In the spring of 1822 a heavy and unlooked-for sorrow befell Byron.
Allegra, his natural daughter by Claire Clairmont, died at the convent
of Bagna Cavallo on the 20th of April 1822. She was in her sixth year,
an interesting and attractive child, and he had hoped that her
companionship would have atoned for his enforced separation from Ada.
She is buried in a nameless grave at the entrance of Harrow church.
Soon after the death of Allegra, Byron wrote
the last of his eight
plays, The Deformed Transformed (published by John Hunt, February 20,
1824). The sources are Goethe’s Faust, The Three
Brothers, a novel by
Joshua Pickersgill, and various chronicles of the sack of Rome in 1527.
The theme or motif is the interaction of personality and individuality.
Remonstrances on the part of publisher and critic induced him to turn
journalist. The control of a newspaper or periodical would enable him to
publish what and as he pleased. With this object in view he entered into
a kind of literary partnership with Leigh Hunt, and undertook to
transport him, his wife and six children to Pisa, and to lodge them in
the Villa Lanfranchi. The outcome of this arrangement was The Liberal
- Verse and Prose from the South. Four numbers were issued between October
1822 and June 1823. The Liberal did not succeed financially, and the
joint manage was a lamentable failure. Correspondence of Byron and some
of his Contemporaries (1828) was Hunt’s revenge for the slights and
indignities which he suffered in Byron’s service.
Yachting was one of
the chief amusements of the English colony at Pisa. A schooner, the
"Bolivar," was built for Byron, and a smaller boat, the "Don Juan"
renamed "Ariel," for Shelley. Hunt arrived at Pisa on the 1st of July.
On the 8th of July Shelley, who had remained in Pisa on Hunt’s account,
started for a sail with his friend Williams and a lad named Vivian. The Arid was wrecked in the Gulf of Spezia and Shelley and his companions
were drowned. On the 16th of August Byron and Hunt witnessed the "burning of Shelley" on the seashore near Via
Reggio. Byron told Moore
that "all of Shelley was consumed but the heart." Whilst the fire was
burning Byron swam out to the "Bolivar" and back to the shore. The hot
sun and the violent exercise brought on one of those many fevers which
weakened his constitution and shortened his life.
The Austrian government would not allow the Gambas or the countess
Guiccioli to remain in Pisa. As a half measure Byron took a villa for
them at Montenero near Leghorn, but as the authorities were still
dissatisfied they removed to Genoa. Byron and Leigh Hunt left Pisa on
the last day of September. On reaching Genoa Byron took up his quarters
with the Gambas at the Casa Saluzzo, "a fine old palazzo with an
extensive view over the bay," and Hunt and his party at the Casa Negroto
with Mrs. Shelley. Life at Genoa was uneventful. Of Hunt and Mrs. Shelley
he saw as little as possible, and though his still unpublished poems
were at the service of The Liberal, he did little or nothing to further
its success. Each number was badly received.
Byron had some reason to
fear that his popularity was on the wane, and though he had broken with Murray and was
offering Don Juan to John Hunt, the publisher of The
Liberal, he meditated a run down to Naples and a recommencement of
Childe Harold. There was a limit to his defiance of the "world’s
rebuke." Home politics and the congress of Verona (November-December
1822) suggested a satire entitled The Age of Bronze (published April
1, 1823). It is, as he said, cries out for notes, but it
embodies some of his finest and most vigorous work as a satirist. By the
middle of February (1823) he had completed The Island; or Christian and
his Comrades (published June 26, 1823). The sources are Bligh’s
Narrative of the Mutiny of the Bounty, and Mariner’s Account of the
Tonga Islands. Satire and tale are a reversion to his earlier method.
The execution of The Island is hurried and unequal, but there is a deep
and tender note in the love-story and the recital of the "feasts and
loves and wars" of the islanders.
