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DON JUAN CANTO THIRD
edited by Peter Cochran
1.^1
Hail Muse! et Cetera. 2 – We left Juan sleeping,
Pillowed upon a fair and happy breast,
And watched by eyes that never yet knew weeping
And loved by a young heart too deeply blest
To feel the poison through her Spirit creeping, 5
Or know who rested there; a foe to rest
Had soiled the Current of her sinless years,
And turned her pure heart’s purest blood to tears. 3
Oh Love! what is it in this world of ours
Which makes it fatal to be loved? Ah why 10
With Cypress branches hast thou wreathed thy bowers,^4
And made thy best interpreter a Sigh?
As those who doat on odours pluck the flowers,
And place them on their breast, but place to die,
Thus the frail beings we would fondly cherish 15
Are laid within our bosoms but to perish.
In her first passion Woman loves her Lover,
In all the others all She loves is Love,^5
Which grows a habit She can ne’er get over,
And fits her loosely – like an easy Glove, 20
As you may find, whene’er you like to prove her;
One Man alone at first her heart can move;
She then prefers him in the plural number
Not finding that the additions much encumber.
1: Cantos III and IV were originally conceived as a unit, and only cut, said Byron (see note below, this Canto, lines 978-9) from mercenary motives. Byron’s original idea for an opening had been the satirical address to Wellington, which he cut from here, and finally used at the start of Canto IX: it was eight stanzas long – hence the numbering of these two. In neat, Byron changed the opening line ( Now to my Epic. – We left Juan sleeping ) to something more epically sensational once he had decided that the attack on Wellington was not yet fitting. The need to do so economically procured him an excellent effect. 2: Hail Muse! et Cetera: in the newly-confident ottava rima manner, this is all there is left of the traditional invocation of and address to the Muses. For the full effect and implication, contrast Homer, Iliad I, 1-7, or Odyssey I, 1-10, Virgil, Aeneid I, 1-11, Tasso, Gerusalemme Liberata I, Stanza 2, or Milton, Paradise Lost I, lines 1-26. 3: turned her pure heart’s purest blood to tears : introduces the theme of the Fall. 4: Cypress: cypresses are symbols of death and mourning; see below, V, 319-20. 5: Lines 17-18 and 31-2 are versions of the Maximes of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Nos. 471 and 73: Dans les premières passions, les femmes aiment l’amant; et dans les autres, elles aiment l’amour (In their first passions, women love the beloved; and in the the others, they love love) ... On peut trouver des femmes qui n’ont jamais eu de galanterie; mais il est rare d’en trouver qui n’en jamais eu qu’une (We can find women who have never taken lovers; but it is rare to find one who has only had one).
I know not if the fault be Men’s or theirs; 25
But one thing’s pretty sure, a Woman planted 6
(Unless at once she plunge for life in prayers)
After a decent time must be gallanted,
Although, no doubt, her first of Love-affairs
Is that to which her heart is wholly granted; 30
Yet there are some, they say, who have had None,
But those who have ne’er end with only One.
‘Tis melancholy, and a fearful sign
Of human frailty, folly, also Crime,
That Love and Marriage rarely can combine, 35
Although they both are born in the same clime –
Marriage from Love, like Vinegar from Wine: 7
A sad, sour, sober beverage by Time
Is sharpened from its high celestial flavour
Down to a very homely household savour. 40
There’s something of Antipathy as ‘twere,
Between their present and their future state;
A kind of flattery that’s hardly fair
Is used until the truth arrives too late,
Yet what can people do except despair? 45
The same things change their names at such a rate,
For instance – Passion in a Lover’s glorious,
But in a husband is pronounced Uxorious.
Men grow ashamed of being so very fond –
They sometimes also get a little tired, 50
(But that of course is rare) and then despond:
The same things cannot always be admired,
Yet ‘tis “so nominated in the bond”^8
That both are tied till one shall have expired –
Sad thought! to lose the spouse that was adorning 55
Our days, and put one’s Servants into Mourning. –
6: planted : signifies morally abandoned; an unscrupulous anglicisation of the Italian piantare (to plant, to drive, to knock, to thrust, to leave in the lurch). 7: Marriage from Love, like Vinegar from Wine : with perhaps a glance at the miracle of the water and the wine (John, 1-10). 8: ‘tis “so nominated in the bond”: from The Merchant of Venice, IV i 257: the parallel between marriage and Shylock’s bond with Antonio is not a romantic one.
