spoilt as pretty a scrawl as ever scratched over a frank. The grammar school might consist of a hundred and fifty of all ages under age. it was divided into five classes taught by four masters, the chief teaching the fourth and fifth himself; as in England, the fifth, sixth forms, and monitors, Of his class-fellows at the grammar school there are many, of course, still alive, by whom he is well remembered; (1) and the general impression they retain of him is, that he was a lively, warmhearted and high-spirited boy-passionate and resentful, but affectionate and companionable with his school-fellows-to a remarkable degree venturous and fearless, and (as one of them significantly expressed it)" always more ready to give a blow than take one." Among many anecdotes illus "For several years of my earliest childhood, I was in that city, but have never revisited it since I was ten years old. I was sent, at five years old or earlier, to a school kept by a Mr. Bowers, who was called' Bodsy Bowers,' by reason of his dapperness. It was a school for both sexes. I learned little there except to repeat by rote the first lesson of mono-are heard by the head-masters." syllables ('God made man'-'Let us love Him') by hearing it often repeated, without acquiring a letter. Whenever proof was made of my progress at home, I repeated these words with the most rapid fluency; but on turning over a new leaf, I continued to repeat them, so that the narrow boundaries of my first year's accomplishments were detected, my ears boxed (which they did not deserve, seeing it was by ear only that I had acquired my letters), and my intellects consigned to a new preceptor. He was a very devout, clever little clergyman,trative of this spirit, it is related that once, in renamed Ross, afterwards minister of one of the kirks turning home from school, he fell in with a boy who (East, I think). Under him I made astonishing pro- had on some former occasion insulted him, but had gress, and I recollect to this day his mild manners then got off unpunished-little Byron, however, at and good-natured pains-taking. The moment I the time, promising to "pay him off" whenever could read, my grand passion was history, and, they should meet again. Accordingly, on this sewhy I know not, but I was particularly taken with cond encounter, though there were some other the battle near the lake Regillus in the Roman His-boys to take his opponent's part, he succeeded in tory, put into my hands the first. Four years ago, when standing on the heights of Tusculum, and looking down upon the little round lake that was once Regillus, and which dots the immense expanse below, I remembered my young enthusiasm and my old instructor. Afterwards I had a very serious, saturnine, but kind young man, named Paterson, for a tutor. He was the son of my shoemaker, but a good scholar, as is common with the Scotch. He was a rigid presbyterian also. With him I began (1) The old Porter, too, at the College, "minds weel" the little boy, with the red jacket and nankeen trowsers, whom he has so often turned out of the College court-yard. inflicting upon him a hearty beating. On his return home, breathless, the servant inquired what he had been about, and was answered by him, with a mixture of rage and humour, that he had been paying a debt, by beating a boy according to promise ; for that he was a Byron, and would never belie his motto, “Trust Byron." He was, indeed, much more anxious to distinguish himself among his school-fellows by prowess in all sports (2) and exercises, than by advancement (2) "He was," says one of my informants, "a good hand at marbles, and could drive one farther than most boys. He also excelled at 'Bases,' a game which requires considerable swiftness of foot." in learning. Though quick, when he could be persuaded to attend, or had any study that pleased him, he was in general very low in the class, nor seemed ambitious of being promoted any higher. It is the custom, it seems, in this seminary, to invert now and then the order of the class, so as to make the highest and lowest boys change places-with a view, no doubt, of piquing the ambition of both. On these occasions, and only these, Byron was sometimes at the head, and the master, to banter him, would say, "Now, George, man, let me see how soon you'll be at the foot again." (1) During this period, his mother and he made, occasionally, visits among their friends, passing some time at Fetteresso, the seat of his godfather, Colonel Duff (where the child's delight with a humorous old butler, named Ernest Fidler, is still remembered), and also at Banff, where some near connexions of Mrs. Byron resided. his safety. While at Aberdeen, he used often to It was about this period, when he was not quite eight years old, that a feeling, partaking more of the nature of love than it is easy to believe possible In the summer of the year 1796, after an attack of scarlet-fever, he was removed by his mother for change of air into the Highlands; and it was either at this time or in the following year that they took up their residence at a farm-house in the neigh-in so young a child, took, according to his own bourhood of Ballater, a favourite summer resort for health and gaiety, about forty miles up the Dee from Aberdeen. Though this house, where they still show with much pride the bed in which young Byron slept, has become naturally a place of pilgrimage for the worshippers of genius, neither its ●wn appearance, nor that of the small bleak valley in which it stands, is at all worthy of being associated with the memory of a poet. Within a short distance of it, however, all those features of wildness and beauty, which mark the course of the Dee through the Highlands, may be surveyed. Here the dark summit of Lachin-y-gair stood towering before the eyes of the future bard; and the verses in which, not many years afterwards, he commemorated this sublime object, show that, young as he was at the time, its "frowning glories" were not unnoticed by him. His love of solitary rambles, and his taste for exploring in all directions, led him not unfrequently so far as to excite serious apprehensions for (1) On examining the quarterly list kept at the grammar schoo! of Aberdeen, in which the names of the boys are set down according to the station each holds in his class, it appears that in April of the year 1794, the name of Byron, then in the second