Byron | Page 6

took no steps to protect her
property; her son she alternately petted and abused. "Your mother's a
fool!" said a school companion to him years after. "I know it," was his
unique and tragic reply. Never was poet born to so much illustrious,
and to so much bad blood. The records of his infancy betray the temper
which he preserved through life--passionate, sullen, defiant of authority,
but singularly amenable to kindness. On being scolded by his first
nurse for having soiled a dress, without uttering a word he tore it from
top to seam, as he had seen his mother tear her caps and gowns; but her
sister and successor in office, May Gray, acquired and retained a hold
over his affections, to which he has borne grateful testimony. To her
training is attributed the early and remarkable knowledge of the
Scriptures, especially of the Psalms, which he possessed: he was,
according to her later testimony, peculiarly inquisitive and puzzling
about religion. Of the sense of solitude, induced by his earliest
impressions, he characteristically makes a boast. "My daughter, my
wife, my half-sister, my mother, my sister's mother, my natural
daughter, and myself, are or were all only children. But the fiercest
animals have the fewest numbers in their litters, as lions, tigers, &c."
To this practical orphanhood, and inheritance of feverish passion, there
was added another, and to him a heavy and life-long burden. A physical
defect in a healthy nature may either pass without notice or be turned to
a high purpose. No line of his work reveals the fact that Sir Walter
Scott was lame. The infirmity failed to cast even a passing shade over
that serene power. Milton's blindness is the occasion of the noblest
prose and verse of resignation in the language. But to understand Pope,
we must remember that he was a cripple: and Byron never allows us to
forget, because he himself never forgot it. Accounts differ as to the
extent and origin of his deformity; and the doubts on the matter are not
removed by the inconsistent accounts of the indelicate post-mortem
examination made by Mr. Trelawny at Mesolonghi. It is certain that
one of the poet's feet was, either at birth or at a very early period, so
seriously clubbed or twisted as to affect his gait, and to a considerable
extent his habits. It also appears that the surgical means--boots,

bandages, &c.--adopted to straighten the limb, only aggravated the evil.
His sensitiveness on the subject was early awakened by careless or
unfeeling references. "What a pretty boy Byron is," said a friend of his
nurse. "What a pity he has such a leg." On which the child, with
flashing eyes, cutting at her with a baby's whip, cried out, "Dinna speak
of it." His mother herself, in her violent fits, when the boy ran round
the room laughing at her attempts to catch him, used to say he was a
little dog, as bad as his father, and to call him "a lame brat"--an incident,
which, notoriously suggested the opening scene of the Deformed
Transformed. In the height of his popularity he fancied that the beggars
and street-sweepers in London were mocking him. He satirized and
discouraged dancing; he preferred riding and swimming to other
exercises, because they concealed his weakness; and on his death-bed
asked to be blistered in such a way that he might not be called on to
expose it. The Countess Guiccioli, Lady Blessington, and others, assure
us that in society few would have observed the defect if he had not
referred to it; but it was never far from the mind, and therefore never
far from the mouth, of the least reticent of men.
In 1792 he was sent to a rudimentary day school of girls and boys,
taught by a Mr. Bowers, where he seems to have learnt nothing save to
repeat monosyllables by rote. He next passed through the hands of a
devout and clever clergyman, named Ross, under whom according to
his own account he made astonishing progress, being initiated into the
study of Roman history, and taking special delight in the battle of
Regillus. Long afterwards, when standing on the heights of Tusculum
and looking down on the little round lake, he remembered his young
enthusiasm and his old instructor. He next came under the charge of a
tutor called Paterson, whom he describes as "a very serious, saturnine,
but kind young man. He was the son of my shoemaker, but a good
scholar. With him I began Latin, and continued till I went to the
grammar school, where I threaded all the classes to the fourth, when I
was recalled to England by the demise of my uncle."
Of Byron's early school days there is little further record. We learn
from