One of perjuring priest Bob Malm’s least attractive qualities is his tendency to tell people what he thinks they want to hear, even when it’s not true. And this appears to be starting anew at St. Gabriel’s in Marion, Mass., where perjuring priest Bob Malm serves as interim rector.

In a local news story covering the effect of COVID-19 churches in his area, perjuring priest Bob Malm says “it’s a little hard getting to know people over the phone.” (See attached screen cap.)

That is inconsistent with his behavior as rector of Grace Church, where Bob didn’t even bother to meet regularly with church wardens. Even when, as in my case, they had his back while he was out on disability. Yet Bob never failed to get in his month at the beach, his junkets “out of town,” his week off for the Boston Marathon, and more. Indeed, Bob traveled to Massachusetts twice, and to Georgia once, while still collecting disability in 2014. Too sick to come to work, but not too sick to travel more than 3,528 miles by car and to spend six weeks at the beach.

Nor did Bob make any greater effort during his final year as rector. Indeed, like many narcissists, Bob tried to manage perceptions on the way out the door by volunteering just how feckless he had been (image attached).


And given that Grace church, like most churches, pretty much recycles the same vestry members over time, this is a stunning admission.

But then, given that hanging with perjuring priest Bob Malm is not exactly a slice of paradise, perhaps the folks at St. Gabriel’s should count themselves lucky.
Attachments:

Sorry for the size of the above pictures, which makes them almost impossible to read.

It is impossible to reflect on the boyhood of Byron without regret.
There is not one point in it all which could, otherwise than with
pain, have affected a young mind of sensibility. His works bear
testimony, that, while his memory retained the impressions of early
youth, fresh and unfaded, there was a gloom and shadow upon them,
which proved how little they had been really joyous.

The riper years of one so truly the nursling of pride, poverty, and
pain, could only be inconsistent, wild, and impassioned, even had his
temperament been moderate and well disciplined. But when it is
considered that in addition to all the awful influences of these
fatalities, for they can receive no lighter name, he possessed an
imagination of unbounded capacity--was inflamed with those
indescribable feelings which constitute, in the opinion of many, the
very elements of genius--fearfully quick in the discernment of the
darker qualities of character--and surrounded by temptation--his
career ceases to surprise. It would have been more wonderful had he
proved an amiable and well-conducted man, than the questionable and
extraordinary being who has alike provoked the malice and interested
the admiration of the world.

Posterity, while acknowledging the eminence of his endowments, and
lamenting the habits which his unhappy circumstances induced, will
regard it as a curious phenomenon in the fortunes of the individual,
that the progress of his fame as a poet should have been so similar
to his history as a man.

His first attempts, though displaying both originality and power,
were received with a contemptuous disdain, as cold and repulsive as
the penury and neglect which blighted the budding of his youth. The
unjust ridicule in the review of his first poems, excited in his
spirit a discontent as inveterate as the feeling which sprung from
his deformity: it affected, more or less, all his conceptions to
such a degree that he may be said to have hated the age which had
joined in the derision, as he cherished an antipathy against those
persons who looked curiously at his foot. Childe Harold, the most
triumphant of his works, was produced when the world was kindliest
disposed to set a just value on his talents; and his latter
productions, in which the faults of his taste appear the broadest,
were written when his errors as a man were harshest in the public
voice.

These allusions to the incidents of a life full of contrarieties, and
a character so strange as to be almost mysterious, sufficiently show
the difficulties of the task I have undertaken. But the course I
intend to pursue will relieve me from the necessity of entering, in
any particular manner, upon those debatable points of his personal
conduct which have been so much discussed. I shall consider him, if
I can, as his character will be estimated when contemporary surmises
are forgotten, and when the monument he has raised to himself is
contemplated for its beauty and magnificence, without suggesting
recollections of the eccentricities of the builder.

JOHN GALT.



CHAPTER I



Ancient Descent--Pedigree--Birth--Troubles of his Mother--Early
Education--Accession to the Title

The English branch of the family of Byron came in with William the
Conqueror; and from that era they have continued to be reckoned among
the eminent families of the kingdom, under the names of Buron and
Biron. It was not until the reign of Henry II. that they began to
call themselves Byron, or de Byron.

Although for upwards of seven hundred years distinguished for the
extent of their possessions, it docs not appear, that, before the
time of Charles I., they ranked very highly among the heroic families
of the kingdom.

Erneis and Ralph were the companions of the Conqueror; but
antiquaries and genealogists have not determined in what relation
they stood to each other. Erneis, who appears to have been the more
considerable personage of the two, held numerous manors in the
counties of York and Lincoln. In the Domesday Book, Ralph, the
direct ancestor of the poet, ranks high among the tenants of the
Crown, in Notts and Derbyshire; in the latter county he resided at
Horestan Castle, from which he took his title. One of the lords of
Horestan was a hostage for the payment of the ransom of Richard Coeur
de Lion; and in the time of Edward I., the possessions of his
descendants were augmented by the addition of the Manor of Rochdale,
in Lancashire. On what account this new grant was given has not been
ascertained; nor is it of importance that it should be.

In the wars of the three Edwards, the de Byrons appeared with some
distinction; and they were also of note in the time of Henry V. Sir
John Byron joined Henry VII. on his landing at Milford, and fought
gallantly at the battle of Bosworth, against Richard III., for which
he was afterwards appointed Constable of Nottingham Castle and Warden
of Sherwood Forest. At his death, in 1488, he was succeeded by Sir
Nicholas, his brother, who, at the marriage of Arthur, Prince of
Wales, in 1501, was made one of the Knights of the Bath.

Sir Nicholas died in 1540, leaving an only son, Sir John Byron, whom
Henry VIII. made Steward of Manchester and Rochdale, and Lieutenant
of the Forest of Sherwood. It was to him that, on the dissolution of
the monasteries, the church and priory of Newstead, in the county of
Nottingham, together with the manor and rectory of Papelwick, were
granted. The abbey from that period became the family seat, and
continued so until it was sold by the poet.

