"_Perhaps his peace I could destroy, And spoil the blisses that await him; Yet let my rival smile in joy, For thy dear sake, I cannot hate him._"
The boasts there, we see, are the prelude of resignation; and, a line or two further on, resignation is followed by the resolution to forget:
"_Then, fare thee well, deceitful Maid, 'Twere vain and fruitless to regret thee; Nor Hope nor Memory yield their aid, But Pride may teach me to forget thee._"
That is very conventional--hardly less conventional than the Elegy on Margaret Parker--a sentimental "prelude to life," one would judge, of quite an ordinary kind. And, as has been said, the sentimental utterance does not stand alone. Other verses, hardly less sentimental, addressed to several other ladies, were, at the same time, pouring from Byron's pen.
Burgage Manor, a house which his mother had taken at Southwell, near Nottingham, was his vacation home. He fled from his home, from time to time, because of Mrs. Byron's incurable habit of rattling the fire-irons in order to draw attention to his faults; but he returned at intervals, and stayed long enough to form a considerable circle of friends--friends, be it noted, who belonged not to "the county" but to the professional society of the town.
The county did not "call" to any appreciable extent. A few of the men called on Byron himself; but none of the women called on Mrs. Byron--whether because her reputation for rattling the fire-irons and hurling the tongs had reached them, or because, on general principles, they did not think her good enough to mix with them. Byron, as was natural, resented their attitude and refused to return visits which implied a slight upon his mother. Whatever his own disputes with her, he would not have her snubbed by the local magnates, or himself enter their doors on sufferance while she was excluded from them. He mixed instead with the clergy, the doctors, the lawyers, the retired colonels, and flirted with their sisters and daughters. In that set he moved as a triton among the minnows, fluttering the dovecotes of Southwell pretty much as, at a later date, Praed, fresh from Eton, fluttered the dovecotes of Teignmouth. He could not dance, of course, owing to his lameness; but he could distinguish himself in amateur theatricals, and he could write verses.