Blessington (p. 117). In fact, however, he oscillated between attempts to preserve the air of an injured yet forgiving husband and outbursts of bitterness. At the instance of Mme. de Staël he made some kind of overture for reconciliation in 1816, and (apparently) upon its failure wrote the ‘Dream,’ intended to show that his love had always been reserved for Mary Chaworth; and a novel upon the ‘Marriage of Belphegor,’ representing his own story. He destroyed it, says Moore, on hearing of her illness; but a fragment is given in the notes to ‘Don Juan.’ In a poem written at the same time, ‘On hearing that Lady Byron was ill,’ he attacks her implacability, and calls her a ‘moral Clytemnestra.’ He never met Lady Blessington without talking of his domestic troubles. He showed an (unsent) conciliatory letter, and apologised for public allusions in his works. Some angry communications were suppressed by his friends, but the allusions in the last cantos of ‘Childe Harold’ and in ‘Don Juan’ were unpardonable. While Byron was bemoaning his griefs to even casual acquaintance with a strange incontinence of language, and circulating letters and lampoons, his occasional conciliatory moods were of little importance. Lady Blessington remarks on his curious forgetfulness of the way in which he had consoled himself when he complained of his wife's implacability. Her dignified reticence irritated and puzzled him, and his prevailing tone only illustrates the radical incompatibility of their characters.
Byron sailed for Ostend (24 April 1816) with a young Italian doctor, Polidori, a Swiss and two English servants, Rushton and Fletcher, who had both started with him in 1809. Byron's good nature to his servants was an amiable point in his character. Harness describes the ‘hideous old woman’ who had nursed him in his lodgings and followed him through all his English establishments, and speaks of his kindness to an old butler, Murray, at Newstead. Byron travelled in a large coach, imitated from Napoleon's, carrying bed, library, and kitchen, besides a calèche bought at Brussels. His expenses were considerable, and his scruples about copyright soon vanished. In 1817 he was bargaining sharply with Murray. He demanded 600l. for the ‘Lament of Tasso’ and the last act of ‘Manfred’ (9 May 1817). On 4 Sept. 1817 he asks 2,500l. instead of 1,500l. for the fourth canto of ‘Childe Harold,’ accepting ultimately 2,000 guineas. The sums paid by Murray for copyrights to the end of 1821 amounted to 15,455l., including the amounts made over to Dallas. He must have received at least 12,500l. at this period, and the 1,100l. for ‘Parisina’ and the ‘Siege of Corinth’ was in Murray's hands. In November 1817 he at last sold Newstead for 90,000 guineas. Payment of debts and mortgages left the 60,000l. settled upon Lady Byron, the income of which was payable to Byron during his life. He was aggrieved by the refusal of his trustees in 1820 to invest this in a mortgage on Lord Blessington's estates (Diary, 24 Jan. 1821; Letter 374). Hanson, Byron's solicitor, went to Venice to obtain his signature to the necessary deeds in November 1818 (Hodgson, ii. 53). Byron declared that he would receive no advantage from Lady Byron's property. On the death of Lady Noel in 1822, however, her fortune of 7,000l. or 8,000l. a year was divided equally between her daughter and Byron by arbitrators (Sir F. Burdett and Lord Dacre); and such a division had, it seems, been provided for in the deed of separation (Hobhouse in Westminster Review, January 1825). Byron then became a rich man for his Italian position, and grew careful of money. He spent much time in settling his weekly bills (Trelawny, ii. 75), and affected avarice as a ‘good old gentlemanly vice.’ But this must be taken as partly humorous, and he was still capable of munificence.
From Brussels Byron visited Waterloo, and thence went to Geneva by the Rhine, where (June 1816) he took the Villa Diodati, on the Belle Rive, a promontory on the south side of the lake (see Notes and Queries, 5th ser. viii. 1, 24, 115). Here Byron met the Shelleys and Miss Clairmont. Miss Clairmont came expressly to meet him, but it is authoritatively stated that the Shelleys were not in her confidence. The whole party became the objects of curiosity and scandal. Tourists gazed at Byron through telescopes (see letter from Shelley, Guiccioli, i. 97). When he visited Mme. de Staël at Coppet, a Mrs. Hervey thought proper to faint. Southey was in Switzerland this year, and Byron believed that he had spread stories in England imputing gross immorality to the whole party. They amused themselves one rainy week by writing ghost stories; Mrs. Shelley began ‘Frankenstein,’ and Byron a fragment called ‘The Vampire,’ from which Polidori ‘vamped up’ a novel of the same name. It passed as Byron's in France and had some success. Polidori, a fretful and flighty youth, quarrelled with his employer, proposed to challenge Shelley, and left Byron for Italy. He was sent out of Milan for a quarrel with an Austrian officer, but afterwards got some patients. Byron tried to help him, and recommended him to Murray (Letters 275, 285). He com-