Sir John Byron left Newstead and his other possessions to John Byron,
whom Collins and other writers have called his fourth, but who was in
fact his illegitimate son. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in
1579, and his eldest son, Sir Nicholas, served with distinction in
the wars of the Netherlands. When the great rebellion broke out
against Charles I., he was one of the earliest who armed in his
defence. After the battle of Edgehill, where he courageously
distinguished himself, he was made Governor of Chester, and gallantly
defended that city against the Parliamentary army. Sir John Byron,
the brother and heir of Sir Nicholas, was, at the coronation of James
I., made a Knight of the Bath. By his marriage with Anne, the eldest
daughter of Sir Richard Molyneux, he had eleven sons and a daughter.
The eldest served under his uncle in the Netherlands; and in the year
1641 was appointed by King Charles I., Governor of the Tower of
London. In this situation he became obnoxious to the refractory
spirits in the Parliament, and was in consequence ordered by the
Commons to answer at the bar of their House certain charges which the
sectaries alleged against him. But he refused to leave his post
without the king's command; and upon' this the Commons applied to the
Lords to join them in a petition to the king to remove him. The
Peers rejected the proposition.

On the 24th October, 1643, Sir John Byron was created Lord Byron of
Rochdale, in the county of Lancaster, with remainder of the title to
his brothers, and their male issue, respectively. He was also made
Field-Marshal-General of all his Majesty's forces in Worcestershire,
Cheshire, Shropshire and North Wales: nor were these trusts and
honours unwon, for the Byrons, during the Civil War, were eminently
distinguished. At the battle of Newbury, seven of the brothers were
in the field, and all actively engaged.

Sir Richard, the second brother of the first lord, was knighted by
Charles I. for his conduct at the battle of Edgehill, and appointed
Governor of Appleby Castle, in Westmorland, and afterwards of Newark,
which he defended with great honour. Sir Richard, on the death of
his brother, in 1652, succeeded to the peerage, and died in 1679.

His eldest son, William, the third lord, married Elizabeth, the
daughter of Viscount Chaworth, of Ireland, by whom he had five sons,
four of whom died young. William, the fourth lord, his son, was
Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Prince George of Denmark, and married,
for his first wife, a daughter of the Earl of Bridgewater, who died
eleven weeks after their nuptials. His second wife was the daughter
of the Earl of Portland, by whom he had three sons, who all died
before their father. His third wife was Frances, daughter of Lord
Berkley, of Stratton, from whom the poet was descended. Her eldest
son, William, born in 1722, succeeded to the family honours on the
death of his father in 1736. He entered the naval service, and
became a lieutenant under Admiral Balchen. In the year 1763 he was
made Master of the Staghounds; and in 1765, he was sent to the Tower,
and tried before the House of Peers, for killing his relation and
neighbour, Mr Chaworth, in a duel fought at the Star and Garter
Tavern, in Pall-mall.

This Lord William was naturally boisterous and vindictive. It
appeared in evidence that he insisted on fighting with Mr Chaworth in
the room where the quarrel commenced. They accordingly fought
without seconds by the dim light of a single candle; and, although Mr
Chaworth was the more skilful swordsman of the two, he received a
mortal wound; but he lived long enough to disclose some particulars
of the rencounter, which induced the coroner's jury to return a
verdict of wilful murder, and Lord Byron was tried for the crime.

The trial took place in Westminster Hall, and the public curiosity
was so great that the Peers' tickets of admission were publicly sold
for six guineas each. It lasted two days, and at the conclusion he
was unanimously pronounced guilty of manslaughter. On being brought
up for judgment he pleaded his privilege and was discharged. It was
to this lord that the poet succeeded, for he died without leaving
issue.

His brother, the grandfather of the poet, was the celebrated "Hardy
Byron"; or, as the sailors called him, "Foulweather Jack," whose
adventures and services are too well known to require any notice
here. He married the daughter of John Trevannion, Esq., of Carhais,
in the county of Cornwall, by whom he had two sons and three
daughters. John, the eldest, and the father of the poet, was born in
1751, educated at Westminster School, and afterwards placed in the
Guards, where his conduct became so irregular and profligate that his
father, the admiral, though a good-natured man, discarded him long
before his death. In 1778 he acquired extraordinary eclat by the
seduction of the Marchioness of Caermarthen, under circumstances
which have few parallels in the licentiousness of fashionable life.
The meanness with which he obliged his wretched victim to supply him
with money would have been disgraceful to the basest adulteries of
the cellar or garret. A divorce ensued, the guilty parties married;
but, within two years after, such was the brutal and vicious conduct
of Captain Byron, that the ill-fated lady died literally of a broken
heart, after having given birth to two daughters, one of whom still
survives.

Captain Byron then married Miss Catharine Gordon, of Gight, a lady of
honourable descent, and of a respectable fortune for a Scottish
heiress, the only motive which this Don Juan had for forming the
connection. She was the mother of the poet.

Although the Byrons have for so many ages been among the eminent
families of the realm, they have no claim to the distinction which
the poet has set up for them as warriors in Palestine, even though he
says--


Near Ascalon's tow'rs John of Horestan slumbers;


for unless this refers to the Lord of Horestan, who was one of the
hostages for the ransom of Richard I., it will not be easy to
determine to whom he alludes; and it is possible that the poet has no
other authority for this legend than the tradition which he found
connected with two groups of heads on the old panels of Newstead.
Yet the account of them is vague and conjectural, for it was not
until ages after the Crusades that the abbey came into the possession
of the family; and it is not probable that the figures referred to
any transactions in Palestine, in which the Byrons were engaged, if
they were put up by the Byrons at all. They were probably placed in
their present situation while the building was in possession of the
Churchmen.

One of the groups, consisting of a female and two Saracens, with eyes
earnestly fixed upon her, may have been the old favourite
ecclesiastical story of Susannah and the elders; the other, which
represents a Saracen with a European female between him and a
Christian soldier, is, perhaps, an ecclesiastical allegory,
descriptive of the Saracen and the Christian warrior contending for
the liberation of the Church. These sort of allegorical stories were
common among monastic ornaments, and the famous legend of St George
and the Dragon is one of them.

Into the domestic circumstances of Captain and Mrs Byron it would be
impertinent to institute any particular investigation. They were
exactly such as might be expected from the sins and follies of the
most profligate libertine of the age.

