TO JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE Venice, April 6th, 1819

My Dear Hobhouse, - I have not derived from the Scriptures of Rochefoucault that consolation which I expected 'in the misfortunes of our best friends' . . .

I have sent my second Canto; but I will have no gelding. Murray has my order of the day. Douglas Kinnaird with more than usual politeness writes me vivaciously that Hanson or I willed the three per cent, instead of the five - as if I could prefer three to five per cent! - death and fiends! - and then he lifts up his leg against the publication of Don Juan. 'Et tu Brute' (the e mute recollect). I shall certainly hitch our dear friend into some d--d story or other, 'my dear, Mr Sneer - Mr Sneer - my dear'. I must write again in a few days, it being now past four in the morning; it is Passion week, and rather dull. I am dull too, for I have fallen in love with a Romagnola Countess from Ravenna, who is nineteen years old, and has a Count of fifty - whom she seems disposed to qualify, the first year of marriage being just over. I knew her a little last year at her starting, but they always wait a year, at least generally. I met her first at the Albrizzi's, and this spring at the Benzona's - and I have hopes, sir, - hopes, but she wants me to come to Ravenna, and then to Bologna. Now this would be all very well for certainties; but for mere hopes; if she should plant me, and I should make a 'fiasco', never could I show my face on the Piazza. It is nothing that money can do, for the Conte is awfully rich, and would be so even in England, - but he is fifty and odd; has had two wives and children before this his third (a pretty fair-haired girl last year out of a convent now making her second tour of the Venetian Conversazioni) and does not seem so jealous this year as he did last - when he stuck close to her side - even at the Governor's.

She is pretty, but has no tact; answers aloud, when she should whisper - talks of age to old ladies who want to pass for young; and this blessed night horrified a correct company at the Benzona's, by calling out to me 'mio Byron' in an audible key during a dead silence of pause in the other prattlers, who stared and whispered their respective serventi. One of her preliminaries is that I must never leave Italy. I have no desire to leave it, but I should not like to be frittered down into a regular Cicisbeo. What shall I do? I am in love, and tired of promiscuous concubinage, and have now an opportunity of settling for life.

Yours,
B.

TO THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI Venice, 25th April, 1819

My Love, - I hope you have received my letter of the 22nd, addressed to the person in Ravenna of whom you told me, before leaving Venice. You scold me for not having written to you in the country - but - how could I? My sweetest treasure, you gave me no other address but that of Ravenna. If you knew how great is the love I feel for you, you would not believe me capable of forgetting you for a single instant; you must become better acquainted with me. Perhaps one day you will know that, although I do not deserve you, I do indeed love you.

-----------Countess Teresa Guiccioli--------

You want to know whom I most enjoy seeing, since you have gone away? who makes me tremble and feel - not what you alone can arouse in my soul - but something like it? Well, I will tell you - it is the old porter whom Fanny used to send with your notes when you were in Venice, and who now brings your letters - still dear, but not so dear as those which brought the hope of seeing you that same day at the usual time. My Teresa, where are you? Everything here reminds me of you, everything is the same, but you are not here and I still am. In separation the one who goes away suffers less than the one who stays behind. The distraction of the journey, the change of scene, the landscape, the movement, perhaps even the separation, distracts the mind and lightens the heart. But the One who stays behind is surrounded by the same things, tomorrow as yesterday, while only that is lacking which made me forget that a tomorrow would ever come. When I go to the Conversazione I give myself up to tedium, too happy to suffer ennui, rather than grief. I see the same faces - hear the same voices - but no longer dare to look towards the sofa where I shall not see you any more, but instead some old crone who might be Calumny personified. I hear, without the slightest emotion, the opening of that door which I used to watch with so much anxiety when I was there before you, hoping to see you come in. I will not speak of much dearer places still, for there I shall not go - unless you return; I have no other pleasure than thinking of you, but I do not see how I could see again the places where we have been together - especially those most consecrated to our love - without dying of grief.

Fanny is now in Treviso, and God knows when I shall have any more letters from you; but meanwhile I have received three; you must by now have arrived in Ravenna - I long to hear of your arrival; my fate depends upon your decision. Fanny will be back in a few days; but tomorrow I shall send her a note by a friend's hand to ask her not to forget to send me your news, if she receives any letters before returning to Venice.

My Treasure, my life has become most monotonous and sad; neither books, nor music, nor horses (rare things in Venice - but you know that mine are at the Lido), nor dogs, give me any pleasure; the society of women does not attract me; I won't speak of the society of men, for that I have always despised. For some years I have been trying systematically to avoid strong passions, having suffered too much from the tyranny of Love. Never to feel admiration - and to enjoy myself without giving too much importance to the enjoyment in itself - to feel indifference toward human affairs - contempt for many - but hatred for none, this was the basis of my philosophy. I did not mean to love any more, nor did I hope to receive Love. You have put to flight all my resolutions; now I am all yours; I will become what you wish perhaps happy in your love, but never at peace again. You should not have re-awakened my heart, for (at least in my own country) my love has been fatal to those I love - and to myself. But these reflections come too late. You have been mine - and whatever the outcome - I am, and eternally shall be, entirely yours. I kiss you a thousand and a thousand times - but

Che giova a te, cor mio, l'esser amato?
Che giova a me l'aver si caro amante?
Perche crudo destino -
Ne disunisci tu s' Amor ne stringe?

Love me - as always your tender and faithful,
B.

[The following letter was inserted as a facsimile in Works of Lord Byron (Galignani, 1826) and also Byron The Complete Poetical Works (Galignani, 1831). Evidently the facsimile is a very good one and can be easily mistaken for the original letter. With Ms. Verry's permission we have posted GIF images of three of the more interesting pages of the facsimile. See "Verry letter" page 1, "Verry letter" page 2, and "Verry letter" page 3]

TO MONSIEUR GALIGNANI Venice, April 27th 1819

Sir,

In various numbers of your Journal, I have seen mentioned a work entitled "the Vampire" with the addition of my name as that of the Author. - I am not the author and never heard of the work in question until now. In a more recent paper I perceive a formal annunciation of "the Vampire" with the addition of an account of my "residence in the Island of Mitylene" an Island which I have occasionally sailed by in the course of travelling some years ago through the Levant - and where I should have no objection to reside - but where I have never yet resided. -- Neither of these performances are mine - and I presume that it is neither unjust nor ungracious to request that you will favour me by contradicting the advertisement to which I allude. - If the book is clever it would be base to deprive the real writer - whoever he may be - of his honours - and if stupid - I desire the responsibility of nobody's dullness but my own. --- You will excuse the trouble I give you, - the imputation is of no great importance, - and as long as it was confined to surmises and reports - I should have received it as I have received many others, in Silence. - But the formality of a public advertisement of a book I never wrote - and a residence where I never resided - is a little too much - particularly as I have no notion of the contents of the one - nor the incidents of the other. - I have besides a personal dislike to "Vampires" and the little acquaintance I have with them would by no means induce me to divulge their secrets. -- You did me a much less injury by your paragraphs about "my devotion" and "abandonment of Society for the Sake of religion" - which appeared in your Messenger during last Lent; - all of which are not founded on fact - but You see I do not contradict them, - because they are merely personal - whereas the others in some degree concern the reader ---- You will oblige me by complying with my request of contradiction - I assure you that I know nothing of the work or works in question - and have the honour to be - (as the correspondents to Magazines say / "your constant reader" and very obedient humble servant.

BYRON

TO JOHN MURRAY Venice, May 15, 1819

Dear Sir, - I have received and return by this post, under another Cover, the first proof of Don Juan. Before the Second can arrive, it is probable that I may have left Venice, and the length of my absence is so uncertain, that you had better proceed to the publication without boring me with more proofs. I send by last post an addition - and a new copy of 'Julia's Letter' . . .

