LETTER 34.

TO MRS. BYRON.

“Falmouth, June 22. 1809.

“Dear Mother,

“I am about to sail in a few days; probably before this reaches you.  Fletcher begged so hard, that I have continued him in my service.  If he does not behave well abroad, I will send him back in a transport.  I have a German servant, (who has been with Mr. Wilbraham in Persia before, and was strongly recommended to me by Dr. Butler, of Harrow,) Robert and William; they constitute my whole suite.  I have letters in plenty:—­you shall hear from me at the different ports I touch upon; but you must not be alarmed if my letters miscarry.  The Continent is in a fine state—­an insurrection has broken out at Paris, and the Austrians are beating Buonaparte—­the Tyrolese have risen.

“There is a picture of me in oil, to be sent down to Newstead soon.—­I wish the Miss P——­s had something better to do than carry my miniatures to Nottingham to copy.  Now they have done it, you may ask them to copy the others, which are greater favourites than my own.  As to money matters, I am ruined—­at least till Rochdale is sold; and if that does not turn out well, I shall enter into the Austrian or Russian service—­perhaps the Turkish, if I like their manners.  The world is all before me, and I leave England without regret, and without a wish to revisit any thing it contains, except yourself, and your present residence.

“P.S—­Pray tell Mr. Rushton his son is well and doing well; so is Murray, indeed better than I ever saw him; he will be back in about a month.  I ought to add the leaving Murray to my few regrets, as his age perhaps will prevent my seeing him again.  Robert I take with me; I like him, because, like myself, he seems a friendless animal.”

To those who have in their remembrance his poetical description of the state of mind in which he now took leave of England, the gaiety and levity of the letters I am about to give will appear, it is not improbable, strange and startling.  But, in a temperament like that of Lord Byron, such bursts of vivacity on the surface are by no means incompatible with a wounded spirit underneath;[116] and the light, laughing tone that pervades these letters but makes the feeling of solitariness that breaks out in them the more striking and affecting.

LETTER 35.

TO MR. HENRY DRURY.

“Falmouth, June 25. 1809.

My dear Drury,

“We sail to-morrow in the Lisbon packet, having been detained till now by the lack of wind, and other necessaries.  These being at last procured, by this time to-morrow evening we shall be embarked on the vide vorld of vaters, vor all the vorld like Robinson Crusoe.  The Malta vessel not sailing for some weeks, we have determined to go by way of Lisbon, and, as my servants term it, to see ’that there Portingale’—­thence to Cadiz and Gibraltar, and so on our old route to Malta and Constantinople, if so be that Captain Kidd, our gallant commander, understands plain sailing and Mercator, and takes us on our voyage all according to the chart.