Part 85

Thus, during ten years, had Howard labored incessantly at a single object, allowing no other to interfere with it; traveling almost without intermission from place to place, and undergoing innumerable risks. From a table drawn up by one of his biographers, it appears that, between 1773 and 1783, he had traveled on his missions of philanthropy, at home and abroad, upwards of forty thousand miles. Forty thousand miles traveled in ten years!――not from mountain to mountain, or from one object of natural beauty to another, but from jail to jail, and bridewell to bridewell――no wonder that Howard, on the retrospect of such a labor fairly accomplished, wrote in his diary, ‘I bless God who inclined my mind to such a scheme.’

During his journeys in Great Britain and Ireland, Mr. Howard was usually accompanied by a single servant. He traveled generally on horseback, at the rate of forty miles a-day. ‘He was never,’ says his biographer, Dr. Aikin, ‘at a loss for an inn. When in Ireland, or the Highlands of Scotland, he used to stop at one of the poor cabins that stuck up a rag by way of sign, and get a little milk. When he came to the town he was to sleep at, he bespoke a supper, with wine and beer, like another traveler; but made his man attend him, and take it away while he was preparing his bread and milk. He always paid the waiters, postilions, etc., liberally, because he would have no discontent or dispute, nor suffer his spirits to be agitated for such a matter; saying that, in a journey which might cost three or four hundred pounds, fifteen or twenty pounds in addition were not worth thinking about.’

In the spring of 1784 Mr. Howard, now about fifty-seven years of age, retired to his estate of Cardington, intending to spend the remainder of his life in peace and quiet, assisting in his private capacity in furthering those schemes of prison improvement which his disclosures had set on foot. He resumed the mode of life which he had led before commencing his prison inquiries; with this difference, that, being now a distinguished public character, his visitors were more frequent and more numerous than formerly. There was one sad circumstance, however, which embittered the peace of this benevolent man. His only son, who had received his early education at several academies in England, and had been sent in his eighteenth year to the university of Edinburgh, and placed under the care of the venerable and well-known Dr. Blacklock, had unhappily contracted habits of extravagance and dissipation; which, to any parent, and especially to one of Howard’s principles, must have caused poignant grief. Already the unfortunate young man had shown symptoms of that malady, brought on by his own imprudent and vicious conduct, which ultimately settled into complete insanity. Of the full extent of this domestic misfortune Mr. Howard was not yet aware.

After nearly two years of repose, interrupted only by the circumstance to which we have alluded, Mr. Howard resolved to quit home on a new mission of philanthropy, fraught with greater danger than the one he had accomplished so successfully. During his inquiries into the state of prisons, his attention had been often directed to the spread of infectious diseases, and the inadequacy of the means provided for checking the progress of fever, pestilence, etc., whether originating in jails or elsewhere. The subject thus suggested to him occupied much of his thoughts during his leisure at Cardington; and he at length determined to devote the remainder of his life to an inspection of the principal hospitals and lazarettos of Europe, with a view to ascertain their defects, and the possibility of effecting such improvements in them as would in future preserve the populations of Europe from the ravages of that dreadful visitation――the plague.

Towards the end of November 1785, Mr. Howard left England on his new expedition of philanthropy. He proceeded first to France, with a view to inspect the lazaretto at Marseilles; but, owing to the jealousy of the French government, it was with the utmost difficulty he could accomplish his object; indeed he narrowly escaped apprehension and committal to the Bastile. After visiting the hospitals of Genoa, Leghorn, Pisa, and Florence, he next proceeded to Rome. Here he was privately introduced to Pope Pius VI, himself a benevolent man. On this occasion the ceremony of kissing the pope’s toe was dispensed with; and at parting, his holiness laid his hand on his visitor’s head, saying kindly, ‘I know you Englishmen do not mind these ceremonies, but the blessing of an old man can do you no harm.’ From Rome our traveler went to Naples, and thence to Malta, pursuing always, as his single object, a knowledge of the state of the hospitals on his route. Writing from Malta to a friend in England, he says, ‘I have paid two visits to the Grand Master. Every place is flung open to me. I am bound for Zante, Smyrna, and Constantinople. One effect I find during my visits to the lazaretto; namely a heavy headache――a pain across my forehead; but it has always quite left me in an hour after I have come from these places. As I am quite alone, I have need to summon all my courage and resolution.’

