SOURCE: Goldweber, David E. “Byron, Catholicism, and Don Juan XVII.” Renascence 49 (spring 1997): 175-89.

[In the following essay, Goldweber analyzes the Biblical overtones in Don Juan.]

Many literary critics continue to cast Lord Byron as a deviant and a miscreant who was contemptuous, or at least suspicious, of all that Western culture and Western religion revere.¹ Indeed, as a young man who denied nothing but doubted everything, Byron explored superstition, deism, and skepticism on the mental side of things; drinking, gambling, whoring, homosexuality, and incest on the physical side.² The early cantos of Byron's first masterpiece, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, are pessimistic and nihilistic, depicting the poet's hopeless journey through the ruined and war-torn remnants of once proud European nations. As he journeys, the young poet declares that even when “A thousand years scarce serve to form a state” still “An hour may lay it in the dust” (II.84).³ Surely, this disillusioned and impetuous rascal would be vigorously averse to Christianity, and even more so to its strictest and most traditional branch, Catholicism?

But, in fact, Byron wrote dozens of poems and plays based upon Biblical subject matter including Hebrew Melodies (1815), Cain (1821), and Heaven and Earth (1823), all of which appropriate and reinterpret scripture, but, as Wolf Z. Hirst demonstrates, never attempt to revise or subvert it. Byron's most affirming verses on religion appear in his greatest poem, Don Juan. Like Bernard Beatty (see esp. 70-84), I see Don Juan progressing not toward despairing skepticism but toward optimistic, albeit cautionary, faithfulness. And while Byron is not explicit, he does hint in the final cantos of the poem that this faithfulness is a Catholic Christian one. The protagonist, true to his namesake, misses out on the goodness that he encounters. But the narrator, through references to Catholicism and through deployment of a prominent Catholic character named Aurora, makes clear the manifest presence in our world of genuine miracles and redemptive ideals that are available for those who trust them. In Byron's own words:

Some people would impose now with authority,
Turpin's or Monmouth Geoffry's Chronicle;
Men whose historical superiority
Is always greatest at a miracle.
But Saint Augustine has the great priority,
Who bids all men believe the impossible,
Because 'tis so. Who nibble, scribble, quibble, he
Quiets at once with ‘quia impossibile’.
And therefore, mortals, cavil not at all;
Believe:—if 'tis improbable, you must;
And if it is impossible, you shall:
'Tis always best to take things upon trust.

(DJ XVI.5-6)⁴

I suggest that in his mature shift away from doubting and towards trusting, Byron not only used Don Juan to depict Catholicism as the highest and best faith, but was himself very close to converting.

Always happy to meet a true believer, Byron even called himself a Christian numerous times (see below, Kennedy 201, or HVSV 210), and occasionally wondered if he might one day “turn devout” (BLJ 5:208). And while Byron acted respectfully to Christianity as a whole, he acted even more so to Catholicism in particular. During his tenure in the House of Lords, Byron consistently voted in favor of Catholic relief (see BLJ 6:172 for his pride in doing so), and devoted one of his three parliamentary speeches to supporting the 1812 Catholic Claims Bill. Byron's favorite poet was the Catholic Alexander Pope, whose works to Byron were “what I firmly believe in as the Christianity of English Poetry” (Prose 106). In fact, late in life Byron not only stated that he inclined “very much to the Catholic doctrines” (BLJ 9:119) and that he has “often wished I had been born a Catholic” (Medwin 80)—but even that he believed Catholicism to be nothing less than “the best religion” (BLJ 8:98).

Also worth mentioning is a facetious letter to John Cam Hobhouse, Byron's best friend, in which Byron pretends to be his own valet, William Fletcher. In this letter, writing from Italy, Byron has ‘Fletcher’ tell Hobhouse not only that Byron has died, but that before he passed away he converted to Catholicism (in Fletcher's imperfect verbiage Byron “died a Papish” [BLJ 6:44]). While this letter is a joke, it is a well-crafted and convincing one. Byron would not have portrayed himself as a convert unless he thought Hobhouse might believe it. Indeed, considering the copious attention that Byron throughout his life paid to Christianity and to Catholicism, we may perceive Byron as a man who himself could neither completely nor consistently adhere to Christian tenets, but who increasingly came to recognize the strength and value of these tenets, praising them and those who followed them in his conversations, his letters, and his poetry.

