lordship were not of that very ardent nature which would have prevented him from indulging in his favorite propensity of bewildering his entourage by giving expression to satirical observations, even on a friend on whom he had written such eulogistic verses as he had composed for the Countess of Blessington. Madame Guiccioli at different periods visited England, and on each occasion found at Gore House a hospitable mansion, where she was occasionally domiciled or entertained. There was great intimacy between Lady Blessington and Madame Guiccioli, and a demonstration of affection in their correspondence that might have denoted friendship of a very cordial kind; but I doubt if a very sincere, ardent, and disinterested attachment existed between them. Madame Guiccioli seemed to feel that she was lionized by Lady Blessington, and Lady Blessington appeared to remember that the Guiccioli claimed a property in the memory of Lord Byron which was not altogether compatible with the feelings of the author of "Conversations with Lord Byron." Lady Blessington courted the society of Madame Guiccioli, it is true, showed her great civility, and made a great deal of her in the salons; but any little peculiarities of the Italian lady were seized hold of eagerly, and made the most of in society, and laughed at in it. Like most Italian women, Madame Guiccioli has very little comprehension of badinage or irony in conversation. The Guiccioli could not understand any thing like a joke; she could bear with any neglect, or even a slight, provided it extended not to Byron's memory. Lady Blessington, who delighted in certain kinds of mystification in a sportive humor, mischief making of a playful sort, used sometimes to take advantage of Madame Guiccioli's simplicity and amusing peculiarities, her exaggerated ideas of Italian superiority in all matters of refinement, her invincible persuasion that Italians exceeded all other Europeans in genius, virtue, and patriotism, to enter into arguments at variance with her notions, and to propound strong opinions unfavorable to the people, culture, and climate of Italy. At the commencement of 1820, Count Guiccioli having arrived in Venice, after some negotiations, menaces of legal proceedings with a view to a divorce, and a formal agreement, by which it was covenanted that all communication with Lord Byron should ceaseo n the part of the countess, the lady consented to accompany her lord to Ravenna. The covenant was not long kept; letters soon passed between the countess and Byron, with complaints of coldness on one side, protestations on the other, and intimation of intended departure from Italy, and farewells for ever. The intended departure was soon relinquished. Early in January, Byron was again established at Ravenna; and in July of the same year (1820), a formal separation was pronounced in Rome between the Count and Countess Guiccioli, the lady and her friends having demanded it. The countess was ordered to go back to her father's house, and a maintenance was decreed from her husband's property. The allowance made to her was 22,000 crowns a year, her husband's income being 120,000 crowns a year. Byron says on this occasion he offered any settlement, but it was refused. The "dama" went to reside at a villa of Count Gamba, fifteen miles distant from Ravenna, and there she was occasionally visited by Byron. In July, 1821, the old Count Gamba, and his son, Count Pietro Gamba, the father and brother of Madame Guiccioli, as suspected chiefs of the Carbonari, were ordered to quit Ravenna, where the countess was then residing. The two Gambas proceeded to Florence, and there were joined by the countess. In the following month of August she was established at Pisa, in the Casa Lanfranchi, an ancient palace which had been just taken by Byron. In the latter part of September, 1822, Lord Byron and the countess removed to Genoa, and took the Villa Saluzzi at Albaro, one of the suburbs of the city. On the 13th of July, 1823, his lordship embarked for Greece. On the morning of that day Madame Guiccioli parted with him, never more to behold him. Of that parting no particulars are to be found in the "Memoirs," by Moore, the "Conversations," by Lady Blessington, or, indeed, in any other account of Byron and his affairs in Italy. Byron had lashed his imagination into a sort of romantic phrensy and enthusiasm on the subject of the struggle of the Greeks for their liberation from Turkish tyranny. He had a generous feeling of devotion to the interests of liberty in all lands. But at this particular juncture he was becoming tired of Italy, and had just witnessed the hopelessness of an attempt there for freedom, and the ruin which that unsuccessful attempt had brought on many of his Italian acquaintances and allies of his political opinions. A few months before, he had spoken of quitting Italy for England, and bidding farewell forever to one who had been the delight of his existence there; but then, when the time for departure came, his courage failed, he could not separate from "La dame de ses pensées." It was the