13 — To the Hon. Augusta Byron

[Castle Howard, Malton, Yorkshire.]

Harrow-on-the-Hill, October 25th, 1804.

My

dear Augusta, — In compliance with your wishes, as well as gratitude for your affectionate letter, I proceed as soon as possible to answer it; I am glad to hear that

any body

gives a good account of me; but from the quarter you mention, I should imagine it was exaggerated. That you are unhappy, my dear Sister, makes me so also; were it in my power to relieve your sorrows you would soon recover your spirits; as it is, I sympathize better than you yourself expect. But really, after all (pardon me my dear Sister), I feel a little inclined to laugh at you, for love, in my humble opinion, is utter nonsense, a mere jargon of compliments, romance, and deceit; now, for my part, had I fifty mistresses, I should in the course of a fortnight, forget them all, and, if by any chance I ever recollected one, should laugh at it as a dream, and bless my stars, for delivering me from the hands of the little mischievous Blind God.

Can't

you drive this Cousin

of ours out of your pretty little head (for as to

hearts

I think they are out of the question),

or

if you are so far gone, why don't you give old L'Harpagon

(I mean the General) the slip, and take a trip to Scotland, you are now pretty near the Borders.

Be

sure to Remember me to my formal Guardy Lord Carlisle

, whose magisterial presence I have not been into for some years, nor have I any ambition to attain so great an honour. As to your favourite Lady Gertrude, I don't remember her; pray, is she handsome? I dare say she is, for although they are a

disagreeable, formal, stiff

Generation, yet they have by no means plain

persons

, I remember Lady Cawdor was a sweet, pretty woman; pray, does your sentimental Gertrude resemble her? I have heard that the duchess of Rutland was handsome also, but we will say nothing about her temper, as I hate Scandal.

Adieu, my pretty Sister, forgive my levity, write soon, and God bless you.

I remain, your very affectionate Brother,

Byron

P.S. — I left my mother at Southwell, some time since, in a monstrous pet with you for not writing. I am sorry to say the old lady and myself don't agree like lambs in a meadow, but I believe it is all my own fault, I am rather too fidgety, which my precise mama objects to, we differ, then argue, and to my shame be it spoken fall out a

little

, however after a storm comes a calm;

what's

become of our aunt the amiable antiquated Sophia

? is she yet in the land of the living, or does she sing psalms with the

Blessed

in the other world. Adieu. I am happy enough and Comfortable here.

My

friends are not numerous, but select; among them I rank as the principal Lord Delawarr

, who is very amiable and my particular friend; do you know the family at all? Lady Delawarr is frequently in town, perhaps you may have seen her; if she resembles her son she is the most amiable woman in Europe. I have plenty of acquaintances, but I reckon them as mere Blanks. Adieu, my dear Augusta.

Footnote 1:

Colonel George Leigh.

return to footnote mark

Footnote 2:

General Leigh, father of the colonel. Both Harpagon and Cléante (

L'Avare

) wish to marry Mariane; but the miser prefers his casket to the lady, who therefore marries Cléante.

Footnote 3:

Frederick Howard, fifth Earl of Carlisle (1748-1825), was, on his mother's side, connected with the Byron family. The Hon. Isabella Byron (1721-1795), daughter of the fourth Lord Byron, married, in 1742, Henry, fourth Earl of Carlisle. She subsequently, after the death of Lord Carlisle (1758), married, as her second husband, Sir William Musgrave. She was a woman of considerable ability, and apparently, in later life, of eccentric habits — a "recluse in pride and rags." She was the reputed writer of some published poetry, and of

Maxims addressed to Young Ladies

. Some of these maxims might have been of use to her grand-nephew: "Habituate yourself to that way of life most agreeable to the person to whom you are united; be content in retirement, or with society, in town, or country." Her

Answer

to Mrs. Greville's ode on

Indifference

has more of the neck-or-nothing temper of the Byrons:—

"Is that your wish, to lose all sense
In dull lethargic ease,
And wrapt in cold indifference,
But half be pleased or please?
...
It never shall be my desire
To bear a heart unmov'd,
To feel by halves the gen'rous fire,
Or be but half belov'd.

Let me drink deep the dang'rous cup,
In hopes the prize to gain,
Nor tamely give the pleasure up
For fear to share the pain.

Give me, whatever I possess,
To know and feel it all;
When youth and love no more can bless,
Let death obey my call."

Lady Carlisle's son, Frederick, who was educated at Eton and Cambridge, succeeded his father as fifth Earl of Carlisle, in 1758, when he was ten years old. After leaving Cambridge, he started on a continental tour with two Eton friends — Lord FitzWilliam and Charles James Fox. A lively letter-writer, his correspondence with his friend George Selwyn, while in Italy, shows him to have been a young man of wit, feeling, and taste. It is curious to notice that, at Rome, he singles out, like his cousin in

Childe Harold

or

Manfred

, as the most striking objects, the general aspect of the "marbled "wilderness," the moonlight view of the amphitheatre, the Laocoon, the Belvedere Apollo, and the group of Niobe and her daughters. One other taste he shared with Byron — he was a lover of dogs, and "Rover" was his constant companion abroad.

