time or passion had ever traced on it ; few marble
busts could have matched its stainless white, tthe
harmony of its proportions, and perfect finish ;
yet he had been dissatisfied with that body, and
longed to cast its slough. How often I had heard
him curse it! He was jealous of the genius of
224 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
Shakspeare — that might well be — but where had he
seen the face or form worthy to excite his envy ? I
asked Fletcher to bring me a glass of water. On
his leaving the room, to confirm or remove my
doubts as to the cause of his lameness, I uncovered
the Pilgrim's feet, and was answered — the great
mystery was solved. Both his feet were clubbed,
and his legs withered to the knee — the form and
features of an Apollo, with the feet and legs of a
sylvan satyr. This was a curse, chaining a proud
and soaring spirit like his to the dull earth. In
the drama of ' The Deformed Transformed,' I knew
that he had expressed all he could express of what
a man of highly-wrought mind might feel when
brooding over a deformity of body : but when he said
" I have done the best which spirit may to make
Its way with all deformity, dull deadly,
Discouraging weight upon me,"
I fought it exaggerated as applied to himself;
now I saw it was not so. His deformity was always
uppermost in his thoughts, and influenced every
act of his life, spurred him on to poetry, as that was
one of the few paths to fame open to him, — and as
LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 226
if to be revenged on Nature for sending him into
the world " scarce half made up," he scoffed at her
works and traditions with the pride of Lucifer ; this
morbid feeling ultimately goaded him on to his last
Quixotic crusade in Greece.
No other man, afflicted as he was, could have
been better justified than Byron in saying,
" I ask not
For valour, since deformity is daring ;
It is its essence to o'ertake mankind
By heart and soul, and make itself the equal —
Ay, the superior of the rest. There is
A spur in its halt movements, to become
All that the others cannot, in such things
As still are free to both, to compensate
For step-dame Nature's niggardness at first ;
They war with fearless deeds, the smiles of fortune,
And oft, like Timour the lame Tartar, win them."
Knowing and sympathising with Byron's sensitive-
ness, his associates avoided prying into the cause of
his lameness ; so did strangers, from good breeding
or common humanity. It was generally thought his
halting gait originated in some defect of the right foot
or ankle — the right foot was the most distorted, and
it had been made worse in his boyhood by vain efforts
to set it right. He told me that for several years he
226 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
wore steel splints, which so wrenched the sinews and
tendons of his leg, that they increased his lameness ;
the foot was twisted inwards, only the edge touched
the ground, and that leg was shorter than the other.
His shoes were peculiar — very high heeled, with the
soles uncommonly thick on the inside and pared thin
on the outside — the toes were stuffed with cotton-
wool, and his trousers were very large below the
knee and strapped down so as to cover his
feet. The peculiarity of his gait was now accounted
for; he entered a room with a sort of run, as
if he could not stop, then planted his best leg
well forward, throwing back his body to keep his
balance. In early life whilst his frame was light
and elastic, with the aid of a stick he might have
tottered along for a mile or two ; but after he had
waxed heavier, he seldom attempted to walk more
than a few hundred yards, without squatting down
or leaning against the first wall, bank, rock, or
tree at hand, never sitting on the ground, as it
would have been difficult for him to get up again.
In the company of strangers, occasionally, he would
make desperate efforts to conceal his infirmity, but
the hectic flush on his face, his swelling veins, and
LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 227
quivering nerves betrayed him, and lie suffered for
many days after such exertions. Disposed to fatten,
incapable of taking exercise to check the tendency,
what could he do ? If he added to his weight, his
feet would not have supported him ; in this dilemma he
was compelled to exist in a state of semi-starvation ;
he was less than eleven stone when at Genoa, and
said he had been fourteen at Venice. The pangs of
hunger which travellers and shipwrecked mariners
have described were nothing to what he suffered ;
their privations were temporary, his were for life,
and more unendurable, as he was in the midst of
abundance. I was exclaiming, " Poor fellow, if your
errors were greater than those of ordinary men, so
were your temptations and provocations," when
Fletcher returned with a bottle and glass, saying,
" There is nothing but slimy salt water in this
horrid place, so I have been half over the town
to beg this bottle of porter," and, answering my
ejaculation of " Poor fellow ? " he said —
" You may well say so, sir, these savages are
worse than any highwaymen ; they have robbed my
Lord of all his money and his life too."