There are, certainly, moments of jest and moments of doubt.⁵ Critics and biographers do have reason to be suspicious about Byron's Christian musings, including his Catholic ones. Some see Byron's religious side only as an anomalous aberration, with Catholicism appealing to him because of the physical elegance and “sensuality” of its “tangible” worshipping rituals (Calvert 7, McGann 253). The evidence, writes one critic, “is such as to remain fairly open ended,” but Byron most probably had only a limited and “secular Catholicism” (Donnelly 49). Another critic maintains that the chapter on Byron's respect for religion in the biography written by Countess Teresa Guiccioli (the poet's Italian lover) is to be considered unreliable, lopsided, and biased by “her own convictions” (Lovell's note, HVSV 633). A major critic suggests that Byron praised Catholicism only to “bait” his English Protestant friends (Marchand's introduction, BLJ 1:14).

But Byron never once makes a genuinely disparaging remark about Christianity or Catholicism. On the contrary, he professes sincere admiration for Christians and for Christian doctrine, especially late in life, seeing Christ as “the source of virtue and felicity” (Kennedy 203), Christ's teachings as “no doubt … conducive to the happiness of the world” (HVSV 569), Christianity as “the purest and most liberal religion in the world” (HVSV 585). Byron's most skeptical letter admits Christ's “heroism” (BLJ 2:97), and within a year of admitting this, Byron declares that “I believe doubtless in God” (BLJ 3:120). When Shelley argued for Plato's three classes of men and three faculties of the soul, Byron countered by arguing for the holy Trinity, adding, “I don't know why I am considered an enemy to religion, and an unbeliever” (Medwin 80). By his bedside, Byron kept a Bible that had been given to him by his sister, reading from it “every day” until his death (Kennedy 140, cf. HVSV 569). And, as G. Wilson Knight reminds us, Byron throughout his life was honest and trustworthy, kind to animals, and charitable to both friends and strangers alike in the Christian social tradition.

Whereas much of Byron's religious poetry takes the Old Testament as its inspiration, some of Byron's most powerful poetic passages are Christian ones. An Abbot who was gruff in an early draft of Manfred is reworked and rewritten so as to be made kindly in the final draft; this good Abbot entreats the unchristian Manfred to seek “the path from sin / To higher hope and better thoughts” (III.i.61-62) and assures him that “all our church can teach thee shall be taught; / And all we can absolve thee, shall be pardon'd” (III.i.86-87). The Vision of Judgment plays with but affirms the “beautiful and mighty” archangel Michael who shines “Radiant with glory, like a banner streaming / Victorious from some world-o'erthrowing fight” and who is “A goodly work of him from whom all glory / And good arise” (st. 28-30). Even Childe Harold, which had begun in sorrow and denial, concludes with Byron's marveling at St. Peter's Basilica, “Worthiest of God, the holy and the true … Majesty, / Power, glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled / In this eternal ark of worship undefiled” (CHP IV.154). This great cathedral, Byron tells us, imparts “glory,” “wonder,” “awe,” “praise,” “sublimity,” and “great conceptions” to those who meditate within it (IV.157-59). There is joy here, and genuine admiration. It seems to be no accident that, along with the ‘Ave Maria’ stanzas of Don Juan, these reverent Roman verses are among the most inspiring Byron ever wrote. In the later poem, Byron celebrates the “rosy flood of twilight's sky” and exclaims:

Ave Maria! o'er the earth and sea,
That heavenliest hour of Heaven is worthiest thee!
Ave Maria! blessed be the hour!
The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft
Have felt that moment in its fullest power
Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft,
While swung the deep bell in the distant tower,
Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft,
And not a breath crept through the rosy air,
And yet the forest leaves seem'd stirr'd with prayer.
Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of prayer!
Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of love!
Ave Maria! may our spirits dare
Look up to thine and to thy Son's above!
Ave Maria! oh that face so fair!
Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty dove—
What though 'tis but a pictured image strike—
That painting is no idol, 'tis too like.

(III.101-3)

Here, apparently looking at a painting of the Immaculate Conception (the absence of Gabriel seems to rule out the Annunciation and the downcast eyes make the Assumption unlikely), Byron celebrates religion's harmony with the works of nature and mankind alike. Declaring the painting to be “no idol,” Byron here does something quite unique in his corpus: he celebrates the human potential to capture and to communicate an apprehension of true and deep spirituality. In Childe Harold, man's inability to touch or to experience divinity is repeatedly bemoaned (see II.87; III.14, 62, and 108; IV.126), but here, an opposing viewpoint is presented. It seems that a questing and querying individual can discover real power not through despairing and scoffing but through engaging the brave artists and thinkers who “dare” to envisage Christianity.