The fortune of Mrs Byron, consisting of various property, and
amounting to about 23,500 pounds, was all wasted in the space of two
years; at the end of which the unfortunate lady found herself in
possession of only 150 pounds per annum.

Their means being thus exhausted she accompanied her husband in the
summer of 1786 to France, whence she returned to England at the close
of the year 1787, and on the 22nd of January, 1788, gave birth, in
Holles Street, London, to her first and only child, the poet. The
name of Gordon was added to that of his family in compliance with a
condition imposed by will on whomever should become the husband of
the heiress of Gight. The late Duke of Gordon and Colonel Duff, of
Fetteresso, were godfathers to the child.

In the year 1790 Mrs Byron took up her residence in Aberdeen, where
she was soon after joined by Captain Byron, with whom she lived in
lodgings in Queen Street; but their reunion was comfortless, and a
separation soon took place. Still their rupture was not final, for
they occasionally visited and drank tea with each other. The Captain
also paid some attention to the boy, and had him, on one occasion, to
stay with him for a night, when he proved so troublesome that he was
sent home next day.

Byron himself has said that he passed his boyhood at Marlodge, near
Aberdeen; but the statement is not correct; he visited, with his
mother, occasionally among their friends, and among other places
passed some time at Fetteresso, the seat of his godfather, Colonel
Duff. In 1796, after an attack of the scarlet fever, he passed some
time at Ballater, a summer resort for health and gaiety, about forty
miles up the Dee from Aberdeen. Although the circumstances of Mrs
Byron were at this period exceedingly straitened, she received a
visit from her husband, the object of which was to extort more money;
and he was so far successful, that she contrived to borrow a sum,
which enabled him to proceed to Valenciennes, where in the following
year he died, greatly to her relief and the gratification of all who
were connected with him.

By her advances to Captain Byron, and the expenses she incurred in
furnishing the flat of the house she occupied after his death, Mrs
Byron fell into debt to the amount of 300 pounds, the interest on
which reduced her income to 135 pounds; but, much to her credit, she
contrived to live without increasing her embarrassments until the
death of her grandmother, when she received 1122 pounds, a sum which
had been set apart for the old gentlewoman's jointure, and which
enabled her to discharge her pecuniary obligations.

Notwithstanding the manner in which this unfortunate lady was treated
by her husband, she always entertained for him a strong affection
insomuch that, when the intelligence of his death arrived, her grief
was loud and vehement. She was indeed a woman of quick feelings and
strong passions; and probably it was by the strength and sincerity of
her sensibility that she retained so long the affection of her son,
towards whom it cannot be doubted that her love was unaffected. In
the midst of the neglect and penury to which she was herself
subjected, she bestowed upon him all the care, the love and
watchfulness of the tenderest mother.

In his fifth year, on the 19th of November, 1792, she sent him to a
day-school, where she paid about five shillings a quarter, the common
rate of the respectable day-schools at that time in Scotland. It was
kept by a Mr Bowers, whom Byron has described as a dapper, spruce
person, with whom he made no progress. How long he remained with Mr
Bowers is not mentioned, but by the day-book of the school it was at
least twelve months; for on the 19th of November of the following
year there is an entry of a guinea having been paid for him.

From this school he was removed and placed with a Mr Ross, one of the
ministers of the city churches, and to whom he formed some
attachment, as he speaks of him with kindness, and describes him as a
devout, clever little man of mild manners, good-natured, and
painstaking. His third instructor was a serious, saturnine, kind
young man, named Paterson, the son of a shoemaker, but a good scholar
and a rigid Presbyterian. It is somewhat curious in the record which
Byron has made of his early years to observe the constant endeavour
with which he, the descendant of such a limitless pedigree and great
ancestors, attempts to magnify the condition of his mother's
circumstances.

Paterson attended him until he went to the grammar-school, where his
character first began to be developed; and his schoolfellows, many of
whom are alive, still recollect him as a lively, warm-hearted, and
high-spirited boy, passionate and resentful, but withal affectionate
and companionable; this, however, is an opinion given of him after he
had become celebrated; for a very different impression has
unquestionably remained among some who carry their recollections back
to his childhood. By them he has been described as a malignant imp:
was often spoken of for his pranks by the worthy housewives of the
neighbourhood, as "Mrs Byron's crockit deevil," and generally
disliked for the deep vindictive anger he retained against those with
whom he happened to quarrel.

By the death of William, the fifth lord, he succeeded to the estates
and titles in the year 1798; and in the autumn of that year, Mrs
Byron, with her son and a faithful servant of the name of Mary Gray,
left Aberdeen for Newstead. Previously to their departure, Mrs Byron
sold the furniture of her humble lodging, with the exception of her
little plate and scanty linen, which she took with her, and the whole
amount of the sale did not yield SEVENTY-FIVE POUNDS.



CHAPTER II



Moral Effects of local Scenery; a Peculiarity in Taste--Early Love--
Impressions and Traditions

Before I proceed to the regular narrative of the character and
adventures of Lord Byron, it seems necessary to consider the probable
effects of his residence, during his boyhood, in Scotland. It is
generally agreed, that while a schoolboy in Aberdeen, he evinced a
lively spirit, and sharpness enough to have equalled any of his
schoolfellows, had he given sufficient application. In the few
reminiscences preserved of his childhood, it is remarkable that he
appears in this period, commonly of innocence and playfulness, rarely
to have evinced any symptom of generous feeling. Silent rages, moody
sullenness, and revenge are the general characteristics of his
conduct as a boy.

