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BYRON's CORRESPONDENCE with DOUGLAS KINNAIRD – Part 1 BYRON’S CORRESPONDENCE WITH DOUGLAS KINNAIRD – Part 1, 1814-1821 Update August 6th 2011. Edited by Peter Cochran This section has been in part prepared with generous support from Mr Geoffrey Bond. Letters and sections of letters not yet seen are reproduced from the John Murray edition, with kind permission. Introduction (by P.C., expanding Ralph Lloyd-Jones) Douglas Kinnaird was born on February 26th 1788, the fourth son of George, the seventh Lord Kinnaird, of Inchture, Perthshire. He was educated from 1799 to 1802 at Eton, then at Gottingen University, where he became fluent in French and German. He graduated MA from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1811. In July 1813 he went to Germany again, where he visited Alexander I’s headquarters at Peterswaldau. In Berlin, J.C.Hobhouse fell in love, and was unwise enough to confess his infatuation to Kinnaird, who “did a Byron” and told everyone else. Kinnaird witnessed the Russo- Prussian victory over the French at Kulm, on August 30th. Travelling via Prague to Paris, he was present at Louis XVIII’s first entry, on April 28th 1814, before returning to England with the journalist William Jerdan. Although Kinnaird had been acquainted with Byron at Cambridge, their friendship began in earnest in the winter of 1814 when Moore recalls “those evenings we passed together at the house of ... Douglas Kinnaird, where music, – followed by its accustomed sequel of supper, brandy and water, and not a little laughter, – kept us together, usually till rather a late hour”.1 These parties were presided over by Kinnaird’s mistress, the actress and singer Maria Keppel, mother to an illegitimate son born in April 1814. Their relationship, which lasted from 1809 to 1818, was extremely volatile, with frequent separations. Neither she, nor the son, was remembered in his will: on July 31st 1820 Hobhouse, loyal in this as in all things, had planted in his mind the suspicion that the son was actually someone else’s, and Kinnaird confirms this to be the case in a top-of-the-page “P.S.” to Byron of January 11th 1821. In May 1815 Kinnaird was elected to the management subcommittee of Drury Lane, boasting to Hobhouse of “drawing our friend Byron into the same situation”. He continued “the Lord is delighted with his office, & will, I think fill it nobly”.2 Acting on a commission, he wrote a letter dated March 26th 1816, denying that Byron had ever spoken ill of his wife (as if that were the point at issue). The sharing of Kinnaird’s bachelor lifestyle and his close involvement with the stage hastened the collapse of Byron’s marriage: early in 1817 John Murray told Augusta that “he also maintained D.K. as a very improper associate”. Kinnaird introduced the poet to both Edmund Kean and Isaac Nathan, for the latter of whom Byron wrote Hebrew Melodies , “at the request of my friend, the Hon. Douglas Kinnaird” (Advertisement to Hebrew Melodies , January 1815). Kinnaird rapidly became disillusioned with the project. Kinnaird was an accomplished amateur singer. He also seems to have been very handsome (unlike Hobhouse). On April 7th 1820 Hobhouse records, Called on a Piece with Kinnaird. She poor girl said she should not care if she died tomorrow – I asked her why? – She said “ I am tired !!!” This is the best reason I think, and I am sure this poor creature was sincere in what she said. 3 In London on April 22nd 1816 Kinnaird and Maria Keppel gave Byron two bottles of champagne and a cake as parting gifts before, three days later, he left England for ever. Byron had awarded him power of attorney, so that thereafter, as well as handling all of his English finances, Kinnaird was the chief recipient of his correspondence from Italy (see below). Effectively running that playhouse after the post-Waterloo suicide of Sir Samuel Whitbread, he commissioned Byron’s Monody on Sheridan , written at Diodati in July 1816, and spoken by Mrs Davison at Drury Lane on September 7th, 1: Moore’s Life, III 136-7. 2: K. to H., May 11th 1815. 3: B.L.Add.Mss.56541, f.25v.; diary entry for April 7th 1820. 