Ær. 27. STAGE ANECDOTES. "PS.-This is a sad scribbler's letter; but the next shall be 'more of this world.'" As, after this letter, there occur but few allusions to his connection with the Drury Lane Management, I shall here avail myself of the opportunity to give some extracts from his Detached Thoughts," containing recollections of his short acquaintance with the interior of the theatre. "When I belonged to the Drury Lane Committee and was one of the Sub-Committee of Management, the number of plays upon the shelves were about five hundred. Conceiving that amongst these there must be some of merit, in person and by proxy I caused an investigation. I do not think that of those which I saw there was one which could be conscientiously tolerated. There never were such things as most of them! Mathurin was very kindly recommended to me by Walter Scott, to whom I had recourse, firstly, in the hope that he would do something for us himself; and, secondly, in despair, that he would point out to us any young (or old) writer of promise. Mathurin sent his Bertram and a letter without his address, so that at first I could give him no answer. When I at last hit upon his residence, I sent him a favourable answer and something more substantial. His play succeeded; but I was at that time absent from England. "I tried Coleridge too: but he had nothing feasible in hand at the time. Mr. Sotheby obligingly offered all his tregedies, and I pledged myself, and, notwithstanding many squabbles with my Committed Brethren, did get Ivan' accepted, read, and the parts distributed. But, lo! in the very heart of the matter, upon some tepidness on the part of Kean, or warmth on that of the author, Sotheby withdrew his play. Sir James Bland Burgess did also present four tragedies and a 1 ["I remember declining to write for the stage, and alleging in excuse, not only the probability that I might not succeed, but the unpleasant yet necessary and inevitable subjection in which I must, as a dramatic writer, be necessarily kept by the good folks of the green-room.' Cæteraque, as I added, ingenio non subeunda meo." Byron sprang up and crossed the room with great vivacity, saying, No, by G-', nor by mine either!' I cannot but think he had been thinking of some dramatic attempt, and that my answer had touched his pride."WALTER SCOTT, MS.] 2 A correspondent of one of the Monthly Miscellanies (Mr. James Smith) gives the following account of this incident: "During Lord Byron's administration, a ballet was invented by the elder Byrne, in which Miss Smith (since Mrs. Oscar Byrne) had a pas seul. This the lady wished 287 farce, and I moved green-room and SubCommittee, but they would not. "Then the scenes I had to go through! the authors, and the authoresses, and the milliners, and the wild Irishmen, —the people from Brighton, from Blackwall, from Chatham, from Cheltenham, from Dublin, from Dundee,—who came in upon me! to all of whom it was proper to give a civil answer, and a hearing, and a reading. Mrs. Glover's father, an Irish dancingmaster of sixty years, calling upon me to request to play Archer, dressed in silk stockings on a frosty morning to show his legs (which were certainly good and Irish for his age, and had been still better,) — Miss Emma Somebody, with a play entitled The Bandit of Bohemia,' or some such title or production, - - Mr. O'Higgins, then resident at Richmond, with an Irish tragedy, in which the unities could not fail to be observed, for the protagonist was chained by the leg to a pillar during the chief part of the performance. He was a wild man, of a salvage appearance, and the difficulty of not laughing at him was only to be got over by reflecting upon the probable consequences of such cachinnation. 66 -- As I am really a civil and polite person, and do hate giving pain when it can be avoided, I sent them up to Douglas Kinnaird, who is a man of business, and sufficiently ready with a negative, and left them to settle with him; and as at the beginning of next year I went abroad, I have since been little aware of the progress of the theatres. "Players are said to be an impracticable people. They are so; but I managed to steer clear of any disputes with them, and excepting one debate 2 with the elder Byrne about Miss Smith's pas de — (something I forget the technicals,)—I do not remember any litigation of my own. I used to protect Miss Smith, because she was like Lady Jane Harley in the face, and likenesses go a great -- to remove to a later period in the ballet. The balletmaster refused, and the lady swore she would not dance it at all. The music incidental to the dance began to play, and the lady walked off the stage. Both parties flounced into the green-room to lay the case before Lord Byron, who happened to be the only person in that apartment. The noble committee-man made an award in favour of Miss Smith, and both complainants rushed angrily out of the room at the instant of my entering it. If you had come a minute sooner,' said Lord Byron, 'you would have heard a curious matter decided on by me: a question of dancing!