92 — To William Harness 1
Dorant's Hotel, Albemarle Street, Feb. II, 1808.
My Dear Harness, — As I had no opportunity of returning my verbal thanks, I trust you will accept my written acknowledgments for the compliment you were pleased to pay some production of my unlucky muse last November, — I am induced to do this not less from the pleasure I feel in the praise of an old schoolfellow, than from justice to you, for I had heard the story with some slight variations.
Indeed
, when we met this morning, Wingfield
had not undeceived me; but he will tell you that I displayed no resentment in mentioning what I had heard, though I was not sorry to discover the truth. Perhaps you hardly recollect, some years ago, a short, though, for the time, a warm friendship between us. Why it was not of longer duration I know not. I have still a gift of yours in my possession, that must always prevent me from forgetting it. I also remember being favoured with the perusal of many of your compositions, and several other circumstances very pleasant in their day, which I will not force upon your memory, but entreat you to believe me, with much regret at their short continuance, and a hope they are not irrevocable,
Yours very sincerely, etc.,
Byron
.
Footnote 1:
William Harness (1790-1869), son of Dr. J. Harness, Commissioner of the Transport Board, was educated at Harrow and Christ's College, Cambridge. Ordained in 1812, he was, from 1823 to 1826, Curate at Hampstead.
"I could quiz you heartily," writes Mrs. Franklin to Miss Mitford (September 6, 1824), "for having told me in three successive letters of Mr. Harness's chapel at Hampstead. I understand he now lives a very retired life"
(
The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford
, vol. i. p. 61). From 1826 to 1844 he was Incumbent of Regent Square Chapel; Minister of Brompton Chapel (1844-47); Perpetual Curate (1849-69) of All Saints', Knightsbridge, which he built from subscriptions raised by himself. He is described by Crabb Robinson (
Diary
, vol. iii. p. 212) as
"a clergyman with Oxford propensities, and a worshipper of the heathen Muses as well as of the Christian Graces;"
and again (iii. 326), as
"a man of taste, of High Church principles and liberal in spirit."
Miss Mitford (
The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford
, vol. ii. p. 289) writes that
"he has neither Catholic nor Puseyite tendencies, — only it is a large and liberal mind like Bishop Stanley's, believing good men and good Christians may exist among Papists, and will be as safe there as if they were Protestants."
Again (vol. ii. p. 295) she says of him:
"Besides his varied accomplishments, and his admirable goodness and kindness, he has all sorts of amusing peculiarities. With a temper never known to fail, an indulgence the largest, a tenderness as of a woman, he has the habit of talking like a cynic! and with more learning, ancient and modern, and a wider grasp of literature than almost any one I know, professes to read nothing and care for nothing but 'Shakespeare and the Bible.' He is the finest reader of both that I ever heard. His preaching, which has been so much admired, is too rapid, but his reading the prayers is perfection. The best parish priest in London, and the truest Christian."
Miss Mitford's praise may be exaggerated; but she had known Harness for a lifetime.
Harness edited
Shakespeare
(1825, 8 vols.), as well as
Massinger
(1830) and
Ford
(1831); wrote for the
Quarterly
and
Blackwood
; and published a number of sermons, including
The Wrath of Cain
,
A Boyle Lecture
(1822). He wrote
The Life of Mary Russell Mitford
(1870), in collaboration with the Rev. A. G. L'Estrange, whose
Life of the Rev. W. Harness
is the chief authority for his career.
His friendship with Byron began at Harrow (
Life
, pp. 23, 24), where Byron, who was older than Harness, took pity upon his lameness and weakness, and protected him from the bullies of the school. At a later period they became estranged, as is shown by the following letter from Byron to Harness (
Life
, pp. 24, 25):—
"We both seem perfectly to recollect, with a mixture of pleasure and regret, the hours we once passed together, and I assure you, most sincerely, they are numbered among the happiest of my brief chronicle of enjoyment. I am now getting into years, that is to say, I was twenty a month ago, and another year will send me into the world to run my career of folly with the rest. I was then just fourteen, — you were almost the first of my Harrow friends, certainly the first in my esteem, if not in date; but an absence from Harrow for some time, shortly after, and new connections on your side, and the difference in our conduct (an advantage decidedly in your favour) from that turbulent and riotous disposition of mine, which impelled me into every species of mischief, — all these circumstances combined to destroy an intimacy, which affection urged me to continue, and memory compels me to regret. But there is not a circumstance attending that period, hardly a sentence we exchanged, which is not impressed on my mind at this moment. I need not say more, — this assurance alone must convince you, had I considered them as trivial, they would have been less indelible. How well I recollect the perusal of your 'first flights'! There is another circumstance you do not know; — the first lines I ever attempted at Harrow were addressed to you. You were to have seen them; but Sinclair had the copy in his possession when we went home; — and, on our return, we were strangers. They were destroyed, and certainly no great loss; but you will perceive from this circumstance my opinions at an age when we cannot be hypocrites.