After remaining about three weeks at Malta, Mr. Howard set out for Zante. ‘From thence,’ he says, ‘in a foreign ship I got a passage to Smyrna. Here I boldly visited the hospitals and prisons; but as some accidents happened, a few dying of the plague, several shrunk at me. I came thence to Constantinople, where I now am, about a fortnight ago. As I was in a miserable Turk’s boat, I was lucky in a passage of six days and a half. I am sorry to say some die of the plague about us. One is just carried before my window; yet I visit where none of my conductors will accompany me. In some hospitals, as in the lazarettos, and yesterday among the sick slaves, I have a constant headache; but in about an hour after it always leaves me. I lodge at a physician’s house, and I keep some of my visits a secret.’ From Constantinople he returned to Smyrna, where the plague was also raging; his object being to obtain a passage from that port to Venice, in order that he might undergo the full rigors of the quarantine system, and be able to report, from personal observation, respecting the economy of a lazaretto. On the voyage from Smyrna to Venice, the ship in which he sailed was attacked by a Tunis privateer, and all on board ran great risks. At length, after a desperate fight, a cannon loaded with spikes, nails, and old iron, and pointed by Mr. Howard himself, was discharged with such effect upon the corsair vessel, that it was obliged to sheer off. From Venice he writes thus to his confidential servant Thomasson, at Cardington; the letter being dated Venice Lazaretto, October 12, 1786:――‘I am now in an infectious lazaretto, yet my steady spirits never forsook me till yesterday, on the receipt of my letters. Accumulated misfortunes almost sink me. I am sorry, very sorry, on your account. I will hasten home; no time will I lose by night or day. But forty days I have still to be confined here, as our ship had a foul bill of health, the plague being in the place from whence we sailed. Then that very hasty and disagreeable measure that is taken in London wounds me sadly indeed. Never have I returned to my country with such a heavy heart as I now do.’ The two circumstances which he alludes to in this extract as distressing him so much, and making him so anxious to leave Venice and return home, were the misconduct of his son, of which he had received further accounts, and a proposal which had just been made in London, and of which intelligence had been conveyed to him, to erect a monument to commemorate the nation’s sense of his former philanthropic labors.

The term of his quarantine at Venice being finished, he proceeded to Trieste, and thence to Vienna. How the thoughts of his sad domestic affliction mingled and struggled with his daily exertions in connexion with the great object of his tour, we may learn from the following touching postscript to a letter to Mr. Smith of Bedford, written from Vienna, and dated 17th December 1786:――‘Excuse writing, etc., as wrote early by a poor lamp. What I suffered, I am persuaded I should have disregarded in the lazaretto, as I gained useful information. Venice is the mother of all lazarettos; but oh, my son, my son!’ At Vienna Mr. Howard had an interview with the Austrian emperor, who entered into conversation with him on the subject of his tour, discussed with him the state of the prisons and hospitals in his Austrian dominions, and expressed his intention to adopt some of his suggestions for their improvement. The attention shown by the emperor to his distinguished visitor procured him the notice of many of the courtiers; and a characteristic anecdote is told of his interview with the governor of Upper Austria and his lady. The Austrian noble asked Howard, in a somewhat haughty manner, what he thought of the prisons in his government. ‘The worst in all Germany,’ said Howard; ‘particularly as regards the female prisoners; and I recommend your countess to visit them personally, as the best means of rectifying the abuses in their management.’ ‘I!’ said the astonished countess; ‘I go into prisons!’ and she rapidly descended the staircase with her husband, as if shocked beyond measure. The philanthropist indignantly followed, and called after her, ‘Madam, remember you are but a woman yourself; and must soon, like the most miserable female in a dungeon, inhabit a little piece of that earth from which both of you sprung.’

