The Henson Journals

[8]

Wednesday, April 23rd, 1924.

Shakespeare's birthday is not an unsuitable day on which to make a pilgrimage to Byron's home. Extravagant as we must needs hold the comparison to be, his contemporaries, some of the greatest of them, did not scruple to place Manfred alongside of Hamlet, & couple together Cain and Paradise Lost.

Mr Lindemann went away in his car after breakfast. He speaks very dogmatically about the possible achievements of science in breeding men & women, and in manipulating human minds & character. I am so ignorant of Science that I can neither check his assertions, nor believe them! The scepticism of ignorance is more inaccessible to argument than the scepticism of knowledge!

Mrs Quirk writes to say that the Bishop of Jarrow has had a paralytic stroke. This is grave news for while a stroke disqualifies for work, it is often consistent with longevity. The Bishop is stated in the paper to be 75. In any case, I must somehow arrange to take myself the confirmations which he had undertaken: and in view of the congested state of my calendar, this addition to my engagements is formidable enough.

I walked in the Park for an hour with Mrs Milner the Papist lady, who is also staying here.

[9]

There are stories of his Harrow days which disclose in the school boy a generous disgust of oppression, and these indications of character were confirmed by his later conduct. His speeches in the House of Lords were entirely consistent, and, though such declamations as he made on behalf of freedom, if they had stood alone, might well have been discounted in the common parliamentary form of a young Whig peer, yet seen in the light of his subsequent career they fit in with the general tendency of his life. His admiration for Napoleon – which found noble expression in "The Age of Bronze" – was justified by his career as a scourge of despots. He mourned over Napoleon's own decline into despotism.

Alas! why pass'd he too the Rubicon –

The Rubicon of man's awakened rights,

To herd with vulgar kings and parasites!

He might have reached a nobler eminence than that from which capricious Fortune had cast him down.

A single step into the right had made

This man the Washington of worlds betray'd:

A single step into the wrong has given

His name a doubt to all the winds of heaven.

Byron was loyal to the Cause of liberty in whatever form that Cause claimed his support – the workless & starving [10] artisans of Nottingham, the unenfranchised Roman Catholics of Britain, the Irish peasants, the Italians rising against the dull tyranny of the Hun, the Spaniards resisting their foolish & fanatical monarch, the Greeks lifting the banner of independence against the Sultan – all found the pen and purse of Byron freely at their service. Finally he laid down his life in the Cause. The closing scene at Missolonghi stands in line with the prevailing tendency of his career.

He felt intensely the pathos and folly of War, and pictured in burning words its blind & brutal ravage.

Ah, monarchs! could ye taste the mirth ye mar,

Not in the toils of Glory would ye fret:

The hoarse dull drum would sleep, & Man be happy yet!

And must they fall? the young, the proud, the brave,

To swell one bloated Chief's unwholesome reign?

Confronted by the Holy Alliance, & daily witnessing in Italy their notion of restoring European liberties, Byron could not but regard the victory of Waterloo as a disaster. It had dethroned one tyrant in order to establish the tyranny of many. His attitude was neither unworthy nor unreasonable.

[11]

Fit retribution! Gaul may champ the bit

And foam in fetters:– but in Earth more free?

Did nations combat to make One submit:

Or league to teach all kings true sovereignty?

What! shall reviving Thaldom again be

The patched–up idol of enlightened days?

Shall we, who struck the Lion down, shall we

Pay the Wolf homage? proffering lowly gaze

And servile knees to thrones? No: prove before

ye praise! C. H. iii.19

In such lines of indignant remonstrance Byron was uttering the thoughts of common men throughout Europe.

If the yearning hope of the European populations is ever to be satisfied, and the barbarous absurdity of War is to be banished from the procedure of civilized nations, the name of Byron must have a conspicuous place among those true servants of mankind who have denounced its wickedness and exposed its folly. And his service to the cause of international peace will have been the greater since he was himself no mere academic advocate, still less a visionary and academic pacifist, but a man of courage and resolution who could call to arms with ringing voice when a higher interest than Peace, the interest of justice and liberty called for the risks & sacrifices of conflict.

[12]

We made our expedition to Newstead Abbey in pouring rain, which hindered us from seeing the gardens. The house is very fairly presented by Byron's descriptive verses, though much of the woods about it have disappeared.

A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile

(While yet the church was Rome's) stood half apart

In a grand arch, which once screened many an aisle.

These last had disappear'd – a loss to art.

The first yet frowned superbly o'er the soil

And kindled feelings in the roughest heart,

Which mourn'd the power of time's or tempest's march.

In gazing on that venerable arch.

Mrs Fraser, the present owner, entertained us at tea. The poor lady is confined to her couch, and nearly blind, but very cheerful and interesting. She was a Miss Webbe, and heiress of her father, who bought the property from Colonel Wildman, to whom Byron sold it. Her father's life had been saved by Livingstone in Africa, & hence a close friendship had sprung up between the Webbes & the famous explorer. There are many relics of Livingstone at Newstead. Mrs F. said that the tenants on the estate were devoted to Byron, and would not credit anything to his discredit. This fact must be kept in mind when appraising the poet.

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