Read Online Lord Byron's Novel by John Crowley - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Crowley
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into, in which the most vivid visions are imparted, as visions of palaces and damsels were to Coleridge at Nether Stowey, till he was awakened by a person from Porlock come calling. (Those regions, so poetical in themselves, are well known to me. Coleridge’s visions were excited as well by the use of opium.) Dr Elliotson’s remarkable successes in the use of those techniques of special sleep once called Mesmeric—but which I prefer to term Hypnotic—are well known. The light and fantastical treatment of the subject in the later pages of this work proceed from the author’s understandable ignorance of the astonishing development of this science in our time; nevertheless, as poets can, he saw far into its possibilities.
Albania: Lord Byron’s journey in youth to Albania, told of in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a journey undertaken at a time when few Englishmen had ever ventured there, was a signal part of his fame, or notoriety. He had indeed a love of movement, an imperviousness to discomfort, and what Dr Johnson calls ‘a willingness to be pleased’ which is the sign of a good traveller. Whether his descriptions of the land, the people, their customs, &c., be accurate, and whence he derived them if not from his own experience, which was after all quite brief—none of this I know very certainly, but my researches continue.
Pacha: Ali Pasha (1741–1822, as near as I can determine), whom Byron visited at his capital Tepelene, on his journey to Albania. In his letters to his mother Byron describes this figure, and his painted grandsons, much as they are here described.
a long white kilt of softest wool, &c.: This describes exactly the Albanian dress my father purchased for himself when he was in that country, and dressed in which he was painted by Phillips. That picture hung over the mantel at my grandmother’s house, Kirkby Mallory, where, for some time after I was born, my mother and I dwelt with her mother. The picture was covered with a cloth of green baize, and I was not allowed to look upon it—for what baleful influences might flow from thence into my young being? Such a shrine—with its cloth drawn before the holy of holies, as the curtain is drawn before the scroll of Scripture in a Jewish temple—ought to have fascinated, rather than discouraging; tempted, rather than saving; and perhaps it did—but in actual fact I do not remember it there at all, and only when the picture itself was given to me after my marriage was the story told me of its concealment. Strange are the ways of the zealous & careful parent.
• TWO •
In which a Father and a Son are joined, and of the consequences
H OW A LI PASSED the next months in the Pacha’s court—how he learned the arts of war, and of horsemanship; how he accompanied the patrols on their less dangerous rounds—for his precious skin was not to be unduly risked, as he came to understand; how he came to recognize the envious or resentful glances of certain of his fellows among the Pacha’s Guard, and how he won over his enemies by his modesty, and his open heart, and his generosity; how he filled his days with activity such as any lad would delight in, and his nights with wakings, and dreams, and griefs that none else were to know of—all that need not be recounted at length. There came a day when Ali, while in the hills practicing with his fellows at pistol-shooting, a sport at which he excelled over even some of the eldest and most experienced of them, was summoned to appear before the Pacha, and a guest who ardently desired to meet him.
The guest’s equipage and suite were in evidence in the courtyard of the Pacha’s house when Ali entered there—horses in strange harness, men in foreign clothes, including a Turk or two with high turbans and trowsers amazingly wide. Above in his room of state the Pacha sat in his accustomed place upon the sopha—and his hawk-like Vizier stood up behind him—and beside him in the place of honour was a man Ali knew
Albania: Lord Byron’s journey in youth to Albania, told of in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a journey undertaken at a time when few Englishmen had ever ventured there, was a signal part of his fame, or notoriety. He had indeed a love of movement, an imperviousness to discomfort, and what Dr Johnson calls ‘a willingness to be pleased’ which is the sign of a good traveller. Whether his descriptions of the land, the people, their customs, &c., be accurate, and whence he derived them if not from his own experience, which was after all quite brief—none of this I know very certainly, but my researches continue.
Pacha: Ali Pasha (1741–1822, as near as I can determine), whom Byron visited at his capital Tepelene, on his journey to Albania. In his letters to his mother Byron describes this figure, and his painted grandsons, much as they are here described.
a long white kilt of softest wool, &c.: This describes exactly the Albanian dress my father purchased for himself when he was in that country, and dressed in which he was painted by Phillips. That picture hung over the mantel at my grandmother’s house, Kirkby Mallory, where, for some time after I was born, my mother and I dwelt with her mother. The picture was covered with a cloth of green baize, and I was not allowed to look upon it—for what baleful influences might flow from thence into my young being? Such a shrine—with its cloth drawn before the holy of holies, as the curtain is drawn before the scroll of Scripture in a Jewish temple—ought to have fascinated, rather than discouraging; tempted, rather than saving; and perhaps it did—but in actual fact I do not remember it there at all, and only when the picture itself was given to me after my marriage was the story told me of its concealment. Strange are the ways of the zealous & careful parent.
• TWO •
In which a Father and a Son are joined, and of the consequences
H OW A LI PASSED the next months in the Pacha’s court—how he learned the arts of war, and of horsemanship; how he accompanied the patrols on their less dangerous rounds—for his precious skin was not to be unduly risked, as he came to understand; how he came to recognize the envious or resentful glances of certain of his fellows among the Pacha’s Guard, and how he won over his enemies by his modesty, and his open heart, and his generosity; how he filled his days with activity such as any lad would delight in, and his nights with wakings, and dreams, and griefs that none else were to know of—all that need not be recounted at length. There came a day when Ali, while in the hills practicing with his fellows at pistol-shooting, a sport at which he excelled over even some of the eldest and most experienced of them, was summoned to appear before the Pacha, and a guest who ardently desired to meet him.
The guest’s equipage and suite were in evidence in the courtyard of the Pacha’s house when Ali entered there—horses in strange harness, men in foreign clothes, including a Turk or two with high turbans and trowsers amazingly wide. Above in his room of state the Pacha sat in his accustomed place upon the sopha—and his hawk-like Vizier stood up behind him—and beside him in the place of honour was a man Ali knew
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