Mr Hobhouse is at it again about indelicacy. There is no indelicacy; if he wants that, let him read Swift, his great Idol; but his Imagination must be a dunghill, with a Viper's nest in the middle, to engender such a supposition about this poem. For my part, I think you are all crazed . . . Request him not 'to put me in a phrenzy', as Sir Anthony Absolute says, 'though he was not the indulgent father that I am' . . .

The story of Shelley's agitation is true. I can't tell what seized him, for he don't want courage. He was once with me in a gale of Wind, in a small boat, right under the rocks between Meillerie and St Gingo. We were five in the boat - a servant, two boatmen, and ourselves. The sail was mismanaged, and the boat was filling fast. He can't swim. I stripped off my coat - made him strip off his and take hold of an oar, telling him that I thought (being myself an expert swimmer) I could save him, if he would not struggle when I took hold of him - unless we got smashed against the rocks, which were high and sharp, with an awkward surf on them at that minute. We were then about a hundred yards from shore, and the boat in peril. He answered me with the greatest coolness, that 'he had no notion of being saved, and that I would have enough to do to save myself, and begged not to trouble me'. Luckily, the boat righted, and, baling, we got round a point into St Gingo, where the inhabitants came down and embraced the boatmen on their escape, the Wind having been high enough to tear up some huge trees from the Alps above us, as we saw next day.

And yet the same Shelley, who was as cool as it was possible to be in such circumstances, (of which I am no judge myself, as the chance of swimming naturally gives self possession when near shore), certainly had the fit of phantasy which Polidori describes though not exactly as he describes it.

The story of the agreement to write the Ghost-books is true but the ladies are not sisters. One is Godwin's daughter by Mary Wolstonecraft, and the other the present Mrs Godwin's daughter by a former husband. So much for Scoundrel Southey's story of 'incest'; neither was there any promiscuous intercourse whatever. Both are an invention of that execrable villain Southey, whom I will term so as publicly as he deserves. Mary Godwin (now Mrs Shelley) wrote Frankenstein, which you have reviewed, thinking it Shelley's. Methinks it is a wonderful work for a girl of nineteen, - not nineteen, indeed at that time . . .

I am yours very truly,
B.

[The following letter was first published by Lord Lovelace in Astarte, a book that attempts to justify Lady Byron in her separation from Lord Byron. The existing copy of the letter is not in Lord Byron's own hand, but is based instead on a copy presumably made by Lady Byron from the original. One can only speculate on Augusta's reasons for showing so intimate a letter to one who was suspicious of Byron's past relationship with her. The reader will easily perceive how different in tone and substance this letter is from all others that Byron wrote to his sister in this period. Support for the validity of the letter is found, though, in Byron's next letter to Augusta on 26 July 1819. For a more thorough discussion of this letter consult G. Wilson Knight, Lord Byron's Marriage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), p. 137 ff.]

TO THE HON. AUGUSTA LEIGH Venice [Monday], May 17th 1819

My Dearest Love, - I have been negligent in not writing, but what can I say? Three years absence - and the total change of scene and habit make such a difference - that we have now nothing in common but our affections and our relationship.

But I have never ceased nor can cease to feel for a moment that perfect and boundless attachment which bound and binds me to you - which renders me utterly incapable of real love for any other human being - for what could they be to me after you? My own - we may have been wrong - but I repent of nothing except that cursed marriage - and your refusing to continue to love me as you had loved me - I can neither forget nor quite forgive you for that precious piece of reformation. - but I can never be other than I have been - and whenever I love anything it is because it reminds me in some way or other of yourself - for instance I not long ago attached myself to a Venetian for no earthly reason (although a pretty woman) but because she was called ------ and she often remarked (without knowing the reason how fond I was of the name. - It is heart-breaking to think of our long Separation - and I am sure more than punishment enough for all our sins - Dante is more humane in his 'Hell' for he places his unfortunate lovers (Francesca of Rimini and Paolo whose case fell a good deal short of ours - though sufficiently naughty) in company - and though they suffer - it is at least together. - If ever I return to England - it will be to see you - and recollect that in all time - and place - and feelings - I have never ceased to be the same to you in heart - Circumstances may have ruffled my manner - and hardened my spirit - you may have seen me harsh and exasperated with all things around me; grieved and tortured with your new resolution, - and the soon after persecution of that infamous fiend who drove me from my Country and conspired against my life - by endeavouring to deprive me of all that could render it precious - but remember that even then you were the sole object that cost me a tear? and what tears! do you remember our parting? I have not spirits now to write to you upon other subjects - I am well in health - and have no cause of grief but the reflection that we are not together - When you write to me speak to me of yourself - and say that you love me - never mind commonplace people and topics - which can be in no degree interesting - to me who see nothing in England but the country which holds you - or around it but the sea which divides us. - They say absence destroys weak passions - and confirms strong ones - Alas! mine for you is the union of all passions and of all affections - Has strengthened itself but will destroy me - I do not speak of physical destruction - for I have endured and can endure much - but of the annihilation of all thoughts, feelings or hopes - which have not more or less reference to you and to our recollections - Ever dearest. [Signature erased]

TO JOHN MURRAY Venice, May 18, 1819

. . . I wrote to you in haste and at past two in the morning having besides had an accident. In going, about an hour and a half ago, to a rendezvous with a Venetian girl (unmarried and the daughter of one of their nobles), I tumbled into the Grand Canal, and, not choosing to miss my appointment by the delays of changing, I have been perched in a balcony with my wet clothes on ever since, till this minute that on my return I have slipped into my dressing-gown. My foot slipped in getting into my Gondola to set out (owing to the cursed slippery steps of their palaces), and in I flounced like a Carp, and went dripping like a Triton to my Sea nymph and had to scramble up to a grated window:

Fenced with iron within and without
Lest the lover get in or the Lady get out.

She is a very dear friend of mine, and I have undergone some trouble on her account, for last winter the truculent tyrant her flinty-hearted father, having been informed by an infernal German, Countess Vorsperg (their next neighbour), of our meetings, they sent a priest to me, and a Commissary of police, and they locked the Girl up, and gave her prayers and bread and water, and our connection was cut off for some time; but the father hath lately been laid up, and the brother is at Milan, and the mother falls asleep, and the Servants are naturally on the wrong side of the question, and there is no Moon at Midnight just now, so that we have lately been able to recommence; the fair one is eighteen; her name, Angelina; the family name, of course, I don't tell you.

She proposed to me to divorce my mathematical wife, and I told her that in England we can't divorce except for female infidelity. 'And pray, (said she), how do you know what she may have been doing these last three years?' I answered that I could not tell, but that the state of Cuckoldom was not quite so flourishing in Great Britain as with us here. 'But', she said, 'can't you get rid of her?' 'Not more than is done already (I answered): You would not have me poison her?' Would you believe it? She made me no answer. Is not that a true and odd national trait? It spoke more than a thousand words, and yet this is a little, pretty, sweet-tempered, quiet feminine being as ever you saw, but the Passions of a Sunny Soil are paramount to all other considerations. An unmarried Girl naturally wishes to be married: if she can marry and love at the same time it is well, but at any rate she must love. I am not sure that my pretty paramour was herself fully aware of the inference to be drawn from her dead Silence, but even the unconsciousness of the latent idea was striking to an observer of the Passions; and I never strike out a thought of another's or of my own without trying to trace it to its Source . . .

Yours ever,
B.

TO JOHN MURRAY Bologna, June 7, 1819

. . . I have been picture-gazing this morning at the famous Domenichino and Guido, both of which are superlative. I afterwards went to the beautiful cimetry of Bologna, beyond the walls, and found, besides the superb Burial-ground, an original of a Custode, who reminded me of the grave-digger in Hamlet. He has a collection of Capuchins' skulls, labelled on the forehead, and taking down one of them, said, 'This was Brother Desidero Berro, who died at forty - one of my best friends . . . He was the merriest, cleverest fellow I ever knew . . . He walked so actively that you might have taken him for a dancer - he joked - he laughed - oh ! he was such a Frate as I never saw before, nor ever shall again.'

