Lord Byron's Novel Page 6

  AS I HAVE HEREIN met the need for an Introduction or Prolegomenon, I have had in addition the temerity to provide a number of notes, illuminating where I can the matter of this curious tale, and connecting its accounts to the scenes of my father’s life, of which, I am obliged to admit, I have often little personal knowledge. It has however been to me a source of diversion, even of delight and solace in difficult and painful times, to have thus laboured over those connexions which I was able to discover, and to expound; and I beg those readers who find my glosses presumptuous or otiose simply to pass over them, as they might the troublesome informations of a guide to a cathedral or castle, who has only his passion and his devotion to sustain him.

  NOTES FOR THE 1ST CHAPTER

  The Laird his father: The wickedness of Byrons past has become legendary, and as such contains a great admixture of untruth. Ld. B. himself delighted, it is reported, in shocking his friends with tales of his ancestor, William, the fifth Lord, who despoiled his estates and murdered a man in an irregular duel; Ld. B.’s own father, ‘Mad Jack’, went through the estate of his first and then of his second wife (Ld. B.’s mother) in an astonishingly short time. He fled to the Continent to avoid his debtors when his son was but two years old, and never saw him again, for he died abroad at the age of thirty-four, penniless, perhaps by his own hand. When I was two years old, my father left England forever; he died in Greece at the age of thirty-six.

  his wife’s Scotch estates: Ld. B. is pleased to set his story in a habitation like his own Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire, but transported to the land he liked to consider himself to have sprung from; indeed he talked of ‘we Scots’, &c., often enough. His mother, Catherine Gordon, was indeed Scottish, and possessed estates at Gight—those that her husband sold for debt—and from his infancy to the age of ten he lived in Aberdeen, and swam in the Dee. His mother, he said, was inordinately proud of her descent from the Stuarts, and looked down upon the ‘Southron’ Byrons.

  Kendals drops: Lord Byron at the end of his time in England was known to use laudanum—in a combination with stimulants such as claret or brandy. It is a palliative known to many with afflictions both physical and mental, though now-a-days morphine is preferred to the old-fashioned black drops. My own physicians recommend a regimen of alternating opiates with stimulants, which has proved beneficial at times, though the prospect of deliberately lowering a mental exaltation by the use of a narcotic is at times repellent even to one who knows the consequences of too high, and too rapid, a flight.

  his pistols within reach: Lord Byron was an excellent shot with the pistol, though he said himself that his hand shook, and he had to train himself specially to squeeze the trigger at the right moment. When I was a child it was thought possible that my father would send agents to my mother’s house to abduct me; possibly he would himself return to England for that purpose. My grandmother, Lady Noel, kept loaded pistols by her bedside to foil such attempts; the thought of that kindly and gentle lady actually employing them seems as amusing now to me as her conviction of sinister plots afoot.

  his father’s tame bear: Byron kept a bear when he was at Cambridge, and for a time it was resident at Newstead Abbey, where it amused his friends. Ld. B. was always surrounded by animals in whatever household he established—dogs in particular were favourites, but the poet Shelley remembered coming upon a crane, a goat, a monkey, and cats as well as dogs at his house in Pisa. A love and respect for animals is a trait that I discovered in myself long before I learned that I shared it with my father. The beasts that Descartes regarded as automata without more feeling than a clock-work will one day be shewn to be more like ourselves—or, ourselves to be more like them—than we can now conceive.

  somnambulations: Lord Byron could not have known of the speculations of Dr Elliotson and others concerning what that physician calls ‘diseased sleep’, a state, like that a poet or saint may fall into, in which the most vivid visions are imparted, as visions of palaces and damsels were to Coleridge at Nether Stowey, till he was awakened by a person from Porlock come calling. (Those regions, so poetical in themselves, are well known to me. Coleridge’s visions were excited as well by the use of opium.) Dr Elliotson’s remarkable successes in the use of those techniques of special sleep once called Mesmeric—but which I prefer to term Hypnotic—are well known. The light and fantastical treatment of the subject in the later pages of this work proceed from the author’s understandable ignorance of the astonishing development of this science in our time; nevertheless, as poets can, he saw far into its possibilities.