I have dwelt longer on this theme than I intended, and I shall now conclude with what I ought to have begun. We were once friends, — nay, we have always been so, for our separation was the effect of chance, not of dissension. I do not know how far our destinations in life may throw us together, but if opportunity and inclination allow you to waste a thought on such a hare-brained being as myself, you will find me at least sincere, and not so bigoted to my faults as to involve others in the consequences. Will you sometimes write to me? I do not ask it often; and, if we meet, let us be what we should be, and what we were."
The following is Harness's own account of the circumstances in which
was written:—
"A coolness afterwards arose, which Byron alludes to in the first of the accompanying letters, and we never spoke during the last year of his remaining at school, nor till after the publication of his Hours of Idleness. Lord Byron was then at Cambridge; I, in one of the upper forms, at Harrow. In an English theme I happened to quote from the volume, and mention it with praise. It was reported to Byron that I had, on the contrary, spoken slightingly of his work and of himself, for the purpose of conciliating the favour of Dr. Butler, the master, who had been severely satirised in one of the poems. Wingfield, who was afterwards Lord Powerscourt, a mutual friend of Byron and myself, disabused him of the error into which he had been led, and this was the occasion of the first letter of the collection. Our intimacy was renewed, and continued from that time till his going abroad. Whatever faults Lord Byron might have had towards others, to myself he was always uniformly affectionate. I have many slights and neglects towards him to reproach myself with; but I cannot call to mind a single instance of caprice or unkindness, in the whole course of our friendship, to allege against him."
In
December, 1811, Harness paid Byron a visit at Newstead, the only other guest being Francis Hodgson, who, like Harness, was not then ordained. He thus describes the visit (
Life of the Rev. Francis Hodgson
, vol. i. pp. 219-221}:—
"When Byron returned, with the MS. of the first two cantos of Childe Harold in his portmanteau, I paid him a visit at Newstead. It was winter — dark, dreary weather — the snow upon the ground; and a straggling, gloomy, depressive, partially inhabited place the Abbey was. Those rooms, however, which had been fitted up for residence were so comfortably appointed, glowing with crimson hangings, and cheerful with capacious fires, that one soon lost the melancholy feeling of being domiciled in the wing of an extensive ruin. Many tales are related or fabled of the orgies which, in the poet's early youth, had made clamorous these ancient halls of the Byrons. I can only say that nothing in the shape of riot or excess occurred when I was there. The only other visitor was Dr. Hodgson, the translator of Juvenal, and nothing could be more quiet and regular than the course of our days. Byron was retouching, as the sheets passed through the press, the stanzas of Childe Harold. Hodgson was at work in getting out the ensuing number of the Monthly Review, of which he was principal editor. I was reading for my degree. When we met, our general talk was of poets and poetry — of who could or who could not write; but it occasionally rose into very serious discussions on religion. Byron, from his early education in Scotland, had been taught to identify the principles of Christianity with the extreme dogmas of Calvinism. His mind had thus imbibed a most miserable prejudice, which appeared to be the only obstacle to his hearty acceptance of the Gospel. Of this error we were most anxious to disabuse him. The chief weight of the argument rested with Hodgson, who was older, a good deal, than myself. I cannot even now — at a distance of more than fifty years — recall those conversations without a deep feeling of admiration for the judicious zeal and affectionate earnestness (often speaking with tears in his eyes) which Dr. Hodgson evinced in his advocacy of the truth. The only difference, except perhaps in the subjects talked about, between our life at Newstead Abbey and that of the great families around us, was the hours we kept. It was, as I have said, winter, and the days were cold; and, as nothing tempted us to rise early, we got up late. This flung the routine of the day rather backward, and we did not go early to bed. My visit to Newstead lasted about three weeks, when I returned to Cambridge to take my degree."
To Harness Byron intended to dedicate
Childe Harold
, but feared to do so, "lest it should injure him in his profession."
cross-reference: return to Footnote 1 of Letter 33
cross-reference: return to Footnote 1 of Letter 102
Footnote 2:
Three Wingfields, sons of Lord Powerscourt, entered Harrow in February, 1801. The Hon. Richard Wingfield succeeded his father as fifth Viscount Powerscourt in 1809, and died in 1823. Edward became a clergyman and died of cholera in 1825; John, Byron's friend, the "Alonzo" of "Childish Recollections" entered the Coldstream Guards, and died of fever at Coimbra, May 14, 1811.
"Of all human beings, I was perhaps at one time most attached to poor Wingfield, who died at Coimbra, 1811, before I returned to England"
(
Life
, p. 21). To his memory Byron wrote the lines in
Childe Harold
, Canto I stanza xci.
