Making Connections

In the John Murray Archive, everything connects to everything else. That office in Albemarle Street was like a nerve ganglion where every 19th century sensation met.

Byron has an affair with Caroline Lamb, whose husband William, under the title of Lord Melbourne, will go on to be Victoria's first Prime Minister, who had an alleged affair with Caroline Norton, who published poems on the Factory Acts for Murray, and later, having lost her children as a consequence of the alleged affair, became a leading campaigner for the property rights of married women, excoriated in Murray's Quarterly Review.

Byron's Child Harold, Murray's first great success, also inaugurated a genre of personal travel narratives, which met up with the exploration narratives of Africa and the Arctic by figures such as John Franklin and David Livingstone. One of these mapping expeditions to Latin America was undertaken in 1835 by HMS Beagle, whose Captain brought on board as gentleman companion one Charles Darwin, whose narrative of the Voyage was published by Murray, which led Murray, 15 years later, to become the publisher of the Origin of Species, which rivals the Bible and Newton's Principia as the most important work ever to see print.

At the same time, in the very same month, John Murray III published an extraordinary Dictionary of the Bible, which is almost as long as the original, in which every tree, shrub and event of the scriptures is re-presented in taxonomic, scientific form...and an account of the discovery of what had happened to Franklin's disappeared expedition of 1845...The Voyage of the Fox, a copy of which he sent to Charles Darwin, having earlier published Austen Layard's archaeological researches which founded their success on their apparent confirmation of the biblical narrative.

So it goes on and on...if you start with Byron you can also trace the romantic heritage of the exploring British Hero through Alexander Burnes of Montrose, Central Asian superspy murdered in Kabul in 1841 through to Isabella Bird, one of the great travelling Englishwomen (like Lady Franklin), and her adventures in China before the Boxer Rebellion...on and on, leading off in tangent after tangent...

Unified only by the London location of the publisher, and the intuition that somehow, this mass of material all leads back to Byron lunging with his stick at Murray's bookshelves after fencing practice...And now this network of correspondences and correspondances is in Edinburgh. And I get the vertiginous pleasure of exploring it and reporting back, perhaps even coherantly sometimes, on my personal responses to what I find.

Last thoughts on Caroline Lamb

Caroline Lamb's commonplace books are an extraordinarily interesting glimpse not just of one, let's be honest, troubled mind, but of an entire social construction of selfhood...many women kept these scrapbooks...mostly just with stuff in them that happened to interest them...newspaper cuttings and so on. What Caroline Lamb did with her second commonplace book (there are two in the archive) is to create a kind of fragmented space of self-invention...an open nakedness, as it were...and turn a private document into a public statement of who she was...her public being both Byron and, oddly, herself...so please forgive there being ten entries here...but the whole thing made me feel a bit fragmented myself, and I felt this was the appropriate response.

Book of Secrets Part 10 - A Book Written Backwards - Another Treasure Found

a book written backwards
with torn pages - silences
and cries
and lies
and whispers
that cry, lie and whisper
into silences
and torn pages
and a book written backwards
which was
delivered to a postman
who kept it
for 200 years

and through an archive project
and a restoration.
She came to me.
and bled

This is my new treasure.

Book of Secrets 9 "Oh God Can you give me Up?"

Alone amid blank pages,
after two pages neatly cut away
SOMETHING lost that she has written
continues in this wise...

"....one only word.

You have raised me from dispair to the joy we look for in heaven

your seeing me has undone me for ever
you are the same
you love me still
I am sure of it
your eyes
your looks
your words
your manners say so

Oh god can you give me up
take me with you take me
my master my friend
take me with you
Byron
my days are paid in vennom
being what I was to you
I wish you had never known me
or that you had killed me
before you went"

Book of Secrets - Part Eight - Heart's Blood

"The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today
Had he thy reason would he skip and play
Pleas'd to the last he crops the flowery food
And licks the hand upraised to shed his blood."

... It says something here that I can't read...

"what you always"...something
repeated?