2 Kinnaird was, however, very unpopular backstage at Drury Lane on account of his abrasive style – Byron often refers to him as “the hot and fiery Douglas” – and had to resign (he signals as much to Byron on September 13th 1816 with the ominous phrase “The Thanes fly from me”). On November 3rd 1817, Monk Lewis wrote to Byron: “they say, that the rapture of Drury Lane from Kean to the Scene-Shifters inclusive, when D. Kinnaird’s expulsion was announced, was something quite ludicrous”. In 1817, in Munich with his brother Charles (Lord Kinnaird), Kinnaird dined with Maximilian I of Bavaria and his son-in-law Eugene de Beauharnais, later meeting Princess Hortense of Holland at Augsberg. The brothers travelled on to Venice, where they saw Byron from September 19th to October 1st. They brought with them a copy of Hookham Frere’s recently-published Whistlecraft . Seeing ottava rima applied to comic English poetry inspired Byron to write Beppo in two nights, and then Don Juan itself. The Kinnaird brothers may thus be said to have been – without realising it – the most important poetic influence of Byron’s whole career. Marino Faliero is dedicated to Kinnaird, who saw it three times during its Drury Lane run and assured Byron that it worked very well on stage – news which Byron did not want to hear. He has no faith in Kinnaird’s ideas for the stage: I understand what you want – you want me to write a love=play – but this were contrary {to} all my principles – as well as to those of Aristotle – I want to simplify your drama – to render it fit for the higher passions – & to make it more Doric and austere. –4 Kinnaird sums up his attitude to Byron’s reformist ambitions on June 29th 1821: “Damn the Unities – I am strongly persuaded you are destin’d to write some wonderful Tragedies”. Kinnaird was a member of the Rota dining club, and first attempted to enter parliament in the general election of 1818. Although nominated as a candidate for the Westminster seat, he stood down in favour of Sir Francis Burdett. He was however elected MP for for Bishops Castle, Shropshire, at a by-election in July the following year. This enabled him to defend Hobhouse in the debate on the Trifling Mistake pamphlet in December 1819, when the latter was imprisoned for breach of parliamentary privilege. Politically on the radical Whig left (unlike Byron, who couldn’t think straight about radicalism), he was, in the general election of March 1820, re-elected by only four votes in the double return for the same constituency, but declared “not duly elected” in July, after which he stood down from parliament, never to return. On December 16th, from Newgate, Hobhouse wrote “D. Kinnaird ... has made a failure in the H. of Commons & is ashamed – or his partners wish to keep him from public meetings”, alluding to his avoidance of mass reform rallies and increased involvement with the family bank. Yet his political activism continued; in January 1821 he was again in Paris, “staying with Lord Rancliffe” and meeting liberal members of the chamber of deputies.5 He also remained a speaker at East India House debates, and published Remarks on the Volume of Hyderabad Papers, etc in 1825. His only other publication was The Beggar’s Bush , a free adaptation of Fletcher’s Merchant of Bruges , which enjoyed some success at Drury Lane in 1815. On the dissolution of the partnership with Sir F. B. Morland that year, Kinnaird became sole managing director of Ransom and Morland’s, Pall Mall. They later became Barclay’s, and a dereliction of duty on someone’s part led to the sensational discovery in 1976, in the Pall Mall vault, of a large trunk of hitherto unsuspected papers from the Shelleys, Byron, and Scrope Davies. ————— Kinnaird was a very effective “hit-man” for Byron, whose covert instructions and wishes he could both interpret, and bear the poet’s wrath when Byron claimed afterwards he had been misunderstood. John Murray complained of his uncompromising manner: “this Scotchman considers you as his property” Kinnaird tells Byron on January 10th 1815: “Hobhouse is also very gentlemanly but I don’t know you when I negotiate with M r Kinnaird”, writes Murray to Byron, March 6th 1821. It was owing to his implementation of Byron’s decisions that The Age of Bronze and The Island were published separately from The Liberal , causing the collapse of that periodical. He was also responsible, however, for the loss of the prose preface to The Vision of Judgement (the manuscript of which has never been found), which necessitated the poem’s republication, and was one final cause of Byron’s break with John Murray. 4: B. to K., September 27th 1821. 5: B.L.Add.Mss. 47224 f.17. 3 As manager of Byron’s English finances Kinnaird’s task was insurmountable. Byron had always left the management of his money to others, principally to his villainous lawyer John Hanson – who took full advantage of the poet’s inability to be bothered. Some things Kinnaird could not fix – like Byron’s refusal to pay the rent on Piccadilly Terrace, or to pay Baxter the coachmaker for his replica of Napoleon’s travelling-vehicle (“it is very iniquitous,” he writes, “to make me pay my debts – you have no idea of the pain it gives one” – October 26th 1819).
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