Chapter 64

"Ravenna, July 2. 1819.

"Thanks for your letter and for Madame's. I will answer it directly. Will you recollect whether I did not consign to you one or two receipts of Madame Mocenigo's for house-rent--(I am not sure of this, but think I did--if not, they will be in my drawers)--and will you desire Mr. Dorville[39] to have the goodness to see if Edgecombe has _receipts_ to all payments _hitherto_ made by him on my account, and that there are _no debts_ at Venice? On your answer, I shall send order of further remittance to carry on my household expenses, as my present return to Venice is very problematical; and it may happen--but I can say nothing positive--every thing with me being indecisive and undecided, except the disgust which Venice excites when fairly compared with any other city in this part of Italy. When I say _Venice_, I mean the _Venetians_--the city itself is superb as its history--but the people are what I never thought them till they taught me to think so.

"The best way will be to leave Allegra with Antonio's spouse till I can decide something about her and myself--but I thought that you would have had an answer from Mrs. V----r.[40] You have had bore enough with me and mine already.

"I greatly fear that the Guiccioli is going into a consumption, to which her constitution tends. Thus it is with every thing and every body for whom I feel any thing like a real attachment;--'War, death, or discord, doth lay siege to them.' I never even could keep alive a dog that I liked or that liked me. Her symptoms are obstinate cough of the lungs, and occasional fever, &c. &c. and there are latent causes of an eruption in the skin, which she foolishly repelled into the system two years ago: but I have made them send her case to Aglietti; and have begged him to come--if only for a day or two--to consult upon her state.

"If it would not bore Mr. Dorville, I wish he would keep an eye on E---- and on my other ragamuffins. I might have more to say, but I am absorbed about La Gui. and her illness. I cannot tell you the effect it has upon me.

"The horses came, &c. &c. and I have been galloping through the pine forest daily.

"Believe me, &c.

"P.S. My benediction on Mrs. Hoppner, a pleasant journey among the Bernese tyrants, and safe return. You ought to bring back a Platonic Bernese for my reformation. If any thing happens to my present Amica, I have done with the passion for ever--it is my _last_ love. As to libertinism, I have sickened myself of that, as was natural in the way I went on, and I have at least derived that advantage from vice, to _love_ in the better sense of the word. _This_ will be my last adventure--I can hope no more to inspire attachment, and I trust never again to feel it."

[Footnote 39: The Vice-Consul of Mr. Hoppner.]

[Footnote 40: An English widow lady, of considerable property in the north of England, who, having seen the little Allegra at Mr. Hoppner's, took an interest in the poor child's fate, and having no family of her own, offered to adopt and provide for this little girl, if Lord Byron would consent to renounce all claim to her. At first he seemed not disinclined to enter into her views--so far, at least, as giving permission that she should take the child with her to England and educate it; but the entire surrender of his paternal authority he would by no means consent to. The proposed arrangement accordingly was never carried into effect.]

* * * * *

The impression which, I think, cannot but be entertained, from some passages of these letters, of the real fervour and sincerity of his attachment to Madame Guiccioli[41], would be still further confirmed by the perusal of his letters to that lady herself, both from Venice and during his present stay at Ravenna--all bearing, throughout, the true marks both of affection and passion. Such effusions, however, are but little suited to the general eye. It is the tendency of all strong feeling, from dwelling constantly on the same idea, to be monotonous; and those often-repeated vows and verbal endearments, which make the charm of true love-letters to the parties concerned in them, must for ever render even the best of them cloying to others. Those of Lord Byron to Madame Guiccioli, which are for the most part in Italian, and written with a degree of ease and correctness attained rarely by foreigners, refer chiefly to the difficulties thrown in the way of their meetings,--not so much by the husband himself, who appears to have liked and courted Lord Byron's society, as by the watchfulness of other relatives, and the apprehension felt by themselves lest their intimacy should give uneasiness to the father of the lady, Count Gamba, a gentleman to whose good nature and amiableness of character all who know him bear testimony.

In the near approaching departure of the young Countess for Bologna, Lord Byron foresaw a risk of their being again separated; and under the impatience of this prospect, though through the whole of his preceding letters the fear of committing her by any imprudence seems to have been his ruling thought, he now, with that wilfulness of the moment which has so often sealed the destiny of years, proposed that she should, at once, abandon her husband and fly with him:--"c'è uno solo rimedio efficace," he says,--"cioè d' andar vià insieme." To an Italian wife, almost every thing but this is permissible. The same system which so indulgently allows her a friend, as one of the regular appendages of her matrimonial establishment, takes care also to guard against all unseemly consequences of this privilege; and in return for such convenient facilities of wrong exacts rigidly an observance of all the appearances of right. Accordingly, the open step of deserting the husband for the lover instead of being considered, as in England, but a sign and sequel of transgression, takes rank, in Italian morality, as the main transgression itself; and being an offence, too, rendered wholly unnecessary by the latitude otherwise enjoyed, becomes, from its rare occurrence, no less monstrous than odious.

The proposition, therefore, of her noble friend seemed to the young Contessa little less than sacrilege, and the agitation of her mind, between the horrors of such a step, and her eager readiness to give up all and every thing for him she adored, was depicted most strongly in her answer to the proposal. In a subsequent letter, too, the romantic girl even proposed, as a means of escaping the ignominy of an elopement, that she should, like another Juliet, "pass for dead,"--assuring him that there were many easy ways of effecting such a deception.

[Footnote 41: "During my illness," says Madame Guiccioli, in her recollections of this period, "he was for ever near me, paying me the most amiable attentions, and when I became convalescent he was constantly at my side. In society, at the theatre, riding, walking, he never was absent from me. Being deprived at that time of his books, his horses, and all that occupied him at Venice, I begged him to gratify me by writing something on the subject of Dante, and, with his usual facility and rapidity, he composed his 'Prophecy.'"--"Durante la mia malattia L.B. era sempre presso di me, prestandomi le più sensibili cure, e quando passai allo stato di convalescenza egli era sempre al mio fianco;--e in società, e al teatro, e cavalcando, e passeggiando egli non si allontanava mai da me. In quel' epoca essendo egli privo de' suoi libri, e de' suoi cavalli, e di tuttociò che lo occupava in Venezia io lo pregai di volersi occupare per me scrivendo qualche cosa sul Dante; ed egli colla usata sua facilita e rapidita scrisse la sua Profezia."]

* * * * *