[Footnote 3: Lady Mary does not compare St. Paul"s with St. Sophia"s, but with the mosque of the Valide,
"the largest of all, built entirely of marble, the most prodigious, and, I think, the most beautiful structure I ever saw, be it spoken to the honour of our s.e.x, for it was founded by the mother of Mahomet IV.
Between friends, "St. Paul"s Church would make a pitiful figure near it"
("Letters", vol. i. p. 356).
[Footnote 4:
"The European with the Asian sh.o.r.e Sprinkled with palaces; the ocean stream Here and there studded with a seventy-four; Sophia"s cupola with golden gleam; The cypress groves; Olympus high and h.o.a.r; The twelve isles, and the more than I could dream, Far less describe, present the very view Which charm"d the charming Mary Montagu."
_Don Juan_, Canto V. stanza 3.]
[Footnote 5: For Mrs. Leigh, "nee" Augusta Byron, see page 18 [Letter 7], [Foot]note 1.]
142.--To his Mother.
Constantinople, July 1, 1810.
My dear Mother,--I have no wish to forget those who have any claim upon me, and shall be glad of the good wishes of R----when he can express them in person, which it seems will be at some very indefinite date. I shall perhaps essay a speech or _two_ in the House when I return, but I am not ambitious of a parliamentary career, which is of all things the most degrading and unthankful. If I could by my own efforts inculcate the truth, that a man is not intended for a despot or a machine, but as an individual of a community, and fit for the society of kings, so long as he does not trespa.s.s on the laws or rebel against just governments, I might attempt to found a new Utopia; but as matters are at present, in course you will not expect me to sacrifice my health or self to your or anyone"s ambition.
To quit this new idea for something you will understand better, how are Miss R"s, the W"s, and Mr. R"s blue b.a.s.t.a.r.ds? for I suppose he will not deny their _authorship_, which was, to say the least, imprudent and immoral. Poor Miss----: if he does not marry, and marry her speedily, he shall be no tenant of mine from the day that I set foot on English sh.o.r.es.
I am glad you have received my portrait from Sanders. It does not _flatter_ me, I think, but the subject is a bad one, and I must even do as Fletcher does over his Greek wines--make a face and hope for better. What you told me of----is not _true_, which I regret for your sake and your gossip-seeking neighbours, whom present with my good wishes, and believe me,
Yours, etc.,
BYRON.
143.--To Francis Hodgson.
Constantinople, July 4, 1810.
My Dear Hodgson,--Twice have I written--once in answer to your last, and a former letter when I arrived here in May. That I may have nothing to reproach myself with, I will write once more--a very superfluous task, seeing that Hobhouse is bound for your parts full of talk and wonderment. My first letter went by an amba.s.sadorial express; my second by the _Black John_ lugger; my third will be conveyed by Cam, the miscellanist.
I shall begin by telling you, having only told it you twice before, that I swam from Sestos to Abydos. I do this that you may be impressed with proper respect for me, the performer; for I plume myself on this achievement more than I could possibly do on any kind of glory, political, poetical, or rhetorical. Having told you this, I will tell you nothing more, because it would be cruel to curtail Cam"s narrative, which, by-the-by, you must not believe till confirmed by me, the eye-witness. I promise myself much pleasure from contradicting the greatest part of it. He has been plaguily pleased by the intelligence contained in your last to me respecting the reviews of his hymns. I refreshed him with that paragraph immediately, together with the tidings of my own third edition, which added to his recreation. But then he has had a letter from a Lincoln"s Inn Bencher, full of praise of his harpings, and vituperation of the other contributions to his _Missellingany_, which that sagacious person is pleased to say must have been put in as FOILS (_horresco referens!_); furthermore he adds that Cam "is a genuine pupil of Dryden,"
concluding with a comparison rather to the disadvantage of Pope.
I have written to Drury by Hobhouse; a letter is also from me on its way to England intended for that matrimonial man. Before it is very long, I hope we shall again be together; the moment I set out for England you shall have intelligence, that we may meet as soon as possible. Next week the frigate sails with Adair; I am for Greece, Hobhouse for England. A year together on the 2nd July since we sailed from Falmouth. I have known a hundred instances of men setting out in couples, but not one of a similar return. Aberdeen"s [1] party split; several voyagers at present have done the same. I am confident that twelve months of any given individual is perfect ipecacuanha.
The Russians and Turks are at it, [2] and the Sultan in person is soon to head the army. The Captain Pasha cuts off heads every day, and a Frenchman"s ears; the last is a serious affair. By-the-by I like the Pashas in general. Ali Pasha called me his son, desired his compliments to my mother, and said he was sure I was a man of birth, because I had "small ears and curling hair." He is Pasha of Albania six hundred miles off, where I was in October--a fine portly person.
His grandson Mahmout, a little fellow ten years old, with large black eyes as big as pigeon"s eggs, and all the gravity of sixty, asked me what I did travelling so young without a _Lala_ (tutor)?