Byron became increasingly religious-minded as he matured, and increasingly Catholic-minded after 1819 when he arrived in Italy, the nation that is “Parent of our Religion!” (CHP IV.47). As he tells Countess Guiccioli:

Time and reflection have changed my mind upon these [religious] subjects, and I consider Atheism as a folly. As for Catholicism, so little is it objectionable to me, that I wish my daughter to be brought up in that religion, and some day to marry a Catholic. If Catholicism, after all, suggests difficulties of a nature which it is difficult for reason to get over, are these less great than those which Protestantism creates? Are not all the mysteries common to both creeds? Catholicism at least offers the consolation of Purgatory, of the Sacraments, of absolution and forgiveness; whereas Protestantism is barren of consolation for the soul.

(Guiccioli I:165)

Byron's remarks concerning his young daughter were genuine. When little Allegra was old enough to be separated from her maniacal mother, Claire Clairemont, and from her benign but unchristian guardians, Percy and Mary Shelley, Byron insisted she be sent to Italy, not only to be by his side, but to be educated in a convent and “to become a good Catholic—& (it may be) a Nun” (BLJ 5:228). As Byron informs his friend Richard Hoppner in April 1820, he fears not only for his daughter's physical but for her spiritual well-being: “the Child shall not quit me again [to join Claire, the Godwins, and the Shelleys]—to perish of starvation, and green fruit—or be taught to believe that there is no Deity” (BLJ 7:80). And, in fact, Byron had Allegra placed, shortly after her arrival in Italy, in the Convent of the Capuchin Nuns of St. John the Baptist, in Bagnacavallo, near Venice. This is hardly what anyone would do only to “bait” one's friends.

It seems to me that Catholicism appealed to Byron for three reasons. First, it satisfied his lifelong love of tradition. He calls Catholicism “the best religion” because “it is assuredly the oldest of the various branches of Christianity” (BLJ 8:98) and because it is “the most ancient of worships” (Guiccioli I:202). As was the case for Edmund Burke, ideas and modes were to Byron proven and affirmed by their endurance through time, by their having imbued themselves long enough and deeply enough in a society to become genuine traditions. The longer we find a practice is followed, the more reason there would be to assume there is virtue in it. The longer an idea endures, the more reason there will be to believe this idea to be true. And while Byron detested sycophants such as “turncoat Southey” (DJ XI.56), who shift and re-shift their views according to fashion, Byron adored men “of principle” such as Burke (BLJ 6:48), who stick with their convictions through tough times. In Don Juan, Byron's ideal Catholic, Aurora Raby, is a model of courageous resilience.

The second reason for Catholicism's appeal to Byron is the fact that its doctrines bring manifest functional boons to its practitioners. Unlike mere “Cant religious” and “Cant moral” which are “without the smallest influence upon human actions” (Prose 128), and unlike “drowsy frowzy” mystic speculation which diffuses itself in useless abstraction rather than in “The public mind” (DJ III.94-95), Catholicism's teachings actually do something real in the real human world. As Byron writes (to Thomas Moore, in March 1822): Catholicism

is by far the most elegant worship, hardly excepting the Greek mythology. What with incense, pictures, statues, altars, shrines, relics, and the real presence, confession, absolution,—there is something sensible to grasp at. Besides, it leaves no possibility of doubt; for those who swallow their Deity, really and truly, in transubstantiation, can hardly find any thing else otherwise than easy of digestion.

(BLJ 9:123)

Sensing that he sounds sarcastic here, Byron quickly adds:

I am afraid that this sounds flippant, but I don't mean it to be so; only my turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and then. Still, I do assure you that I am a very good Christian. Whether you will believe me in this, I do not know.