Some persons say that Dante meant Theology
By Beatrice, and not a Mistress; I,
Although my opinion may require apology,
Deem this a Commentator’s phantasy,
Unless indeed it was from his own knowledge he 85
Decided thus, and showed good reason why;
I think that Dante’s more abstruse ecstatics
Meant to personify the Mathematics. 13 –
12.^14
Haidee and Juan were not married, but
The fault was theirs, not mine; it is not fair, 90
Chaste reader, then in any way to put
The blame on me, unless you wish they were;
Then if you’d have them wedded, please to shut
The book which treats of this erroneous pair,
Before the Consequences grow too awful; 95
‘Tis dangerous to read of loves unlawful.^15
Yet they were happy, – happy in the illicit
Indulgence of their innocent desires;
But more imprudent grown with every visit,
Haidee forgot the Island was her Sire’s; 100
When we have what we like ‘tis hard to miss it,
At least in the beginning, ere one tires;
Thus She came often, not a moment losing,
Whilst her piratical papa was cruising.^16
13: ecstatics ... Mathematics: the relationship between mathematics and mysticism has been much discussed, and Dante’s Paradiso is an especially mathematical one; but Byron’s irony here is at the expense of his wife; see above, I 89n; or Beppo, lines 623-4. 14: Sts. 12 and 13: The portrait of Lambro, begun above at Canto II Stanzas 125-7 and continued here, develops ideas relating to the protagonist in Beppo, which in turn re-stress and invert Byron’s more popular emphases in such poems as The Corsair. Where, in the more conventional early work, Byron was only interested in his pirate as a romantic and heroic figure, both Beppo and Don Juan examine the more mundanely entreprenurial attributes such a person might be expected to possess – the greed, the power, the contacts, the materialism, and the dehumanising insistence on people’s monetary value. It is part of the new force of ottava rima that someone at once so impressive and so wordly - credible should now begin to threaten the fragile and partially ruined paradise of Juan and Haidee. 15: ‘Tis dangerous to read of loves unlawful: see above, Canto I, note to line 921. Byron again – more overtly this time – reminds us of the book about Lancelot and Guinevere, which led to Paolo’s first adultery with Francesca, as reported in Inferno V. 16: She came often, not a moment losing, / Whilst her piratical papa was cruising: again emphasises the idea of the Fall (see note to line 8 above) connecting Lambro’s illicit plunder with Haidee’s illicit appetite for Juan.
Let not his mode of raising cash seem strange, 105
Although he fleeced the flags of every nation;
For into a prime Minister but change
His title, and ‘tis nothing but Taxation;
But he, more modest, took an humbler range
Of life, and in an honester vocation 110
Pursued o’er the high seas his watery journey,^17
And merely practised as a Sea-Attorney.^18 –
17: LOST READING FROM 1832: 111-12: “ Displayed much more of nerve, perhaps of wit, / Than any of the parodies of Pitt.” 18: a Sea-Attorney: Byron may be making a joke at the piratical tendencies of John Hanson, his own legal representative, whose idleness and indifference made him much more of a parasite and a menace than a support. Compare below, 201, where Lambro becomes a Sea-Solicitor.
