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Who Said It - Miss Austen or Lord Byron?
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My research on Jane Austen's era one day led me to a paperback copy of
Byron: A Self-Portrait; Letters and Diaries 1798-1824. I'd never been particularly interested in Byron, but since he lived roughly during the same period as Jane Austen, I thought I might find some useful bits of information in his letters & journals. I didn't expect to read the whole book (it was several hundred pages long), but I checked it out of the library and took it with me on vacation — hardly your typical beach reading. Yet from the first page I found myself totally fascinated: sometimes appalled, often amused, occasionally laughing out loud. I finished it and wanted more.
Many people view Austen as a feminist, or at least a proto-feminist; Byron, on the other hand, was a decided misogynist — he was, as Lady Caroline Lamb famously put it, 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know.' Unlike Austen, Byron was a person who knew everyone, went everywhere, and did everything). Like Austen, however, Byron was also a brilliant writer and a perceptive observer of the people, places, and events he encountered. Indeed, in their keen sense of irony, the two were very much alike. Read the quotes below and see if you can tell who said what.
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Who Said It?
- My laurels have turned my brain, but the cooling
acids of forthcoming criticism will probably restore me to
modesty.
- Comfort must not be expected by folks that go a pleasuring.
- ...my hearing nothing of you makes me apprehensive that you,
your fellow travellers, and all your effects, might be seized
by the bailiffs when you stopt at the house, and sold
altogether for the benefit of the creditors.
- I am very serious and cynical, and a good deal disposed to
moralise; but fortunately for you the coming homily is cut off
by default of pen and defection of paper.
- You cannot conceive what a delightful companion you are now
you are gone.
- When I saw the waggons at the door, and thought of all the
trouble they must have in moving, I began to reproach myself
for not having liked them better; but since the waggons have
disappeared my conscience has been closed again, and I am
excessively glad they are gone.
- I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves
me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
- How dull he is! I wish the dog had any bad qualities
that one might not be ashamed of disliking him.
- ...indeed I do not think publishing at all creditable either
to men or women, and (though you will not believe me) very
often feel ashamed of it myself...
- Since I wrote last, my 2nd edit. has stared me in the
face. [...] I cannot help hoping that many will feel
themselves obliged to buy it. I shall not mind imagining it a
disagreeable duty to them, so as they do it.
- I... do not think the worse of him for having a brain
so very different from mine. ... And he deserves better
treatment than to be obliged to read any more of my
works.
- London is very dull, and I am still duller than London. Now
I am at a stand still — what shall I say next? I must have
recourse to hoping. This then 'comes hoping' that you survived
the dust of your journey and the fatigue of not dancing at
Lady Clonmell's the night before. I hope moreover that you
will not gladden the eyes and break the hearts of the Royal
Corps of Marines at Plymouth for sometime to come...
- Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and
vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted.
- Take care of yourself, and do not be trampled to death in
running after the Emperor.
- ...a woman should never be seen eating or drinking, unless
it be lobster salad and champagne, the only
truly feminine and becoming viands.
- Madame Stael... hath published an Essay against Suicide,
which, I presume, will make somebody shoot himself...
- Unluckily however, I see nothing to be glad of, unless
I make it a matter of Joy that Mrs. Wylmot has another son,
& that Lord Lucan has taken a Mistress, both of which
Events are of course joyful to the Actors.
- I believe I drank too much wine last night at
Hurstbourne; I know not how else to account for the shaking of
my hand to-day. You will kindly make allowance therefore for
any indistinctness of writing, by attributing it to this
venial error.
- If you don't answer this [letter], I sha'nt say what you
deserve, but I think I deserve a reply.
- You deserve a longer letter than this; but it is my
unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they
deserve.
- ...there is no comedy after all like real life.
- ...except all night and some part of the morning, I don't
think much about the matter.
- I begin to think I like every body; — a disposition not to
be encouraged; — a sort of social gluttony that swallows every
thing set before it.
- I cannot anyhow continue to find people agreeable; I
respect Mrs. Chamberlayne for doing her hair well, but cannot
feel a more tender sentiment. Miss Langley is like any other
short girl, with a broad nose and wide mouth, fashionable
dress and exposed bosom....
- I dine with him to-morrow, which may have some influence on
my opinion. It is as well not to trust one's gratitude after
dinner.
- The word 'sensibility' (always my aversion) occurs a
thousand times in these Essays; and, it seems, is to be an
excuse for all kinds of discontent.
- The reason adulation is not displeasing is, that, though
untrue, it shows one to be of consequence enough, in one way
or another, to induce people to lie...
- Any other head would be turned with half her acquisitions,
and a tenth of her advantages.
- The Duke of ** called... His Grace is a good, noble, ducal
person; but I am content to think so at a distance...
- ...she always talks of myself or herself, and
I am not... much enamoured of either subject...
- The more I see of men, the less I like them.
- The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with
it...
WHAT DID THEY SAY OF EACH OTHER?
I have read [Byron's] The Corsair, mended my
petticoat, and have nothing else to do. {Jane Austen, letter
of March 5, 1814}.
...having talked of poetry, the richness of the present age,
and gone through a brief comparison of opinion as to the
first-rate poets, trying to ascertain whether Marmion or The
Lady of the Lake were to be preferred, and how ranked the Giaour
and The Bride of Abydos, and moreover, how the Giaour
was to be pronounced, he shewed himself so intimately acquainted
with all the tenderest songs of the one poet, and all the
impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony of the other; he
repeated with such tremulous feeling the various lines which
imaged a broken heart, or a mind destroyed by wretchedness, and
looked so entirely as if he meant to be understood, that she
ventured to hope he did not always read only poetry, and to say
that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry to be seldom
safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the
strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly were the very
feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly. {Jane Austen, Persuasion,
Chapter 11}
The most sensational item in the 1813 catalogue [of Byron's library] is 1813, 154, showing Byron to have possessed first editions of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. They are thrown in with a History of Pugilism, Despotism, or [the] Fall of the Jesuits (by Isaac Disraeli, published by Murray), and a “volume of plays”, and do not recur in the 1816 catalogue. Perhaps Byron gave them to Annabella. There are no references to Jane Austen anywhere in his work.
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©2007, Joan
Ellen Delman
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