"what you always repeated!"
(exclamation point)

She might have dreamed he'd see this page
most other pages don't have this much hope
Pure nostalgia
old songs
songs in Italian and French...
petering out into emptier and emptier pages...
intensity exhausted
until...

Book of Secrets 7 - Lost Lamb

Say on.
We part that little word
farewell
Farewell though spoke in tears may sooth our pain
Does it not chear ye whom it seems to tell
That though we part "we yet shall meet again"

But oh how like the knell of death it falls
upon the heart whose every hope is o'er
How the affrighted fancy it appals
when farewell seems to say we meet no more

Le Livre des Secrets - Sixieme

es tu bien sur que tu m'aimes
est-il certain que dans tes vastes contrees
aucun objet n'a fixe ton coeur?

je dois etre a tes yeux
sacree comme la faiblesse, l'enfance
ou le malheur

il faut que j'existe pour lui
je suis morte deja la
dit-elle
enposant la main sur son coeur

Book of Secrets 5 - "Bitch"

There's also an Italian name...Biondetta...
Byron's dog's name
Turns out to be his pet name for her

In her own little box on page 3, she says:

"This was a small spaniel Bitch whom Lord Byron took a fancy for as he saw it bounding along in company with a thousand other dogs...it had the furiousness of a Jaguar or mountain cat when angry...but would nestle like a dove in his bosom when carried. It was so happy when thus favoured, that it grew presumptious and would bite and bark at everyone who approached..."

This is her story, this is true

"one day he drew it from his bosom and gave it back to its former owner, kissing it often and promising with tears soon to return - but Biondetta's faults were remembered and all her truth and kindness forgotten from that hour ...

the dog sat and watched for him and would not feed...till it heard that a new favourite filled its place, and then growing furious, it broke its chains...(wish fulfilment coming) and tried to bite and tear to pieces its rival..."

Lord Byron gives the bitch away

"from that hour it sickened and still watching for one kind word from its master..."

A kind word from Byron?
His kind word could only be a poem

And Caroline thought Childe Harold was for her
She thought he was Childe Harold

She thought he would make a poem of her
The way he'd made a poem of himself
She was wrong
So she wanted to die


"it died...the collar around its neck..."

(this handwritten book, maybe...this is the collar
identifying, demeaning,
this is the way she forces herself on him)

She could not make him make her into a poem
She could not die, meaningfully, and thus make a poem of herself

So what could she do
but make herself into a writer
(which she did...in a novel called Glenarvon
Written dressed in a page boy costume
feverishly
night after night for four weeks)

(if you will not make me a poem
I will make a poem...a book..a spectacle
Of myself)

She wanted to be his poem
That was all

"Lord Byron derided Biondetta, and said it was a whelp, a vixen - but whatever it was, none ever lov'd him so before or since"

So she wants Murray to believe...he was actually the one who received and kept this keepsake

She's always looking for an ending, a dying fall, a conclusion and release

but her tragedy was, that like the rest of us, she woke up again next morning and everything was the same

The Book of Secrets Part 4

Caroline Lamb lies to herself more than she does to Byron
she could not have expected to be believed
that she really thought this secret book was the opening of a dialogue?
That he'd ever have her back?
That he'd court his certain social ruin?
(not in 1812...he hadn't crossed his personal Rubicon yet...)
But maybe I'm wrong
Did she sense something about him
his suicidal, romantic doomedness
that it was this that was real, threatening them both with ruin
though he didn't know that yet himself
was she psychic?
Or lucky
Or maybe she just knew him better than he did himself
Did she really love him
did she really think he loved her
did she really think she knew
knew him, more than he knew him?
was this because she fell in love
with a fictional version of him
his own fiction, to be sure, but...
She knew, somehow, that it was his destiny
to fulfil his own fiction in his actual self
that his pose of doomed satanic exile
was a prophecy more than a strategy

That might be her story
if she were writing it now

But I'm writing it
and at the moment I'm arguing with her
I'd ask her...if I could
Caroline...
What is it, this secret book?
Was this ever really intended to be delivered?
Isn't this a game?
Isn't this for yourself?
Aren't you playing pretend?
You can't believe John Murray is going to send him this?
That Byron will ever set eyes on these scribblings
and self advertisings?