Some he disposed of off Cape Matapan 20
Among his friends the Mainots,^21 some he sold *
To his Tunis Correspondents, save one Man *
Tossed overboard unsaleable (being old)
The rest – save here and there some richer One 125
Reserved for future ransom in the hold –
Were linked alike; as for the common people he
Had a large order from the Dey of Tripoli.^22 –
The Merchandise was served in the same way
Pieced out for different marts in the Levant 130
Except some certain portions of the prey,
Light Classic articles of female want,
French stuffs, lace, tweezers, toothpicks, a bidet,
Guitars and Castanets from Alicant,^23 *
All which selected from the spoil he gathers, 135
Robbed for his daughter by the best of fathers.^24 – –
20: Cape Matapan: modern Tainaron, the southernmost tip of mainland Greece. In Candide (Chapter 27) Cacacambo refers to it as a place to which he and Cunégonde were taken by the pirates who kidnapped them, en route for Constantinople – Juan’s destination here, though he does not yet know it. 21: Mainots: Greek pirates. Byron had a narrow escape from some in 1810 – see BLJ 30-1. 22: Tunis ... Dey of Tripoli: capital of modern Libya, north Africa. The Dey: son of the Bashaw, who is the ruler. Often Bey; this is perhaps Byron’s first borrowing from A Narrative of Ten Years’ Residence in Tripoli, from which he is soon to take many details. See below. The kidnapping and enslavement of Europeans in North Africa was a major international problem at the time. See the Quarterly Review for April 1816. The idea of a ruler putting out an order for slaves (line 128) is, however, probably fanciful, though it does improve Lambro’s bourgeois credentials. 23: Alicant: in southern Spain. Lambro’s commercial contacts span the entire Mediterranean. 24: best of fathers: a phrase used, without irony, by Sophia Western, to describe Squire Western, in her letter to the hero at Tom Jones, Book XVI Chapter 5. Western is obviously a more extrovert parent than Lambro: but love, possessiveness, and materialism unite them.
A Monkey, a Dutch Mastiff, a Maccaw,
Two Parrots, with a Persian cat and kittens,^25
He chose from several animals he saw;
A terrier, too, which once had been a Briton’s, 140
Who dying on the coast of Ithaca,^26
The Peasants gave the poor dumb thing a pittance;
These to secure in this strong blowing weather,
He caged in one huge hamper altogether.^27 –
Then having settled his Marine affairs, 145
Dispatching single Cruisers here and there
His Vessel having need of some repairs
He shaped his course to where his daughter fair
Continued still her hospitable cares;
But that part of the Coast being shoal and bare, 150
And rough with reefs which ran out many a mile,
His Port lay on the other Side o’the Isle.
And there he went ashore without delay,
Having no custom-house nor Quarantine
To ask him awkward questions on the way 155
About the time and place where he had been;
He left his Ship to be hove down next day,
With orders to the people to Careen,^28
So that all hands were busy beyond measure,
In getting out Goods, Ballast, Guns, and Treasure. – 160
25: A Monkey ... kittens: not unlike Byron’s own menagerie, which seems to have acted as a more stress- free family. At Cambridge he owned a bear; at Venice, while writing Cantos I and II, he possessed “two monkeys, a fox and two new mastiffs” (BLJ VI 108); later, at Ravenna, when writing Cantos III and IV, he still had “a fox – some dogs and two monkeys – all scratching – screaming and fighting – in the highest health and Spirits” (BLJ VI 171 – compare 144 here); also “a civet cat ... but it ran away, after scratching my monkey’s cheek” (BLJ VII 105) and “(besides my daughter Allegra) ... two Cats – six dogs – a badger – a falcon, a tame Crow – and a Monkey. – – The fox died – and a first Cat ran away.
- With the exception of an occasional civil war about provisions – they agree to admiration – and do not make more noise than a well-behaved Nursery” (BLJ VII 208-9). Later he reports from Ravenna, “The Child Allegra is well – but the Monkey has got a cough – and the tame Crow has lately suffered from the head ache” (BLJ VII 227); the monkeys and the crow die subsequently “of indigestion” (BLJ VIII 139). How Byron diagnosed headache or indigestion in a crow is not clear: these may be jokes to tease the recipient of the letters, Augusta. Shelley further reports “a goat ... an eagle ... five peacocks, two guinea hens and an Egyptian crane” as additions to the crew (Letters ed. Jones, II 330-1). The facts may show an identification with Lambro on Byron’s part, in keeping with the stanzas on homecoming which now follow: but see also note to 144. 26: Ithaca: home of Odysseus, whose dog Argus is a famous literary canine: see below, this Canto, line 184 and n. 27: He caged in one huge hamper altogether: Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Works (1803) Volume V pp.36-7, has a Dutch Mastiff, a cat, and her kittens, a monkey and a parrot packed into one hamper for transportation. The letter is spurious; but Byron was not to know that. See DJP 608-9. 28: hove down ... Careen: turned on her side to facilitate the cleaning and repair of her hull.
