Chapter VII: Introduction: To the the Bride of Abydos

Many poets--Wordsworth, for instance--have been conscious in their old age that an interest attaches to the circumstances of the composition of their poems, and have furnished their friends and admirers with explanatory notes. Byron recorded the _motif_ and occasion of the _Bride of Abydos_ while the poem was still in the press. It was written, he says, to divert his mind, "to wring his thoughts from reality to imagination--from selfish regrets to vivid recollections" (_Diary_, December 5, 1813, _Letters_, ii. 361), "to distract his dreams from ..." (_Diary_, November 16) "for the sake of _employment_" (Letter to Moore, November 30, 1813). He had been staying during part of October and November at Aston Hall, Rotherham, with his friend James Wedderburn Webster, and had fallen in love with his friend's wife, Lady Frances. From a brief note to his sister, dated November 5, we learn that he was in a scrape, but in "no immediate peril," and from the lines, "Remember him, whom Passion's power" (_vide ante_, p. 67), we may infer that he had sought safety in flight. The _Bride of Abydos_, or _Zuleika_, as it was first entitled, was written early in November, "in four nights" (_Diary_, November 16), or in a week (Letter to Gifford, November 12)--the reckoning goes for little--as a counter-irritant to the pain and distress of _amour interrompu_.

The confession or apology is eminently characteristic. Whilst the _Giaour_ was still in process of evolution, still "lengthening its rattles," another Turkish poem is offered to the public, and the natural explanation, that the author is in vein, and can score another trick, is felt to be inadequate and dishonouring--"To withdraw _myself_ from _myself_," he confides to his _Diary_(November 27), "has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive for scribbling at all."

It is more than probable that in his twenty-sixth year Byron had not attained to perfect self-knowledge, but there is no reason to question his sincerity. That Byron loved to surround himself with mystery, and to dissociate himself from "the general," is true enough; but it does not follow that at all times and under all circumstances he was insincere. "Once a _poseur_ always a _poseur_" is a rough-and-ready formula not invariably applicable even to a poet.

But the _Bride of Abydos_ was a tonic as well as a styptic. Like the _Giaour_, it embodied a personal experience, and recalled "a country replete with the _darkest_ and _brightest_, but always the most _lively_ colours of my memory" (_Diary_, December 5, 1813).

In a letter to Galt (December 11, 1813, Letters, 1898, ii. 304, reprinted from _Life of Byron_, pp. 181, 182) Byron maintains that the first part of the _Bride_ was drawn from "observations" of his own, "from existence." He had, it would appear, intended to make the story turn on the guilty love of a brother for a sister, a tragic incident of life in a Harem, which had come under his notice during his travels in the East, but "on second thoughts" had reflected that he lived "two centuries at least too late for the subject," and that not even the authority of the "finest works of the Greeks," or of Schiller (in the _Bride of Messina_), or of Alfieri (in _Mirra_), "in modern times," would sanction the intrusion of the [Greek: misêto\n] into English literature. The early drafts and variants of the MS. do not afford any evidence of this alteration of the plot which, as Byron thought, was detrimental to the poem as a work of art, but the undoubted fact that the _Bride of Abydos_, as well as the _Giaour_, embody recollections of actual scenes and incidents which had burnt themselves into the memory of an eye-witness, accounts not only for the fervent heat at which these Turkish tales were written, but for the extraordinary glamour which they threw over contemporary readers, to whom the local colouring was new and attractive, and who were not out of conceit with "good Monsieur Melancholy."

Byron was less dissatisfied with his second Turkish tale than he had been with the _Giaour_. He apologizes for the rapidity with which it had been composed--_stans pede in uno_--but he announced to Murray (November 20) that "he was doing his best to beat the _Giaour_," and (November 29) he appraises the _Bride_ as "my first entire composition of any length."

Moreover, he records (November 15), with evident gratification, the approval of his friend Hodgson, "a very sincere and by no means (at times) a flattering critic of mine," and modestly accepts the praise of such masters of letters as "Mr. Canning," Hookham Frere, Heber, Lord Holland, and of the traveller Edward Daniel Clarke.

The _Bride of Abydos_ was advertised in the _Morning Chronicle,_ among "Books published this day," on November 29, 1813. It was reviewed by George Agar Ellis in the _Quarterly Review_ of January, 1814 (vol. x. p. 331), and, together with the _Corsair_, by Jeffrey in the _Edinburgh Review_ of April, 1814 (vol. xxiii. p. 198).

* * * * *

NOTE TO THE MSS. OF _THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS_.

The MSS. of the _Bride of Abydos_ are contained in a bound volume, and in two packets of loose sheets, numbering thirty-two in all, of which eighteen represent additions, etc., to the First Canto; and fourteen additions, etc., to the Second Canto.

The bound volume consists of a rough copy and a fair copy of the first draft of the _Bride_; the fair copy beginning with the sixth stanza of