. . . Some of the epitaphs at Ferrara pleased me more than the more splendid monuments of Bologna; for instance:

Martini Luigi
Implora pace.
Lucrezia Picini
Implora eterna quiete.

Can any thing be more full of pathos? Those few words say all that can be said or sought: the dead had had enough of life; all they wanted was rest, and this they 'implore'. There is all the helplessness, and humble hope, and deathlike prayer, that can arise from the grave - 'implora pace'. I hope, whoever may survive me, and shall see me put in the foreigners' burying-ground at the Lido, within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see those two words, and no more, put over me. I trust they won't think of 'pickling, and bringing me home to Clod or Blunderbuss Hall'. I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country. I believe the thought would drive me mad on my deathbed, could I suppose that any of my friends would be base enough to convey my carcase back to your soil. I would not even feed your worms, if I could help it . . .

I never hear any thing of Ada, the little Electra of my Mycenae; the moral Clytemnestra is not very communicative of her tidings, but there will come a day of reckoning, even if I should not live to see it . . .

TO RICHARD BELGRAVE HOPPNER Ravenna, June 20th 1819

. . . My letters were useful as far as I employed them; and I like both the place and people, though I don't trouble the latter more than I can help. She manages very well, though the locale is inconvenient (no bolts and be d--d to them) and we run great risks (were it not at sleeping hours - after dinner) and no place but the great Saloon of his own palace. So that if I come away with a Stiletto in my gizzard some fine afternoon, I shall not be astonished.

I can't make him out at all - he visits me frequently, and takes me out (like Whittington, the Lord Mayor) in a coach and six horses. The fact appears to be, that he is completely governed by her - for that matter, so am I. The people here don't know what to make of us, as he had the character of jealousy with all his wives - this is the third. He is the richest of the Ravennese, by their own account, but is not popular among them.

By the aid of a Priest, a Chambermaid, a young Negro-boy, and a female friend, we are enabled to carry on our unlawful loves, as far as they can well go, though generally with some peril, especially as the female friend and priest are at present out of town for some days, so that some of the precautions devolve upon the Maid and Negro . . .

You are but a shabby fellow not to have written before - and I am,

Truly yours,
B.

TO THE HON. AUGUSTA LEIGH Ravenna, July 26th, 1819

My Dearest Augusta, - I am at too great a distance to scold you, but I will ask you whether your letter of the 1st July is an answer to the letter I wrote you before I quitted Venice? What? is it come to this? Have you no memory? or no heart? You had both - and I have both - at least for you.

I write this presuming that you received that letter. Is it that you fear? Do not be afraid of the past; the world has its own affairs without thinking of ours and you may write safely . . .

I do not like at all this pain in your side and always think of your mother's constitution. You must always be to me the first consideration in the world. Shall I come to you? Or would a warm climate do you good? If so say the word, and I will provide you and your family (including that precious luggage your husband) with the means of making an agreeable journey. You need not fear about me. I am much altered and should be little trouble to you, nor would I give you more of my company than you like. I confess after three and a half - and such years! and such a year as preceded those three years ! - it would be a relief to me to see you again, and if it would be so to you I will come to you. Pray answer me, and recollect that I will do as you like in everything, even to returning to England, which is not the pleasantest of residences were you out of it.

I write from Ravenna. I came here on account of a Countess Guiccioli, a girl of twenty married to a very rich old man of sixty about a year ago. With her last winter I had a liaison according to the good old Italian custom. She miscarried in May and sent for me here, and here I have been these two months. She is pretty, a great coquette, extremely vain, excessively affected, clever enough, without the smallest principle, with a good deal of imagination and some passion. She had set her heart on carrying me off from Venice out of vanity, and succeeded, and having made herself the subject of general conversation has greatly contributed to her recovery. Her husband is one of the richest nobles of Ravenna, threescore years of age. This is his third wife. You may suppose what esteem I entertain for her. Perhaps it is about equal on both sides. I have my saddle-horses here and there is good riding in the forest. With these, and my carriage which is here also, and the sea, and my books, and the lady, the time passes. I am very fond of riding and always was out of England. But I hate your Hyde Park, and your turnpike roads, and must have forests, downs, or deserts to expatiate in. I detest knowing the road one is to go, and being interrupted by your damned finger-posts, or a blackguard roaring for twopence at a turnpike.

I send you a sonnet which this faithful lady had made for the nuptials of one of her relations in which she swears the most alarming constancy to her husband. Is not this good? You may suppose my face when she shewed it to me. I could not help laughing - one of our laughs. All this is very absurd, but you see that I have good morals at bottom.

She is an equestrian too, but a bore in her rides, for she can't guide her horse and he runs after mine, and tries to bite him, and then she begins screaming in a high hat and sky-blue riding habit, making a most absurd figure, and embarrassing me and both our grooms, who have the devil's own work to keep her from tumbling, or having her clothes torn off by the trees and thickets of the pine forest. I fell a little in love with her intimate friend, a certain Geltruda (that is Gertrude) who is very young and seems very well disposed to be perfidious; but alas! her husband is jealous, and the G. also detected me in an illicit squeezing of hands, the consequence of which was that the friend was whisked off to Bologna for a few days, and since her return I have never been able to see her but twice, with a dragon of a mother in law and a barbarian husband by her side, besides my own dear precious Amica, who hates all flirting but her own. But I have a priest who befriends me and the Gertrude says a good deal with her great black eyes, so that perhaps . . . but alas! I mean to give up these things altogether. I have now given you some account of my present state. The guidebook will tell you about Ravenna. I can't tell how long or short may be my stay. Write to me - love me - as ever

Yours most asffectedly
B.

P.S. - This affair is not in the least expensive, being all in the wealthy line, but troublesome, for the lady is imperious, and exigeante. However there are hopes that we may quarrel. When we do you shall hear.

TO JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE Ravenna, July 30th, 1819

. . . I have been here these two months, and hitherto all hath gone on well, with the usual excerpta of some 'gelosie', which are the fault of the climate, and of the conjunction of two such capricious people as the Guiccioli and the Inglese, but here hath been no stabbing nor drugging of possets. The last person assassinated here was the Commissary of Police, three months ago; they kilt him from an alley one evening, but he is recovering from the slugs with which they sprinkled him, from an 'Archibugia' that shot him round a corner, like the Irishman's gun. He and Manzoni, who was stabbed dead going to the theatre at Forli, not long before, are the only recent instances. But it is the custom of the country, and not much worse than duelling, where one undertakes, at a certain personal risk of a more open nature, to get rid of a disagreeable person, who is injurious or inconvenient, and if such people become insupportable, what is to be done? It is give and take, like everything else - you run the same risk, and they run the same risk; it has the same object with duelling, but adopts a different means. As to the trash about honour, that is all stuff; a man offends, you want to kill him, this is amiable and natural, but how? The natural mode is obvious, but the artificial varies according to education.

I am taking the generous side of the question, seeing I am much more exposed here to become the patient than the agent of such an experiment. I know but one man whom I should be tempted to put to rest, and he is not an Italian nor in Italy, therefore I trust that he won't pass through Romagna during my sojourn, because 'gin he did, there is no saying what the fashionable facilities might induce a vindictive gentleman to meditate; besides, there are injuries where the balance is so greatly against the offender, that you are not to risk life against his (excepting always the law, which is originally a convention), but to trample as [you] would on any other venomous animal . . .

TO JOHN MURRAY Ravenna, August 1, 1819

. . . You have bought Harlow's drawings of Margarita and me rather dear methinks; but since you desire the story of Margarita Cogni, you shall be told it, though it may be lengthy.

Her face is of the fine Venetian cast of the old Time, and her figure, though perhaps too tall, not less fine - taken altogether in the national dress.