He was, undoubtedly, delicately susceptible of impressions from the
beauties of nature, for he retained recollections of the scenes which
interested his childish wonder, fresh and glowing, to his latest
days; nor have there been wanting plausible theories to ascribe the
formation of his poetical character to the contemplation of those
romantic scenes. But, whoever has attended to the influential causes
of character will reject such theories as shallow, and betraying
great ignorance of human nature. Genius of every kind belongs to
some innate temperament; it does not necessarily imply a particular
bent, because that may possibly be the effect of circumstances: but,
without question, the peculiar quality is inborn, and particular to
the individual. All hear and see much alike; but there is an
undefinable though wide difference between the ear of the musician,
or the eye of the painter, compared with the hearing and seeing
organs of ordinary men; and it is in something like that difference
in which genius consists. Genius is, however, an ingredient of mind
more easily described by its effects than by its qualities. It is as
the fragrance, independent of the freshness and complexion of the
rose; as the light on the cloud; as the bloom on the cheek of beauty,
of which the possessor is unconscious until the charm has been seen
by its influence on others; it is the internal golden flame of the
opal; a something which may be abstracted from the thing in which it
appears, without changing the quality of its substance, its form, or
its affinities. I am not, therefore, disposed to consider the idle
and reckless childhood of Byron as unfavourable to the development of
his genius; but, on the contrary, inclined to think, that the
indulgence of his mother, leaving him so much to the accidents of
undisciplined impression, was calculated to cherish associations
which rendered them, in the maturity of his powers, ingredients of
spell that ruled his memory.

It is singular, and I am not aware it has been before noticed, that
with all his tender and impassioned apostrophes to beauty and love,
Byron has in no instance, not even in the freest passages of Don
Juan, associated either the one or the other with sensual images.
The extravagance of Shakespeare's Juliet, when she speaks of Romeo
being cut after his death into stars, that all the world may be in
love with night, is flame and ecstasy compared to the icy
metaphysical glitter of Byron's amorous allusions. The verses
beginning with


She walks in beauty like the light
Of eastern climes and starry skies,


are a perfect example of what I have conceived of his bodiless
admiration of beauty, and objectless enthusiasm of love. The
sentiment itself is unquestionably in the highest mood of the
intellectual sense of beauty; the simile is, however, anything but
such an image as the beauty of woman would suggest. It is only the
remembrance of some impression or imagination of the loveliness of a
twilight applied to an object that awakened the same abstract general
idea of beauty. The fancy which could conceive in its passion the
charms of a female to be like the glow of the evening, or the general
effect of the midnight stars, must have been enamoured of some
beautiful abstraction, rather than aught of flesh and blood. Poets
and lovers have compared the complexion of their mistresses to the
hues of the morning or of the evening, and their eyes to the dewdrops
and the stars; but it has no place in the feelings of man to think of
female charms in the sense of admiration which the beauties of the
morning or the evening awaken. It is to make the simile the
principal. Perhaps, however, it may be as well to defer the
criticism to which this peculiar characteristic of Byron's amatory
effusions gives rise, until we shall come to estimate his general
powers as a poet. There is upon the subject of love, no doubt, much
beautiful composition. throughout his works; but not one line in all
the thousands which shows a sexual feeling of female attraction--all
is vague and passionless, save in the delicious rhythm of the verse.

But these remarks, though premature as criticisms, are not uncalled
for here, even while we are speaking of a child not more than ten
years old. Before Byron had attained that age, he describes himself
as having felt the passion. Dante is said as early as nine years old
to have fallen in love with Beatrice; Alfieri, who was himself
precocious in the passion, considered such early sensibility to be an
unerring sign of a soul formed for the fine arts; and Canova used to
say that he was in love when but five years old. But these
instances, however, prove nothing. Calf-love, as it is called in the
country, is common; and in Italy it may arise earlier than in the
bleak and barren regions of Lochynagar. This movement of juvenile
sentiment is not, however, love--that strong masculine avidity,
which, in its highest excitement, is unrestrained, by the laws alike
of God and man. In truth, the feeling of this kind of love is the
very reverse of the irrepressible passion it is a mean shrinking,
stealthy awe, and in no one of its symptoms, at least in none of
those which Byron describes, has it the slightest resemblance to that
bold energy which has prompted men to undertake the most improbable
adventures.

He was not quite eight years old, when, according to his own account,
he formed an impassioned attachment to Mary Duff; and he gives the
following account of his recollection of her, nineteen years
afterwards.

"I have been thinking lately a good deal of Mary Duff. How very odd
that I should have been so 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, 'O Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh,
and your old sweetheart, Mary Duff, is married to Mr C***.' 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 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." But was this agitation the effect of natural feeling,
or of something in the manner in which his mother may have told the
news? He proceeds to inquire. "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 sat gravely making love
in our own way.

"How the deuce did all this occur so early? Where could it
originate? I certainly had no sexual ideas for years afterward, and
yet my misery, my love for that girl, were so violent, that I
sometimes doubt if I have ever been really attached since. Be that
as it may, hearing of her marriage, several years afterward, was as a
thunderstroke. It nearly choked me, to the horror of my mother, and
the astonishment and almost incredulity of everybody; and it is a
phenomenon in my existence, for I was not eight years old, which has
puzzled and will puzzle me to the latest hour of it. And, lately, I
know not why, the RECOLLECTION (NOT the attachment) has recurred as
forcibly as ever: I wonder if she can have the least remembrance of
it or me, or remember pitying her sister Helen, for not having an
admirer too. How very pretty is the perfect image of her in my
memory. Her dark brown hair and hazel eyes, her very dress--I should
be quite grieved to see her now. The reality, however beautiful,
would destroy, or at least confuse, the features of the lovely Peri,
which then existed in her, and still lives in my imagination, at the
distance of more than sixteen years."

Such precocious and sympathetic affections are, as I have already
mentioned, common among children, and is something very different
from the love of riper years; but the extract is curious, and shows
how truly little and vague Byron's experience of the passion must
have been. In his recollection of the girl, be it observed, there is
no circumstance noticed which shows, however strong the mutual
sympathy, the slightest influence of particular attraction. He
recollects the colour of her hair, the hue of her eyes, her very
dress, and he remembers her as a Peri, a spirit; nor does it appear
that his sleepless restlessness, in which the thought of her was ever
uppermost, was produced by jealousy, or doubt, or fear, or any other
concomitant of the passion.

There is another most important circumstance in what may be called
the Aberdonian epoch of Lord Byron's life.

