Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 1: With His Letters and JournalsMoore, Thomas
General
Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 1: With His Letters and Journals
Moore, Thomas
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron, 1788-1824; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
This gentleman saw but little of Lord Byron after he left his care;
but, from the manner in which both he and Mrs. Glennie spoke of their
early charge, it was evident that his subsequent career had been
watched by them with interest; that they had seen even his errors
through the softening medium of their first feeling towards him, and
had never, in his most irregular aberrations, lost the traces of those
fine qualities which they had loved and admired in him when a child.
Of the constancy, too, of this feeling, Dr. Glennie had to stand no
ordinary trial, having visited Geneva in 1817, soon after Lord Byron
had left it, when the private character of the poet was in the very
crisis of its unpopularity, and when, among those friends who knew
that Dr. Glennie had once been his tutor, it was made a frequent
subject of banter with this gentleman that he had not more strictly
disciplined his pupil, or, to use their own words, "made a better boy
of him."
About the time when young Byron was removed, for his education, to
London, his nurse May Gray left the service of Mrs. Byron, and
returned to her native country, where she died about three years
since. She had married respectably, and in one of her last illnesses
was attended professionally by Dr. Ewing of Aberdeen, who, having been
always an enthusiastic admirer of Lord Byron, was no less surprised
than delighted to find that the person tinder his care had for so many
years been an attendant on his favourite poet. With avidity, as may be
supposed, he noted down from the lips of his patient all the
particulars she could remember of his Lordship's early days; and it is
to the communications with which this gentleman has favoured me, that
I am indebted for many of the anecdotes of that period which I have
related.
As a mark of gratitude for her attention to him, Byron had, in parting
with May Gray, presented her with his watch,--the first of which he
had ever been possessor. This watch the faithful nurse preserved
fondly through life, and, when she died, it was given by her husband
to Dr. Ewing, by whom, as a relic of genius, it is equally valued. The
affectionate boy had also presented her with a full-length miniature
of himself, which was painted by Kay of Edinburgh, in the year 1795,
and which represents him standing with a bow and arrows in his hand,
and a profusion of hair falling over his shoulders. This curious
little drawing has likewise passed into the possession of Dr. Ewing.
The same thoughtful gratitude was evinced by Byron towards the sister
of this woman, his first nurse, to whom he wrote some years after he
left Scotland, in the most cordial terms, making enquiries of her
welfare, and informing her, with much joy, that he had at last got his
foot so far restored as to be able to put on a common boot,--"an event
for which he had long anxiously wished, and which he was sure would
give her great pleasure."
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