Lord Carlisle returned to England in 1769. Like Fox, he was a prodigious dandy. They "once travelled from Paris to Lyons for the express purpose of buying waistcoats; and during the whole journey they talked of nothing else" (

Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers

, pp. 73, 74). Already well known in London society, Carlisle was a close friend of George Selwyn, a familiar figure at White's and Brookes's, an inveterate gambler, an adorer of Lady Sarah Bunbury, who, as Lady Sarah Lennox, had won the heart of George III. The flirtation provoked from Lord Holland an adaptation of

Lydia, dic per omnes

"Sally, Sally, don't deny,
But, for God's sake, tell me why
You have flirted so, to spoil
That once lively youth, Carlisle?
He used to mount while it was dark;
Now he lies in bed till noon,
And, you not meeting in the park,
Thinks that he gets up too soon," etc.

In 1770 Lord Carlisle married Lady Margaret Leveson Gower, a beautiful and charming woman. "Everybody," writes Lord Holland to George Selwyn (May 2, 1770), "says it is impossible not to admire Lady Carlisle." But matrimony did not at once steady his character. For the next few years — though in 1773 he published a volume of

Poems

— his pursuits were mainly those of a young man of fashion, and he impoverished himself at the gaming-table. From 1777 onwards, however, his life took a more serious turn. In that year he became Treasurer of the Household, and was sworn a member of the Privy Council. In 1778 he was the chief of the three commissioners sent out by Lord North to negotiate with the United States. There he declined a challenge from Lafayette, provoked by reflections on the French court and nation, which he had issued with his fellow-commissioners in their political capacity. In 1779 he was nominated Lord-Lieutenant of Yorkshire, and First Lord of Trade and Plantations. He was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland from 1780 to 1782, and held the post of Lord Privy Seal in the Duke of Portland's administration of 1783. Till the outbreak of the French Revolutionary wars, he was an opponent of Pitt; but after 1792 he consistently supported the Government.

Carlisle was a collector of pictures, statuary, and works of art. He was also a writer of verse, tragedies, and pamphlets; but, in literature, his admirable letters are his best claim to be remembered. One of his two tragedies,

The Father's Revenge

(1783), was praised by Walpole, and received the guarded approval of Dr. Johnson. His published poetry consisted of an ode on the death of Gray, verses on that of Lord Nelson, "Lines for the Monument of a favourite Spaniel," an address to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and translations from Dante. The first two poems provoked Richard Tickell to write the

Wreath of Fashion

(1780). "The following lines," says Tickell, in his "Advertisement," were "occasioned by the Author's having lately studied, with infinite attention, several fashionable productions in the

Sentimental

stile.... For example, A Noble Author has lately published his works, which consist of

three

compositions:

one

an Ode upon the death of Mr. Gray; the two others upon the death of his Lordship's

Spaniel

"Here, placid Carlisle breathes his gentle line,
Or haply, gen'rous Hare, re-echoes thine.
Soft flows the lay: as when, with tears, He paid
The last sad honours to his — — — Spaniel's shade!
And lo! he grasps the badge of wit, a wand;
He waves it thrice and Storer is at hand."

His contemporaries seem to have thought that his poetry, weak though it was, was indebted to his Eton friends, "the Hare with many friends," and Antony Storer. The latter's name is linked with that of Carlisle in another satire,

Pandolfo Attonito

"Fall'n though I am, I ne'er shall mourn,
Like the dark Peer on Storer's urn,"

where a note refers to "Antony Storer, formerly Member for Morpeth (

as some persons

near Carlisle and Castle Howard

may possibly recollect

), a gentleman well known in the circles of fashion and polite literature." Carlisle's name occurs in many of the satires of the day on literary subjects.

The Shade of Pope

(ii. 191, 192) says —

"Carlisle is lost with Gillies in surprize,
As Lysias charms soft Jersey's classic eyes;"

and in the

Pursuits of Literature

(Dialogue ii. line 234), a note to the line —

"While lyric Carlisle purrs o'er love transformed,"

again associates his name with that of Lady Jersey.

In 1799 Lord Carlisle was persuaded by Hanson to become Byron's guardian, in order to facilitate legal proceedings for the recovery of the Rochdale property, illegally sold by William, fifth Lord Byron. He was introduced to his ward by Hanson, who took the boy to Grosvenor Place, to see his guardian and consult Dr. Baillie in July, 1799. He seemed anxious to befriend the boy; but Byron was eager, as Hanson notes, to leave the house. When Mrs. Byron, in 1800, was anxious to remove her son from Dr. Glennie's care, Carlisle exercised his authority, and forbade the schoolmaster to give him up to his mother. He probably, on this occasion, experienced Mrs. Byron's temper, for Augusta Byron, writing to Hanson (November 18, 1804), says that he dreaded "having any concern whatever with Mrs. Byron."