That Byron, in his boyhood, was possessed of lively sensibilities, is
sufficiently clear; that he enjoyed the advantage of indulging his
humour and temper without restraint, is not disputable; and that his
natural temperament made him sensible, in no ordinary degree, to the
beauties of nature, is also abundantly manifest in all his
productions; but it is surprising that this admiration of the
beauties of Nature is but an ingredient in Byron's poetry, and not
its most remarkable characteristic. Deep feelings of dissatisfaction
and disappointment are far more obvious; they constitute, indeed, the
very spirit of his works, and a spirit of such qualities is the least
of all likely to have arisen from the contemplation of magnificent
Nature, or to have been inspired by studying her storms or serenity;
for dissatisfaction and disappointment are the offspring of moral
experience, and have no natural association with the forms of
external things. The habit of associating morose sentiments with any
particular kind of scenery only shows that the sources of the
sullenness arose in similar visible circumstances. It is from these
premises I would infer, that the seeds of Byron's misanthropic
tendencies were implanted during the "silent rages" of his childhood,
and that the effect of mountain scenery, which continued so strong
upon him after he left Scotland, producing the sentiments with which
he has imbued his heroes in the wild circumstances in which he places
them, was mere reminiscence and association. For although the sullen
tone of his mind was not fully brought out until he wrote Childe
Harold, it is yet evident from his Hours of Idleness that he was
tuned to that key before he went abroad. The dark colouring of his
mind was plainly imbibed in a mountainous region, from sombre heaths,
and in the midst of rudeness and grandeur. He had no taste for more
cheerful images, and there are neither rural objects nor villagery in
the scenes he describes, but only loneness and the solemnity of
mountains.

To those who are acquainted with the Scottish character, it is
unnecessary to suggest how very probable it is that Mrs Byron and her
associates were addicted to the oral legends of the district and of
her ancestors, and that the early fancy of the poet was nourished
with the shadowy descriptions in the tales o' the olden time;--at
last this is manifest, that although Byron shows little of the
melancholy and mourning of Ossian, he was yet evidently influenced by
some strong bias and congeniality of taste to brood and cogitate on
topics of the same character as those of that bard. Moreover,
besides the probability of his imagination having been early tinged
with the sullen hue of the local traditions, it is remarkable, that
the longest of his juvenile poems is an imitation of the manner of
the Homer of Morven.

In addition to a natural temperament, kept in a state of continual
excitement, by unhappy domestic incidents, and the lurid legends of
the past, there were other causes in operation around the young poet
that could not but greatly affect the formation of his character.

Descended of a distinguished family, counting among its ancestors the
fated line of the Scottish kings, and reduced almost to extreme
poverty, it is highly probable, both from the violence of her temper,
and the pride of blood, that Mrs Byron would complain of the almost
mendicant condition to which she was reduced, especially so long as
there was reason to fear that her son was not likely to succeed to
the family estates and dignity. Of his father's lineage few
traditions were perhaps preserved, compared with those of his
mother's family; but still enough was known to impress the
imagination. Mr Moore, struck with this circumstance, has remarked,
that "in reviewing the ancestors, both near and remote, of Lord
Byron, it cannot fail to be remarked how strikingly he combined in
his own nature some of the best, and perhaps worst qualities that lie
scattered through the various characters of his predecessors." But
still it is to his mother's traditions of her ancestors that I would
ascribe the conception of the dark and guilty beings which he
delighted to describe. And though it may be contended that there was
little in her conduct to exalt poetical sentiment, still there was a
great deal in her condition calculated to affect and impel an
impassioned disposition. I can imagine few situations more likely to
produce lasting recollections of interest and affection, than that in
which Mrs Byron, with her only child, was placed in Aberdeen.
Whatever might have been the violence of her temper, or the
improprieties of her after-life, the fond and mournful caresses with
which she used to hang over her lame and helpless orphan, must have
greatly contributed to the formation of that morbid sensibility which
became the chief characteristic of his life. At the same time, if it
did contribute to fill his days with anguish and anxieties, it also
undoubtedly assisted the development of his powers; and I am
therefore disposed to conclude, that although, with respect to the
character of the man, the time he spent in Aberdeen can only be
contemplated with pity, mingled with sorrow, still it must have been
richly fraught with incidents of inconceivable value to the genius of
the poet.



CHAPTER III



Arrival at Newstead--Find it in Ruins--The old Lord and his Beetles--
The Earl of Carlisle becomes the Guardian of Byron--The Poet's acute
Sense of his own deformed Foot--His Mother consults a Fortune-teller

Mrs Byron, on her arrival at Newstead Abbey with her son, found it
almost in a state of ruin. After the equivocal affair of the duel,
the old lord lived in absolute seclusion, detested by his tenantry,
at war with his neighbours, and deserted by all his family. He not
only suffered the abbey to fall into decay, but, as far as lay in his
power, alienated the land which should have kept it in repair, and
denuded the estate of the timber. Byron has described the conduct of
the morose peer in very strong terms:--"After his trial he shut
himself up at Newstead, and was in the habit of feeding crickets,
which were his only companions. He made them so tame that they used
to crawl over him, and, when they were too familiar, he whipped them
with a wisp of straw: at his death, it is said, they left the house
in a body."

However this may have been, it is certain that Byron came to an
embarrassed inheritance, both as respected his property and the
character of his race; and, perhaps, though his genius suffered
nothing by the circumstance, it is to be regretted that he was still
left under the charge of his mother: a woman without judgment or
self-command; alternately spoiling her child by indulgence,
irritating him by her self-willed obstinacy, and, what was still
worse, amusing him by her violence, and disgusting him by fits of
inebriety. Sympathy for her misfortunes would be no sufficient
apology for concealing her defects; they undoubtedly had a material
influence on her son, and her appearance was often the subject of his
childish ridicule. She was a short and corpulent person. She rolled
in her gait, and would, in her rage, sometimes endeavour to catch him
for the purpose of inflicting punishment, while he would run round
the room, mocking her menaces and mimicking her motion.

The greatest weakness in Lord Byron's character was a morbid
sensibility to his lameness. He felt it with as much vexation as if
it had been inflicted ignominy. One of the most striking passages in
some memoranda which he has left of his early days, is where, in
speaking of his own sensitiveness on the subject of his deformed
foot, he described the feeling of horror and humiliation that came
over him when his mother, in one of her fits of passion, called him a
"lame brat."

