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2. Travelling to the Past

2.1 Byron’s Grand Tour

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is unquestionably the most travel-oriented of

Byron’s texts. The poem’s first two cantos were largely composed during Byron’s Grand Tour to the Levant in 1809-11, and published in the succeeding year (1812). The poem’s abundance of travels and foreign locations was such that a reviewer from the Anti-Jacobin protested that the poem’s subtitle – ‘A Romaunt’ – was misleading, since the composition did not contain interesting events nor a hero, but merely presented the reader with one ‘wandering over the world, without any fixed object’.67 The reviewer argued that the subtitle

should have been ‘Sketches of scenery in Spain, Portugal, Epirus, Acarnia, and Greece’ instead (Anti-Jacobin, ‘Childe Harold’s’, p. 344). Byron’s ironic and deliberate mingling of genres confused the poetical expectations of these early reviewers, since the composition lacked the trumpeting of chivalry and medieval knights as expected in a ‘romaunt’.68 The travelling locations – from

Portugal to Ottoman-ruled Greece – were chosen by Byron and his friend John Cam Hobhouse (1786-1869) out of convenience, given that the ‘Continent [was] in a fine state!’ (BLJ, I, 206) amidst the destructive and uncertain forces

67 [Anonymous], 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a Romaunt; and Other Poems', Anti-

Jacobin Review and True Churchman's Magazine, 42 (August 1812), 343-365 (p. 344).

68 David Duff, Romanticism and the Uses of Genre (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

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unleashed by the Napoleonic wars.69 Their post-academic education, the role

of the Grand Tour, would have to do without visiting the aristocratic saloons and art galleries in France, Switzerland, Germany and, above all, Italy, as was the custom for those living in the preceding century.70

The Grand Tour as a traditional cultural practice was fully established by the late 1700s and, especially after the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, the number of Englishmen visiting the Continent increased dramatically (Hibbert, p. 39). The role of this travelling phenomenon was not only to send out young gentlemen to train as ‘diplomats, public servants and soldiers’ whilst on the Continent but also as the means by which one could ‘[impart] taste, knowledge, self-assurance and polished manners’ to them. By proxy, the Grand Tour had ‘become accepted as an invaluable alternative, or supplement, to a university education’ (p. 18). Though a destination of travellers since the pioneering tours promoted by the Society of Dilettanti in the 1760s, Greece only became a popular excursion after the occupations of Italian territories in 1796 by Napoleonic forces (Tregaskis, p. 7). This pragmatically reinvigorated route to the Levant proved to be very fruitful for young Englishmen to rejoice in their historical knowledge of Greece, so exhaustively studied by them at school, and to exult, as one prominent travel writer in the late eighteenth century put it, in the ‘antient virtuosi’ of places ‘filled with monuments of

69 Byron to Mrs Catherine Gordon Byron. 22 June 1809; Christopher Hibbert, The

Grand Tour (London: Thames Methuen, 1987), p. 220.

70 Hugh Tregaskis, Beyond the Grand Tour: The Levant Lunatics (London: Ascent Books,

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Athenian glory’.71 It was mostly under these conditions that those visiting

Greece published their travel texts concerning the history and society of the region. By 1809 there already was a booming market for books written by travellers to the Levant, and Byron and Hobhouse’s tour was part of an ongoing tradition of ‘Cambridge Hellenists’: graduates who visited and published travelogues on the East in the previous decades. These authors were, for the most part, interested in ‘classical topography, the practice of identifying the modern locations of ancient sites, and describing and measuring the ruins of classical antiquity’, as all travel writers attempted to outdo and prove those previously published wrong in their theses and descriptions.72

As Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage takes the reader to Greece, it is no surprise that the knowledge of that ancient civilisation and its classical culture is so prominent in the poem. Canto I starts with a fully-fledged Homeric introduction, albeit tongue-in-cheek, as Byron pays his allegiance to the ancient muses:

Oh, thou! in Hellas deem’d of heav’nly birth, Muse! form’d or fabled at the minstrel’s will! Since sham’d full oft by later lyres on earth, Mine dares not call thee from thy sacred hill:

71 Richard Chandler, Travels in Greece: Or, an Account of a Tour Made at the Expence

of the Society of Dilettanti (Oxford: 1776), p. 37.