Byron

does not seem to have met his guardian again till January, 1805, when Augusta Byron writes to Hanson:

"I hear from Lady Gertrude Howard that Lord Carlisle was very much pleased with my brother, and I am sure, from what he said to me at Castle Howard, is disposed to show him all the kindness and attention in his power. I know you are so partial to Byron and so much interested in all that concerns him, that you will rejoice almost as much as I do that his acquaintance with Lord C. is renewed. In the mean time it is a great comfort for me to think that he has spent his Holydays so comfortably and so much to his wishes. You will easily believe that he is a very great favourite of mine, and I may add the more I see and hear of him, the more I must love and esteem him."

It may be doubted whether Carlisle ever saw the dedication of

Hours of Idleness

. Augusta Byron, in a letter to Hanson of February 7, 1807, says,

"I return you my Brother's poems with many Thanks. Mrs. B. has had the attention to send me 2 copies. I like some of them very much: but you will laugh when I tell you I have never had courage to shew them to Lord Carlisle for fear of his disapproving others."

The years 1806-7, spent at Southwell, as his sister says, "in idleness and ill humour with the whole World," were not the most creditable of Byron's life, and Carlisle's efforts to make him return to Cambridge failed. It is, moreover, certain that in 1809 Carlisle was ill; it is also probable that at a time when the scandal of Mary Anne Clarke and the Duke of York threatened to come before the House of Lords, he was unwilling to connect himself in public with a cousin of whom he knew no good, and of whose political views he was ignorant. These causes may have combined to produce the coldly formal letter, in which he told Byron the course of procedure to be adopted in taking his seat in the House of Lords, and ignored the young man's wish that his cousin and guardian should introduce him. (For Byron's attack upon Carlisle, and his subsequent admission of having done him "some wrong," see

English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers

, lines 723-740; and

Childe Harold

, Canto III. stanzas xxix., xxx.)

It is possible that the "paralytic puling" may have been suggested by the "placid purring" of previous satirists. In March, 1814, his sister Augusta was trying hard to persuade Byron, as he notes in his Diary,

"to make it up with Carlisle. I have refused every body else, but I can't deny her anything, though I had as leif 'drink up Eisel — eat a crocodile.'"

Lord Carlisle had three daughters: the eldest, Lady Caroline Isabella Howard, married, in 1789, John, first Lord Cawdor, and died in 1848; the second, Lady Elizabeth, married, in 1799, John Henry, fifth Duke of Rutland, and died in 1825; the third, Lady Gertrude, married, in 1806, William Sloane Stanley, of Paultons, Hants, and died in 1870.

cross-reference: return to Footnote 1 of Letter 7

cross-reference: return to Footnote 2 of Letter 110

Footnote 4:

No "Aunt Sophia" appears in the pedigree; but his grandmother was Sophia Trevanion, who married, in 1748, the Hon. John Byron, afterwards Admiral Byron. Mrs. Byron knew Dr. Johnson well, and she and Miss Burney were the only two friends who, as Mrs. Piozzi (then Mrs. Thrale) thought, might regret her departure from Streatham in 1782 (

Life and Writings of Mrs. Piozzi

, vol. i. p. 171). "Mrs. Byron, who really loves me," says Mrs. Piozzi (

ibid

., p. 125), "was disgusted at Miss Burney's carriage to me." In August, 1820, Mrs. Piozzi writes to a Miss Willoughby, to tell her

"what wonders Lord Byron is come home to do, for I see his arrival in the paper. His grandmother was my intimate friend, a Cornish lady, Sophia Trevanion, wife to the Admiral, pour ses péchés, and we called her Mrs. Biron always, after the French fashion"

Life and Writings, etc.

, vol. ii. pp. 456, 457)' Mrs. Byron died at Bath in 1790.

Footnote 5:

Lady Delawarr, widow of John Richard, fourth Earl Delawarr, whom she married in 1783, died in 1826. Her only son, George John, fifth earl, succeeded his father in 1795. He went from Harrow to Brasenose College, Oxford; married, in 1813, Lady Elizabeth Sackville; was Lord Chamberlain 1858-9; and died in 1869. He was the "Euryalus" of "Childish Recollections" (see

Poems

, vol. i. p. 100; and lines "To George, Earl of Delawarr,"

ibid.

, p. 126).

cross-reference: return to Footnote 2 of Letter 65

cross-reference: return to Footnote 1 of Letter 93

List of Letters