Jan 17 1813: The Devil, & Medea & her Dragons

On January 17, 1813, Lord Byron, from Ledbury, writes to John Cam Hobhouse  responding to an earlier letter and passing along some news. Byron first thanks Hobhouse for having secured the purchase of a miniature portrait of Lady Oxford from the artist Mrs. Mee or, as Bryon calls her,  “Ma – Mee.”  Earlier, Hobhouse had written to  Byron:

“A Tin case with a layer of cotton is preparing for that celestial beauty, for the artist told me that the Countess unless hermetically sealed and made air tight would get the mildew to a certainty. She is now in my bureau, as the Spanish ambassador said of his dead secretary Mr Poggio.”

Hobhouse had earlier also passed along some choice words and gossip about R.C. Dallas and the inevitable Lady Caroline Lamb:

“Dallas damn’d ass Dull ass has sent me his works – he cuts you up by implication in the prefatory dedication by saying you approve of his Novels – I read myself asleep with Aubrey last night which is, to my mind, the most unnatural low minded stuff I ever read – He has in his miscellany got a long aligator called Dokimasia!!!

Your tale of the Brocket bon fire is almost incredible.”

Hobhouse’s last reference is to the bonfire that Lady Caroline Lamb had staged on the grounds of Brocket Hall, the Melbourne House in Hertfordshire, with a group of village girls dressed in white dancing around the bonfire, while one of her pages recited lines she had composed, and an  effigy of Byron was burned along with letters, rings, and a replica of Byron’s miniature. It appears that Caroline had regretted the loss of the miniature and had forged a letter to John Murray, in Byron’s handwriting, requesting and obtaining another miniature of the likeness of Byron. Byron passes along this further story in his letter to Hobhouse: “Car. L. has been forging letters in my name & hath thereby pilfered the best picture of me the Newstead Miniature!!! – Murray was the imposed upon. – The Devil, & Medea, & her Dragons to boot, are possessed of that little maniac.”

Byron’s letter is reproduced below.

Dear H. –  I am on my way to town – writing from my sordid Inn – many thanks for your successful diplomacy with Ma – Mee – & now “Grant him one favour & he’ll ask you two”. – I have written to Batt for rooms – would it hurt your dignity to order me some at any other hotel (by a note) in case he should not have them? – for I have no opportunity of receiving your or his answer before I reach London, & if he has not any to spare & I arrive late I shall be as bewildered as Whittington —

I rejoice in your good understanding with Murray – through him you will become a “staple author”. –

D. [R.C.Dallas]  is a damned nincom – assuredly – he has bored me into getting young Fox to recommend his further damnation to the Manager Whitbread – God (& the Gods) knows & know what will become of his “25 acts & some odd scenes”. –

I am at Ledbury – Ly . O. & famille I left at Hereford – as I hate travelling with Children unless they have gotten a Stranguary. –

However I wait here for her tomorrow like a dutiful Cortejo – O. has been in town these ten days. –

Car. L. has been forging letters in my name & hath thereby pilfered the best picture of me the Newstead Miniature!!! – Murray was the imposed upon. – The Devil, & Medea, & her Dragons to boot, are possessed of that little maniac. Bankes is gone or going to tourify – I gave him a few letters. – – I expect & hope you will have a marvellous run & trust you have not forgotten “monogamy my dr . boy” – if the “learned world are not in arms against your paradoxes”  I shall despise these coster=monger days when Merit availeth not. –

Excuse my buffoonery for I write under the influence of a {solitary} nipperkin of Grog such as the Salsette afforded “us youth” in the Arches. – ever yrs. dr. H.

B