Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/138

 burning by showing to the boys the names of their ancestors on the walls (, p. 68). He afterwards satirised Butler as ‘Pomposus’ in ‘Hours of Idleness,’ but had the sense to apologise before his first foreign tour.

‘My school friendships,’ says Byron, ‘were with me passions.’ Byron remonstrates with a boyish correspondent for calling him ‘my dear’ instead of ‘my dearest Byron.’ His most famous contemporary at Harrow was Sir Robert Peel, for whom he offered to take half the thrashing inflicted by a bully. He protected Harness, his junior by two years, who survived till 1869. His closest intimates were apparently Lords Clare and Dorset and John Wingfield. When he met Clare long afterwards in Italy, he was agitated to a painful degree, and says that he could never hear the name without a beating of the heart. He had been called at Glennie's ‘the old English baron,’ and some aristocratic vanity perhaps appears in his choice of intimates and dependents.

His mother was at Bath in 1802 (where he appeared in Turkish costume at a masquerade); at Nottingham in 1803; and at Southwell, in a house called Burgage Manor, in 1804. Byron visited Newstead in 1803, then occupied by Lord Grey de Ruthin, who set apart a room for his use. He was often at Annesley Hall, the seat of his distant cousins the Chaworths. Mary Anne Chaworth was fifth in descent from Viscount Chaworth, and her grandfather was brother to the William Chaworth killed by the fifth Lord Byron. A superstitious fancy (duly turned to account in the ‘Siege of Corinth,’ xxi.), that the family portraits would descend from their frames to haunt the duellist's heir, made him refuse to sleep there; till a ‘bogle’ seen on the road to Newstead—or some less fanciful motive—induced him to stay for the night. He had fallen desperately in love with Mary Anne Chaworth, two years his senior, who naturally declined to take him seriously. A year later Miss Pigot describes him as a ‘fat bashful boy.’ In 1804 he found Miss Chaworth engaged to John Musters. The marriage took place in 1805. Moore gives a report, probably inaccurate (see, i. 123), of Byron's agitation on hearing of the wedding. He dined with her and her husband in 1808, and was much affected by seeing her infant daughter. Poems addressed to her appeared in ‘Hours of Idleness’ and Hobhouse's ‘Miscellany.’ He told Medwin (p. 65) that he had found in her ‘all that his youthful fancy could paint of beautiful.’ Mrs. Musters's marriage was unhappy; she was separated from her husband; her mind became affected, and she died in 1832 from a shock caused by riots at Nottingham. This passion seems to have left the most permanent traces on Byron's life; though it was a year later (if his account is accurate) that the news of Mary Duff's marriage nearly caused convulsions.

In October 1805 Byron entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a nobleman. A youth of ‘tumultuous passions’ (in the phrase of his college tutor), he was exposed to the temptations of his rank, yet hardly within the sphere of its legitimate ambition. He rode, shot with a pistol, and boxed. He made a friend of the famous pugilist, Jackson, paid for postchaises to bring ‘dear Jack’ to visit him at Brighton, invited him to Newstead, and gave him commissions about dogs and horses. He was greatest at swimming. The pool below the sluice at Grantchester is still called by his name. Leigh Hunt first saw him (, Byron, &c. p. 1) swimming a match in the Thames under Jackson's supervision, and in August 1807 he boasts to Miss Pigot of a three miles swim through Blackfriars and Westminster bridges. He travelled to various resorts with a carriage, a pair of horses, a groom and valet, besides a bulldog and a Newfoundland. In 1806 his mother ended a quarrel by throwing the poker and tongs at his head. She followed him to his lodgings in London, whither he retreated, and there another engagement resulted in the defeat of the enemy—his mother. On a visit to Harrogate in the same summer with his friend Pigot he was shy, quiet, avoided drinking, and was polite to Professor Hailstone, of Trinity. On some of his rambles he was accompanied by a girl in boy's clothes, whom he introduced as his younger brother. He tells Miss Pigot that he has played hazard for two nights till four in the morning; and in a later diary (, chap. viii.) says that he loved gambling, but left off in time, and played little after he was of age. It is not surprising to find him confessing in 1808 (Letter 25) that he is ‘cursedly dipped,’ and will owe 9,000l. or 10,000l. on coming of age. The college authorities naturally looked askance at him; and Byron symbolised his opinion of dons by bringing up a bear to college, and declaring that the animal should sit for a fellowship.

Byron formed friendships and had pursuits of a more intellectual kind. He seems to have resided at Cambridge for the Michaelmas term 1805, and the Lent and Easter terms 1806; he was then absent for nearly a year, and returned to keep (probably) the Easter term of 1807, the following October and Lent terms, and perhaps the Easter term of 1808, taking his M.A. degree on 4 July 1808 (information kindly given by Cambridge