Whilst saying this, Fletcher, without making any
q2
228 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
remark, drew the shroud and pall carefully over the
feet of his master's corpse — he was very nervous and
trembled as he did it ; so strongly had his weak
and superstitious nature been acted upon by the
injunctions and threats of his master, that, alive or
dead, no one was to see his feet, for if they did, he
would haunt him, &c., &c.
Fletcher gave me a sheet of paper, and from his
dictation I wrote on Byron's coffin the particulars
of his last illness and death. This account differs
in many particulars from the one already published ;
in the same way that the fresh rough notes of an
eye-witness, taken on the spot, differ on passing
through the hands of the editor of a review to be
served out to the public as an article to serve a
cause or strengthen a faction — so let it be, I shall
not question it.
A letter from his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, was
on his writing-table. This lady was the only rela-
tion Byron had, or at least acknowledged ; and he
always spoke of her in the most affectionate terms.
He was in the act of writing to her when he was
taken ill. This unfinished letter I copied, — as the
original would run many risks of being lost before
LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 229
it reached its destination. It is interesting as the
last of Byron's writings — as an index, too, of his
real and inward feelings ; those letters that have
been published were written, as I have already
observed, under an assumed character and for eifect.
His sister's letter contained a long transcript of
one from Lady Byron; with a minute mental
and physical account of their child, Ada. Lady
Byron's letter mentioned a profile of the child.
I found it, with other tokens that the Pilgrim had
most treasured, scattered on the floor, — as rubbish
of no marketable value, and trampled on. I rescued
from destruction a cambric handkerchief staiued with
his blood, and marked with a lady's name in hair ;
a riaglet ; a ribbon ; and a small glove. These rehcs
I folded up with some of his own hair that I had
shorn from his head.
This unfinished letter was the last of Byron's
writings ; it is to his half-sister, Augusta Leigh.
Missolonghi, Feb. 23, 1824.
My deaeest Augusta,
I received a few days ago, your and Lady B.'s
report of Ada's health, with other letters from
230 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
England ; for which I ought to be, and am (I hope)
sufficiently thankful, as they are of great comfort
and I wanted some, having been recently unwell
— but am now much better, so that you must not
be alarmed.
You will have heard of our journeys and escapes,
and so forth, — perhaps with some exaggeration ;
but it is all very well now, and I have been some
time in Greece, which is in as good a state as could
be expected considering circumstances. But I will
not plague you with politics — ^wars — or earthquakes,
though we have had a rather smart one three nights
ago, which produced a scene ridiculous enough, as
no damage was done, except to those who stuck fast
in the scuffle to get first out of the doors or win-
dows ; amongst w^hom, some recent importations
from England, who had been used to quieter
elements, were rather squeezed in the press for
precedence.
I have been obtaining the release of about nine-
and-twenty Turkish prisoners, — men, women, and
children, and have sent them, at my own expense,
home to their friends ; but one pretty little girl of
nine years of age, named Hato or Hatagee, has
LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 231
expressed a strong wish to remain with me or under
my care ; — and I have nearly determined to adopt
her, if I thought that Lady B. would let her come
to England as a companion to Ada (they are about
the same age), and we could easily provide for her,
— if not, I can send her to Italy for education. She
is very lively and quick,, and with great black
Oriental eyes and Asiatic features. All her brothers
were killed in the revolution. Her mother wishes
to return to her husband, who is at Previsa; but
says that she would rather entrust the child to me
in the present state of the country. Her extreme
youth and sex have hitherto saved her life, but
there is no saying what might happen in the course
of the war (and of such a war). I shall probably
commit her to the care of some English lady in the
islands for the present. The child herself has the
same wish, and seems to have a decided character
for her age. You can mention this matter, if you
think it worth while. I merely wish her to be
respectably educated and treated ; and if my years
and all things be considered, — I presume it would be
difficult to conceive me to have any other views.