Good night, dear H. I have crammed my paper, and crave your indulgence. Write to me at Malta. I am, with all sincerity,
Yours affectionately,
BYRON.
[Footnote 1: George Hamilton Gordon, Earl of Aberdeen (1784-1860), afterwards Prime Minister (1852-55), succeeded his grandfather as fourth earl in 1801. Grandson of the purchaser of Mrs. Byron"s old home of Gight, and writer of an article in the "Edinburgh Review" (July, 1805) on Gell"s "Topography of Troy," he has a place in "English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers" (lines 508, 509). He also appears as "sullen Aberdeen," in a suppressed stanza of "Childe Harold", Canto II., which in the MS. follows stanza xiii., among those who
"----pilfer all the Pilgrim loves to see, All that yet consecrates the fading scene."
After leaving Harrow, and before entering St. John"s College, Cambridge, he spent two years (1801-3) in Greece. On his return he founded the Athenian Society, and became President of the Society of Antiquaries from 1812 to 1846. It may be added that he was Foreign Secretary when the Porte acknowledged the independence of Greece by the Treaty of Adrianople (1829).]
[Footnote 2: In this war, the scene of which lay chiefly in Wallachia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Servia, the main episodes were the two battles of Rustchuk (July 4 and October 14, 1811), the recapture of Silistria by the Russians, and the Convention of Giurgevo between the contending forces (October 28, 1811).]g
144.--To his Mother.
Athens, July 25, 1810.
Dear Mother,--I have arrived here in four days from Constantinople, which is considered as singularly quick, particularly for the season of the year. I left Constantinople with Adair, at whose adieux of leave I saw Sultan Mahmout, [1] and obtained a firman to visit the mosques, of which I gave you a description in my last letter, now voyaging to England in the _Salsette_ frigate, in which I visited the plains of Troy and Constantinople. Your northern gentry can have no conception of a Greek summer; which, however, is a perfect frost compared with Malta and Gibraltar, where I reposed myself in the shade last year, after a gentle gallop of four hundred miles, without intermission, through Portugal and Spain. You see, by my date, that I am at Athens again, a place which I think I prefer, upon the whole, to any I have seen.
My next movement is to-morrow into the Morea, where I shall probably remain a month or two, and then return to winter here, if I do not change my plans, which, however, are very variable, as you may suppose; but none of them verge to England.
The Marquis of Sligo, [2] my old fellow-collegian, is here, and wishes to accompany me into the Morea. We shall go together for that purpose; but I am woefully sick of travelling companions, after a year"s experience of Mr. Hobhouse, who is on his way to Great Britain. Lord S. will afterwards pursue his way to the capital; and Lord B., having seen all the wonders in that quarter, will let you know what he does next, of which at present he is not quite certain. Malta is my perpetual post-office, from which my letters are forwarded to all parts of the habitable globe:--by the bye, I have now been in Asia, Africa, and the east of Europe, and, indeed, made the most of my time, without hurrying over the most interesting scenes of the ancient world. Fletcher, after having been toasted and roasted, and baked, and grilled, and eaten by all sorts of creeping things, begins to philosophise, is grown a refined as well as a resigned character, and promises at his return to become an ornament to his own parish, and a very prominent person in the future family pedigree of the Fletchers, who I take to be Goths by their accomplishments, Greeks by their acuteness, and ancient Saxons by their appet.i.te. He (Fletcher) begs leave to send half-a-dozen sighs to Sally his spouse, and wonders (though I do not) that his ill-written and worse spelt letters have never come to hand; as for that matter, there is no great loss in either of our letters, saving and except that I wish you to know we are well, and warm enough at this present writing, G.o.d knows. You must not expect long letters at present, for they are written with the sweat of my brow, I a.s.sure you. It is rather singular that Mr. Hanson has not written a syllable since my departure. Your letters I have mostly received as well as others; from which I conjecture that the man of law is either angry or busy.
I trust you like Newstead, and agree with your neighbours; but you know _you_ are a _vixen_--is not that a dutiful appellation? Pray, take care of my books and several boxes of papers in the hands of Joseph; and pray leave me a few bottles of champagne to drink, for I am very thirsty;--but I do not insist on the last article, without you like it. I suppose you have your house full of silly women, prating scandalous things. Have you ever received my picture in oil from Sanders, London? It has been paid for these sixteen months: why do you not get it? My suite, consisting of two Turks, two Greeks, a Lutheran, and the nondescript, Fletcher, are making so much noise, that I am glad to sign myself
Yours, etc., etc.,
BYRON.
[Footnote 1: On July 10, 1810, the British amba.s.sador, Robert Adair, had his audience of Sultan Mahmoud II, and on the 14th the "Salsette" set sail. She touched at the island of Zea to land Byron, who thence made his way to Athens.
It was in making war against Mahmoud II, the conqueror of Ali Pasha and the destroyer of the Janissaries, that Byron lost his life. The following description of the Sultan is given by Hobhouse ("Travels in Albania, etc.," vol. ii. pp. 364, 365):--