When The Island was finished, Byron went on with
Don Juan. Early in
March the news reached him that he had been elected a member of the
Greek Committee, a small body of influential Liberals who had taken up
the cause of the liberation of Greece. Byron at once offered money and
advice, and after some hesitation on the score of health, determined
to go to Greece. His first step was to sell the Bolivar to Lord
Blessington, and to purchase the Hercules, a collier-built tub of 120
tons. On the 23rd of July the Hercules sailed from Leghorn and
anchored off Cephalonia on the 3rd of August. The party on board
consisted of Byron, Pietro Gamba, Trelawny, Hamilton Browne and six or
seven servants. The next four months were spent at Cephalonia, at first
on board the Hercules, in the harbor of Argostoli and afterwards at
Metaxata. The object of this delay was to ascertain the real state of
affairs in Greece. The revolutionary Greeks were split up into parties,
not to say factions, and there were several leaders. It was a question
to which leader he would attach himself. At length a message reached him
which inspired him with confidence. He received a summons from Prince
Alexander Mavrocordato, a man of birth and education, urging him to come
at once to Missolonghi, and enclosing a request from the legislative
body to co-operate with Mavrocordato in the organization of western
Greece.
Byron felt that he could act with a
"clear conscience" in
putting himself at the disposal of a man whom he regarded as the
authorized leader and champion of the Greeks. He sailed from Argostoli
on the 29th of December 1823, and after an adventurous voyage landed at
Missolonghi on the 5th of January 1824. He met with a royal reception.
Byron may have sought, but he did not find, "a soldier’s grave." During
his three months’ residence at Missolonghi he accomplished little and he
endured much. He advanced large sums of money for the payment of the
troops, for repair and construction of fortifications, for the provision
of medical appliances. He brought opposing parties into line, and served
as a link between Odysseus, the democratic leader of the insurgents, and
the prince Mavrocordato. He was eager to take the field, but he never
got the chance. A revolt in the Morea, and the repeated disaffection of
his Suliote guard prevented him from undertaking the capture of Epacto,
an exploit which he had reserved for his own leadership. He was beset
with difficulties, but at length events began to move. On the 18th of
March he received an invitation from Odysseus and other chiefs to attend
a conference at Salona, and by the same messenger an offer from the
government to appoint him governor-general of the enfranchised parts of
Greece. He promised to attend the conference but did not pledge himself
to the immediate acceptance of office. But to Salona he never came.
" Roads and rivers were impassable," and the conference was inevitably
postponed.
His health had given way, but he does not seem to have realized that
his life was in danger. On the 15th of February he was struck down by
an epileptic fit, which left him speechless though not motionless. He
recovered sufficiently to conduct his business as usual, and to drill
the troops. But he suffered from dizziness in the head and spasms in the
chest, and a few days later he was seized with a second though slighter convulsion. These attacks
may have hastened but they did not cause his death. For the first week
of April the weather confined him to the house, but on the 9th a letter
from his sister raised his spirits and tempted him to ride out with
Gamba. It came on to rain, and though he was drenched to the skin he
insisted on dismounting and returning in an open boat to the quay in
front of his house. Two hours later he was seized with ague and violent
rheumatic pains. On the 11th he rode out once more through the olive
groves, attended by his escort of Suliote guards, but for the last time.
Whether he had got his deathblow, or whether copious blood-letting made
recovery impossible, he gradually grew worse, and on the ninth day of
his illness fell into a comatose sleep. It was reported that in his
delirium he had called out, half in English, half in Italian, "Forward
forward courage! follow my example-don’t be afraid !" and that
he tried to send a last message to his sister and to his wife. He died
at six o’clock in the evening of the 19th of April 1824, aged thirty-six
years and three months. The Greeks were heartbroken. Mavrocordato gave
orders that thirty-seven minute-guns should be fired at daylight and
decreed a general mourning of twenty-one days. His body was embalmed and
lay in state. On the 25th of May his remains, all but the heart, which
is buried at Missolonghi, were sent back to England, and were finally
laid beneath the chancel of the village church of Hucknall-Torkard on
the 16th of July 1824. The authorities would not sanction burial in
Westminster Abbey, and there is neither bust nor statue of Lord Byron in
Poets’ Corner.
The title passed to his first cousin as 7th baron, from whom the
subsequent barons were descended. The poet’s daughter Ada (d. 1852)
predeceased her mother, but the barony of Wentworth went to her heirs.
She was the first wife of Baron King, who in 1838 was created 1st earl
of Lovelace, and had two sons (of whom the younger, b. 1839, d. 1906,
Was 2nd earl of Lovelace) and a daughter, Lady Anne, who married Wilfrid
S. Blunt. On the death of the 2nd earl the barony of Wentworth
went to his daughter and only child, and the earldom of Lovelace to his half brother
by the 1st earl’s second wife.
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