If Single, probably his plighted Fair 185
Has in his absence wedded some rich Miser;
But all the better, for the happy pair
May quarrel, and the lady growing wiser,
He may resume his amatory care
As Cavalier Servente, or despise her;^32
And that his Sorrow may not be a dumb one,
Writes Odes on the Inconstancy of Woman.
And Oh! Ye Gentlemen who have already
Some chaste liaison of the kind; I mean
An honest friendship with a married Lady, 195
The only thing of this Sort ever seen
To last, of all Connections the most steady^33
And the true Hymen (the first’s but a Screen)^34
Yet for all that keep not too long away^35 –
I’ve known the absent wronged four times a-day.^36 – 200
PROOF: Someone (CPW identifies John Murray’s hand) writes in pencil on a galley-proof, next
to line 200, very bad [.]
32: Cavalier Servente: socially accepted lover of a married woman: see above, note to I 1177, Beppo, line 135, or sts.36-40. The phrase describes B.’s relationship with Teresa Guiccioli, which had started when he wrote this canto. 33: ... of all Connections the most steady: Byron’s relationship with the married Teresa Guiccioli was the longest-lasting in his life. 34: Hymen: god of marriage, and thus marriage itself (with a pun on the virginal membrane, Screen for less delicate impulses). 35: LOST READING FROM 1832: 199-200: “Yet for all that don’t stay away too long / A sofa, like a bed, may come by wrong.” 36: I’ve known the absent wronged four times a-day : implies Byron’s own part in the infidelity; implies also the extent of his physical relationships with Teresa Guiccioli.
Lambro, 37 our Sea-Solicitor, who had
Much less experience of dry land than Ocean,
On seeing his own Chimney-Smoke, felt glad,
But not knowing Metaphysics, had no notion^38
Of the true reason of his not being sad, 205
Or that of any other strong emotion;
He loved his child, and would have wept the loss of her,
But knew the cause no more than a Philosopher.
27.^39
He saw his white walls shining in the Sun,
His Garden trees all shadowy and green, 210
He heard his rivulet’s light bubbling Run,
The distant dog-bark; and perceived between
The Umbrage of the wood so cool and dun,
The moving figures, and the sparkling Sheen
Of Arms (in the East all arm) – and various dyes 215
Of coloured garbs, as bright as Butterflies.
37: Lambro: the first time he is named. Ali Pasha, Byron’s Albanian host on his first Mediterranean tour, is often quoted as a model, but there was a famous Greek pirate called Lambros Katzones. The Bride of Abydos, Canto II line 380, carries the following note: “ Lambro Canzani, a Greek, famous for his efforts in 1789-90 for the independence of his country; abandoned by the Russians he became a pirate, and the Archipelago was the scene of his enterprizes. He is said to be still alive at Petersburg. He and Riga are the two most celebrated of the Greek revolutionists.” Also known as Lambro Canziani, he was employed by the Russians to raid Turkish merchantmen during 1790-1. Defeated, he took refuge in Albania. Byron would have read about him at III 285-93 of William Tooke’s Life of Catharine II, an important source for Cantos IX and X. He may even have met him in Constantinople. On July 2nd 1809, Hobhouse’s diary records: ... dind at palace – met Colonel Rooke (calld Capt[ain] by Adair) a singular fellow, an old greyheaded man who lives amongst the islands – keeps a boat of 100 tons & has been here 8 or 9 years, as rattling and as incorrect as a boy called Lambro. L Cazzoni!! Lambro’s literary precedents include Odysseus himself, Conrad in The Corsair, Moses, and Prospero in The Tempest. His approach through scenes of pastoral delight echoes the crusaders’ journey through the enchanted island in Gerusalemme Liberata, XIV-XVI, where they save Rinaldo from the seductress Armida; but Byron inverts Tasso’s stern Christian ethic. “… the pirate Lambro” appears at II, 417 of Thomas Hope’s 1819 novel Anastasius, which B. admired, and from which he borrowed a lot. Our Sea-Solicitor: a distant way of saying that Lambro transacted nautical business. 38: On seeing his own Chimney-Smoke, felt glad, / But not knowing Metaphysics ...: glances at the wreathes of smoke / Sent up, in silence, from among the trees at lines 18-19 of Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey. 39: Sts. 27-35: a pastoral interlude, with both innocent and guilty conviviality threatened by Lambro’s approach. S.T.Coleridge speaks of the section in Table Talk for June 7 1824: Upon the whole, I think the part of Don Juan in which Lambro’s return to his home, and Lambro himself are described, is the best, that is, the most individual, in all I know of Lord B.’s works. The festal abandonment puts one in mind of Nicholas Poussin’s pictures (quoted E.H.Coleridge, VI 152). It is also interesting to compare the passage with Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn.