Returning home in February 1787, after an absence of fifteen months, Mr. Howard found his unhappy son a confirmed and incurable lunatic. For some time he attempted to keep him in his own house at Cardington, under a mild restraint; at length, however, he yielded to the advice of the medical attendants, and suffered him to be removed to a well conducted asylum at Leicester.

The proposal to erect a memorial to Mr. Howard, was so strenuously resisted by him on his return to England, that it was obliged to be given up. Out of £1533 which had been subscribed for the purpose, about £500 pounds were returned to the donors: the remainder was placed in the stocks――£200 of it being employed in obtaining the discharge of fifty-five poor prisoners in London, a similar sum in the striking of a medal in memory of Howard, and the rest being appropriated, after his death, to the object for which it had been collected. Howard’s opposition to the scheme of erecting to him any species of monument, amounted to positive antipathy; indeed nothing was more remarkable in his character than his dislike to be praised for what he had done. When one gentleman happened to speak to him respecting his services to society in a flattering manner, Howard interrupted him by saying, ‘My dear sir, what you call my merit is just my hobby-horse.’

The three years which followed Mr. Howard’s return from his first tour through the lazarettos of Europe, were spent by him in a new general inspection of the English, Scotch, and Irish prisons, with a view to ascertain whether any improvements had been effected in them since his former survey; and in the preparation of a work giving an account of his recent continental journey. This work was entitled, ‘An Account of the Principal Lazarettos of Europe, with Papers Relative to the Plague;’ and was published in the year 1789. It contained, in the form of an appendix, additional remarks on the state of British prisons.

In the conclusion of his work on Lazarettos, Howard announced his intention of again quitting England to visit the hospitals of Russia, Turkey and the Eastern countries, in order to gain more accurate and extensive views of the plague. ‘I am not insensible,’ he says, ‘of the dangers that must attend such a journey. Trusting, however, in the protection of that Providence which has hitherto preserved me, I calmly and cheerfully commit myself to the disposal of unerring wisdom.’

‘Should it please God to cut off my life in the prosecution of this design, let not my conduct be uncandidly imputed to rashness or enthusiasm, but to a serious, deliberate conviction that I am pursuing the path of duty, and to a sincere desire of being made an instrument of more extensive usefulness to my fellow-creatures than could be expected in the narrower circle of a retired life.’ With regard to his objects in undertaking this journey, his biographer, Dr. Aikin, observes that he had various conversations with him on the subject; and found rather a wish to have objects of inquiry pointed out to him by others, than any specific views present to his own mind.

On the 4th of July 1789, Mr. Howard, accompanied by a single servant, quitted England on his last philanthropic journey. He passed through Holland, part of Germany, Prusia, and several cities of Russia, examining the state of the hospitals; and about the end of the year had reached Cherson, a new settlement of the Russian empress at the mouth of the Dnieper. This was destined to be the closing scene of his labors.

Visiting, according to one account, the Russian hospital of the place; according to another, a young lady, whose friends were anxious that he should prescribe for her, as he had done successfully in many similar cases, he caught a malignant fever, which, after an illness of twelve days, carried him off on the 20th of January, 1790, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. On his deathbed he showed the same calm and Christian spirit which had distinguished him through life. To Admiral Priestman, who resided at Cherson, and who visited him during his illness, and endeavored to amuse and cheer him by his remarks, thinking to divert his thoughts, he said, ‘Priestman, you style this a dull conversation, and endeavor to divert my mind from dwelling on death; but I entertain very different sentiments. Death has no terrors to me; it is an event I always look to with cheerfulness, if not with pleasure; and be assured the subject is more grateful than any other. I am well aware that I have but a short time to live; my mode of life has rendered it impossible that I should get rid of this fever. I have no method of lowering my nourishment, and therefore I must die. It is such jolly fellows as you, Priestman, that get over these fevers.’ Then alluding to the subject of his funeral, he continued――‘There is a spot near the village of Dauphigny; this would suit me nicely. You know it well, for I have often said that I should like to be buried there; and I beg of you as you value your old friend, not to suffer any pomp to be used at my funeral; nor any monument, nor monumental inscription whatever, to mark where I am laid; but lay me quietly in the earth, place a sun-dial over my grave, and let me be forgotton.’ These directions were in spirit, although not strictly complied with; and on the 25th of January 1790, the body of Howard was buried in the spot which he had chosen near the village of Dauphigny, at a little distance from Cherson.