72 Nigel Leask, 'Byron and the Eastern Mediterranean: Childe Harold II and "the Polemic

of Ottoman Greece"', in The Cambridge Companion to Byron, ed. by Drummond Bone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 99-118 (p. 103).

Page 99 of 363 Yet there I’ve wander’d by thy vaunted rill; Yes! sigh’d o’er Delphi’s long-deserted shrine, Where, save that feeble fountain, all is still; Nor mote my shell awake the weary Nine

To Grace so plain a tale – this lowly lay of mine. (CPW, II, 8; 1-9)

The ‘form’d or fabled’ muse is invoked to start the poetic composition. Following the theme of degradation (as he saw it) of poetry in the early 1800s as discussed in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Byron recognises how the muse is ‘sham’d full of oft by later lyres on earth’. Despite modestly acknowledging he is no exception to this rule (‘this lowly lay of mine’), he places great importance on his physical presence on the spot of where was once the oracle of Delphi. This reason alone makes it possible for Byron to state his higher cultural position in comparison to his contemporaries and acceptable for him to summon the muse in the first place. Moreover, the line on Delphi is expanded with a long note, where Byron describes and ponders on the famous location he witnessed first-hand in 1809. The note states that the ‘little village of Castri stands partly on the site of Delphi’ with a brief description of the geography surrounding the spot, as it was customary for the writers of travels to the Levant to do (CPW, II, p. 187).

Most interestingly, however, is the reference to classical authority in order to comprehend the geographical attributes of the region. Byron alludes to a few caves close to a nearby monastery, ‘leading to the interior of the

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mountain; probably to the Corycian Cavern mentioned by Pausanias’ (p. 187). Pausanias, the 2nd century CE Greek geographer and author of Description of Greece is uncritically accepted by Byron as the authority on the geography of

the region. The centuries between the second and nineteenth century seem as almost irrelevant regarding the geographical knowledge of the region, given the sheer domination of classical knowledge and of ancient history in general present in the educational system at the time. Furthermore, the overall tone of despondency over the decayed remains of Greece dominates the poetry, given that the realities of the region in the 1800s failed to match the grandeur of the past in the traveller’s mind. This theme is shared by many a travel writer. John Galt (1779-1839), for example, addresses the subject in his Letters from

the Levant (1813):

Sometimes I think that I ought to make an apology to you for paying so little attention to the localities of this country; but I have not conscience enough to pretend to any other interest in the objects around me, than that vague awakening of the imagination which is inspired by my belief of the appearance of things having been once very different. Greece has been so long ruined, that even her desolation is in a state of decay, and, like her field after winter, the frame of her society begins to show symptoms of revival.73

Hobhouse writes how the ‘noble masterpieces still retain their grandeur and their grace’ but as a ‘melancholy spectacle’, since one sees ‘not only the final

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effects, but the successive progress of devastation, and, at one rapid glance, peruse the history of a thousand ages’.74

Accordingly, thoughts of Greece – ancient and modern – pervade most of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage cantos I and II. Before reaching the Levant, canto I takes the reader across the Iberian Peninsula, as Harold (and Byron) crossed Portugal and Spain on their way to the Mediterranean. The narrative concerning these countries and of ‘Spain’s dark-glancing daughters’ (p. 31; 609) is suddenly interrupted in stanza 60 by the sight of Parnassus:

Oh, thou Parnassus! whom I now survey, Not in the phrenzy of a dreamer’s eye, Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,

But soaring snow-clad through thy native sky, In the wild pomp of mountain majesty! What marvel if I thus essay to sing? The humblest of thy pilgrims passing by Would gladly woo thine Echoes with his string,

Though from thy heights no more one Muse will wave her wing. (CPW, II, 31; 612-20).

