Lord Byron's Novel (36 page)

‘In the mornings I attend to my Italian (tho’ the language spoken here by the generality is quite a different thing, methinks, and must be learned as well) and in the evenings I attend a
conversazione
where English may be heard, as well as the best of the Native tongue—I confess I love the sound of it, like Latin gone rosaceous and soft as butter—I think I am being
seduced
when I am but greeted, or harangued. It is said of this City that she spent a thousand years gathering in the wealth of the world, and will now spend the next hundred or so in
spending
it, on Pleasure—there is a maddened quality about the pursuit, that makes one giddy, and unable to avoid joining in.’

Later he continued in this wise:—

‘I learn much of Venice, and Venetians. In love they have no
morals
—at the which I profess myself shocked—but they have very strict
codes
—which supply their place, and which evoke the most grievous of
social
punishments when broken, viz., banishment, ostracism, and even the threat of a Duel, though they are by and large a peaceful people, and prefer Pleasure to Honour except in the extremest of cases. Their code has its heroes, too, and heroines—I have heard of, and had pointed out to me, a Lady now somewhat elderly, who never had but a single
lover
(her husband not figuring in the story) and who, when the lover died, remained faithful to his Memory as well, and never took another—an example of selflessness and fidelity that seemed to mark the Lady’s features with a certain air of
sanctity
.

‘I have also attended two executions, and a circumcision—two heads and a foreskin cut off—the ceremonies were all very moving. But these marvels were nothing, to my mind, in comparison to an encounter I must now describe to you, which involves the strange manners of Venetians in love, and also nearly touches yourself.

‘Often I had heard tales of one, an Englishman (tho’ as it will appear he is not
wholly
one) who had so adopted the ways of Venice, that he had become the official lover of a noble Venetian lady—the young wife of an old husband—and conformed himself to the many and strict rules that governed his position. There was some wonderment at this, though no ridicule—these matters are taken with what passes among the Venetians with the greatest seriousness. At length the man was pointed out to me, at a rout—though he being in Domino, I could learn little of him, except that he seemed somehow out of human shape—I mean
bent,
as by disease or accident. The Lady upon whom he waited was as dark-eyed, and red-lipped, and graceful, as she ought to be—or more. And what devotion he display’d—what care to meet her every wish! He receives from her her fan—delivers to her her shawl—bears her a
limonata
—opens the window by which she sits—closes it again for fear of miasma—sits by her, but a little
lower,
to hear her conversation, upon whatever Subject—and when she has been delighted enough, he hastens to call her Gondola! (It was in the execution of this task that I noticed how he
halted
slightly as he walked, yet the flaw diminished not a sort of dignity which he brought even to these slight occupations.) He passed by me as he escorted his
Amorosa
to the stair, and looked upon me with the most piercing—I would say
unsettling
—interest, which I trust I well supported, returning him a courtesy.

‘He must have inquired thereupon concerning me, for some time after there came to my lodgings in the Frezzeria—a neighbourhood near St Mark’s—a letter from him, borne by a pretty lad in livery, who delivered it with the most amusing gravity, as if it had
ambassadorial
status, and there awaited my reply, as he had been instructed. The letter was brief—it invited me to call upon the writer at his own residence, at a certain day and time, whereupon I would hear matter of interest to myself—but the hand, strangely, I seemed to know, as though I had seen it not
often,
but upon an occasion that might burn it into my mind. Intrigued I was—you know that an
unknown
is an interesting thing to me, and I find it hard to refuse one, though it cost me! In short I returned a note as brief as his own, agreeing to his request, and watched his messenger bear it away.

‘At the approach of the appointed hour, then, I called for my cloak and gondola (two nice Mrs Radcliffe words for you) and glided off upon the water to his
palazzo
. The day was one such as I have come to know and to delight in, when the Sun and Sea combine in such a way as to cause the silver-gilt city to seem imaginary, the illusion of a sorcerer, or that hallucination the French call
le mirage,
in which a lake of water and its trees and caravanserai hover upon the desert sands, only to vanish when approached—
this
does not so vanish, but it tickles the fancy that it might, and gives a
careless
quality to all of life that proceeds here.