And here, assembled cross-legged round their trays,
Small social parties just begun to dine,
Pilaus and Meats of all sorts met the gaze,^45
And flasks of Samian and of Chian Wine,^46
And Sherbet cooling in the porous Vase; 245
Above them their Desert grew on its Vine,
The Orange and Pomegranate nodding o’er
Dropped in their laps scarce plucked their mellow Store.^47
45: Pilaus: Levantine dish made with rice, meat and spices. 46: Samian ... Chian Wine: anticipates The Isles of Greece. See below, this canto, 738. 47: Orange and Pomegranate ... Dropped in their laps scarce plucked their mellow Store: Byron increases the complexity of this section by using several details from religious ideas of paradise: see Koran, Sura 56, 15-30: They shall recline on jewelled couches face to face, and there shall wait on them immortal youths with bowls and ewers and a cup of purest wine (that will neither pain their heads nor take away their reason); with fruits of their own choice and flesh of fowls that they relish. And theirs shall be the dark-eyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls: a guerdon for their deeds. There they shall hear no idle talk, no sinful speech, but only the greeting, “Peace! Peace!” For a Christian version, see Marvell, The Garden, V: What wondrous life is this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The lustrous clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarene, and curious peach, Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons, as I pass, Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass. Byron does not seem to have read Marvell; but the ideas are traditional.
A band of Children round a Snow-white Ram, 48
There wreathe his venerable horns with flowers, 250
While peaceful as if still an unweaned lamb,
The Patriarch of the flock all gently cowers
His sober head, majestically tame,
Or eats from out the palm, or playful lowers
His brow, as if in act to butt, and then 255
Yielding to their small hands, draws back again.
Their Classical profiles, and glittering dresses,
Their large black eyes, and soft Seraphic cheeks,
Crimson as cleft Pomegranates, their long tresses,
The gesture which enchants, the Eye that speaks, 260
The Innocence which happy Childhood blesses,
Made quite a picture of these little Greeks,
So that the philosophical beholder
Sighed for their sakes that they should e’er grow older.
48: A fine competition is visible here between the two opposites, Wordsworth and Byron, as to who can provide his white ram with the finer verse context. For Byron’s very negative evaluation of Wordsworth’s poem, see BLJ IV 157: [Wordsworth] “ ... has just spawned a quarto of metaphysical blank verse, which is nevertheless only a part of a poem ...” or BLJ IV 324: “there is undoubtedly much natural talent spilt over “the Excursion” but it is rain upon rocks where it stands & stagnates – or rain upon sands where it falls without fertilizing – who can understand him? – let those who do make him intelligible.” A snow-white ram appears, isolated from humanity, at Wordsworth’s despised Excursion (see this canto, 846-7) Book IX, 441: Thus having reached a bridge, that overarched The hasty rivulet where it lay becalmed In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw A twofold image; on a grassy bank A snow-white ram, and in the crystal flood Another and the same! Most beautiful, On the green turf, with his imperial front Shaggy and bold, and wreathéd horns superb, The breathing creature stood; as beautiful, Beneath him, showed his shadowy counterpart. Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky, And each seemed centre of his own fair world: Antipodes unconscious of each other, Yet, in partition, with their several spheres, Blended in perfect stillness, to our sight!