The authorities and the inhabitants of the place testified their respect for him by attending his remains to the grave. Instead of the sun-dial, a small brick pyramid was erected on the spot. In Cardington church, according to his direction, a plain slip of marble was erected by his wife’s tomb, bearing this inscription: ‘John Howard; died at Cherson, in Russian Tartary, January 20th, 1790. Aged 64. Christ is my hope.’ A more stately monument was soon afterwards erected to his memory in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Howard’s son, who never recovered from his malady, died in April 1799, in his thirty-fifth year.

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON.

George Gordon, the only son of Captain John Byron, by his second wife, Miss Gordon, of Gight, and grandson of the celebrated Admiral Byron, was born in Holles Street, London, on the 22d of January, 1788. His ancestry, of which he is said to have been more proud than of having been the author of Childe Harold and Manfred, was composed of persons of distinction, but possessing much of that daring recklessness of character which so early displayed itself in the subject of our memoir. His great uncle, Lord William, to whom he succeeded, was tried for killing his relation, Mr. Chaworth, in a duel; and his father, who had caused his first wife to die of a broken heart, after having seduced her, when Marchioness of Carmarthen, became the husband of our poet’s mother, as he openly avowed, for her fortune alone; after the dissipation of which, he separated from her, and died at Valenciennes, in 1791. At this time, young Byron resided, with his mother, at Aberdeen, where in November, 1792, he was sent to a day school; but, according to his own account, ‘learned little there, except to repeat by rote the first lesson of monosyllables.’ After remaining a year in this school, he was placed with a clergyman, named Ross, under whom, he says, he made astonishing progress; and observes, that the moment he could read, his grand passion was history. His next tutor was named Paterson; with him, he adds, ‘I began Latin in Ruddiman’s grammar, and continued till I went to the grammar-school, where I threaded all the classes to the fourth, when I was recalled to England by the demise of my uncle.

The anecdotes which are told of him at this time, display his temper in an unfavorable light, both in his infancy and boyhood. Mr. Moore relates, that whilst yet in petticoats, being angrily reprimanded by his nurse for having soiled or torn a new frock, in which he had just been dressed, he got into one of his ‘silent rages’ (as he himself has described them), seized the frock with both his hands, rent it from top to bottom, and stood, in sullen stillness, setting his censurer and her wrath at defiance. The same authority tells us, that once, in returning home from school at Aberdeen, Byron fell in with a boy who had, on some former occasion, insulted him, but had then got off unpunished; little Byron, however, at the time, promising to ‘pay him off’ whenever they should meet again. Accordingly, on this second encounter, though there were some other boys to take his opponent’s part, he succeeded in inflicting upon him a hearty beating. On his return home, breathless, the servant inquired what he had been about, and was answered by him, with a mixture of rage and humor, that he had been paying a debt, by beating a boy according to promise; for that he was a Byron and would not belie his motto. Other anecdotes are told of him, which show him to have been passionate and resentful to that degree, as to leave it doubtful whether the description of him as ‘a malignant imp’ is not more applicable to his early years, than that of ‘a lively, warm-hearted, and high-spirited boy.’ Before closing our account of his infancy, we should not omit to state that he suffered much from the malformation of one of his feet, which gave him much pain and mortification throughout his life. Even when a child, an allusion to this infirmity so provoked him, that he once struck at a person who remarked it, with a little whip which he held in his hand, exclaiming impatiently, as his eyes flashed fire, ‘Dinna speak of it!’ He himself says, in some memoranda of his early days, that he never felt greater horror and humiliation than when his mother, in one of her fits of passion, called him a ‘lame brat:’ and it is certain, that he always felt it as a sort of ignominy, notwithstanding Mr. Moore’s assertion that in after-life, ‘he could sometimes talk indifferently, and even jestingly, of this lameness.’ His attachment to Mary Duff commenced when he was only eight years of age; but, though, eight years afterwards, the account of her marriage with another, ‘nearly threw him into convulsions,’ and for a while embittered his existence, it was, he adds, ‘the recollection, not the attachment, which afterwards recurred to me so forcibly.’ This affection, however, was not without its influence upon his mind, and probably tended to increase that love of contemplation and solitude, which he is said to have sometimes carried to a dangerous excess among the mountainous scenery of the highlands.