‘I was welcomed at the stair of the
palazzo
by the liveried boy, and taken up to the first storey. There I found the man, somewhat diminish’d in stature when out of his black draperies and wearing an ordinary dressing-gown. He welcomed me with a brusque gesture, as he was intent upon a task with a yard of lace that I could not interpret, ’til he spoke. “There is,” says he, as though we was come together just for the purpose of discussing this, “a right and a wrong way to double a Lady’s shawl, and all my fellows seem to have got the knack, and I have not.”

‘I asked him whom he meant by his
fellows,
and he answered, those who like him had taken the
rôle
of
Cavalier servente
to a Lady. It is a guild, said he, with the sternest of rules; the
Cavalier servente
may act toward his
Servite
in some ways, but not in others; may wait upon her, but not refuse her commands, saving those that may injure his Honour—which is
not
injured by his shawl-folding, parasol-bearing, &c., &c. Nor is the position one lightly to be taken up—an
amicizia
is supposed to continue for many years, and those cancelling their Contracts prematurely are perfidious, and despised. If a vacancy should conveniently appear, the
amicizia
may be rounded off by a
sposizia,
and all end happily. I cannot tell you, my Lord, how ill all this contrivance seemed to sit upon the one before me—who now, having cast aside his shawl-folding and summoned Refreshment, offered me a chair by the brazier—he was almost a standing reproach to the delicacies of social intercourse, and of the taking of them
gravitate
all the more—for he hath a saturnine eye almost hard to meet, yet a tolerant smile often upon his features, as one who finds the ways of Earth a puzzle, which he will tolerate for a time. Now as we sat he came to his business, and with it my amazement grew—for he asked, without much preface, if
I knew of your whereabouts
! He had, he said, tried diligently to find them out, and had failed—when, upon seeing me at the Masquerade upon the earlier occasion, he remembered me as having once had a connexion with you.

‘ “I think he has leaned upon you in the past,” said he to me. “Indeed he named you as his Second upon a certain occasion, when he issued a challenge to a Ghost.”

‘I assented that I had so acted—I forbore to say, dear Friend, that I had
also
seconded you upon another occasion, when one you challenged was
made
a ghost, tho’ there was something about the man that encouraged a grisly levity—I cannot explain it, but ’twas so. Now I knew the man for sure—
this was he
who had pretended to appear for him who would not come, who spoke to us with such impertinence then—who now called himself openly by
your
name, even as he had secretly then!

‘ “I have request to make to you, then,” continued he, nothing abashed. “I would have you send to him for me a confidential letter.” I replied that I would do so, but that I was also prepared to give to him the address I superscribe upon my own letters. This he waved away, and indeed made it clear to me that he wished me only to
include,
with a letter of my own, a missive he would supply to me. Further, he asked me to keep all this entirely in confidence—that I had received anything from him, that I had sent it to you,
and
that the conversation we were then engaged upon had ever occurred. Well! This seemed to me to infringe upon mine own Honour, as being less than frank—but—I cannot say how—I sensed that it was vital that I do so—vital to
him,
and perhaps to
yourself
. To be brief, my dear Friend, I enclose herewith the letter in his hand, delivered to me
sealed,
and by a seal you know, which you may have by now already broken—let me but add, that the one who gave it me (forgive me if I do not refer to him by that
name
and
title
he himself uses, to which I do not understand his claim) was definite in saying, that if you should receive it with the seal
broken,
you must ignore it wholly, and all that it says, or requests. I take it to be a summons, and an urgent one, tho’ I am ignorant of what the matter is. Moreover, and to end—he asked me to salute you, on his behalf, with this name:
Brother
.’