same, in some respects, on this occasion; he talked for a long time to her of this romantic expedition, he descanted on its pleasure, its perils and excitement, and sometimes half seriously, half ironically, of its glories. He persuaded her to allow her brother, Count Gamba, to accompany him to Greece; he told her he was resolved, in a few months, to return to Italy, ritornaire a l'Italia (to her, as it was interpreted, for what was Italy then to Byron without her?); but Madame Guiccioli says, "Notwithstanding all this, every person who was near him at the time can bear witness to the struggle which his mind underwent (however much he endeavored to hide it) as the period fixed for his departure approached." In the evening of the 13th of July, when all the preparations were made, and the persons of his suite who were at the Saluzzi, and were to accompany him, had been sent on, Byron, who had been busily engaged in superintending those preparations, with manifest effort endeavoring to appear composed, indifferent, wholly rapt up in Greece and liberty, and affecting to be jaunty in his air and lively in his conversation, took his last leave of the person who for him had abandoned every thing in this life that should be held dear to woman. His lordship embarked the evening before the intended departure; he and his whole party slept on board the Hercules, the vessel chartered for the expedition. Byron's latest dream Moore's Life of Byron, p. 590. of love had been dreamed out; and that last vision of his life's romance past and gone, nothing now remained for him but a vague, undefined object, looked at through a refracting medium that tinged its imperfect outlines with bright hues, and invested them with glorious shapes and classical poetic illusions. In that work, which Byron told Mr. Murray, in July, 1821, "at the particular request of the Contessa Ghe had prom ised not to continue"-Don Juan, there are some farewell lines of the Donna Julia which might have been appropriately addressed to the author of that poem by the Donna Teresa Guiccioli, on the occasion of his departure from Genoa : "My breast has been all weakness, is so yet, But still I think I can collect my mind: To all except one image madly blind; Byron, at the time of his departure from Genoa, was in his thirty-sixth, and Madame Guiccioli in her twenty-second year. The Hercules cleared the port at daybreak on the 14th of July, but the vessel lay becalmed all day in sight of Genoa. At nightfall a storm set in, and after encountering considerable danger, the captain had to put back to port, and anchored there about six o'clock in the morning of the 15th. Lord Byron came on shore dejected, and appearing thoughtful. On relanding, he set off for Albaro, expecting to find the Guiccioli still at Saluzzi. On the way he said to his companion, "Where shall we be in a year?" He arrived in the chill gray morning, at an early hour, at his former residence, but there was no light step of one rushing forth to meet him as he approached. "He entered the house his home no more, For without hearts there is no home, and felt Without a welcome: there he long had dwelt, All was still and silent in the Saluzzi; a caretaker of the deserted house met his lordship at the threshold, and said, “La senora è partita." Madame Guiccioli had taken her departure that morning. A painter should have been there, ensconced in some nook-one of a divining spirit as well as of a skillful hand. Byron wandered for some time through the desolate-looking apartments, the rooms she inhabited, the grounds that were her customary walks; and, like that Lambro of whom he had written five years previously-" a man of a strange temperament”—he felt there was in the aspect of a place that had recently been an abode that had enjoyments and joyous loving inmates, and all at once had become a solitude, "A thing to human feeling the most trying, Than even the mental agony of dying." Byron returned early in the day to Genoa, and there he passed some hours with his friend Mr. Barry, walking about some gardens near the city, and conversing in a way that showed his thoughts had taken a gloomy turn. In the evening of that day he embarked, and finally lost sight of Genoa, and soon of Italy. During Byron's life, it was "la nobile e bellissima sua fisonomia, il suono della sua voce, le sue maniere, i mille incanti, che lo circondavano che lo rendevano un essere cosi differente cosi superiore a tutti quelli che ella aveva sino allora veduti," which had nourished the passion of the Countess Guiccioli. But the fidelity of her attachment to the memory of that highly-gifted being, at the expiration of thirty years even, still survives. It has assumed a settled aspect of veneration, that with a pale but steady light shines not ineffectually over the remains of the greatly loved and honored dead. This kind of culte reminds one of the sepulchral lamps of the ancients that are said to have burned continually in charnels, giving out a faint, unfading light, without receiving aliment or support from without the precincts of the tomb. |