-by me,' added he, looking down at the lame limb, whom Nature from my birth has prohibited from taking a single step.' His coun. tenance fell after he had uttered this, as if he had said too much; and for a moment there was an embarrassing silence on both sides." way with me. Indeed, in general, I left such things to my more bustling colleagues, who used to reprove me seriously for not being able to take such things in hand without buffooning with the histrions, or throwing things into confusion by treating light matters with levity. "Then the Committee ! - then the SubCommittee ! we were but few, but never agreed. There was Peter Moore who contradicted Kinnaird, and Kinnaird who contradicted every body: then our two managers, Rae and Dibdin; and our secretary, Ward! and yet we were all very zealous and in earnest to do good and so forth. George Lamb furnished us with prologues to our revived old English plays; but was not pleased with me for complimenting him as the Upton' of our theatre (Mr. Upton is or was the poet who writes the songs for Astley's), and almost gave up prologuing in consequence. "In the pantomime of 1815-16 there was a representation of the masquerade of 1814, given by us youth' of Watier's Club to Wellington and Co. Douglas Kinnaird and one or two others, with myself, put on masks, and went on the stage with the oi oo, to see the effect of a theatre from the stage :it is very grand. Douglas danced among the figuranti too, and they were puzzled to find out who we were, as being more than their number. It was odd enough that Douglas Kinnaird and I should have been both at the real masquerade, and afterwards in the mimic one of the same, on the stage of Drury Lane theatre." LETTER 228. TO MR. MOORE. "Terrace, Piccadilly, October 31. 1815. "I have not been able to ascertain precisely the time of duration of the stock market; but I believe it is a good time for selling out, and I hope so. First, because I shall see you; and, next, because I shall receive certain monies on behalf of Lady B., the which will materially conduce to my comfort, -I wanting (as the duns say) to make up a sum.' 'Yesterday, I dined out with a large-ish party, where were Sheridan and Colman, Harry Harris of Covent Garden, and his brother, Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Douglas Kinnaird, and others, of note and notoriety. Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogethery, then inarticulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again without stumbling; and, to crown all, Kinnaird and I had to conduct Sheridan down a d-d corkscrew staircase, which had certainly been constructed before the discovery of fermented liquors, and to which no legs, however crooked, could possibly accommodate themselves. We deposited him safe at home, where his man, evidently used to the business, waited to receive him in the hall. reason, "Both he and Colman were, as usual, very good; but I carried away much wine, and the wine had previously carried away my memory; so that all was hiccup and happiness for the last hour or so, and I am not impregnated with any of the conversation. Perhaps you heard of a late answer of Sheridan to the watchman who found him bereft of that divine particle of air,' called He, the watchman, who found Sherry in the street, fuddled and bewildered, and almost insensible. Who are you, sir?'- no answer. What's your name?' —a hiccup. What's your name?' - Answer, in a slow, deliberate, and impassive tone- • Wilberforce !!!' Is not that Sherry_all over? - and, to my mind, excellent. Poor fellow, his very dregs are better than the first sprightly runnings' of others. 66 1 My paper is full, and I have a grievous head-ach. "P.S.-Lady B. is in full progress. Next month will bring to light (with the aid of Juno Lucina, fer opem, or rather opes, for the last are most wanted,) the tenth wonder of the world-Gil Blas being the eighth, and he (my son's father) the ninth." LETTER 229. TO MR. MOORE. "November 4. 1815. "Had you not bewildered my head with the stocks,' your letter would have been answered directly. Hadn't I to go to the city? and hadn't I to remember what to ask when I got there? and hadn't I forgotten it? I "I should be undoubtedly delighted to see you; but I don't like to urge against your reasons my own inclinations. Come you must soon, for stay you won't. know you of old; you have been too much leavened with London to keep long out of it. "Lewis is going to Jamaica to suck his sugar canes. He sails in two days; I inclose you his farewell note. I saw him last night at Drury Lane Theatre for the last time previous to his voyage. Poor fellow ! he is really a good man- an excellent man - he left me his walking-stick and a pot of Ær. 27. PECUNIARY EMBARRASSMENTS. preserved ginger. I shall never eat the last without tears in my eyes, it is so hot. We have had a devil of a row among our ballerinas. Miss Smith has been wronged about a hornpipe. The Committee have interfered; but Byrne, the d-d ballet-master, won't budge a step. I am furious, so is George Lamb. Kinnaird is very glad, because he don't know why; and I am very sorry, for the same reason. To-day I dine with Kd. - we are to have Sheridan and Colman again; and to-morrow, once more, at Sir Gilbert Heathcote's. "Leigh Hunt has written a real good and very original Poem, which I think will be a great hit. You can have no notion how very well it is written, nor should I, had I not redde it. As to us, Tom - eh, when art thou out? If you think the verses worth it, I would rather they were embalmed in the Irish Melodies, than scattered abroad in a separate song-much rather. But when are thy great things out? I mean the Po of Posthy Shah Nameh. It is very kind in Jeffrey to like the Hebrew Melodies. 