NOTES FOR THE 14TH CHAPTER

1. lit de repos:
   Byron when he left England in the spring of 1816 travelled in a specially built coach modelled in every obtainable particular upon the coach that Napoleon abandoned at Genappe in his flight after his defeat in Russia. It was not small and convenient, as is the one here described, but huge, and black, and subject to mechanical failures, and was soon given up.
   
2. the young gentleman:
   Lord Broughton ( John Cam Hobhouse) tells me that this story, widely told about Mr S. B. Davies, is quite true, that Mr Davies enjoyed travelling in the coach from Cambridge, where he had a fellowship, to London, where he pursued his avocation, which was gambling. Mr Charles Babbage had a coach like it, with which he travelled the Continent. It was of his own design, and steady enough to transport delicate scientific instruments. He named it a Dormobile. I believe that fanciers of such hybrid coaches commonly convene in summer, to examine one another’s recreative vehicles, and celebrate their vagrant manner of life.
   
3. Fortune:
   S. B. Davies did indeed finally lose large sums of money—Lord Broughton suggests it may have been in the tens of thousands of pounds—despite his skill and nerve in play. He also borrowed sums of money from his friends, which were unpaid when he fled to the Continent. It is, apparently, the only instance of Mr Davies acting dishonourably in a field of human activity where dishonourable, indeed dishonest, actions are frequent—a field which yet depends on the majority keeping its promises, and paying its debts at least a great part of the time—else the race-courses, gaming-tables, betting-shops and bookmakers of the world would vanish into air.
   
4. gone mad:
   How convenient and perhaps even delightful it must be, to be able to visit upon one’s enemies (or their shadows) disasters that might give even the Gods somewhat more trouble to deliver, than a few pen scratches. I hear his laughter, almost, and—almost—I shudder at it.
   
5. Mathematical Puzzles:
   It was a commonplace of Lord Byron’s scornful satire (
   vide
   Donna Inez in
   Don Juan
   ) that my mother was of a coldly mathematical cast of mind, abstract and calculating, and devoted to Number. In fact that lady has little true conception of any general or higher Mathematics, and pretends to none; the only reason that Lord Byron credits her with such is that his own conception was not even as great.
   
6. a single Eye:
   In the story of Perseus and Andromeda. They were not evil—they were afraid—of everything. I was kept in ignorance of their fears
   for me,
   that I would be snatched away—but of course children (though when we become parents, we forget) may know, or perceive, more than their guardians suppose. I divined that I was, or might be, the object of my distant father’s plans, and I well remember the thrill of terror and anticipation—a
   mixed
   feeling to say the least—when at the passage of a coach, or a late knock upon the door, I could convince myself that the long-awaited abduction was at hand Even now
   
7. how he halted:
   Mr Moore relates in his
   Memoirs
   that Mrs Mercer Elphinstone told him Lord Byron chose Venice for his residence, because, as nobody walks there, his limitations in this would not be so remarkable.
   
8. Mrs Radcliffe:
   Her Italian romances were read by one and all in Ld. B.’s youth,
   The Castle of Otranto, The Italian,
   &c. Two stand upon my own shelves in this Study, which I had in youth. I have stared at their spines so long I feel that I must once have opened them, but I cannot be sure, and have no strength now to determine.
   
9. Cavalier servente:
   Some of Ld. B.’s most amusing letters describe his taking this employment in respect to the Lady who became his last attachment, Countess Teresa Guiccioli, now the Marquise de Boissy. The Countess as she then was came to London in 1835, during the summer of my own wedding. It was of course impossible for me to meet her, but Mr Babbage did, at Gore House; Dr Lardiner, whom I heard lecture on the Difference Engine, and Mr Edward Bulwer, now my friend, both called upon her there, and from them I later learned of the pathetic incident, whereby the Countess decided to see me married; somehow she supposed the wedding was to take place at St George’s church in Hanover Square, and there she waited in expectation for some time on the appointed day. My wedding, however, was solemnized in the drawing-room of a private house some miles away. This had required a special licence—as my Mother’s wedding at Seaham also had. My private wedding was at my Mother’s insistence, her
   command,
   to which we (my husband and I) assented strange