He being a Man who seldom used a word
Too much, and wishing gladly to surprize 290
(In general he surprized men with the sword)
His daughter; had not sent before to advise
Of his arrival, so that no one stirred,
And long he paused to reassure his eyes,
In fact much more astonished than delighted, 295
To find so much good company invited. –
He did not know – (Alas! how men will lie)
That a report (especially the Greeks) 55
Avouched his death (such people never die)
And put his house in mourning several weeks; 300
But now their eyes and also lips were dry;
The Bloom too had returned to Haidee’s cheeks;
Her tears too being returned into their fount,
She now kept house upon her own account.
Hence all this Rice, meat, dancing, wine, and fiddling, 305
Which turned the isle into a place of pleasure;
The Servants all were getting drunk or idling,
A life which made them happy beyond measure;^56
Her father’s hospitality seemed middling,
Compared with what Haidee did with his treasure; 310
‘Twas wonderful how things went on improving,
While She had not one hour to spare from loving.^57
Perhaps you think in stumbling on this feast
He flew into a passion, and in fact
There was no mighty reason to be pleased; 315
Perhaps you prophesy some sudden act,
The whip, the rack, or dungeon at the least,
To teach his people to be more exact,
And that, proceeding at a very high rate,
He showed the royal penchants of a pirate. 58 320
55: (especially the Greeks): refers back a thought, to the parenthesis at the end of the previous line. 56: The Servants all were getting drunk or idling, / A life which made them happy beyond measure: the ordinariness of the fact deflates our sense that Haidee and Juan have created paradise on earth (see above, III Stanzas 30-5n). 57: LOST READING FROM 1832: 311-12: “All had been open heart, and open house / Ever since Juan served her for a spouse.” 58: Byron re-employs the high rate / pirate rhyme below, at IV 639-40; there, however, he reverses it, which presumably salves his conscience.
You’re wrong. – He was the mildest mannered Man
That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat,^59
With such true breeding of a Gentleman,
You never could divine his real thought;
No Courtier could, and scarcely Woman can 325
Gird more deceit within a petticoat;
Pity! he loved adventurous life’s variety,
He was so great a loss to good Society. – –^60
Advancing to the nearest dinner tray,
Tapping the shoulder of the nighest guest, 330
With a peculiar smile, which by the way
Boded no good, whatever it expressed,
He asked the meaning of this holiday;
The vinous Greek to whom he had addressed
His question, much too merry to divine 335
The questioner, filled up a glass of wine.
And without turning his facetious head,
Over his shoulder with a Bacchant air
Presented the o’erflowing cup, and said,
“Talking’s dry work, I have no time to spare.” 340
A Second hiccuped, “Our old Master’s dead,
“You’d better ask our Mistress who’s his heir.”
“Our Mistress!” quoth a third, “Our Mistress! – Pooh! –
“You mean our Master – not the old, but new.”^61 –
These rascals being new comers knew not whom 345
They thus addressed, and Lambro’s visage fell,
And o’er his eye a momentary Gloom
Passed, but he strove quite courteously to quell
The expression, and endeavouring to resume
His smile, requested one of them to tell
The name and quality of his new Patron, 350
Who seemed to have turned Haidee into a Matron.^62
59: He was the mildest mannered Man / That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat : an allusion to Byron’s friend, the affable mass-murderer Ali Pacha. 60: Pity! he loved adventurous life’s variety, / He was so great a loss to good Society: implies Lambro to be a more common bourgeois type than we might at first wish to admit. 61: Quasi-Oedipal rivalry enters the tale at line 344, in the manner of Azo and Hugo in Parisina (without precisely their near-incestuous closeness). It is a note heard also in the Juan-Alfonso relationship of Canto I, if we believe the rumours about Alfonso and Inez; though the tension between Juan and Lambro is territorial rather than sexual. 62: Who seemed to have turned Haidee into a Matron : no seeming.