  Albania: Lord Byron’s journey in youth to Albania, told of in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a journey undertaken at a time when few Englishmen had ever ventured there, was a signal part of his fame, or notoriety. He had indeed a love of movement, an imperviousness to discomfort, and what Dr Johnson calls ‘a willingness to be pleased’ which is the sign of a good traveller. Whether his descriptions of the land, the people, their customs, &c., be accurate, and whence he derived them if not from his own experience, which was after all quite brief—none of this I know very certainly, but my researches continue.

  Pacha: Ali Pasha (1741–1822, as near as I can determine), whom Byron visited at his capital Tepelene, on his journey to Albania. In his letters to his mother Byron describes this figure, and his painted grandsons, much as they are here described.

  a long white kilt of softest wool, &c.: This describes exactly the Albanian dress my father purchased for himself when he was in that country, and dressed in which he was painted by Phillips. That picture hung over the mantel at my grandmother’s house, Kirkby Mallory, where, for some time after I was born, my mother and I dwelt with her mother. The picture was covered with a cloth of green baize, and I was not allowed to look upon it—for what baleful influences might flow from thence into my young being? Such a shrine—with its cloth drawn before the holy of holies, as the curtain is drawn before the scroll of Scripture in a Jewish temple—ought to have fascinated, rather than discouraging; tempted, rather than saving; and perhaps it did—but in actual fact I do not remember it there at all, and only when the picture itself was given to me after my marriage was the story told me of its concealment. Strange are the ways of the zealous & careful parent.

  • TWO •

  In which a Father and a Son are joined, and of the consequences

  HOW ALI PASSED the next months in the Pacha’s court—how he learned the arts of war, and of horsemanship; how he accompanied the patrols on their less dangerous rounds—for his precious skin was not to be unduly risked, as he came to understand; how he came to recognize the envious or resentful glances of certain of his fellows among the Pacha’s Guard, and how he won over his enemies by his modesty, and his open heart, and his generosity; how he filled his days with activity such as any lad would delight in, and his nights with wakings, and dreams, and griefs that none else were to know of—all that need not be recounted at length. There came a day when Ali, while in the hills practicing with his fellows at pistol-shooting, a sport at which he excelled over even some of the eldest and most experienced of them, was summoned to appear before the Pacha, and a guest who ardently desired to meet him.

  The guest’s equipage and suite were in evidence in the courtyard of the Pacha’s house when Ali entered there—horses in strange harness, men in foreign clothes, including a Turk or two with high turbans and trowsers amazingly wide. Above in his room of state the Pacha sat in his accustomed place upon the sopha—and his hawk-like Vizier stood up behind him—and beside him in the place of honour was a man Ali knew not—the sight of whom sent through his being a flash of dread or horror. To what might this be attributed? The man was huge, indeed—even folded up as he was upon the low seat this was evident—but Ali had known larger fighters; and his head-cloth was done up in the Turkish fashion—but the Vizier’s was too; and beneath his capote the brass buttons of his red tunic might be seen—but the capote itself was not so different from that which Ali himself wore. Then was it a p
resentiment of all that lay ahead, that he was to do, and to bear, because of the man? No—it was simply that the stranger’s face was clean-shaven. He was the first grown man without moustaches that Ali had ever seen, and Albanians have a horror of such—the Bogey in the tales their grand-dames tell to children, who comes to eat them up, has just such a white and hairless face as Ali now looked upon—as looked upon him with interested eye.

  The man was John Porteous, Lord Sane, it need not be said—his the eye, and the interest—and it is appropriate, or at least convenient, here to describe in greater detail the appearance of one who was to affect so singularly the youth who now stood unmoving within his fixing gaze. Those characters cruel or haughty who proceed through the pages of our romances (and the poets’ pages, too, be it admitted!) and do deeds of dreadful note are often as not painted as though to persuade Mr Kean to portray them upon the stage—the tense and braided muscle, the great eyes that flash darkly, quivering visage, nose like a hawk’s beak, red mouth cruelly cut, at once sneering and sensual, &c., &c. The face of ‘Satan’ Porteous was not so: it was, to speak truly, as round and bland as a pudding, and his eyes small and shrouded by pale lids, wherein but a crumb of glitter could be seen—the which made them the more horrid to look upon—for the eyes had a cold alertness like a sleepy reptile’s, when they slid in one’s direction; they chilled without thrilling, and induced a horrid lassitude in those—a large class—upon whom their possessor had some design.