The sense which Byron always retained of the innocent fault in his
foot was unmanly and excessive; for it was not greatly conspicuous,
and he had a mode of walking across a room by which it was scarcely
at all perceptible. I was several days on board the same ship with
him before I happened to discover the defect; it was indeed so well
concealed, that I was in doubt whether his lameness was the effect of
a temporary accident, or a malformation, until I asked Mr Hobhouse.

On their arrival from Scotland, Byron was placed by his mother under
the care of an empirical pretender of the name of Lavender, at
Nottingham, who professed the cure of such cases; and that he might
not lose ground in his education, he was attended by a respectable
schoolmaster, Mr Rodgers, who read parts of Virgil and Cicero with
him. Of this gentleman he always entertained a kind remembrance.
Nor was his regard in this instance peculiar; for it may be said to
have been a distinguishing trait in his character, to recollect with
affection all who had been about him in his youth. The quack,
however, was an exception; whom (from having caused him to suffer
much pain, and whose pretensions, even young as he then was, he
detected) he delighted to expose. On one occasion, he scribbled down
on a sheet of paper, the letters of the alphabet at random, but in
the form of words and sentences, and placing them before Lavender,
asked him gravely, what language it was. "Italian," was the reply,
to the infinite amusement of the little satirist, who burst into a
triumphant laugh at the success of his stratagem.

It is said that about this time the first symptom of his predilection
for rhyming showed itself. An elderly lady, a visitor to his mother,
had been indiscreet enough to give him some offence, and slights he
generally resented with more energy than they often deserved. This
venerable personage entertained a singular notion respecting the
soul, which she believed took its flight at death to the moon. One
day, after a repetition of her original contumely, he appeared before
his nurse in a violent rage, and complained vehemently of the old
lady, declaring that he could not bear the sight of her, and then he
broke out into the following doggerel, which he repeated over and
over, crowing with delight.


In Nottingham county, there lives at Swan-green,
As curs'd an old lady as ever was seen;
And when she does die, which I hope will be soon,
She firmly believes she will go to the moon.


Mrs Byron, by the accession of her son to the family honours and
estate, received no addition to her small income; and he, being a
minor, was unable to make any settlement upon her. A representation
of her case was made to Government, and in consequence she was placed
on the pension-list for 300 pounds a-year.

Byron not having received any benefit from the Nottingham quack, was
removed to London, put under the care of Dr Bailey, and placed in the
school of Dr Glennie, at Dulwich; Mrs Byron herself took a house on
Sloan Terrace. Moderation in all athletic exercises was prescribed
to the boy, but Dr Glennie had some difficulty in restraining his
activity. He was quiet enough while in the house with the Doctor,
but no sooner was he released to play, than he showed as much
ambition to excel in violent exercises as the most robust youth of
the school; an ambition common to young persons who have the
misfortune to labour under bodily defects.

While under the charge of Dr Glennie, he was playful, good-humoured,
and beloved by his companions; and addicted to reading history and
poetry far beyond the usual scope of his age. In these studies he
showed a predilection for the Scriptures; and certainly there are
many traces in his works which show that, whatever the laxity of his
religious principles may have been in after-life, he was not
unacquainted with the records and history of our religion.

During this period, Mrs Byron often indiscreetly interfered with the
course of his education; and if his classical studies were in
consequence not so effectually conducted as they might have been, his
mind derived some of its best nutriment from the loose desultory
course of his reading.

Among the books to which the boys at Dr Glennie's school had access
was a pamphlet containing the narrative of a shipwreck on the coast
of Arracan, filled with impressive descriptions. It had not
attracted much public attention, but it was a favourite with the
pupils, particularly with Byron, and furnished him afterwards with
the leading circumstances in the striking description of the
shipwreck in Don Juan.

Although the rhymes upon the lunar lady of Notts are supposed to have
been the first twitter of his muse, he has said himself, "My first
dash into poetry was as early as 1800. It was the ebullition of a
passion for my first cousin, Margaret Parker. I was then about
twelve, she rather older, perhaps a year." And it is curious to
remark, that in his description of this beautiful girl there is the
same lack of animal admiration which we have noticed in all his
loves; he says of her:--

"I do not recollect scarcely anything equal to the transparent beauty
of my cousin, or to the sweetness of her temper, during the short
period of our intimacy: she looked as if she had been made out of a
rainbow, all beauty and peace." This is certainly poetically
expressed; but there was more true love in Pygmalion's passion for
his statue, and in the Parisian maiden's adoration of the Apollo.

When he had been nearly two years under the tuition of Dr Glennie, he
was removed to Harrow, chiefly in consequence of his mother's
interference with his studies, and especially by withdrawing him
often from school.

During the time he was under the care of Dr Glennie, he was more
amiable than at any other period of his life, a circumstance which
justifies the supposition, that, had he been left more to the
discipline of that respectable person, he would have proved a better
man; for, however much his heart afterwards became incrusted with the
leprosy of selfishness, at this period his feelings were warm and
kind. Towards his nurse he evinced uncommon affection, which he
cherished as long as she lived. He presented her with his watch, the
first he possessed, and also a full-length miniature of himself, when
he was only between seven and eight years old, representing him with
a profusion of curling locks, and in his hands a bow and arrow. The
sister of this woman had been his first nurse, and after he had left
Scotland he wrote to her, in a spirit which betokened a gentle and
sincere heart, informing her with much joy of a circumstance highly
important to himself. It was to tell her that at last he had got his
foot so far restored as to be able to put on a common boot, an event
which he was sure would give her great pleasure; to himself it is
difficult to imagine any incident which could have been more
gratifying.

I dwell with satisfaction on these descriptions of his early
dispositions; for, although there are not wanting instances of
similar warm-heartedness in his later years, still he never formed
any attachments so pure and amiable after he went to Harrow. The
change of life came over him, and when the vegetable period of
boyhood was past, the animal passions mastered all the softer
affections of his character.