(BLJ 9:123)

The tone of this letter is quiet and sincere. There is a reverence not merely for beautiful altars and shrines but for the creeds which have inspired the creation of these objects and for the practices which employ them. Material elements are an appeal, but they are to Byron a means; they are what helps the religion work. And the fact that it works is, of course, the whole point. Altars, shrines, and transubstantiation may be “elegant”; but, more importantly, they give us “something sensible to grasp at” in real life, and they leave us with “no possibility of doubt.” Guiccioli confirms that, because Byron was never swayed merely by his imagination and could not help exercising his reason, it was not “the poetry” or the “pomps and gorgeous ceremonies” of Catholicism that appealed to him, but, rather, the religion's genuine effectiveness (I.202). Thus, says Byron, “That Purgatory of theirs is a comfortable doctrine,” much more so than the transmigration of souls taught by Shelley's “wiseacre philosophers” (Medwin 80). Again, it is the functionality of the doctrine that makes it praiseworthy. Like the relics in the Catholic churches, concepts such as Purgatory are strong not because they are poetic or pretty, not because they are efficient or scientific, not because they hold together abstractly in themselves, but—rather—because they have worked and continue to work for real people, because they consistently provide the comfort and the inspiration that a religion is supposed to provide.

Third—and this reason depends upon the second—it seems to me that Catholicism to the later Byron quite often appeared to be right. Before instantly brushing this contention off, let us first remember Byron's empirical mind-set. He sought truth by virtue of effect, trusting not information that satisfied a priori logic but that which subsisted manifestly in the human world. He thus praised and advocated learning that comes through “experience not Books” (BLJ 1:173), through “history” (BLJ 3:218, 8:240), and through the “due precision” of “experience” and “tradition” (DJ V.115). As we have seen above, Byron liked Catholicism because it was “sensible” and because it actually produced manifest goodness for humans, here, on earth. And while there is no record of Byron's ever attending Mass, it was reported by Fletcher (who had been Byron's valet for twenty years) that the poet would “repeatedly, on meeting or passing any religious ceremonies which the Roman Catholics have in their frequent processions … dismount his horse and fall on his knees, and remain in that posture till the procession had passed” (HVSV 210). Byron himself, it seems, felt firsthand the power of the ceremonies he adored. Catholicism worked not only for the Italians but for Byron as well.

For more evidence of Byron's genuine belief in Catholicism, let us return to the poetry, in particular to the character of Aurora, an orphan and a Catholic, who emerges in the fifteenth canto of Don Juan, during a dinner at Norman Abbey.⁶ Aurora is introduced not merely to be a potential wife for the poem's maturing protagonist but as a symbol of ideal tradition and ideal faith. Among many guests at the Abbey,

          there was
Indeed a certain fair and fairy one,
Of the best class, and better than her class,—
Aurora Raby, a young star who shone
O'er life, too sweet an image for such glass,
A lovely being, scarcely form'd or moulded,
A Rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded;
Rich, noble, but an orphan; left an only
Child to the care of guardians good and kind;
But still her aspect had an air so lonely!
Early in years, and yet more infantine
In figure, she had something of the sublime
In eyes which sadly shone, as seraphs' shine.
All youth—but with an aspect beyond time;
Radiant and grave—as pitying man's decline;
Mournful—but mournful of another's crime,
She look'd as if she sat by Eden's door,
And grieved for those who could return no more.

(XV.43-5)

Aurora's essence is dual: both “fair” and “fairy”—a convergence of what is ideal on earth (“Of the best class, and better than her class”) and in the heavens (“a young star who shone / O'er life, too sweet an image for such glass”). The “sublime” of her eyes is the Burkean sublime, an unfathomable and beautiful vastness and greatness. She rises beyond “time” that is historical. Yet while transcending human time in her closeness to eternity and to the Edenic past, she is simultaneously associated with civilization, and she thus brings spiritual ideals to real life on earth. Her reach is wide as well as far.

Beatty (152ff.) associates Aurora with authentic religious understanding and with an ideal spiritual life that includes sexuality as well as thoughtfulness, strength, and purity. He notes that Aurora is the true heir to Norman Abbey since she is the only Catholic within it, the only person associated with its original monastic purposes; its windows are as “seraph's wings” (XIII.62) while her eyes are as “seraphs' shine” (XV.45). Aurora alone can restore prelapsarian ideals and “connect Juan and the poem trustingly to their existence” (Beatty 198-99). I agree with Beatty, but I think Aurora idealizes not only spirituality in general but Catholicism in particular; the specificity of her religion is not accessory but essential. As Byron informs us:

She was a Catholic too, sincere, austere,
As far as her own gentle heart allow'd,
And deem'd that fallen worship far more dear
Perhaps because 'twas fallen: her sires were proud
Of deeds and days when they had fill'd the ear
Of nations, and had never bent or bow'd
To novel power; and as she was the last,
She held their old faith and old feelings fast.
Her spirit seem'd as seated on a throne
Apart from the surrounding world, and strong
In its own strength—most strange in one so young!