"my very love was a crime towards you, and this if nothing else, requires your pardon"

the wind whistles inside the emptiness of this
you can't possibly think it could mean anything to anyone
is that why it reads, your opening essay, LIKE an essay...
is that why you write your name at the bottom, squashed in like an afterthought?

"your friend and servant, Caro."

You can't have thought this would actually communicate...
except perhaps to me
And it does communicate to me.
I'm reading and shaking while I type.

The Book of Secrets Part Three...This Comes From One That Suffers

The first page of Caroline Lamb's secret book is empty
But for a pencil written "i"
in the top right corner.

Turn the page

On the next facing page
there is a "ii"

and the mirror writing from the ink on the next
facing page

numbered "1"

Again in pencil
Not in her hand

Not hers then
but an archivist's
some other handler

sometime after 1812

That's from her first line
In her forward sloping confession

"This comes from one that suffers - 1812"

"when you open this book - you will be as far from me in distance as you are now in heart - yet I believe time which softens all resentment will make you forget many of my faults and you will perhaps remember that I was affectionate and true to you..."

(She was then in exile, not him...sent to Kilkenny to scream in the Irish bog)

"Women do not, neither do they ever resent and what you bound to you once will be still yours while it exists however you may think to cut the chains no one knew how to unlock."

toiled in her denial
that he ever dumped her
that she was not what he wanted
that he lied to her
when he said she was himself

ton hypocrite lecteur, ton semblable, ton frere

(yes, some of it's in French)

The Book of Secrets. Part Two.

The first thing you see
is that the book is back to front
it has been started twice
if you open it the wrong way round,
Is that the pages at the back
or at the front
have been torn
Ripped out

Who by?

There is the curl of a letter Y
There is a faint "I"
on the roughly excised stumps

Why?

Murray burned Byron's memoirs
while hordeing his other souveniers

Byron's Napoleonic nick nacks
Survive

What did else he keep
What was his selection?
What grounds?

What else did he burn?

If it was his hand...
His censorship
Not hers,
it was Byron he protected
always
from her accurate slanders
of buggery and incest.

She would never have pulled her own pages down
and out, with her white hand
this pale, aged
cream paper

eight leaves jutting
but a fifth, perhaps
of the whole book removed

Unless

Unless she started the book the right way up
and ripped out what she's written
as too exposed, too raw?

Or unless it was just an old book
a poor thing

and she was saving money

This thing was probably expensive then
though not nearly as expensive as it is now...

So for reasons of parsimony or censorship
someone is being protected here
by someone.

And she started the book again
backwards
like a Hebrew.

Never got that far...

Perhaps another third of the pages are blank
some ruled, boxed
empty
waiting for wisdom
and truth
and love

for ever

Turn it upside down

First Treasure - A Forgery

I mean it's nothing much to look at
Look at it.

A rectangle of greyish card
that's been written on by three different people.

It's been smudged

The ink at the end of the letter
has bled onto the facing page

Or some of it's been written over, crossed out.

It's a letter written at the end of 1812
that Lady Caroline Lamb brought in to Murray's office
that goes like this:

"Once more my dearest friend,
let me advise you that I had no hand
in the satire you mention,
so do not take affront about anything but call where I desired
- as to his refusing you the picture - it is quite ridiculous -
only name me or if you like it, shew but this note
and that will suffice - you know my reasons for wishing them
not to allow all who call the same latitude.
Explain whatever you think necessary to them and take
which picture you think most like but do not forget to return it the soonest you can -
for reasons I explained. My dearest friend take care of that picture...."

and it's signed:

your friend, Lord Byron"

Well, so what. Byron is writing to a friend who is to show this letter to John Murray, so she can take away, perhaps for copying purposes, a portrait of Byron. The friend, in this case, is Lady Caroline Lamb, who Murray knows perfectly well has had a torrid affair with his Lordship lately, but which is now over...so (as I'm sure she charmingly explained to him) it was natural that she wanted a souvenier of this liaison...Murray will surely understand.