In the summer of 1801 he accompanied his mother to Cheltenham, and
while he resided there the views of the Malvern hills recalled to his
memory his enjoyments amid the wilder scenery of Aberdeenshire. The
recollections were reimpressed on his heart and interwoven with his
strengthened feelings. But a boy gazing with emotion on the hills at
sunset, because they remind him of the mountains where he passed his
childhood, is no proof that he is already in heart and imagination a
poet. To suppose so is to mistake the materials for the building.

The delight of Byron in contemplating the Malvern hills, was not
because they resembled the scenery of Lochynagar, but because they
awoke trains of thought and fancy, associated with recollections of
that scenery. The poesy of the feeling lay not in the beauty of the
objects, but in the moral effect of the traditions, to which these
objects served as talismans of the memory. The scene at sunset
reminded him of the Highlands, but it was those reminiscences which
similar scenes recalled, that constituted the impulse which gave life
and elevation to his reflections. There is not more poesy in the
sight of mountains than of plains; it is the local associations that
throw enchantment over all scenes, and resemblance that awakens them,
binding them to new connections: nor does this admit of much
controversy; for mountainous regions, however favourable to musical
feeling, are but little to poetical.

The Welsh have no eminent bard; the Swiss have no renown as poets;
nor are the mountainous regions of Greece, nor of the Apennines,
celebrated for poetry. The Highlands of Scotland, save the equivocal
bastardy of Ossian, have produced no poet of any fame, and yet
mountainous countries abound in local legends, which would seem to be
at variance with this opinion, were it not certain, though I cannot
explain the cause, that local poetry, like local language or local
melody, is in proportion to the interest it awakens among the local
inhabitants, weak and ineffectual in its influence on the sentiments
of the general world. The "Rans de Vaches," the most celebrated of
all local airs, is tame and commonplace,--unmelodious, to all ears
but those of the Swiss "forlorn in a foreign land."

While in Cheltenham, Mrs Byron consulted a fortune-teller respecting
the destinies of her son, and according to her feminine notions, she
was very cunning and guarded with the sybil, never suspecting that
she might have been previously known, and, unconscious to herself, an
object of interest to the spaewife. She endeavoured to pass herself
off as a maiden lady, and regarded it as no small testimony of the
wisdom of the oracle, that she declared her to be not only a married
woman, but the mother of a son who was lame. After such a marvellous
proof of second-sightedness, it may easily be conceived with what awe
and faith she listened to the prediction, that his life should be in
danger from poison before he was of age, and that he should be twice
married; the second time to a foreign lady. Whether it was this same
fortune-teller who foretold that he would, in his twenty-seventh
year, incur some great misfortune, is not certain; but, considering
his unhappy English marriage, and his subsequent Italian liaison with
the Countess Guiccioli, the marital prediction was not far from
receiving its accomplishment. The fact of his marriage taking place
in his twenty-seventh year, is at least a curious circumstance, and
has been noticed by himself with a sentiment of superstition.



CHAPTER IV



Placed at Harrow--Progress there--Love for Miss Chaworth--His
Reading--Oratorical Powers

In passing from the quiet academy of Dulwich Grove to the public
school of Harrow, the change must have been great to any boy--to
Byron it was punishment; and for the first year and a half he hated
the place. In the end, however, he rose to be a leader in all the
sports and mischiefs of his schoolfellows; but it never could be said
that he was a popular boy, however much he was distinguished for
spirit and bravery; for if he was not quarrelsome, he was sometimes
vindictive. Still it could not have been to any inveterate degree;
for, undoubtedly, in his younger years, he was susceptible of warm
impressions from gentle treatment, and his obstinacy and arbitrary
humour were perhaps more the effects of unrepressed habit than of
natural bias; they were the prickles which surrounded his genius in
the bud.

At Harrow he acquired no distinction as a student; indeed, at no
period was he remarkable for steady application. Under Dr Glennie he
had made but little progress; and it was chiefly in consequence of
his backwardness that he was removed from his academy. When placed
with Dr Drury, it was with an intimation that he had a cleverness
about him, but that his education had been neglected.

The early dislike which Byron felt towards the Earl of Carlisle is
abundantly well known, and he had the magnanimity to acknowledge that
it was in some respects unjust. But the antipathy was not all on one
side; nor will it be easy to parallel the conduct of the Earl with
that of any guardian. It is but justice, therefore, to Byron, to
make the public aware that the dislike began on the part of Lord
Carlisle, and originated in some distaste which he took to Mrs
Byron's manners, and at the trouble she sometimes gave him on account
of her son.

Dr Drury, in his communication to Mr Moore respecting the early
history of Byron, mentions a singular circumstance as to this
subject, which we record with the more pleasure, because Byron has
been blamed, and has blamed himself, for his irreverence towards Lord
Carlisle, while it appears that the fault lay with the Earl.

"After some continuance at Harrow," says Dr Drury, "and when the
powers of his mind had begun to expand, the late Lord Carlisle, his
relation, desired to see me in town. I waited on his Lordship. His
object was to inform me of Lord Byron's expectations of property when
he came of age, which he represented as contracted, and to inquire
respecting his abilities. On the former circumstance I made no
remark; as to the latter, I replied, 'He has talents, my Lord, which
will add lustre to his rank.' 'Indeed,' said his Lordship, with a
degree of surprise, that, according to my feelings, did not express
in it all the satisfaction I expected."

Lord Carlisle had, indeed, much of the Byron humour in him. His
mother was a sister of the homicidal lord, and possessed some of the
family peculiarity: she was endowed with great talent, and in her
latter days she exhibited great singularity. She wrote beautiful
verses and piquant epigrams among others, there is a poetical
effusion of her pen addressed to Mrs Greville, on her Ode to
Indifference, which, at the time, was much admired, and has been,
with other poems of her Ladyship's, published in Pearch's collection.
After moving, for a long time, as one of the most brilliant orbs in
the sphere of fashion, she suddenly retired, and like her morose
brother, shut herself up from the world. While she lived in this
seclusion, she became an object of the sportive satire of the late Mr
Fox, who characterized her as


Carlisle, recluse in pride and rags.


