Part 3 (1/2)
The perverse pride of Byron, the vices to which he yielded, the bad things in his writings, the sectarian obloquy which pursued him, have veiled from popular apprehension some of the sweet and n.o.ble qualities of his heart. Notwithstanding his perverse lower impulses, he was one of the most princely and magical of the immortal lords of fame. So far from there being any lack of permanent value and power in his verse, any falling from his established rank, the most authoritative critics, more generally today than ever before, acknowledge him to be the greatest lyric poet that ever lived. One can hardly help being awed at the thought of the genius and fascination of the young man whom the gifted and fastidious Sh.e.l.ley called
The pilgrim of eternity, whose fame Over his living head, like heaven, is bent-- An early but enduring monument.
Perhaps his better traits nowhere s.h.i.+ne out with such steady l.u.s.tre as in the constancy of glowing tenderness with which, in all his wanderings, woes, and glory, he cherished the love of his sister Augusta, Mrs. Leigh. She remained unalterably attached to him through the dreadful storm of unpopularity which drove him out of England.
With what convulsive grat.i.tude he appreciated her fond fidelity, he has expressed with that pa.s.sionate richness of power which no other could ever equal. Four of his most splendid poems were composed for her and addressed to her. In the one beginning, ”When all around grew drear and dark,” he says,
When fortune changed, and love fled far, And hatred's shafts flew thick and fast, Thou wert the solitary star Which rose, and set not to the last.
The wonderful verses commencing,
Though the day of my destiny's over, And the star of my fate hath declined, Thy soft heart refused to discover The faults which so many could find,
wring the very soul by their intensity of feeling condensed into language of such vigor and such melody.
From the wreck of the past, which hath perished, Thus much I at least may recall: It hath taught me that what I most cherished Deserved to be dearest of all.
In the desert a fountain is springing, In the wide waste there still is a tree, And a bird in the solitude singing, Which speaks to my spirit of thee.
To her he sent one of the first presentation copies of ”Childe Harold,” with this inscription: ”To Augusta, my dearest sister and my best friend, who has ever loved me much better than I deserved, this volume is presented by her father's son and most affectionate brother.” He wrote to her those expressions of love beginning,
The castled crag of Drachenfels Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine;
and ending,
Nor could on earth a spot be found To nature and to me so dear, Could thy dear eyes, In following mine, Still sweeten more These banks of Rhine,
expressions so transcendently fond and earnest in their beauty, that it is a thrilling luxury to linger on them, return to them, and repeat them over and over.
One of the finest and richest productions of his genius, both in thought and in pa.s.sion, is the poem he wrote to her when he was living at Diodati, on the banks of Leman.
My sister, my sweet sister! if a name Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
Mountains and seas divide us; but I claim No tears, but tenderness to answer mine.
Go where I will, to me thou art the same, A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny, A world to roam through, and a home with thee.
I feel almost, at times, as I have felt In happy childhood: trees and flowers and brooks, Which do remember me of where I dwelt Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books; Come as of yore upon me, and can melt My heart with recognition of their looks; And even, at moments, I could think I see Some living thing to love, but none like thee.
Oh that thou wert but with me! but I grow The fool of my own wishes, and forget The solitude which I have vaunted so Has lost its praise in this but one regret.
The last intelligible words of Byron were, ”Augusta, Ada, my sister, my child.”
It would be hard to find a friends.h.i.+p more deeply rooted, more inclusive of the lives of the parties, proof against terrible trials, full of quiet fondness and substantial devotion, than that of Charles Lamb and his sister Mary. The earliest written expression of this attachment occurs in a sonnet ”To my Sister,”
composed by Charles in a lucid interval, when he was confined in the asylum at Hoxton for the six weeks of his single attack of insanity.
Thou to me didst ever show Kindest affection; and wouldst oft-times lend An ear to the desponding love-sick lay, Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.