1 Some of the fellows here preferred Sternhold and Hopkins, and said so; - 'the fiend receive their souls therefor!' "I must go and dress for dinner. Poor dear Murat, what an end! You know, I suppose, that his white plume used to be a rallying point in battle, like Henry IV.'s. He refused a confessor and a bandage; so would neither suffer his soul or body to be bandaged. You shall have more to-morrow or next day. Ever, &c." 289 Terms and time, I leave to his pleasure and your discernment; but this I will say, that I think it the safest thing you ever engaged in. I speak to you as a man of business; were I to talk to you as a reader or a critic, I should say it was a very wonderful and beautiful performance, with just enough of fault to make its beauties more remarked and remarkable. "And now to the last-my own, which I feel ashamed of after the others;- - publish or not as you like, I don't care one damn. If you don't, no one else shall, and I never thought or dreamed of it, except as one in the collection. If it is worth being in the fourth volume, put it there and nowhere else; and if not, put it in the fire. 66 Yours, CHAPTER XXV. 1815-1816. "N." INCREASED PECUNIARY EMBARRASSMENTS. -LETTERS TO MURRAY AND MOORE.BIRTH OF AUGUSTA ADA BYRON.SEPARATION. ANECDOTES. LETTERS TO MOORE, ROGERS, AND MURRAY. — PUBLIC OUTCRY. -NEWSPAPER ABUSE. PUBLICATION OF THE SIEGE OF CORINTH AND OF PARISINA. THOSE embarrassments which, from a review of his affairs previous to the mar riage, he had clearly foreseen would, before long, overtake him, were not slow in realising his worst omens. The increased expenses induced by his new mode of life, with but very little increase of means to meet them, the long arrears of early pecuniary obligations, as well as the claims which had been, gradually, since then, accumulating, all pressed upon him now with collected force, and reduced him to some of the worst humiliations of poverty. He had been even driven, by the necessity of encountering such demands, to the trying expedient of parting with his books,-which circumstance coming to Mr. Murray's ears, that gentleman in Than sold thyself to death and shame For a meanly royal name." See Works, p. 561.] Nourishing a wild idea of recovering his crown, Murat invaded the Neapolitan territory at the head of about two hundred men, was attacked by the country people, fought as he was wont, was made prisoner, tried by martial law, and condemned, October 13. 1815.] 3 [Coleridge's "Zapolya, a Christmas Tale, in two parts," was published in 1817.] U stantly forwarded to him 1500, with an assurance that another sum of the same amount should be at his service in a few weeks; and that if such assistance should not be sufficient, Mr. Murray was most ready to dispose of the copyrights of all his past works for his use. This very liberal offer Lord Byron acknowledged in the following letter: LETTER 231. TO MR. MURRAY. "November 14. 1815. "I return you your bills not accepted, but certainly not unhonoured. Your present offer is a favour which I would accept from you, if I accepted such from any man. Had such been my intention, I can assure I would have asked you fairly, and as you freely as you would give; and I cannot say conduct. more of my confidence or your The circumstances which induce me to part with my books, though sufficiently, are not immediately, pressing. I have made up my mind to them, and there's an end. "Had I been disposed to trespass on your kindness in this way, it would have been before now; but I am not sorry to have an opportunity of declining it, as it sets my opinion of you, and indeed of human nature, in a different light from that in which I have been accustomed to consider it. Believe me very truly, &c." TO MR. MURRAY. "December 25. 1815. "I send some lines, written some time ago, and intended as an opening to 'The Siege of Corinth.' I had forgotten them, and am not sure that they had not better be left out now :- on that, you and your Synod can determine. Yours, &c." The following are the lines alluded to in this note. They are written in the loosest form of that rambling style of metre which his admiration of Mr. Coleridge's "Christabel” led him, at this time, to adopt; and he judged rightly, perhaps, in omitting them as the opening of his poem. They are, however, too full of spirit and character to be lost. Though breathing the thick atmosphere of Piccadilly when he wrote them, it is plain that his fancy was far away, among the sunny hills and vales of Greece; and their contrast with the tame life he was leading at the moment, but gave to his recollections a fresher spring and force. "The last tidings recently heard of Dervish (one of the Arnaouts who followed me) state him to be in revolt "In the year since Jesus died for men, Riding o'er land, and sailing o'er sea. We forded the river, and clomb the high hill, All our thoughts and words had scope, "But some are dead, and some are gone, That look along Epirus' valleys Over the earth, and through the air, 66 "January 5. 