In 1798, he prepared to quit Scotland for Newstead, in consequence of his accession to his family title, of which, perhaps, he was not a little proud; for his mother having said to him, some time in the previous year, whilst perusing a newspaper, that she hoped to have the pleasure of some time or other reading his speeches in the house of commons; he replied, ‘I hope not; if you read any speeches of mine, it will be in the house of lords.’ On his arrival at Newstead, he continued his studies under Mr. Rogers, a schoolmaster in the neighborhood, and was also attended by a quack of the name of Lavender, who had undertaken to cure the defect in his foot. Of this man he had a great abhorrence, and took every opportunity of ridiculing him; and, about the same time, the first symptom of his predilection for rhyming showed itself in four lines of doggerel, respecting an old woman who had given him some offense. In 1799, he was removed to London; and at the suggestion of his guardian, the Earl of Carlisle, placed under the care of Dr. Baillie, who also attended him on his subsequent removal to the school of Dr. Glennie, at Dulwich, where he appears to have gained the esteem both of his master and schoolfellows. His reading in history and poetry, says Dr. Glennie, was far beyond the usual standard of his age; and ‘he showed an intimate accquaintance with the historical parts of Holy Scriptures;’ an assertion which serves to confirm the subsequent declaration of Byron himself, ‘that he was a great reader and admirer of the Old Testament, and had read it through and through before he was eight years old.’ The progress he was rapidly making under Dr. Glennie was, unfortunately, interrupted by the foolish indulgence of his mother, who took him home so frequently, and behaved with so much violence when remonstrated with on the subject, that lord Carlisle determined upon removing his ward to Harrow, whither he was sent in his fourteenth year.

In 1800, he had, as he expresses himself, made ‘his first dash into poetry; the ebullition,’ he adds ‘of a passion for my first cousin, Margaret Parker, one of the most beautiful of evanescent beings.’ This was succeeded by his attachment for Miss Mary Chaworth, whom he used to meet during the Harrow vacations; she was two years older than himself, and does not appear to have given sufficient encouragement to his addresses, to warrant his declaration ‘that she jilted him:’ especially as she was, at the time of their first acquaintance, engaged to Mr. Musters, whom she subsequently married. There is no doubt, however, that his affection for the lady (who is now dead) was sincere, and that the loss of her had an embittering influence upon his future life. A person, who was present when Miss Chaworth’s marriage was first announced to him, has thus described the scene that occurred:――‘Byron, I have some news for you,’ said his mother. ‘Well, what is it?’ ‘Take out our handkerchief first, you will want it.’ ‘Nonsense!’ ‘Take out your handkerchief, I say.’ He did so, to humor her. ‘Miss Chaworth is married.’ An expression very peculiar, impossible to describe, passed over his pale face, and he hurried his handkerchief into his pocket; saying with an affected air of coldness and nonchalance, ‘Is that all?’ ‘Why, I expected,’ said his mother, ‘you would have been plunged into grief.’ He made no reply, and soon began to talk about something else.