Mary was ten years older than Charles, and, as is shown well in Talfourd's ”Final Memorials,” loved him with an affection combining a mother's care, a sister's tenderness, and a friend's fervent sympathy. Nor did he, in return, fall short in any respect. He appreciated her devotion, pitied her sorrow, responded to her feelings, revered her worth, and ministered to her wants with a loving gentleness, a patient self-sacrifice, and an heroic fort.i.tude, which, as we gaze on his image, make the halo of the saint and the crown of the martyr alternate with the wrinkles of his weaknesses and his mirth. In one of her periodical paroxysms of madness, Mary struck her mother dead with a knife. Charles was then twenty-two, full of hope and ambition, enthusiastically attached to Coleridge, and in love with a certain ”fair-haired maid,” named Anna, to whom he had written some verses. This fearful tragedy altered and sealed his fate. He felt it to be his duty to devote himself thenceforth to his unhappy sister. He abandoned every thought of marriage, gave up his dreams of fame, and turned to his holy charge, with a chastened but resolute soul. ”She for whom he gave up all,” De Vincy says, ”in turn gave up all for him. And of the happiness, which for forty years or more he had, no hour seemed true that was not derived from her.” He never thought his sacrifice of youth and love gave him any license for caprice towards her or exactions from her. He always wrote of her as his better self, his wiser self, a generous benefactress, of whom he was hardly worthy. ”Of all the people I ever saw in the world, my poor sister is the most thoroughly devoid of the least tincture of selfishness.” He was happy when she was well and with him. His great sorrow was to be obliged so often to part from her on the recurrences of her attacks. ”To say all that I know of her would be more than I think anybody could believe or even understand. It would be sinning against her feelings to go about to praise her; for I can conceal nothing I do from her. All my wretched imperfections I cover to myself by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would share life and death, heaven and h.e.l.l, with me. She lives but for me.” Their hearts and lives were blended for forty years. Mary was unconscious at the time of her brother's death, and the blow was mercifully deadened in her gradual recovery. In her sunset walks she would invariably lead her friends towards the churchyard where Charles was laid. Their common friend Moxon paints the touching scene:
Here sleeps beneath this bank, where daisies grow, The kindliest sprite earth holds within her breast.
Her only mate is now the minstrel lark, Save she who comes each evening, ere the bark Of watch-dog gathers drowsy folds, to shed A sister's tears.
Eleven years later, this memorable friends.h.i.+p, so sacred to all who knew it, was consummated for earth, as a few reverential survivors entered the shadow of Edmonton Church, and, coming away, left Mary and Charles Lamb sleeping in the same grave.
The union of Felix and f.a.n.n.y Mendelssohn was something wonderful, like the wonderful genius of sensibility and music which endowed them both. Such pure, tender, and n.o.ble souls are made for each other. The more fervid and exacting bonds of marriage and parentage did not interfere with the profound sympathy in which they lived, both when together and when apart. They corresponded in music. Their emotions, too deep and strange to be conveyed in words, like articulate thoughts, they expressed in tones. Seating themselves at their instruments, they would for hours carry on an intercourse perfectly intelligible to each other, and more adequate and delicious than any vocal conversation. When Felix, at Naples, at Rome, or in London, sent to f.a.n.n.y a letter composed in notes, she translated it first with her eyes, then with her piano. The most charming transcripts of these affectionate and musical souls were thus made in music. Sweeter or more divinely gifted beings have rarely appeared on this earth.
Their relations of spirit were sensitive and organic, far beneath the reach of intellectual consciousness. They seemed able to communicate tidings through the ethereal medium by some subtile telegraphy of feeling, which transcends understanding, and belongs to a miraculous region of life. For, when f.a.n.n.y died in her German home, Felix, amidst a happy company in England, suddenly aware of some terrible calamity, from the disturbance of equilibrium and dread sinking of his soul, rushed to the piano, and poured out his anguish in an improvisation of wailing and mysterious strains, which held the a.s.sembly spell-bound and in tears. In a few days a letter reached him, announcing that his sister had died at that very hour. On receiving the tidings, he uttered a shriek, and the shock was so great as to burst a blood-vessel in his brain. Life had no charm potent enough to stanch and heal the cruel laceration left in his already failing frame by this sundering blow. The web of torn fibrils bled invisibly. He soon faded away, and followed his sister to a world of finer melody, fitted for natures like theirs.