The Henson Journals

[63]

Friday, November 16th, 1923.

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I called at the famous house in Albemarle Street, and was shown the Byron MSS. They are extraordinarily full of interest. Byron wrote freely, & corrected incessantly. His proofs were always subjected to revision by Hobhouse & Griffith: & then sent to him. The five successive revisions of the Giaour nearly trebled the size of the poem. He was curiously careful to note the number of lines that he had written. I was much interested in the portraits of eminent literary men, in the room where they gathered so often for work and conviviality, on the fire–place in which the Memoir was consumed, in many personal relics which fill the cases. The Byron MSS were lent to the Laipsic Exhibition just before the War, and were insured by the German authorities for £9000. For some years Mr Murray heard nothing of their fate, & had resigned himself to their loss. But they eventually were returned without injury.

I celebrated the Marriage of the Hon: G. Phillimore with an "innocent divorcee" in S. John's Westminster.

I returned to Auckland Castle by the 5.30 p.m. express, and was met as usual by the car at Darlington. I beguiled the journey as far as York by reading Miss Macaulay’s novel, "Told by an Idiot": but from York to Darlington I had the company of Sir Arthur Pease, who talked very eagerly about the political crisis.

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