With regard to Ada's health, I am glad to hear
232 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
that she is so much better; but I think it right
that Lady B. should be informed and guard against
it accordingly ; that her description of much of her
disposition and tendencies very nearly resemble
that of my own at a similar age, — except -that I was
much more impetuous. Her preference of prose
(strange as it may now seem) was^ and indeed is,
mine (for I hate reading verse — and always did);
and I never invented anything but ' boats, — ships,'
and generally something relative to the ocean. I
showed the report to Colonel Stanhope, who was
struck with the resemblance of parts of it to the
paternal line, — even now.
But it is also fit, though unpleasant, that I should
mention, — that my recent attack, and a very severe
one, — had a strong appearance of epilepsy ; — why, I
know not — for it is late in life. Its first appearance
at thirty-six, and, so far as I know, it is not here-
ditary ; — and it is that it may not hecovae so, that
you should tell Lady B. to take some precautions
in the case of Ada.
My attack has not returned, — and I am fighting
it off with abstinence and exercise, and thus far with
success ; — if merely casual, it is all very well
LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYROK 233
Gordon, in liis ' History of the Greek Eevolu-
tion,' speaking of Byron just before his death says :
" His health declined, and we cannot be surprised,
considering what he had suffered, and was daily
suffering, from the deceptions practised upon him,
and importunate solicitations for money. Parry
talked a great deal and did little; Mavrocordato
promised everything, and performed nothing, and
the primates, who engaged to furnish 1500 dollars
towards the expenses of the fortifications, could
not produce a farthing, and in lieu thereof pre-
sented him with the freedom of the town. The
streets and country were a bed of mire, so he could
not take any exercise out of doors."
To return to what passed in Byron's house. On
hearing a noise below, I went down into the public
room, and found Parry with a comrade carousing.
This man (Parry) had been a clerk in the civil de-
partment of the Ordnance at Woolwich, and was sent
out by the committee with the munitions of war, as
head fire-master. In revolutions, however severely
the body may suffer for want of pay and rations, your
vanity is pampered to satiety by the assumption of
whatever rank or title you may have a fancy
234 • RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
for. Mavrocordato dubbed himself Prince ; Byron,
Commander-in-Chief; Parry the ordnance clerk,
Major.
I said, "Well, major, what do you think was the
cause of Lord Byron's death ?"
" Think ? I don't think anything about it ; I am a
practical man, not a humbugging thinker ; he would
have been alive now if he had followed my advice. He
lived too low : I told him so a thousand times. Two
or three days before he slipped his wind, he said :
' Parry, what do you think is the matter with me, the
doctors don't know my complaint ?' No, I said, nor
nothing else, my lord; let me throw them out of
the window. * What will do me good, Parry ?' Brandy,
my lord ; nothing but brandy will save you ; you have
only got a chill on an empty stomach ; let me mix you
a stiff glass of grog, and you will be all right to-
morrow, but he shook his head, so I gave him up as
a lost man. My father," he continued, " lived to a
great age on brandy, and then he would not have
died, but the doctor stopped his drink, and the
death-rattle choked his scuppers."
" What did the doctors do. Parry, with Lord
Bvron?"
LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 235
" Do ! why they physicked and bled him to death.
My lord called them assassins to their faces, and
so they are. A pair of more conceited ignorant
scamps I never saw ; they are only fit to stand at
the corners of alleys to distribute Doctor Eady's
hand-bills."
The fire -master was a rough burly fellow, never
quite sober, but he was no fool, and had a fund of
pot-house stories which he told in appropriately
slang language ; he was a mimic, and amused Byron
by burlesquing Jeremy Bentham and other mem-
bers of the Greek committee. Besides these accom-
plishments, he professed a thorough knowledge of the
art of fortification, and said he was the inventor of
shells and fire-balls that would destroy the Ottoman
fleet and the garrison of Lepanto. All he did, how-
ever, was to talk and drink. He was three months
in Greece, returned to England, talked the com-
mittee out of 400Z. for his services, and drank him-
self into a madhouse. When he could get no more
brandy to keep down the death-rattle, he died as he
said his father had done. Six artificers whom he
brought to Greece with him, staid there only a fort-
night, and cost the committee MOl.
236 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
Out of the first loan of 800,000L, negotiated in
England, the Greeks got 240,0002. The money
Byron advanced by way of loan was repaid by the
Greeks ; but I believe it was invested in the Greek
loan, and so lost.