I have heard a still coarser apostrophe by the same gentleman. It
seems they had quarrelled, and on his leaving her in the drawing-
room, she called after him, that he might go about his business, for
she did not care two skips of a louse for him. On coming to the
hall, finding paper and ink on the table, he wrote two lines in
answer, and sent it up to her Ladyship, to the effect that she always
spoke of what was running in her head.

Byron has borne testimony to the merits of his guardian, her son, as
a tragic poet, by characterizing his publications as paper books. It
is, however, said that they nevertheless showed some talent, and that
The Father's Revenge, one of the tragedies, was submitted to the
judgment of Dr Johnson, who did not despise it.

But to return to the progress of Byron at Harrow; it is certain that
notwithstanding the affectionate solicitude of Dr Drury to encourage
him, he never became an eminent scholar; at least, we have his own
testimony to that effect, in the fourth canto of Childe Harold; the
lines, however, in which that testimony stands recorded, are among
the weakest he ever penned.


May he who will his recollections rake
And quote in classic raptures, and awake
The hills with Latin echoes: I abhorr'd
Too much to conquer, for the poet's sake,
The drill'd, dull lesson forced down word by word,
In my repugnant youth with pleasure to record.


And, as an apology for the defect, he makes the following remarks in
a note subjoined:--

"I wish to express that we become tired of the task before we can
comprehend the beauty; that we learn by rote before we can get by
heart; that the freshness is worn away, and the future pleasure and
advantage deadened and destroyed by the didactic anticipation, at an
age when we can neither feel nor understand the power of
compositions, which it requires an acquaintance with life, as well as
Latin and Greek, to relish or to reason upon. For the same reason,
we never can be aware of the fulness of some of the finest passages
of Shakspeare ('To be, or not to be,' for instance), from the habit
of having them hammered into us at eight years old, as an exercise
not of mind but of memory; so that when we are old enough to enjoy
them, the taste is gone, and the appetite palled. In some parts of
the Continent, young persons are taught from mere common authors, and
do not read the best classics until their maturity. I certainly do
not speak on this point from any pique or aversion towards the place
of my education. I was not a slow or an idle boy; and I believe no
one could be more attached to Harrow than I have always been, and
with reason: a part of the time passed there was the happiest of my
life; and my preceptor, the Rev. Dr Joseph Drury, was the best and
worthiest friend I ever possessed; whose warnings I have remembered
but too well, though too late, when I have erred; and whose counsels
I have but followed when I have done well and wisely. If ever this
imperfect record of my feelings towards him should reach his eyes,
let it remind him of one who never thinks of him but with gratitude
and veneration; of one who would more gladly boast of having been his
pupil if, by more closely following his injunctions, he could reflect
any honour upon his instructor."

Lord Byron, however, is not singular in his opinion of the inutility
of premature classical studies; and notwithstanding the able manner
in which the late Dean Vincent defended public education, we have
some notion that his reasoning upon this point will not be deemed
conclusive. Milton, says Dr Vincent, complained of the years that
were wasted in teaching the dead languages. Cowley also complained
that classical education taught words only and not things; and
Addison deemed it an inexpiable error, that boys with genius or
without were all to be bred poets indiscriminately. As far, then, as
respects the education of a poet, we should think that the names of
Milton, Cowley, Addison, and Byron would go well to settle the
question; especially when it is recollected how little Shakspeare was
indebted to the study of the classics, and that Burns knew nothing of
them at all. I do not, however, adopt the opinion as correct;
neither do I think that Dean Vincent took a right view of the
subject; for, as discipline, the study of the classics may be highly
useful, at the same time, the mere hammering of Greek and Latin into
English cannot be very conducive to the refinement of taste or the
exaltation of sentiment. Nor is there either common sense or correct
logic in the following observations made on the passage and note,
quoted by the anonymous author of Childe Harold's Monitor.

"This doctrine of antipathies, contracted by the impatience of youth
against the noblest authors of antiquity, from the circumstance of
having been made the vehicle of early instruction, is a most
dangerous doctrine indeed; since it strikes at the root, not only of
all pure taste, but of all praiseworthy industry. It would, if acted
upon (as Harold by the mention of the Continental practice of using
inferior writers in the business of tuition would seem to recommend),
destroy the great source of the intellectual vigour of our
countrymen."

This is, undoubtedly, assuming too much; for those who have objected
to the years "wasted" in teaching the dead languages, do not admit
that the labour of acquiring them either improves the taste or adds
to the vigour of the understanding; and, therefore, before the
soundness of the opinion of Milton, of Cowley, of Addison, and of
many other great men can be rejected, it falls on those who are of
Dean Vincent's opinion, and that of Childe Harold's Monitor, to prove
that the study of the learned languages is of so much primary
importance as they claim for it.

But it appears that Byron's mind, during the early period of his
residence at Harrow, was occupied with another object than his
studies, and which may partly account for his inattention to them.
He fell in love with Mary Chaworth. "She was," he is represented to
have said, "several years older than myself, but at my age boys like
something older than themselves, as they do younger later in life.
Our estates adjoined, but owing to the unhappy circumstances of the
feud (the affair of the fatal duel), our families, as is generally
the case with neighbours, who happen to be near relations, were never
on terms of more than common civility, scarcely those. She was the
beau ideal of all that my youthful fancy could paint of the
beautiful! and I have taken all my fables about the celestial nature
of women from the perfection my imagination created in her. I say
created, for I found her, like the rest of the sex, anything but
angelic. I returned to Harrow, after my trip to Cheltenham, more
deeply enamoured than ever, and passed the next holidays at Newstead.
I now began to fancy myself a man, and to make love in earnest. Our
meetings were stolen ones, and my letters passed through the medium
of a confidant. A gate leading from Mr Chaworth's grounds to those
of my mother, was the place of our interviews, but the ardour was all
on my side; I was serious, she was volatile. She liked me as a
younger brother, and treated and laughed at me as a boy; she,
however, gave me her picture, and that was something to make verses
upon. Had I married Miss Chaworth, perhaps the whole tenor of my
life would have been different; she jilted me, however, but her
marriage proved anything but a happy one." It is to this attachment
that we are indebted for the beautiful poem of The Dream, and the
stanzas beginning

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