In the summer of 1817, Hobhouse and myself were sauntering on horseback along the Brenta one evening, when, amongst a group of peasants, we remarked two girls as the prettiest we had seen for some time. About this period, there had been great distress in the country, and I had a little relieved some of the people. Generosity makes a great figure at very little cost in Venetian livres, and mine had probably been exaggerated - as an Englishman's. Whether they remarked us looking at them or no, I know not; but one of them called out to me in Venetian 'Why do not you, who relieve others, think of us also?' I turned round and answered her - 'Cara, tu sei troppo bella e giovane per aver' bisogno del soccorso mio'. She answered, 'If you saw my hut and my food, you would not say so'. All this passed half jestingly, and I saw no more of her for some days.

A few evenings after, we met with these two girls again, and they addressed us more seriously, assuring us of the truth of their statement. They were cousins; Margarita married, the other single. As I doubted still of the circumstances, I took the business up in a different light, and made an appointment with them for the next evening. Hobhouse had taken a fancy to the single lady, who was much shorter in stature, but a very pretty girl also. They came attended by a third woman, who was cursedly in the way, and Hobhouse's charmer took fright (I don't mean at Hobhouse, but at not being married - for here no woman will do anything under adultery), and flew off; and mine made some bother - at the propositions, and wished to consider of them. I told her, 'if you really are in want, I will relieve you without any conditions whatever, and you may make love with me or no just as you please - that shall make no difference; but if you are not in absolute necessity, this is naturally a rendezvous, and I presumed that you understood this when you made the appointment'. She said that she had no objection to make love with me, as she was married, and all married women did it; but that her husband (a baker) was somewhat ferocious, and would do her a mischief. In short, in a few evenings we arranged our affairs, and for two years, in the course of which I had more women than I can count or recount, she was the only one who preserved over me an ascendancy which was often disputed, and never impaired. As she herself used to say publicly, 'It don't matter, he may have five hundred; but he will always come back to me'.

The reasons of this were, firstly, her person - very dark, tall, the Venetian face, very fine black eyes - and certain other qualities which need not be mentioned. She was two and twenty years old, and, never having had children, had not spoilt her figure, nor anything else - which is, I assure you, a great desideration in a hot climate where they grow relaxed and doughy, and flumpity a short time after breeding. She was, besides, a thorough Venetian in her dialect, in her thoughts, in her countenance, in every thing, with all their naivete and Pantaloon humour. Besides, she could neither read nor write, and could not plague me with letters, except twice that she paid sixpence to a public scribe, under the piazza, to make a letter for her, upon some occasion, when I was ill and could not see her. In other respects she was somewhat fierce and prepotente, that is, overbearing, and used to walk in whenever it suited her, with no very great regard to time, place, nor persons; and if she found any women in her way, she knocked them down.

When I first knew her, I was in relazione (liaison) with la Signora Segati, who was silly enough one evening at Dolo, accompanied by some of her female friends, to threaten her; for the Gossips of the Villeggiatura had already found out, by the neighing of my horse one evening, that I used to 'ride late in the night' to meet the Fornarina. Margarita threw back her veil (fazziolo), and replied in very explicit Venetian, 'You are not his wife; I am not his wife: you are his Donna, and I am his Donna: your husband is a cuckold, and mine is another. For the rest, what right have you to reproach me? if he prefers what is mine to what is yours, is it my fault? if you wish to secure him, tie him to your petticoat-string; but do not think to speak to me without a reply, because you happen to be richer than I am.' Having delivered this pretty piece of eloquence (which I translate as it was related to me by a bye-stander), she went on her way leaving a numerous audience with Madame Segati, to ponder at her leisure on the dialogue between them.

When I came to Venice for the Winter, she followed. I never had any regular liaison with her, but whenever she came I never allowed any other connection to interfere with her; and as she found herself out to be a favourite, she came pretty often. But she had inordinate Self-love, and was not tolerant of other women, except of the Segati, who was, as she said, my regular Amica, so that I, being at that time somewhat promiscuous, there was great confusion and demolition of head-dresses and handkerchiefs; and sometimes my servants, in 'redding the fray' between her and other feminine persons, received more knocks than acknowledgements for their peaceful endeavours. At the Cavalchina, the masqued ball on the last night of the Carnival, where all the World goes, she snatched off the mask of Madame Contarini, a lady noble by birth, and decent in conduct, for no other reason, but because she happened to be leaning on my arm. You may suppose what a cursed noise this made; but this is only one of her pranks.

At last she quarrelled with her husband, and one evening ran away to my house. I told her this would not do: she said she would lie in the street, but not go back to him; that he beat her (the gentle tigress), spent her money, and scandalously neglected his Oven. As it was Midnight I let her stay, and next day there was no moving her at all. Her husband came, roaring and crying, and entreating her to come back: - not she! He then applied to the Police, and they applied to me: I told them and her husband to take her; I did not want her; she had come, and I could not fling her out of the window; but they might conduct her through that or the door if they chose it. She went before the Commissary, but was obliged to return with that becco ettico ('consumptive cuckold'), as she called the poor man, who had a Ptisick. In a few days she ran away again. After a precious piece of work, she fixed herself in my house, really and truly without my consent, but, owing to my indolence, and not being able to keep my countenance; for if I began in a rage, she always finished by making me laugh with some Venetian pantaloonery or another; and the Gipsy knew this well enough, as well as her other powers of persuasion, and exerted them with the usual tact and success of all She-things - high and low, they are all alike for that.

Madame Benzone also took her under her protection, and then her head turned. She was always in extremes, either crying or laughing, and so fierce when angered, that she was the terror of men, women, and children - for she had the strength of an Amazon, with the temper of Medea. She was a fine animal, but quite untameable. I was the only person that could at all keep her in any order, and when she saw me really angry (which they tell me is rather a savage sight), she subsided. But she had a thousand fooleries: in her fazziolo, the dress of the lower orders, she looked beautiful; but, alas! she longed for a hat and feathers, and all I could say or do (and I said much) could not prevent this travestie. I put the first into the fire; but I got tired of burning them, before she did of buying them, so that she made herself a figure - for they did not at all become her.

Then she would have her gowns with a tail - like a lady, forsooth: nothing would serve her but 'l'abito colla coua', or cua, (that is the Venetian for 'la Coda', the tail or train,) and as her cursed pronunciation of the word made me laugh, there was an end of all controversy, and she dragged this diabolical tail after her every where.

In the meantime, she beat the women and stopped my letters. I found her one day pondering over one: she used to try to find out by their shape whether they were feminine or no; and she used to lament her ignorance, and actually studied her Alphabet, on purpose (as she declared) to open all letters addressed to me and read their contents.

I must not omit to do justice to her housekeeping qualities: after she came into my house as donna di governo, the expences were reduced to less than half, and every body did their duty better - the apartments were kept in order, and every thing and every body else, except herself.

That she had a sufficient regard for me in her wild way, I had many reasons to believe. I will mention one. In the autumn, one day, going to the Lido with my Gondoliers, we were overtaken by a heavy Squall, and the Gondola put in peril - hats blown away, boat filling, oar lost, tumbling sea, thunder, rain in torrents, night coming, and wind encreasing. On our return, after a tight struggle, I found her on the open steps of the Mocenigo palace, on the Grand Canal, with her great black eyes flashing through her tears, and the long dark hair, which was streaming drenched with rain over her brows and breast. She was perfectly exposed to the storm; and the wind blowing her hair and dress about her thin figure, and the lightning flashing round her, with the waves rolling at her feet, made her look like Medea alighted from her chariot, or the Sibyl of the tempest that was rolling around her, the only living thing within hail at that moment except ourselves. On seeing me safe, she did not wait to greet me, as might be expected, but calling out to me Ah! can' della Madonna, e esto il tempo per andar' al' Lido? (Ah! Dog of the Virgin, is this a time to go to Lido?) ran into the house, and solaced herself with scolding the boatmen for not foreseeing the 'temporale'. I was told by the servants that she had only been prevented from coming in a boat to look after me, by the refusal of all the Gondoliers of the Canal to put out into the harbour in such a moment: and that then she sat down on the steps in all the thickest of the Squall, and would neither be removed nor comforted. Her joy at seeing me again was moderately mixed with ferocity, and gave me the idea of a tigress over her recovered Cubs.