The mountain, seat of the Muses in Greek mythology, is literally described as ‘soaring’ its way into the composition. Byron’s physical presence at the

74 John Cam Hobhouse, A Journey through Albania; and Other Provinces of Turkey in

Europe and Asia, to Constantinople, During the Years 1809 and 1810 (London: 1813),

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geographical location is placed on an indelibly higher cultural position than those who were to write on the subject with nothing but the ‘fabled landscape’ depicted in their poetry. Accordingly, he adds a note following the mention of the mountain: ‘These stanzas were written in Castri (Delphos), at the foot of the Parnassus, now called Λιακυρα – Liakura’ (p. 280). The claim to legitimacy is made evident by the note, as if these verses should be viewed as higher cultural expressions than others, given that they were written on the spot. Moreover, the reader is once again reminded that Castri is the modern name of the location nearby ancient Delphos, and Byron uses the opportunity to also write the modern name given to Parnassus by the inhabitants of the region in the Cyrillic alphabet before eventually presenting his readers with its Westernised spelling.

Ancient Greece is described as setting off frenzied dreams of poets and general enthusiasts of the historical period. Indeed, Byron’s language betrays a sense of utmost reverence which can be only paralleled to a religious ritual. The texts of Greece, relentlessly taught to English schoolboys, are ‘man’s divinest lore’ (CPW, II, 32; 622) and virtually worshipped:

When I recount thy worshippers of yore I tremble, and can only bend the knee; Nor raise my voice, nor vainly dare to soar, But gaze beneath thy cloudy canopy

In silent joy to think at last I look on Thee! (CPW, II, 32; 625- 29).

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These lines point to a sense of cultural piety and modesty triggered by the knowledge of the Greek past and its culture. There is nothing left for the writer to feel than being grateful for his physical presence by the base of the mythical mountain. Once again, this notion is echoed by many a travel writer who also visited the Greek spots. For instance, Edward Dodwell:

[A] classic interest is breathed over the superficies of the Grecian territory; that its mountains, its valleys, and its streams, are intimately associated with the animating presence of the authors, by whom they have been immortalized. Almost every rock, every promontory, every river, is haunted by the shadows of the mighty dead. Every portion of the soil appears to teem with historical recollections; or it borrows some potent but invisible charm from the inspirations of poetry, the efforts of genius, or the energies of liberty and patriotism.75

Ultimately, Byron’s digression from the poem’s narrative in Spain is an inescapable intrusion of the location from where he writes. It could not be otherwise, Byron states, given that others before him have written on the ‘hallow’d’ Greeks without ever visiting the Mediterranean: ‘Shall I unmov’d behold the hallow’d scene, | Which others rave of, though they know it not?’ (CPW, II, 32; 632-33). His verses, he implies, are more poetic and ‘factually’ legitimate than those which were hypothetically written in, say, a library in

75 Edward Dodwell, A Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece: During the

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England with nothing but books to support their composition. The physical presence on the spot provides the author with a certain knowledge provided by the haunting of the remnants of the past:

Though here no more Apollo haunts his grot, And thou, the Muses’ seat, art now their grave, Some gentle Spirit still pervades the spot, Sighs in the gale, keeps silence in the cave,

And glides with glassy foot o’er yon melodious Wave. (CPW, II, 32; 634-48)

The theme of attaining historical knowledge by being physically present on the spot when writing, as Stephen Cheeke clarifies, is also a ‘classical commonplace’ which can be traced to the works of antiquity – like the Roman philosopher and statesman Cicero (1st century BCE) (Cheeke, p. 198, n6). Byron

is not only claiming a communion with the place’s past by standing on the actual spot, but also showing his allegiance to a classical theme which he internalised via his Harrow/Cambridge education and its predominance of the study of ancient cultures.