J, A^nntra, litl, J%iSi£m;i.iLlft<:tii6 Otteen
E,DVv/\Rr) JOH N TRLLA,V-iNV.
F ROM A SK ETCH BY
SFVMOUK Kl RKUP.
LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 237
CHAPTEE XXII.
Wlieii a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbours ;
Let him think of the glories of Grreece and of Rome,
And get knock'd on the head for his labours.
Don Juan.
Early in the morning Gamba and I looked over
Byron's papers; there were several journals and
note -books ; they contained memorandums of his
thoughts, not of his actions — violent invectives on
the Zuliotes and others. — Italian and English letters,
fifteen stanzas of the seventeenth canto of * Don Juan,'
dated 8th May, several songs finished, and sundry
beginnings of poems, his opinions of Napoleon's
banishment, continuations of ' Childe Harold,' and
the ' Deformed Transformed,' and other fragments.
Mavrocordato came in ; finally we sealed up every-
thing. The 30 or 40,000 dollars which Byron had
brought with him to Missolonghi were reduced to
238 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
5000 or 6000. Mavrocordato urged that this sum
should be left with him as a loan, and that he would
be responsible for its repayment. I objected to this
as illegal, and insisted on the money being shipped
to the Ionian Islands. The prince was exceedingly
put out at this ; he evidently thought my scruples
arose from no other motive than personal enmity to
him. The congress at Salona he considered a scheme
of mine to get Byron out of his hands, and to deliver
him, Mavrocordato, into the clutches of Odysseus,
and he was in great terror of that chief. These things
I could see engendered in his mind a deadly hatred
of me. After the consummate art which this prince
of Phanariotes had displayed in inveigling Byron
and his dollars into Missolonghi, he looked upon
him as a lawful prize, and on my efforts to rescue
his victim as the height of audacity. I had no
enmity to the prince, but I had a strong feeling of
good will towards Byron ; and never lost sight of his
interest. To be brief, my plan had been simply this,
to get Byron to Athens; Odysseus, whose con-
fidence I had won, engaged to deliver up the
Acropolis of that city, to put the said fortress into
my hands the instant Byron promised to come there,
LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 239
and to allow me to garrison it with my own people
and hold it ; with no other condition than that of not
giving it up to the Greek government as at the time
constituted. There the poet would have been in his
glory ; he loved Athens. In that fortress with a
Frank garrison he would have been thoroughly in-
dependent; he would have been safe from fevers,
for it is the healthiest site in the world, as well as
the most beautiful. If the Greeks succeeded in
raising a loan, and he was appointed to control its
expenditure, at Athens he would have been in
a commanding position : aloof from the sordid civil
and military factions, he might have controlled
them — Byron was no soldier :
" Nor the division of a battle knew more than a spinster."
To carry on the war a disciplined army and an able
general were indispensable. Sir C. J. Napier was the
man exactly fitted for such an emergency ; skilful,
fearless, prompt, and decided as fate. The deep in-
terest that great soldier felt in the cause of the Greeks
was such, that he would have undertaken the war,
although it would have cost him his commission in
the British service, if solicited by the proper autho-
240 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
rities, and furnished with sufficient means and
power. When Byron was on his death-hed, and
wandering in his mind, Napier was uppermost in
his thoughts ; he cursed the mercenary and turbu-
lent Zuliotes, exclaiming : " When Napier comes, I
will have them all flayed alive."
In one of my visits to Cephalonia, expressly to
inform Napier of the state of anarchy in Greece,
I told him the first duty he would have to perform
would be that of shooting and imprisoning half-
a-dozen of the most refractory of the leaders of
factions, as well as of the Captanria.
" No," he said, " you shall do that ; you shall be
Provost Marshal. If I go there, we will raise the
price of hemp ; and I won't go without two Euro-
pean regiments, money in hand to pay them, and
a portable gallows."
" I will accept the ofiice, and do my duty," I
answered.