  The Pacha summoned the frozen lad, and bade him sit upon the divan between himself and the wondrous beardless monster, who put upon Ali’s shoulder a hand heavy as though it were a leaden statue’s, and spoke words to him and to the Pacha that Ali could not interpret. The Pacha smiled, and nodded, and hummed, pleased at the scene; he took the man’s right hand, and placed Ali’s within it, and closed them both in his own. ‘My brave Ali!’ said he. ‘There has come a wonderful providence into thy life, by the will of Allah. Behold here beside thee thy father!’

  So startled was Ali that he snatched his hand from within the others’, as though it had been nearly caught in a rat-trap. This occasioned laughter from the older men, who were not just then in a mood to be offended, and were as well delighted with the boy’s discomfiture. When their glee was past, Ali was told that he was indeed the Englishman’s son—the Sigma indited upon his arm was identical to that on a Seal-ring the Englishman wore, in indication of the name he had inherited. Moreover and more wonderfully—the Pacha smiling said—the Englishman had decided to take Ali back with him to the land of Britain, which was a small grey island far away, but one with many ships and guns; and there he would be the Englishman’s son and heir, and have wealth and honours beyond telling, and was not this a fine thing, and were not the dispositions of Allah to be praised?

  Ali in horrified amazement leapt up from his place upon the Pacha’s sopha—dropt to his knees before the old sinner, and lifted his hands in supplication. ‘But thou alone art my father!’ quoth he. ‘I am thy son, if love and devotion have power to make me such. Send me not from thy presence—for have I not been faithful, and put away all old loyalties whatever, and pledged to thee my arm and my soul?’

  Yet the word of the Pacha was not to be challenged, nor would Ali have dreamed of challenging it—better to believe that a tomcat was his father, if the Pacha pronounced it so, than to say the word No to that long-bearded face!

  What bargain the old warrior had struck with the English adventurer—by what means he had first learned of the man’s return to these dominions, and of the object of his coming there—what advantage to himself or hurt to his adversaries he expected by fulfilling his wish—I cannot say—nor whether the Milord he fawned upon had the powers to bring about those Results which he intimated to the Pacha he might. Certain it is, however, that such bargains had been made, and were not to be unmade. And as in this land the filial bond is the strongest that any man can know—the duty owed to Fathers the one least and last to be shaken off by any man of honour or common sense—Ali was left without grounds on which to protest; he must at last bend the knee before this spectre, his Father, and kiss his hands, and offer his Duty.

  ‘Come,’ then said Lord Sane—speaking to Ali as though the boy could understand him,—‘You are flesh of my flesh, and from here, where there is nothing, I shall take you to where you shall have much. And now let us have no more talk. We leave today for the coast. You need bring nothing: all will be provided.’

  And thus suddenly it was done. In the courtyard of the Pacha’s palace there was a great stir, as with a clashing of bells, ornament, and weaponry Lord Sane’s Suliote guards mounted, screamed out their ululations, fired their guns in air. A lad brought forth a mount for Ali—the most beautiful he had ever seen, its trappings and harness gorgeous. The Englishman showed by a wave of his hand that the horse was his, and the lad as well—who thereupon helped Ali to mount—which help Ali hardly knew how to accept. At the same time a groom also led a huge Arabian stallion from the stable, a steed glowing black as the desert night, haughty and enraged—so it appeared by his rolling eye, and bared teeth—and every horse in that enclosure trembled, shook head, started and reared, as though in the presence of a Lion rather than one of their own kind. Lord Sane called its name as harshly as though he pronounced a curse—struck its face to still its tossing—took its reins—and threw himself upon its back; and though the beast reared and twisted, the Lord subdued it. With a raised hand he summoned his train and his guard, the gates were opened, and he went out.

