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Fantasy, Forgery, and the Byron Legend

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Fantasy, Forgery, and the Byron Legend University of Kentucky UKnowledge Literature in English, British Isles English Language and Literature 1995 Fantasy, Forgery, and the Byron Legend James Soderholm University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Soderholm, James, "Fantasy, Forgery, and the Byron Legend" (1995). Literature in English, British Isles. 86. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_british_isles/86 Fantasy, Forgery, and the Byron Legend Fantasy, Forgery, and the Byron Legend JAMES SODERHOLM THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Copyright © 1996 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 frontispiece: Lord Byron, Thomas Phillips. Newstead Abbey, Nottingham City Museums. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Soderholm, James, 1957- Fantasy, forgery, and the Byron legend / James Soderholm. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8131-1939-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788-1824—Authorship. 2. Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788-1824—Relations with women. 3. Poets, English—19th century—Biography—History and criticism. 4. Literary forgeries and mystifications—History—19th century. 5. Authors and readers—Great Britain—History—19th century. 6. Women and literature—History—19th century. 7. Fame— History—19th century. 8. Self in literature. I. Title. PR4382.S63 1995 821'.7—dc20 95-17130 for Jerome McGann Who loves, raves—'tis youth's frenzy—but the cure Is bitterer still; as charm by charm unwinds Which robed our idols, and we see too sure Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out of the mind's Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds The fatal spell, and still it draws us on, Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds; The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun, Seems ever near the prize,—wealthiest when most undone. —Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage 3.1099-1107 Women are prone to judge their lovers' hearts But by their own, which little semblance hath With man's rough nature. Hence they love them for The qualities they give them—not for those They have, which rarely merit to be loved. —Lady Blessington Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi A Note on Citations xii Introduction: The Grammar of Glamour 1 1 Trial Fantasies: Byron and Elizabeth Pigot 16 2 Byron's Miniature Writ Large: Lady Caroline Lamb 40 3 The Divining of Byron: Annabella Milbanke 70 4 Unwriting His Body: Teresa Guiccioli's Transubstantiation of Byron 102 5 The Art of Conversation: Lady Marguerite Blessington 132 Appendix A: Transcription of French Portions from a Seance with Byron 163 Appendix B: The Byron Legend in an Age of Artificial Intelligence 165 Notes 171 Selected Bibliography 188 Index 193 Illustrations Lord Byron frontispiece Silhouette of Elizabeth Pigot 16 Lady Caroline Lamb 40 Lamb's forgery 42 The Newstead miniature 47 Annabella Milbanke 70 "Thyrza to Lord Byron" 93 Countess Teresa Guiccioli 102 Lady Marguerite Blessington 132 Acknowledgments I am grateful to the following journals for allowing me to reprint revised and expanded articles as chapters 2, 3, and 4: Keats-Shelley Journal, The Byron Journal, Nineteenth-Century Contexts. Many thoughtful friends improved this work—and my mind—while I was in graduate school at the University of Vir- ginia: Lyell Asher, Richard Begam, Anne Birberick, Jay Do- brutsky, Deborah Garfield, Barbara Green, Daniel Kinney, and Cecil Lang. Paul Cantor supported me both financially and in- tellectually and remembered to shake my hand and wish me well when I collected the Ph.D. Richard Rorty had kind words about this book when it was a dissertation. My more general debt to his way of thinking and writing is immeasurable. Donna Soderholm read the book just before it went to press and, as always, her open heart and mind encouraged me. Bill Soderholm, who first put me under the spell of words, gave the manuscript an editorial scrubbing I shall not soon forget. A bare sentence cannot depict my esteem for the pilgrim soul of Anatole Mori, who before my eyes became the better maker. The book is dedicated to the most generous scholar I know. A Note On Citations Byron's Letters and Journals, 12 vols., ed. Leslie A. Marchand (London: John Murray, 1973-82). All quotations from the let- ters and journals are taken from this edition and cited in the text as BLf, followed by volume and page number. Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works, 7 vols., ed. Jerome J. McGann (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980-92). All quotations from the poetry will be from this edition and cited in the text as CPW, followed by volume and page number. INTRODUCTION The Grammar of Glamour By a coincidence of labors—one literary, one maternal (but both Scottish)—the word "glamour" and George Gordon Byron came into the world at about the same time. Walter Scott and Robert Burns first gave the word "glamour" literary currency. Scott used it in his 1802 ballad "Christie's Will," in which a group of gypsies dupes a schoolmaster by magically entrapping him: He thought the warlocks o' the rosy cross Had fang'd him in their nets sae fast; Or that the gipsies' glamour'd gang Had laired his learning at the last. In a note to this poem Scott glossed the folklore underpinning such a trick: "Besides the prophetic powers, ascribed to the gyp- sies in most European countries, the Scottish peasants believe them possessed of the power of throwing upon bystanders a spell, to fascinate their eyes, and cause them to see the thing that is not."1 In his Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (1830), Scott discussed this power of fascination ascribed to sor- ceresses and gave it a native habitation: "This species of Witchcraft is well known in Scotland as the glamour, or decep- tio visus, and was supposed to be a special attribute of the race of Gypsies."2 As another example of this form of fascination, Scott cites "The Gypsie Laddie," a song in which enchantment and se- duction work together. The gypsies came to our good lord's gate, And wow but they sang sweetly; They sang sae sweet and sae very complete, That down came the fair lady. 2 Fantasy, Forgery, and the Byron Legend And she came tripping down the stair, And a' her maids before her; As soon as they saw her weel-far'd face, They coost the glamer o'er her. Under the spell of "the glamer," the Countess of Cassillis elopes with the gypsy leader, and the rest of the song recounts her capitulation to the powers that have seduced her.3 Still another important use of "glamour" appears in Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805). Happening upon the magic book entrusted to the wounded William of Deloraine, a goblin- dwarf tries to pry it open. The iron band, the iron clasp, Resisted long the elfin grasp: For when the first he had undone, It closed as he the next begun. Those iron clasps, that iron band, Would not yield to unchristened hand, Till he smeared the cover o'er With the Borderer's curdled gore; A moment then the volume spread, And one short spell therein he read, It had much of glamour might, Could make a ladye seem a knight; The cobwebs on a dungeon wall Seem tapestry in lordly hall; A nut-shell seem a gilded barge, A sheeling seem a palace large, And youth seem age, and age seem youth— All was delusion, naught was truth. [Canto 3, stanza 9] The might of "the glamour" allows the dwarf to become a shape-shifting deceiver, much like Morgan le Fay of Arthurian legend. In Scott's works, then, glamour is associated with the power to create illusions, derived in this instance from a book of spells. Robert Burns also introduced a literary usage of the word "glamour" in his "On the Late Captain Grose's Peregrinations thro' Scotland, collecting the Antiquities of that Kingdom" (1789). Introduction 3 Ilk ghaist that haunts auld ha' or chamer, Ye gipsy-gang that deal in glamor, And you, deep-read in hell's black grammar, Warlocks and Witches; Ye'll quake at his conjuring hammer, Ye midnight b es. [11. 19-24] Burns makes an explicit connection between supernatural deal- ings in "glamour" and the special knowledge of language ("Hell's black grammar") from which this power derives. The genealogy that connects a scholastic conception of grammar to the gypsy practice of deception shows us the history of this in- triguing word. In classical Greek and Latin, the word [grammar] denoted the method- ological study of literature in the widest sense, including textual and aesthetic criticism, investigation of literary history and antiquities, explanation of allusions, etc., besides the study of Greek and Latin languages. Post-classically, grammatica came to be restricted to the linguistic portion of this discipline, and eventually to "grammar" in the modern sense. In the Middle Ages, grammatica and its Roman forms chiefly meant the knowledge or study of Latin, and were hence used as synonymous with learning in general, the knowledge peculiar to the learned classes.
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