But her reign drew near a close. She became quite ungovernable some months after; and a concurrence of complaints, some true, and many false - 'a favourite has no friend' - determined me to part with her . . .

I forgot to mention that she was very devout, and would cross herself if she heard the prayer-time strike - sometimes when that ceremony did not appear to be much in unison with what she was then about.

She was quick in reply; as, for instance - One day when she had made me very angry with beating somebody or other, I called her a Cow (Cow, in Italian, is a sad affront and tantamount to the feminine of dog in English). I called her 'Vacca'. She turned round, curtesied, and answered, 'Vacca tua, 'Celenza' (i.e., Eccelenza). 'Your Cow, please your Excellency.' In short, she was, as I said before, a very fine Animal, of considerable beauty and energy, with many good and several amusing qualies, but wild as a witch and fierce as a demon. She used to boast publicly of her ascendancy over me, contrasting it with that of other women, and assigning for it sundry reasons, physical and moral, which did more credit to her person than her modesty. True it was, that they all tried to get her away, and no one succeeded till her own absurdity helped them. Whenever there was a competition, and sometimes one would be shut in one room and one in another to prevent battle, she had generally the preference.

Yours very truly and affectionately,
B.

TO JOHN MURRAY Bologna, August 12, 1819

.. . You are right, Gifford is right, Crabbe is right, Hobhouse is right - you are all right, and I am all wrong; but do, pray, let me have that pleasure. Cut me up root and branch; quarter me in the Quarterly; send round my disjecti membra poetae, like those of the Levite's Concubine; make me, if you will, a spectacle to men and angels; but don't ask me to alter, for I can't: - I am obstinate and lazy - and there's the truth.

But, nevertheless, I will answer your friend C[ohen], who objects to the quick succession of fun and gravity, as if in that case the gravity did not (in intention, at least) heighten the fun. His metaphor is, that 'we are never scorched and drenched at the same time'. Blessings on his experience! Ask him these questions about 'scorching and drenching'. Did he never play at Cricket, or walk a mile in hot weather? Did he never spill a dish of tea over his testicles in handing the cup to his charmer, to the great shame of his nankeen breeches? Did he never swim in the sea at Noonday with the Sun in his eyes and on his head, which all the foam of Ocean could not cool? Did he never draw his foot out of a tub of too hot water, damning his eyes and his valet's? Did he never inject for a Gonorrhea? or make water through an ulcerated Urethra? Was he ever in a Turkish bath, that marble paradise of sherbet and Sodomy? Was he ever in a cauldron of boiling oil, like St John? or in the sulphureous waves of hell? (where he ought to be for his 'scorching and drenching at the same time'). Did he never tumble into a river or lake, fishing, and sit in his wet cloathes in the boat, or on the bank, afterwards 'scorched and drenched', like a true sportsman? 'Oh for breath to utter!' - but make him my compliments; he is a clever fellow for all that - a very clever fellow.

You ask me for the plan of Donny Johnny: I have no plan - I had no plan; but I had or have materials; though if, like Tony Lumpkin, I am 'to be snubbed so when I am in spirits', the poem will be naught, and the poet turn serious again. If it don't take, I will leave it off where it is, with all due respect to the Public; but if continued, it must be in my own way. You might as well make Hamlet (or Diggory) 'act mad' in a strait waistcoat as trammel my buffoonery, if I am to be a buffoon: their gestures and my thoughts would only be pitiably absurd and ludicrously constrained. Why, Man the Soul of such writing is its licence; at least the liberty of that licence, if one likes - not that one should abuse it- it is like trial by Jury and Peerage and the Habeas Corpus - a very fine thing, but chiefly in the reversion; because no one wishes to be tried for the mere pleasure of proving his possession of the privilege.

But a truce with these reflections. You are too earnest and eager about a work never intended to be serious. Do you suppose that I could have any intention but to giggle and make giggle? - a playful satire, with as little poetry as could be helped, was what I meant: and as to the indecency, do, pray, read in Boswell what Johnson, the sullen moralist, says of Prior and Paulo Purgante . . .

TO JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE Bologna, August 20th, 1819

. . . My time has been passed viciously and agreeably; at thirty-one so few years, months, days remain, that 'Carpe diem' is not enough. I have been obliged to crop even the seconds, for who can trust to-morrow? - to-morrow quotha? to-hour, to-minute. l can not repent me (I try very often) so much of anything I have done, as of anything I have left undone. Alas! I have been but idle, and have the prospect of an early decay, without having seized every available instant of our pleasurable years. This is a bitter thought, and it will be difficult for me ever to recover [from] the despondency into which this idea naturally throws one. Philosophy would be in vain - let us try action.

Would that the Dougal of Bishop's Castle would find a purchaser for Rochdale.

I would embark (with Fletcher as a breeding beast of burthen) and possess myself of the pinnacle of the Andes, or a spacious plain of unbounded extent in an eligible earthquake situation . . .

TO JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE Bologna, August 23rd, 1819

My Dear Hobhouse, - I have received a letter from Murray containing the 'British Review's' eleventh article. Had you any conception of a man's tumbling into such a trap as Roberts has done? Why it is precisely what he was wished to do. I have enclosed an epistle for publication with a queer signature (to Murray, who should keep the anonymous still about D. Juan) in answer to Roberts, which pray approve if you can. It is written in an evening and morning in haste, with ill-health and worse nerves. I am so bilious, that I nearly lose my head, and so nervous that I cry for nothing; at least to-day I burst into tears, all alone by myself, over a cistern of gold-fishes, which are not pathetic animals. I can assure you it is not Mr Roberts. or any of his crew that can affect me; but I have been excited and agitated, and exhausted mentally and bodily all this summer, till I really sometimes begin to think not only 'that I shall die at top first', but that the moment is not very remote. I have had no particular cause of griefs, except the usual accompaniments of all unlawful passions . . .

But I feel - and I feel it bitterly - that a man should not consume his life at the side and on the bosom of a woman, and a stranger; that even the recompense, and it is much, is not enough, and that this Cicisbean existence is to be condemned. But I have neither the strength of mind to break my chain, nor the insensibility which would deaden its weight. I cannot tell what will become of me - to leave, or to be left would at present drive me quite out of my senses; and yet to what have I conducted myself? I have, luckily, or unluckily, no ambition left; it would be better if I had, it would at least awake me; whereas at present I merely start in my sleep. . . .

TO JOHN MURRAY Bologna, August 24, 1819

Dear Sir, - I wrote to you last post, enclosing a buffooning letter for publication, addressed to the buffoon Roberts, who has thought proper to tie a cannister to his own tail. It was written off hand, and in the midst of circumstances not very favourable to facetiousness, so that there may, perhaps, be more bitterness than enough for that sort of small acid punch. You will tell me.

Keep the anonymous, in every case: it helps what fun there may be; but if the matter grows serious about Don Juan, and you feel yourself in a scrape, or me either, own that I am the author. I will never shrink . . .

TO THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI Bologna, August 25, 1819

My Dear Teresa, - I have read this book in your garden - my love, you were absent, or else I could not have read it. It is a favourite book of yours, and the writer was a friend of mine. You will not understand these English words, and others will not understand them - which is the reason I have not scrawled them in Italian. But you will recognise the handwriting of him who passionately loved you, and you will divine that, over a book which was yours, he could only think of love. In that word, beautiful in all languages, but most so in yours - Amor mio - is comprised my existence here and hereafter. I feel I exist here, and fear that I shall exist hereafter, - to what purpose you will decide; my destiny rests with you, and you are a woman, seventeen years of age, and two out of a convent. I wish that you had stayed there, with all my heart, - or, at least, that I had never met you in your married state.