  This black charger was the first of Lord Sane’s beasts that Ali would associate with his father—beasts wild—fierce—unyielding—mad & dangerous. Such beings alone his father could love simply, without hypocrisy or design—who responded only to force, whose spirits were as huge & contrary as his own, whom he could contest with, and break. The horse was hardly still a moment beneath him, and if ever he became so, Sane would challenge him the more, and dig into his shining flanks the little roundels Ali saw at his heels, sharp and hurtful: Ali supposed—for he had never seen their like before, as they are not used in that country—that his father had conceived and made them himself, for the torment they inflicted.

  As they passed downward from the stony heights, Lord Sane was silent; or contrariwise, he talked long to his son in a low grating voice without inflection, talked and talked as though he could compel his son to learn to comprehend the tongue of his father and his father’s fathers merely by the force of his speaking: which Ali could not do, and so listened merely to the tone—which was compelling enough—the matter he would not gather for many weeks and months to come. Once on a time, said the Lord, he had come to these lands for adventure, and by reason of tales told in the South of Gold, for which men will undergo the harshest of privations, and do deeds of the greatest and most dreadful courage, ever heedless that not one El Dorado in a thousand yields up a shilling’s worth of gold, whereas the bones of countless seekers whiten in the deserts and forests of the world. No gold—his comrades (if such they may be named) dead around him, or deserted—himself cashiered upon return to his regiment for absence without leave, and for the string of lies he had left behind (what may we not admit to, if our hearer knows nothing of our tongue? What sins our dogs and horses are privy to, if they could but reckon them!)—and so he came again into his homeland, where there were many who thought they had seen the last of him, and who did not rejoice to greet him again.

  Not for gold was he now come back into these mountains, though. No! It was an heir that Lord Sane had returned to find, having no issue of his marriage, and no longer expecting any—for a wound in his thigh, suffered in a duel, would not permit him to engender further—which made it also superfluous for him to divorce, as he had for some time planned to do, his wife—broken in health herself—whose lands and fortunes he had despoiled, and take a fertile maid to wed. Therefore—though he knew not if the child he had so rudely spawned in these parts had lived, or was male—knew not the fate of
Mother or Husband—was only driven to press on with his design, however mad the world would surely have deemed it, had the world known of it—he had come again to the coast of Epirus, and mounted his expedition. The one emotion perhaps creditable to the giant Lord was this, that he would not see his line extinguished; and who can say that he did not, in his cinder of a heart, feel remorse at least for this—that, had he not acted as he had in time gone by, a legitimate Heir might now be waiting to succeed him.

  A day and a night passed in the telling of this tale, in all its parts, some more dreadful than any here recounted, though the consequences of those untold deeds may yet figure in the present account; and at its end Ali was not wiser than he had been. Upon the following day, Lord Sane, by forcing his mount down a way that the horse considered too steep, the rock-strewn path too loose, caused the animal by his cruel goading to slip, and fall upon its delicate cannons, and twist a leg at the hock. When Lord Sane’s fury at his horse’s betrayal—as he considered it—was past, his groom was commanded to care for the horse, whose wound was considered by those horsemen as likely to heal with proper care, and to follow on after—by no means was he to mount the animal, but only to lead it. Lord Sane took another horse, and the party went on. When they had come to a town large enough to support so large a number as they were, they stopt, and with only the showing of the Firman he had obtained from the Pacha’s Vizier, Lord Sane and his son and his aides-de-camp were offered the upper storey of a large fortified house. The accommodating Landlord, who seemed to hope for something more than the approbation of Allah for his hospitality—though whether his hopes were realized Ali never knew—went, with his wives in closed chairs, to another house in the wooded hills. The Suliotes built their own cookfires in the courtyard, and set up to sleep on the ground floor with the beasts—yet till late at night they did not sleep, but passed the Wineskin, and sang their harsh balladry, and danced—man with man, at first stepping delicately and gravely as in a minuet, but by degrees growing wilder, and whirling faster, as the music of the drums and stringed gourds sped—let no mere waltzer of our lands attempt it! First among the dancers—a head higher than any of them, like Beelzebub amid his cohort—was the English Lord, his scarlet coat pulled open, and his handkerchief—as is the custom in that gallopade—aflutter in his right hand.