class, stands twenty-third in a list of thirty-eight boys. In the April of 1798, however, he had risen to be fifth in account, entire possession of his thoughts, and showed how early, in this passion, as in most others, the sensibilities of his nature were awakened (2). The name of the object of this attachment was Mary Duff; and the following passage from a Journal, kept by him in 1813, will show how freshly, after an interval of seventeen years, all the circumstances of this early love still lived in his memory. "I have been thinking lately a good deal of Mary Duff. How very odd that I should have been so utterly, devotedly fond of that girl, at an age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word! And the effect :-My mother used always to rally me about this childish amour; and, at last, many years after, when I was sixteen, she told me one day, 'Oh, Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh, from Miss Abercromby, and your old sweetheart Mary Duff is married to a Mr. Co-e.' And what was my answer? I really cannot explain or account for my feelings at that moment; but they nearly threw me into convulsions, and alarmed my the fourth class, consisting of twenty-seven boys, and had got ahead of several of his contemporaries, who had, previously, always stood before him. (2) Dante, we know, was but nine years old when, at a Mayday festival, he saw and fell in love with Beatrice; and Alfieri, who was himself a precocious lover, considers such early sensi mother so much, that, after I grew better, she generally avoided the subject—to me-and contented herself with telling it to all her acquaintance. Now, what could this be? I had never seen her since her mother's faux-pas at Aberdeen had been the cause of her removal to her grandmother's at Banff; we were both the merest children. I had and have been attached fifty times since that period; yet I recollect all we said to each other, all our caresses, her features, my restlessness, sleeplessness, my tormenting my mother's maid to write for me to her, which she at last did, to quiet me. Poor Nancy thought I was wild, and, as I could not write for myself, became my secretary. I remember, too, our walks, and the happiness of sitting by Mary, in the children's apartment, at their house not far from the Plainstones at Aberdeen, while her lesser sister Helen played with the doll, and we sate gravely making love, in our way. it in her answer to Miss A., who was well acquainted with my childish penchant, and had sent the news on purpose for me,—and, thanks to her! "Next to the beginning, the conclusion has often occupied my reflections, in the way of investigation. That the facts are thus, others know as well as I, and my memory yet tells me so, in more than a whisper. But, the more I reflect, the more I am bewildered to assign any cause for this precocity of affection." By the death of the grandson of the old Lord at Corsica, in 1794, the only claimant that had hitherto stood between little George and the immediate succession to the peerage was removed; and the increased importance which this event conferred upon them was felt not only by Mrs. Byron, but by the young future Baron of Newstead himself. In the winter of 1797, his mother having chanced, one day, to read part of a speech spoken in the House of Commons, a friend who was present said to the other, of reading your speeches in the House of Commons." "I hope not," was his answer; “if you read any speeches of mine, it will be in the House of Lords. " "How the deuce did all this occur so early? where could it originate? I certainly had no sex-boy, "We shall have the pleasure, some time or ual ideas for years afterwards; and yet my misery, my love for that girl, were so violent, that I some times doubt if I have ever been really attached since. Be that as it may, hearing of her marriage several years after was like a thunder-stroke-it nearly The title, of which he thus early anticipated the choked me to the horror of my mother and the enjoyment, devolved to him but too soon. Had he astonishment and almost incredulity of every body. been left to struggle on for ten years longer, as And it is a phenomenon in my existence (for I was plain George Byron, there can be little doubt that not eight years old) which has puzzled and will puz- his character would have been, in many respects, zle me to the latest hour of it; and lately, I know the better for it. In the following year his grandnot why, the recollection (not the attachment) has uncle, the fifth Lord Byron, died at Newstead Abrecurred as forcibly as ever. I wonder if she can bey, having passed the latter years of his strange life have the least remembrance of it or me? or re-in a state of austere and almost savage seclusion. member her pitying sister Helen for not having an It is said, that the day after little Byron's accession admirer too? How very pretty is the perfect image to the title, he ran up to his mother, and asked her, of her in my memory!—her brown, dark hair, and "whether she perceived any difference in him since hazel eyes; her very dress! I should be quite he had been made a Lord, as he perceived none grieved to see her now; the reality, however himself: -a quick and natural thought; but the beautiful, would destroy, or at least confuse, the child little knew what a total and talismanic change features of the lovely Peri which then existed in had been wrought in all his future relations with her, and still lives in my imagination, at the dis- society, by the simple addition of that word before tance of more than sixteen years. I am now twenty- his name. That the event, as a crisis in his life, five and odd months.... affected him, even at that time, may be collected from the agitation which he is said to have manifested on the important morning when his name was first called out in school with the title of "Do “I think mother told the circumstances (on my hearing of her marriage) to the Parkynses, and certainly to the Pigot family, and probably mentioned bility to be an unerring sign of a soul formed for the fine arts: a quei soli pochissimi è concesso l'isci della folla volgare in "Effetti (he says, in describing the feelings of his own first tutte le umane arti." Canova used to say, that he perfectly love) che poche persone intendono, e pochissime provano : ma well remembered having been in love when but five years old. |