But all this is too late. I love you, and you love me, - at least, you say so, and act as if you did so, which last is a great consolation in all events. But I more than love you, and cannot cease to love you.

Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and the ocean divide, - but they never will, unless you wish it.

BYRON

TO JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE Venice, Oct. 3rd, 1819

. .I assure you that I am very serious in the idea, and that the notion has been about me for a long time, as you will see by the worn state of the advertisement. I should go there with my natural daughter, Allegra, - now nearly three years old, and with me here, - and pitch my tent for good and all.

I am not tired of Italy, but a man must be a Cicisbeo and a Singer in duets, and a connoisseur of Operas - or nothing - here. I have made some progress in all these accomplishments, but can't say that I don't feel the degradation. Better be an unskilful Planter, an awkward settler, - better be a hunter, or anything, than a flatterer of fiddlers, and fan carrier of a woman. I like women - God he knows - but the more their system here developes upon me, the worse it seems, after Turkey too; here the polygamy is all on the female side. I have been an intriguer, a husband, a whoremonger, and now I am a Cavalier Servente by the holy! it is a strange sensation. After having belonged in my own and other countries to the intriguing, the married, and the keeping parts of the town, - to be sure an honest arrangement is the best, and I have had that too, and have - but they expect it to be for life, thereby, I presume, excluding longevity. But let us be serious, if possible.

You must not talk to me of England, that is out of the question. I had a house and lands, and a wife and child, and a name there once - but all these things are transmuted or sequestered. Of the last, and best, ten years of my life, nearly six have been passed out of it. I feel no love for the soil after the treatment I received before leaving it for the last time, but I do not hate it enough to wish to take a part in its calamities, as on either side harm must be done before good can accrue; revolutions are not to be made with rosewater. My taste for revolution is abated, with my other passions.

Yet I want a country, and a home, and - if possible - a free one. I am not yet thirty-two years of age. I might still be a decent Citizen, and found a house, and a family as good - or better than the former. I could at all events occupy myself rationally, my hopes are not high, nor my ambition extensive, and when tens of thousands of our countrymen are colonizing (like the Greeks of old in Sicily and Italy) from so many causes, does my notion seem visionary or irrational? There is no freedom in Europe that's certain: it is besides a worn out portion of the globe . . .

TO THE HON. DOUGLAS KINNAIRD Venice, Octr 26, 1819

. . . As to 'Don Juan', confess, confess - you dog and be candid that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing - it may be bawdy but is it not good English? It may be profligate but is it not life, is it not the thing? Could any man have written it who has not lived in the world? - and [t]ooled in a post-chaise? - in a hackney coach? - in a gondola? - against a wall? - in a court carriage? - in a vis a vis? - on a table? - and under it? I have written about a hundred stanzas of a third Canto, but it is a damned modest - the outcry has frighted me. I have such projects for the Don but the Cant is so much stronger than the C--- nowadays, that the benefit of experience in a man who had well weighed the worth of both monosyllables must be lost to despairing posterity. After all what stuff this outcry is - Lalla Rookh and Little are more dangerous than my burlesque poem can be. Moore has been here, we got tipsy together and were very amicable; he is gone to Rome. I put my life (in M.S.) into his hands (not for publication), you or anybody else may see it at his return. It only comes up to 1816. He is a noble fellow and looks quite fresh and poetical, nine years (the age of a poem's education) my senior. He looks younger. This comes from marriage and being settled in the country. I want to go to South America - I have written to Hobhouse all about it . . .

TO RICHARD BELGRAVE HOPPNER October 29, 1819

My Dear Hoppner, - The Ferrara Story is of a piece with all he rest of the Venetian manufacture; you may judge. I only changed horses there since I wrote to you after my visit in June last. 'Convent' - and 'carry off' quotha! - and 'girl' - I should like to know who has been carried off- except poor dear me. I have been more ravished myself than any body since the Trojan war. . .

Count G[uiccioli] comes to Venice next week and I am requested to consign his wife to him, which shall be done - with all her linen.

What you say of the long evenings at the Mira, or Venice, reminds me of what Curran said to Moore - 'so - I hear - you have married a pretty woman - and a very good creature too an excellent creature - pray - um - how do you pass your evenings?' it is a devil of a question that, and perhaps as easy to answer with a wife as with a mistress; but surely they are longer than the nights. I am all for morality now, and shall confine myself henceforward to the strictest adultery, which you will please to recollect is all that that virtuous wife of mine has left me . . .

TO LADY BYRON [Ravenna, December 31st 1819]

You will perhaps say why write my life? - Alas! I say so too but they who have traduced it - and blasted it - and branded me - should know - that it is they - and not I - are the cause It is no great pleasure to have lived - and less to live over again the details of existence - but the last becomes sometimes a necessity and even a duty.

If you choose to see this you may - if you do not - you have at least had the option.

TO JOHN MURRAY Ravenna, February 21, 1820

. . . I see the good old King is gone to his place: one can't help being sorry, though blindness, and age, and insanity, are supposed to be drawbacks on human felicity; but I am not at all sure that the latter, at least, might not render him happier than any of his subjects.

I have no thoughts of coming to the Coronation, though I should like to see it, and though I have a right to be a puppet in it; but my division with Lady Byron, which has drawn an equinoctial line between me and mine in all other things, will operate in this also to prevent my being in the same procession . . .

By the king's death Mr H[obhouse], I hear, will stand for Westminster: I shall be glad to hear of his standing any where except in the pillory, which, from the company he must have lately kept (I always except Burdett, and Douglas K., and the genteel part of the reformers), was perhaps to be apprehended. I was really glad to hear it was for libel instead of larceny; for, though impossible in his own person, he might have been taken up by mistake for another at a meeting. All reflections on his present case and place are so Nugatory, that it would be useless to pursue the subject further. I am out of all patience to see my friends sacrifice themselves for a pack of blackguards, who disgust one with their Cause, although I have always been a friend to and a Voter for reform. If Hunt had addressed the language to me which he did to Mr H. last election, I would not have descended to call out such a miscreant who won't fight; but have passed my sword-stick through his body, like a dog's, and then thrown myself on my Peers, who would, I hope, have weighed the provocation: at any rate, it would have been as public a Service as Walworth's chastisement of Wat. Tyler. If we must have a tyrant, let him at least be a gentleman who has been bred to the business, and let us fall by the axe and not by the butcher's cleaver.

No one can be more sick of, or indifferent to, politics than I am, if they let me alone, but if the time comes when a part must be taken one way or the other, I shall pause before I lend myself to the views of such ruffians, although I cannot but approve of a Constitutional amelioration of long abuses.

Lord George Gordon, and Wilkes, and Burdett, and Horne Tooke, were all men of education and courteous deportment; so is Hobhouse; but as for these others, I am convinced that Robespierre was a Child, and Marat a Quaker in comparison of what they would be, could they throttle their way to power.

Yours ever,
B.

TO JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE Ravenna, March 3rd. 1820

. . . So Scrope is gone - down-diddled- as Doug. K. writes it the said Doug. being like the man who, when he lost a friend went to the Saint James's Coffee House and took a new one; but to you and me the loss of Scrope is irreparable; we could have better spared not only a 'better man', but the 'best of men'. Gone to Bruges where he will get tipsy with Dutch beer and shoot himself the first foggy morning. Brummell at Calais; Scrope at Bruges, Buonaparte at St Helena, you in your new apartments, and I at Ravenna, only think! so many great men! There has been nothing like it since Themistocles at Magnesia, and Marius at Carthage.

But times change, and they are luckiest who get over their first rounds at the beginning of the battle . . .

