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, was all wasted in the space of two years; at the end of which the unfortunate lady found herself in possession of only £150 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, the interest on which reduced her income to £135; but, much to her credit, she contrived to live without increasing her embarrassments until the death of her grandmother, when she received £1122, 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