To resume my story. After I had seen Bjrron's
effects dispatched to Zante, I left Missolonghi to
return to Salona. Many of the foreign soldiers who
had been in Byron's pay, now that pay was stopped,
volunteered to join me. I engaged as many as I
LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 241
could afford to keep. I had, likewise, five brass
guris, with ammunition, and some other things
sent out by the English committee, which I was
authorised to take to Eastern Greece. Mavro-
cordato opposed this order, — but I enforced it;
so that I had now a cavalcade of fifty or sixty
horses and mules, and about a hundred men, in-
cluding the Eoumeliotes whom I had brought with
me. In all my motley squad there was only one who
spoke English, and he was a Scot. It would have
been better had I omitted that one. When I arrived
at Salona, I found Stanhope and a host of others who
had come to meet Byron. Stanhope had received a
letter from the Horse Guards ordering him home.
I had now no motive for remaining in Greece.
The Greeks were jealous of foreigners ; those who
had not money wandered about in rags and
wretchedness, although maiiy of them were very
able soldiers, and had greatly distiaguished them-
selves. But I did not like deserting Odysseus ; he
was very anxious I should stay. He said : " The
Greeks were naturally treacherous, artful, sordid,
and fickle; and that history and tradition proved
they had always been so."
242 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
The congress dispersed. I returned with Odys-
seus into Livadia, and we re -visited Athens and
Euboea, — carrying on the war in the same ineffi-
cient and desultory way as before, unaided by the
government and abandoned to our own resources.
Hitherto the military chiefs held all the real power
in Greece ; the territory they wrested from the
Turks they considered as lawful prize : in short,
they acted on
*' The good old rule, the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power.
And they should keep who can."
As to the government it was a mere farce, but its
members knew it might one day become a reality.
Their chief occupation consisted in raising money
from those few spots not previously ravaged by
the ruthless soldiers. The insignificant revenue
thus raised they appropriated to their own
uses.
They were now assembled at Nauplia. An English
vessel arrived in that port with 40,000/. assigned to
them, — this being the first instalment of the Greek
loan. The rush to the diggings in California and
Australia, on the first discovery of gold in those
LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 2-13
regions, was partial, if not orderly, as compared
with the wild and universal rush of the Greeks
on Nauplia. That town was beleaguered by armed
legions of robbers, frantically clamouring for their
share of the spoil. Their military leaders soon
found, not only that they should get no money, but
that they were in imminent peril of losing their
heads.
The government determined to rule with a strong
hand, and to crush their military rivals. They
commenced organising a force and inveigling the
men from their chiefs ; they attempted to assassi-
nate Odysseus, and were plotting to seize the
great Moreote chieftain, Colocotroni, — so the great
captains fled to their mountain strongholds. The
government ultimately arrested Colocotroni and
many others.
I remained with a hundred men between Livadia
and Mount Parnes. Odysseus joined me there, and
gave me an account of the state of things at
Nauplia.
He said : " By stratagem and force, with my own
small means, I have kept the Turks out of the
Morea for three years without aid from the govern-
R 2
244 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE
ment. The territory we captains have dispossessed
the Sultan of, our self-elected government have sold
to the Russians ; and with the money they ai-e to
get rid of us, to make way for a foreign king and
foreign soldiers."
I asked, "What king?"
He said, they were " divided on that subject, but
the Russian party was the strongest, for they had
the priests, the Phanariotes and Moreotes, with
them ; but," he added, " what puzzles me is,
that England should advance money to make
Greece a hospodariot of Russia. I never met
any Greek who could understand the reason why
so shrewd a nation of traffickers as the English
should lend them such large sums of money, since
every one must know, they said, that they neither
could nor would repay any portion of it."
I urged Odysseus to resign his command, and
with a few followers to retire to the mountains —
adding that " borrowed money in the hands of
a knavish government would soon vanish."
Odysseus said, " This part of the country,
Livadia, my father inherited from his father, who
won it by his valour, and when it was lost through
FORTIFIED CAVE IN MOUNT PARNASSUS, THE STRONGHOLD OF ODYSSEUS.
A.D. 1824.
LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON. 245
the treachery of the Venetians, who sold my father
to the Sultan, I regained it by my wits, and have
kept it with my sword."
" And so you may again, if you are dispossessed
now," I answered, " if you bide your time."
How can a soldier, with nothing but his sword,
defend himself against infernal machinations devised
by a Prince of Hell, armed with a chest of gold ?