1816. 'I hope Mrs. M. is quite re-established. The little girl was born on the 10th of December last; her name is Augusta Ada (the second a very antique family name, I believe not used since the reign of King John). She was, and is, very flourishing and fat, and reckoned very large for her days-squalls and sucks incessantly. Are you answered? Her mother is doing very well, and up again. "I have now been married a year on the second of this month-heigh-ho! I have seen nobody lately much worth noting, except Sebastiani and another general of the Gauls, once or twice at dinners out of doors. upon the mountains, at the head of some of the bands common in that country in times of trouble." ÆT. 27. BIRTH OF AUGUSTA ADA. "I would gladly—or, rather, sorrowfully comply with your request of a dirge for the poor girl you mention.3 But how can I write on one I have never seen or known? Besides, you will do it much better yourself. I could not write upon any thing, without some personal experience and foundation; far less on a theme so peculiar. Now, you have both in this case; and, if you had neither, you have more imagination, and would never fail. "This is but a dull scrawl, and I am but a dull fellow. Just at present, I am absorbed in 500 contradictory contemplations, though with but one object in view—which will probably end in nothing, as most things we wish do. But never mind, as somebody says, 'for the blue sky bends over all.' I only could be glad, if it bent over me where it is a little bluer; like the 'skyish top of blue Olympus,' which, by the way, looked very white when I last saw. "Ever, &c." On reading over the foregoing letter, I was much struck by the tone of melancholy that pervaded it; and well knowing it to be the habit of the writer's mind to seek relief, when under the pressure of any disquiet or disgust, in that sense of freedom which told him that there were homes for him elsewhere, I could perceive, I thought, in his recollections of the blue Olympus," some return of the restless and roving spirit, which unhappiness or impatience always called up in his mind. I had, indeed, at the time when he sent me those melancholy verses, "There's not a joy this world can give," &c. felt some vague apprehensions as to the mood into which his spirits then seemed to be sinking, and, in acknowledging the receipt of the verses, thus tried to [Count Sebastiani, now the ambassador from the court of Louis Philippe to the court of London. 1838.] 2 [Count Flahaut - who, in June 1817, married the Hon. Margaret Mercer Elphinstone; now Baroness Keith. 1838.] 291 banter him out of it: - "But why thus on your stool of melancholy again, Master Stephen? This will never do-it plays the deuce with all the matter-of-fact duties of life, and you must bid adieu to it. Youth is the only time when one can be melancholy with impunity. As life itself grows sad and serious we have nothing for it but to be as much as possible the contrary." My absence from London during the whole of this year had deprived me of all opportunities of judging for myself how far the appearances of his domestic state gave promise of happiness; nor had any rumours reached me which at all inclined me to suspect that the course of his married life hitherto exhibited less smoothness than such unions, -on the surface, at least, generally wear. The strong and affectionate terms in which, soon after the marriage, he had, in some of the letters I have given, declared his own happiness-a declaration which his known frankness left me no room to question— had, in no small degree, tended to still those apprehensions which my first view of the lot he had chosen for himself awakened. I could not, however, but observe that these indications of a contented heart soon ceased. His mention of the partner of his home became more rare and formal, and there was observable, I thought, through some of his letters, a feeling of unquiet and weariness that brought back all those gloomy anticipations with which I had, from the first, regarded his fate. This last letter of his, in particular, struck me as full of sad omen, and, in the course of my answer, I thus noticed to him the impression it had made on me"And so you are a whole year married! – 'It was last year I vow'd to thee That fond impossibility.' Do you know, my dear B., there was a something in your last letter-a sort of unquiet mystery, as well as a want of your usual elasticity of spirit which has hung upon my mind unpleasantly ever since. I long to be near you, that I might know how you really look and feel; for these letters tell nothing, and one word, a quattr'occhi, is worth whole reams of correspondence. But only do tell me you are happier than that letter has led me to fear, and I shall be satisfied. It was in a few weeks after this latter 3 I had mentioned to him, as a subject worthy of his best powers of pathos, a melancholy event which had just occurred in my neighbourhood, and to which I have myself made allusion in one of the Sacred Melodies "Weep not for her." |