This obsession with classical Greece finds its epitome in canto II, as Byron reaches the ‘[l]ands that contain the monuments of Eld’ (CPW, II, 44; 952). The reader is greeted by a plethora of references to ancient Greece and its celebrated authors. As in the previous canto, it also starts with a Homeric introduction, as Byron addresses Athena:

Page 105 of 363 Didst never yet one mortal song inspire – Goddess of Wisdom! here thy temple was, And is, despite of war and wasting fire, And years, that bade thy worship to expire: But worse than steel, and flame, and ages slow, Is the dread sceptre and dominion dire

Of men who never felt the sacred glow

That thoughts of thee and thine on polish’d breasts bestow. (CPW, II, 44; 1-9)

Once more, Byron broods over the ruinous state of the country in the early 1800s in comparison to its former ancient glories. He attacks those who were engaged in plundering the Parthenon – most notably Lord Elgin (1766-1841) – who managed to complete the destruction of the site in succession to the centuries of war and decay. The theme of being on the spot and feeling ‘the sacred glow’ of history is again invoked and Byron essentially labels Elgin and the other plunderers of the site as philistines who cannot embrace the beauties of the Greek past. In the appended note, he expands on this theme:

We can all feel, or imagine, the regret with which the ruins of cities, once the capital of empires, are beheld[.] But never did the littleness of man, and the vanity of his very best virtues, of patriotism to exalt, and of valour to defend his country, appear more conspicuous in the record of what Athens was, and the certainty of what she now is. This theatre of contention between mighty factions, of the

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struggles of orators, the exaltation and deposition of tyrants, the triumph and punishment of generals, is now become a scene of petty intrigue and perpetual disturbance, between the bickering agents of certain British nobility and gentry (CPW, II, 189).

The glory of the Athenian past, as evidenced by Byron’s enumeration of political struggles and heated public debates, descends to an archaeological plundering mainly motivated by greed. Once the location of glorious battles and other important historical events, modern day Athens is merely reduced to where ‘petty’ fights between members of the British upper classes and their ‘bickering agents’ about the possession and removal of marbles take place. As evidenced by Byron’s language, the spoliation of the Parthenon and other ancient sites is carried on in a shamefully competitive manner which neglected the preservation of the ruins plundered. To Byron, these agents effectively sealed the fate of Greece to an irredeemably shameful present. ‘Sylla could but punish, Philip subdue, and Xerxes burn Athens; but it remained for the paltry Antiquarian, and his despicable agents, to render her contemptible as himself and his pursuits’ (CPW, II, 190). The contempt that Byron feels towards Athens in the early nineteenth century is partially explained by a comparison between the celebrated past he exhaustively studied in Harrow and Cambridge and the farcical present dominated by the plundering of the country’s antiquities. In addition, Byron’s perception of the appropriation of the remnants of the ancient past in terms of commercial transactions only fuelled his contempt for

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his contemporaries for not indulging in the absorption of the glorious events of Greece.

Ironically, the antiquarianism of Elgin and the others is not dissimilar to the classical discourse which obsessed over the ‘facts’ of antiquity as existent in Byron’s poetry and annotations. Despite being critical of his contemporaries for not feeling a historical connection by being on the famous spots of antiquity or by attempting to attain this connection by spoiling the historical site, Byron for the most part rejoices in dropping scattered references to ancient Greek culture. Given the disappointing state of the country under the Ottoman rule in the 1800s, Byron finds solace in dealing with Greece as ‘[a] school-boy’s tale, the wonder of an hour!’ (CPW, II, 44; 15). Literally, what that means is a self- conscious allusion to his Harrow/Cambridge education deeply dominated by classical languages and history. In this aspect, Byron is trumpeting his social upbringing and claiming for himself the status of a gentleman who has been on the Grand Tour and could subsequently publish a travel narrative.