The Letters of Lord Byron (1936)

What a lovely revelation. So much is revealed that all I can really say is that these are essential reading. There is the necessity of countering the received notion of Byron that comes down through popular culture, which this definitely does, but of course that notion has come from somewhere, and this also elucidates that genesis. There are 232 letters or letter-excerpts here which range from early childhood epistles to his mother to a letter written on the day that he caught his fatal fever. The primal strength and determination of the man is evident throughout, but, as he says himself, if one was expecting someone roaring in a wolf's pelt one would be sorely disappointed. An absolute fascination in these is the progress of the works; the letters have been chosen carefully enough to give a remarkable picture of the to and fro of the development of many of them, and also to give voice to his responses to their critical reception. It's a fiery portrait, and an exciting one. They also naturally provide a vision of the vicissitudes of his life; matrimonial wars, deep analyses of society and culture, his love for his daughters, opinions of literary effort, political machinations, memories of lost friends - whatever really mattered. A vital book.

Commonplace Book

'It is not true that I ever did, will, would, could or should write a satire against Gifford, or a hair of his head. I always considered him as my literary father, and myself as his 'prodigal son'; and if I have allowed his 'fatted calf' to grow to an ox before he kills it on my return, it is only because I prefer beef to veal.'

from a letter to Douglas Kinnaird, dated February 21, 1824, in The Letters of Lord Byron

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'...I have known Walter Scott long and well, and in occasional situations which call forth the real character - and I can assure you that his character is worthy of admiration - that of all men he is the most open, the most honourable, the most amiable. With his politics I have nothing to do: they differ from mine, which renders it difficult for me to speak of them. But he is perfectly sincere in them: and Sincerity may be humble, but she cannot be servile. I pray you, therefore, to correct or soften that passage. You may, perhaps, attribute this officiousness of mine to a false affectation of candour, as I happen to be a writer also. Attribute it to what motive you please, but believe the truth. I say that Walter Scott is as nearly a thorough good man as man can be, because I know it by experience to be the case.'

from a letter to Henri Beyle (Stendhal), dated May 29, 1823, in The Letters of Lord Byron

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'...But I suspect that he did not take quite so much to me, from his having expected to meet a misanthropical gentleman, in wolf-skin breeches, and answering in fierce mono-syllables, instead of a man of this world. I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever...'

from a letter to Thomas Moore, dated July 5, 1821, in The Letters of Lord Byron

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'Mr. Keats, whose poetry you enquire after, appears to me what I have already said: such writing is a sort of mental ****-******** his Imagination. I don't mean he is indecent, but viciously soliciting his own ideas into a state, which is neither poetry nor anything else but a Bedlam vision produced by raw pork and opium...'

from a letter to John Murray, dated November 9, 1820, in The Letters of Lord Byron

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'The biographer has made a botch of your life - calling your father "a venerable old gentleman", and prattling of "Addison", and "dowager countesses". If that damned fellow was to write my life, I would certainly take his...'

from a letter to Thomas Moore, dated June 9, 1820, in The Letters of Lord Byron

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'...Their moral is not your moral; their life is not your life; you would not understand it: it is not English, nor French, nor German, which you would all understand. The Conventual education, the Cavalier Servitude, the habits of thought and living are so entirely different, and the difference becomes so much more striking the more you live intimately with them, that I know not how to make you comprehend a people, who are at once temperate and profligate, serious in their character and buffoons in their amusements, capable of impressions and passions, which are at once sudden and durable (what you find in no other nation), and who actually have no society (what we would call so), as you may see by their Comedies: they have no real comedy, not even in Goldoni; and that is because they have no Society to draw it from.'

from a letter to John Murray, dated February 21, 1820, in The Letters of Lord Byron

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'...Was he ever in a Turkish bath, that marble paradise of sherbet and Sodomy?...'

from a letter to John Murray dated August 12, 1819, in The Letters of Lord Byron

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'...I think Rubens a very great dauber, and prefer Vandyke a hundred times over (but then I know nothing about the matter). Rubens' women have all red gowns and red shoulders - to say nothing of necks, of which they are more liberal than charming; it may all be very fine, and I suppose it may be Art, for 'tis not Nature.'

from a letter to Augusta Leigh, dated May 1, 1816, in The Letters of Lord Byron

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'...Swift says 'no wise man ever married'; but, for a fool, I think it the most ambrosial of all possible future states. I still think one ought to marry upon lease; but am very sure I should renew mine at the expiration, though next term were for ninety and nine years.'

from a letter to Thomas Moore dated February 2, 1815, in The Letters of Lord Byron

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'...The great object of life is sensation - to feel that we exist, even though in pain. It is this 'craving void' which drives us to gaming - to battle - to travel - to intemperate, but keenly felt pursuits of any description, whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment...'

from a letter to Anne Isabella Milbanke, dated September 6, 1813, in The Letters of Lord Byron

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'...God would have made His will known without books, considering how very few could read them when Jesus of Nazareth lived, had it been His pleasure to ratify any peculiar mode of worship. As to your immortality, if people are to live, why die? And our carcases, which are to rise again, are they worth raising? I hope, if mine is, that I shall have a better pair of legs than I have moved on these two-and-twenty years, or I shall be sadly behind in the squeeze into Paradise...'

from a letter to Francis Hodgson, dated September 25, 1811, in The Letters of Lord Byron