I said that Lambro was a Man of patience,
And certainly he shewed the best of breeding,
Which scarce even France, the Paragon of Nations,
E’er saw her most polite of Sons exceeding;
He bore these sneers against his near relations, 365
His own anxiety, his heart too bleeding,
The insults too of every servile glutton,
Who all the time were eating up his mutton. –
Now in a person used to much command –
To bid men come and go – and come again^64 – 370
To see his orders done too out of hand –
Whether the word was death or but the chain –
It may seem strange to find his manners bland;
Yet such things are, which I cannot explain;
Though doubtless he who can command himself 375
Is good to govern, almost as a Guelf. 65 –
Not that he was not sometimes rash or so,
But never in his real or serious mood;
Then calm, concentrated, and still, and slow,
He lay coiled like the Boa in the wood;^66
With him it never was a word and blow;^67
His angry word once o’er he shed no blood,
But in his silence there was much to rue,
And his one blow left little work for two.
He asked no further questions, and proceeded 385
On to the house, but by a private way –
So that the few who met him hardly heeded,
So little they expected him that day;
If Love paternal in his bosom pleaded
For Haidee’s sake is more than I can say, 390
But certainly to One deemed dead returning,
This Revel seemed a curious sort of Mourning.
64: To bid men come and go – and come again : alludes to the centurion at Matthew, 8, 9: ... I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh ... The centurion is a man of much faith, as well as power; it is hard to take the parallel any further, unless we are to see a contrast, with Lambro being a man of great power and no faith. Compare Byron’s lines about the Military Commandant of Ravenna, below, V 286-7. 65: Guelf: Byron’s ironical way of alluding to the House of Hanover, descended from the medieval Italian Guelf faction. See TVOJ, 391. Byron’s thesis was that George III had considerable self-command, but George IV virtually none. 66: Boa: boa-constrictor, large, beautiful and dangerous Amazonian snake; it suggests that Lambro is the serpent in Eden. For Haidee as snake, see above, II, 933-6. 67: a word and blow : from Romeo and Juliet , III i 39: But one word with one of us? Couple it with something – make it a word and a blow. Mercutio is challenging Tybalt.
If all the dead could now return to life
(Which God forbid!) or some, or a great Many,
For instance, if a husband or his Wife 395
(Nuptial Examples are as good as any)
No doubt whate’er might be their former Strife,
The present Weather would be much more rainy;
Tears shed into the Grave of the Connection
Would share most probably its resurrection. 400
He entered in the house no more his home,
A thing to human feelings the most trying,
And harder for the heart to overcome
Perhaps than even the mental pangs of dying;
To find our hearthstone turned into a tomb 405
And round its once warm precincts palely lying
The Ashes of our Hopes is a deep Grief –
Beyond a single Gentleman’s Belief. –
He entered in the house – his home no more,
For without hearts there is no home; – and felt 410
The Solitude of passing his own door
Without a Welcome; there he long had dwelt,
There his few peaceful days Time had swept o’er,
There his worn bosom and keen eye would melt
Over the Innocence of that sweet Child, 415
His only Shrine of feelings undefiled. –
68: Sts. 49-51: The reflective tone here is a consequence of Byron remembering the trauma of his alienation from his own home during the final weeks of the separation from Lady Byron. See this, from a letter to Moore of February 29 1816: “I don’t know that in the course of a hair-breadth existence I was ever, at home or abroad, in a situation so completely uprooting of present pleasure, or of rational hope for the future, as this same” (BLJ V 35). See also a later letter to Moore: “I could have forgiven the dagger or the bowl, any thing, but the deliberate desolation piled upon me, when I stood alone upon my hearth, with my household gods shivered around me. [words cut by Moore] Do you suppose I have forgotten or forgiven it? It has comparatively swallowed up in me every other feeling, and I am only a spectator upon earth, till a tenfold opportunity offers. It may come yet ...” (BLJ VI 69). He may also be thinking of the need to sell Newstead Abbey. The unhappy spoliation of home is a common theme with him; the effect here is to deepen our sympathy for Lambro, despite his materialism and brutality, and thus to alter our perspective on Juan and Haidee. See above, I 286n and I 1437n. Each of the husband / fathers – Don José, Don Alfonso and Lambro – presides, as did Byron (and Adam) over the destruction of his own paradise. There is also a remote echo here of Southey’s epic The Curse of Kehama, Book IX, in which Ladurlad, having been cursed by Kehama, visits his abandoned home for the last time. Was Lord Henry Amundeville being prepared for a similar fate in the later English cantos?