I shall let 'dearest duck' waddle alone at the Coronation; a ceremony which I should like to see, and have a right to act Punch in; but the crown itself would not bribe me to return to England, unless business or actual urgency required it. I was very near coming, but that was because I had been very much 'agitato' with some circumstances of a domestic description, here in Italy, and not from any love to the tight little Island . . .

-------------John Cam Hobhouse---------------

TO JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE Ravenna, March 29th, 1820

... I suppose I shall soon see your speeches again, and your determination 'not to be saddled with wooden shoes as the Gazetteer says', but do pray get into Parliament, and out of the company of all these fellows, except Burdett and Douglas Kinnaird, and don't be so very violent. I doubt that Thistlewood will be a great help to the ministers in all the elections, but especially in the Westminster. What a set of desperate fools these Utican conspirators seem to have been. As if in London, after the disarming acts, or indeed at any time, a secret could have been kept among thirty or forty. And if they had killed poor Harrowby - in whose house I have been five hundred times, at dinners and parties; his wife is one of 'the Exquisites' - and t'other fellows, what end would it have answered? 'They understand these things better in France', as Yorick says, but really, if these sort of awkward butchers are to get the upper hand, I for one will declare off. I have always been (before you were, as you well know) a well-wisher to, and voter for reform in parliament; but 'such fellows as these, who will never go to the gallows with any credit', such infamous scoundrels as Hunt and Cobbett, in short, the whole gang (always excepting you, B. and D.) disgust, and make one doubt of the virtue of any principle or politics which can be embraced by similar ragamuffins. I know that revolutions are not to be made with rose water, but though some blood may, and must be shed on such occasions, there is no reason it should be clotted; in short, the Radicals seem to be no better than Jack Cade or Wat Tyler, and to be dealt with accordingly.

. . . You will see that I have taken up the Pope question (in prose) with a high hand, and you (when you can spare yourself from Party to Mankind) must help me. You know how often, under the Mira elms, and by the Adriatic on the Lido, we have discussed that question, and lamented the villainous cant which at present would decry him. It is my intention to give battle to the blackguards and try if the 'little Nightingale' can't be heard again.

TO RICHARD BELGRAVE HOPPNER Ravenna, April 22nd l820

. . . About Allegra, I can only say to Claire - that I so totally disapprove of the mode of Children's treatment in their family that I should look upon the Child as going into a hospital. Is it not so'? Have they reared one? Her health here has hitherto been excellent, and her temper not bad - she is sometimes vain and obstinate, but always clean and cheerful, and as, in a year or two I shall either send her to England, or put her in a Convent for education, these defects will be remedied as far as they can in human nature. But the Child shall not quit me again to perish of Starvation, and green fruit, or be taught to believe that there is no Deity. Whenever there is convenience of vicinity and access, her Mother can always have her with her; otherwise no. It was so stipulated from the beginning.

The Girl is not so well off as with you, but far better than with them; the fact is she is spoilt, being a great favourite with every body on account of the fairness of her skin, which shines among their dusky children like the milky way, but there is no comparison of her situation now, and that under Elise, or with them. She has grown considerably, is very clean, and lively. She has plenty air and exercise at home, and she goes out daily with Me Guiccicli in her carriage to the Corso.

The paper is finished and so must the letter be.

Yours ever,

TO JOHN MURRAY Ravenna, May 20 , 1820

Dear Murray, - . . . Excuse haste: if you knew what I have on hand, you would.

In the first place, your packets; then a letter from Kinnaird on the most urgent business: another from Moore, about a communication to Lady B[yron] of importance; a fourth from the mother of Allegra; and, fifthly, the Contessa G[uiccioli] is on the eve of being divorced on account of our having been taken together quasi in the fact, and, what is worse, that she did not deny it: but the Italian public are on our side, particularly the women, - and the men also, because they say that he had no business to take the business up now after a year of toleration. The law is against him, because he slept with his wife after her admission. All her relations (who are numerous, high in rank, and powerful) are furious against him for his conduct, and his not wishing to be cuckolded at threescore, when everyone else is at ONE. I am warned to be on my guard, as he is very capable of employing Sicarii - this is in Latin as well as in Italian, so you can understand it; but I have arms, and don't mind them, thinking that I can pepper his ragamuffins if they don't come unawares, and that, if they do, one may as well end that way as another; and it would besides serve you as an advertisement: -. . .

TO THOMAS MOORE Ravenna, July 13, 1820

To remove or increase your Irish anxiety about my being 'in a wisp', I answer your letter forthwith; premising that, as I am a 'Will of the wisp', I may chance to flit out of it. But, first, a word on the Memoir; - I have no objection, nay, I would rather that one correct copy was taken and deposited in honourable hands, in case of accidents happening to the original; for you know that I have none, and have never even re-read, nor, indeed, read at all what is there written; I only know that I wrote it with the fullest intention to be 'faithful and true' in my narrative, but not impartial - no, by the Lord! I can't pretend to be that, while I feel. But I wish to give every body concerned the opportunity to contradict or correct me.

I have no objection to any proper person seeing what is there written - seeing it was written, like everything else, for the purpose of being read, however much many writings may fail in arriving at that object.

With regard to 'the wisp', the Pope has pronounced their separation. The decree came yesterday from Babylon, - it was she and her friends who demanded it, on the grounds of her husband's (the noble Count Cavalier's) extraordinary usage. He opposed it with all his might because of the alimony, which has been assigned, with all her goods, chattels, carriage, etc., to be restored by him. In Italy they can't divorce. He insisted on her giving me up, and he would forgive every thing, - even the adultery, which he swears that he can prove by 'famous witnesses'. But, in this country, the very courts hold such proofs in abhorrence, the Italians being as much more delicate in public than the English, as they are more passionate in private.

The friends and relatives, who are numerous and powerful, reply to him - 'You, yourself, are either fool or knave, - fool, if you did not see the consequences of the approximation of these two young persons, - knave, if you connive at it. Take your choice, - but don't break out (after twelve months of the closest intimacy, under your own eyes and positive sanction) with a scandal, which can only make you ridiculous and her unhappy.'

He swore that he thought our intercourse was purely amicable, and that I was more partial to him than to her, till melancholy testimony proved the contrary. To this they answer, that 'Will of this wisp' was not an unknown person, and that 'clamosa Fama' had not proclaimed the purity of my morals; - that her brother, a year ago, wrote from Rome to warn him that his wife would infallibly be led astray by this ignis fatuus, unless he took proper measures, all of which he neglected to take, etc., etc.

Now he says that he encouraged my return to Ravenna, to see 'in quanti piedi di acqua siamo',and he has found enough to drown him in. In short,

Ce ne fut pas le tout; sa femme se plaignit -
Proces - La parente se joint en excuse et dit
Que du Docteur venoit tout le mauvais menage;
Que cet homme etoit fou, que sa femme etoit sage.
On fit casser le mariage.

It is best to let the women alone, in the way of conflict, for they are sure to win against the field. She returns to her father's house, and I can only see her under great restrictions - such is the custom of the country. The relations behave very well: - I offered any settlement, but they refused to accept it, and swear she shan't live with G[uiccioli] (as he has tried to prove her faithless), but that he shall maintain her; and, in fact, a judgment to this effect came yesterday. I am, of course, in an awkward situation enough . . .

TO JOHN MURRAY Ravenna, July 22nd 1820

Dear Murray, - The tragedy is finished, but when it will be copied is more than can be reckoned upon. We are here upon the eve of evolutions and revolutions. Naples is revolutionized, and the ferment is among the Romagnuoles, by far the bravest and most original of the present Italians, though still half savage. Buonaparte said the troops from Romagna were the best of his Italic corps, and I believe it. The Neapolitans are not worth a curse, and will be beaten if it comes to fighting: the rest of Italy, I think, might stand. The Cardinal is at his wits' end; it is true that he had not far to go. Some papal towns on the Neapolitan frontier have already revolted. Here there are as yet but the sparks of the volcano; but the ground is hot, and the air sultry. Three assassinations last week here and at Faenza - an anti-liberal priest, a factor, and a trooper last night, - I heard the pistol-shot that brought him down within a short distance of my own door. There had been quarrels between the troops and people of some duration: this is the third soldier wounded within the last month. There is a great commotion in people's minds, which will lead to nobody knows what - a row probably. There are secret Societies all over the country as in Germany, who cut off those obnoxious to them, like the Free tribunals, be they high or low; and then it becomes impossible to discover or punish the assassins - their measures are taken so well . . .