And Murray does...and he gives her the picture...

which brings us to the second of the writers on
this undistinguished bit of card.

Who in darker pen but very SIMILAR handwriting says

"This letter was forged in my name by Caroline L. for the purpose of obtaining a picture from the hands of Mr M.
January 1813

Byron"

Caroline wrote the letter to herself...it's a forgery! In one object, you can see the whole relationship between poet, lover and publisher

But the third set of handwriting is interesting too; it says in pencil on the blank half of one side

"forged letter
by
Lady Caroline Lamb"

It's been named. Kept. Catalogued. Collected. Obsessed over.

I think that to understand the collecting impulse that I think gave rise to the very existence of the archive itself, as with so many other things with the JMA, you have to try to understand a bit about the relationship with Byron not of his lovers, but of his publisher. There is probably no single item anywhere in the 12,000 odd items pertaining to Byron and his circle that says quite so much as this one about the curious love triangle. Or which speaks more directly to the theme of that relation ship...which was the reinventing of the self.

So this is my first treasure.

The end of the affair

READER
Lady Caroline paid Murray a visit in December of 1816,. They are like two ex wives of the same husband getting together to talk about the man who has just got married again....she writes to Murray...

CAROLINE
It is strange but my visit to your house today has made me miserable. After all what a life mine has been and how irregular our aquaintance. You must show me the seal when it is done. Is not life strange? Whatever he is, and however I have abused him, if I believed him at any hour unhappy, would not I go thropugh the fire to serve him. That child of his. Will it be like him? But what is all this to me? Your room speaks of him in every part of it, and I never see you without pain. I think you have been a sincere, upright and manly friend to him and me.

Doomed Love Letters and Strange Enclosures

First, illustrated, the most beautiful of the letters as an object...Caroline writing on her best paper in her best handwriting...when love was new...but foredoomed...it's all about the death of a rose...March 1812...



CAROLINE
The rose Lord Byron gave Lady Caroline Lamb died in despite of every effort made to save it, from regret at its fallen fortunes.
READER
an undated letter from between April and June shows Caroline in sentimental mood, but also that she was not above using Byron as an entree into the world of high literature to which she now felt, perhaps, destined
CAROLINE
as you like curiosities, I send you a relic of Lady Caroline Ponsonby (her maiden name and maiden hair) and I request that you keep it for her sake. I saw Walter Scott last night. He did not remember me at first, I think. I much wish him to name some evening within these 14 days and will engage some persons who wish to meet him to come here. I trust you will be of that number...
READER
anxiety is already creeping in, and is perhaps full blown trauma, when less philosophically, and far more famously than pressed flowers, in the letter of 9 August, Caroline enclosed a cutting of her pubic hair



CAROLINE
Next to Thyrza dearest
and most faithful - God bless you
own love - ricordati di Biondetta

READER
This is in code...lovers code...but according to Fiona MacCarthy, "Thyrza" was a boy named John Eddleston...Byron's lover in Cambridge...who had died...so Caroline is saying that she... "Biondetta"...is next to him...that is, if she knew, if he'd talked...

and we know that he must have told her something of his homosexual activity...she was going to use it against him later...

cross dressing was very much part of their relationship. Not only did she dress as a boy, she had herself painted as one...

and signed the pubic hair enclosing letter

CAROLINE
From your wild antelope

I asked you not to send blood but yet do - because it means love, I like to have it - I cut the hair too close and bled much more than you need. Do not you the same o pray, put not scissors point near where quei capelli grow - sooner take it from the arm or wrist - pray be careful, and Byron, tell me why a few conversations with the Queen Mothers always change you. I think tou would make a bad minister and a worse ambassador. You would be always acting from pique and resentment, [then] soft words and pretty lips would make you another Duke of Buckingham. I must one night be in your arms, and now not even see you but in presence of a witness? Newstead bears your unkindness in sullen silence. I will kneel and be torn from your feet before I will give you up