TO THE HON. AUGUSTA LEIGH Ravenna, August 19th 1820

My Dearest Augusta, - I always loved you better than any earthly existence, and I always shall unless I go mad. And if I did not so love you - still I would not persecute or oppress any one wittingly - especially for debts, of which I know the agony by experience. Of Colonel Leigh's bond, I really have forgotten all particulars, except that it was not of my wishing. And I never would nor ever will be pressed into the Gang of his creditors. I would not take the money if he had it. You may judge if I would dun him having it not -

Whatever measure I can take for his extrication will be taken. Only tell me how - for I am ignorant, and far away. Who does and who can accuse you of 'interested views'? I think people must have gone into Bedlam such things appear to me so very incomprehensible. Pray explain

Yours ever and truly
BYRON

TO RICHARD BELGRAVE HOPPNER Ravenna, Septr. 10th 1820

. . . I regret that you have such a bad opinion of Shiloh; you used to have a good one. Surely he has talent and honour, but is crazy against religion and morality. His tragedy is sad work; but the subject renders it so. His Islam had much poetry. You seem lately to have got some notion against him.

Clare writes me the most insolent letters about Allegra; see what a man gets by taking care of natural children! Were it not for the poor little child's sake, I am almost tempted to send her back to her atheistical mother, but that would be too bad; you cannot conceive the excess of her insolence, and I know not why, for I have been at great care and expense, - taking a house in the country on purpose for her. She has two maids and every possible attention. If Clare thinks that she shall ever interfere with the child's morals or education, she mistakes; she never shall. The girl shall be a Christian and a married woman, if possible. As to seeing her, she may see her - under proper restrictions; but she is not to throw every thing into confusion with her Bedlam behaviour. To express it delicately, I think Madame Clare is a damned bitch. What think you?

TO THE HON. DOUGLAS KINNAIRD Ravenna, September 17th, 1820

Dear Douglas, - I got your letter - why, man! what are ye aboot ? What makes you so careful of your paper? Is it for the sake of contrast? This is the Paper Age. The Golden, the Silver and the Iron ages are long since past, the two former never to return! We are now happily arrived at the Age of Rags. The He-mans and She-mans of our literature are as plenty as blackberries as we of the North say. They have made a litterature of literature, which at this moment is more extensively spread; but 'tis grown shallow, it seems, in proportion to its diffusion. Our age is in everything an affected age, and where affectation prevails the fair sex - or rather the blue are always strongly tinctured with it. A little learning may be swelled to an enormous size by artifice. Madam de Stael, I grant, is a clever woman; but all the other madams are no Staels. The philosophical petticoats of our times surpass even those of the age of Elizabeth who pretended to cultivate an acquaintance with the classics. Roger Asham tells us that, going to wait on Lady Jane Grey at her father's house in Leicestershire, he found her reading Plato's works in the Greek, while the rest of the family were hunting in the park. Possibly the lady had no objection to be interrupted in her studies - she was hunting for applause. I shall be at them one of these days - there is nothing like ridicule, the only weapon that the English climate cannot rust . . .

TO RICHARD BELGRAVE HOPPNER Ravenna, 8bre. 1, 1820

... The Shiloh story is true no doubt, though Elise is but a sort of Queen's evidence. You remember how eager she was to return to them, and then she goes away and abuses them. Of the facts, however, there can be little doubt; it is just like them. You may be sure that I keep your counsel.

What you say of the Queen's affair is very just and true; but the event seems not very easy to anticipate.

I enclose an epistle from Shiloh.
BYRON

TO JOHN MURRAY Ravenna, 9bre 4, 1820

. . . P.S. - There will be shortly 'the Devil to pay' here; and, as there is no saying that I may not form an Item in his bill, I shall not now write at greater length: you have not answered my late letters; and you have acted foolishly, as you will find out some day.

P.S. I have read part of the Quarterly just arrived: Mr Bowles shall be answered; he is not quite correct in his statement about E[nglish] B[ards] and S[cotch] R[eviewers]. They support Pope, I see, in the Quarterly. Let them continue to do so: it is a Sin, and a Shame, and a damnation to think that Pope!! should require it - but he does. Those miserable mountebanks of the day, the poets, disgrace themselves and deny God, in running down Pope, the most faultless of Poets, and almost of men.

The Edinburgh praises Jack Keats or Ketch, or whatever his names are: why, his is the Onanism of Poetry - something like the pleasure an Italian fiddler extracted out of being suspended daily by a Street Walker in Drury Lane. This went on for some weeks: at last the Girl went to get a pint of Gin - met another, chatted too long, and Cornelli was hanged outright before she returned. Such like is the trash they praise, and such will be the end of the outstretched poesy of this miserable Self-polluter of the human mind.

W. Scott's Monastery just arrived: many thanks for that

Grand Desideratum of the last six months . . .

TO JOHN MURRAY R[avenn]a, 9bre 9, 1820

... Hobhouse writes me a facetious letter about my indolence and love of Slumber. It becomes him: he is in active life; he writes pamphlets against Canning, to which he does not put his name; he gets into Newgate and into Parliament - both honourable places of refuge; and he 'greatly daring dines' at all the taverns (why don't he set up a tap room at once), and then writes to quiz my laziness.

Why, I do like one or two vices, to be sure; but I can back a horse and fire a pistol 'without winking or blinking' like Major Sturgeon; I have fed at times for two months together on sheer biscuit and water (without metaphor); I can get over seventy or eighty miles a day riding post upon [?] of all sorts, and swim five at a Stretch, taking a piece before and after, as at Venice, in 1818, or at least I could do, and have done it ONCE, and I never was ten minutes in my life over a solitary dinner.

Now, my friend Hobhouse, when we were wayfaring men, used to complain grievously of hard beds and sharp insects, while I slept like a top, and to awaken me with his swearing at them: he used to damn his dinners daily, both quality and cookery and quantity, and reproach me for a sort of 'brutal' indifference, as he called it, to these particulars; and now he writes me facetious sneerings because I do not get up early in a morning, when there is no occasion - if there were, he knows that I was always out of bed before him, though it is true that my ablutions detained me longer in dressing than his noble contempt of that 'oriental scrupulosity' permitted.

Then he is still sore about 'the ballad' - he!! why, he lampooned me at Brighton, in 1808, about Jackson the boxer and bold Webster, etc.: in 1809, he turned the death of my friend Ed Long into ridicule and rhyme, because his name was susceptible of a pun; and, although he saw that I was distressed at it, before I left England in 1816, he wrote rhymes upon D. Kinnaird, you, and myself; and at Venice he parodied the lines 'Though the day of my destiny's over' in a comfortable quizzing way: and now he harps on my ballad about his election! Pray tell him all this, for I will have no underhand work with my 'old Cronies'. If he can deny the facts, let him. I maintain that he is more carnivorously and carnally sensual than I am, though I am bad enough too for that matter; but not in eating and haranguing at the Crown and Anchor, where I never was but twice - and those were at 'Whore's Hops' when I was a younker in my teens; and Egad, I think them the most respectable meetings of the two. But he is a little wroth that I would not come over to the Queen's trial: lazy, quotha! it is so true that he should be ashamed of asserting it. He counsels me not to 'get into a Scrape'; but, as Beau Clincher says, 'How melancholy are Newgate reflections!' To be sure, his advice is worth following; for experience teacheth: he has been in a dozen within these last two years. I pronounce me the more temperate of the two . . .

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

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