(XV.46-7)

Catholicism is “fallen” in Protestant England, where Aurora resides. England seems the worse for this, since Aurora, even at her young age, shines far above both the foolish people and foolish practices of her “surrounding world” as a beacon of principle and forbearance. Thus, Norman Abbey's other lady-visitors are caricatured as “Miss Raw, Miss Flaw, Miss Showman, and Miss Knowman [and] Miss Audacia Shoestring” (XV.40-42); their society is like a “masquerade” in which “The guests were placed according to their roll” (XV. 74). Aurora is “purer than the rest” (XV.55), maintaining “self-possession” amidst the fakery of the dinner's hot “tumult of fish, flesh, and fowl” (XV.74).

Lady Adeline, the matchmaker-matron of Norman Abbey, might have encouraged Juan to speak with Aurora, but Adeline sees the young woman as “prim, silent, cold” (XV.49) due to what the narrator tells us is an inappropriate and inexplicable “prejudice … against a creature / As pure as sanctity itself from vice” (XV.52). Aurora is in fact silent, but, as Byron tells us, this silence is “Shakespearian” in that “There was a depth of feeling to embrace / Thoughts, boundless, deep, but silent too as Space” (XVI.48). Happily, Juan sees a richness in Aurora's quiet propriety. To him, Aurora is “a Catholic, / And therefore fittest [to be his wife]” (XV.50). He senses this fittingness when he realizes that Aurora is the opposite of Haidee, the primitive pagan island-girl whom Juan once loved (see cantos II-IV). As we learn, “the difference” between Haidee and Aurora “Was such as lies between a flower and a gem” (XV.59). Aurora is thus “High” in birth, unlike “lost Haidee … Nature's all” (XV.58). Aurora is like a work of art rather than nature, and this is, says Byron, a “sublime comparison” (XV.59). Aurora does not spring quickly up from the ground only to perish in one season; her essence endures, admired through ages.

Yet as faith must not be easy, Aurora herself is elusive, and she “scarcely look'd aside” when Juan attempts to flirt (XV.78). But, after concentrated effort on Juan's part, she at last begins “once or twice to smile, if not to listen” (XV.80), and then “she began to question” (XV.81), joining into conversation. Through Juan's ability to tame his presumptuousness and act humbly, Aurora shows her virtues. Whereas Haidee spoke an indecipherable foreign tongue, Aurora proves to be easily understood, graceful and versatile in public rapport. She begins to display less “indifference” to Juan (XV.83), responding now to his “deference,” to his “delicate dissent,” and even to his “good looks” although she “look'd more on books than faces” (83-85). We learn that the appeal of her conversation does not fade when we find Juan, alone that night, unable to forget that Aurora's eyes were “more bright / Than Adeline (such is advice) advised” (XVI.12). After this, “He sighed;—the next resource is the full moon, / Where all sighs are deposited; and now / It happened luckily, the chaste orb shone / As clear as such a climate will allow” (XVI.13). The Catholic Aurora, then, represents a beautiful and spiritual purity accessible within real human life.

But Juan will not explore his spiritual longings. Fickle, he wanders from his room late at night where he encounters what appears to be a ghost of one of the Abbey's long-dead monks. This encounter startles Juan, pushing him figuratively away from Christianity and literally away from Aurora. Even when, during the next morning's breakfast, Juan “caught Aurora's eye on his, / And something like a smile upon her cheek” (XVI.92), Juan is flustered rather than gratified. As a result of Aurora's glance Juan “grew carnation with vexation, / Which was not very wise and still less witty” but “his senses / By last night's ghost [had] been driven from their defences” (XVI.93). Had he tried again to make conversation with Aurora he might have regained his voice, but fearful instead, he let the ghost-sighting render him “as silent as a ghost” (XVI.107).

Byron makes sure that we regard Juan's unwillingness to speak with Aurora as a bad thing. As Byron tells us,

          Aurora had renewed
In him some feelings he had lately lost
Or hardened; feelings which, perhaps ideal,
Are so divine, that I must deem them real:—
The love of higher things and better days;
The unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance
Of what is called the world, and the world's ways;
The moments when we gather from a glance
More joy than from all future pride or praise …

(XVI.107-8)

Anyone “That hath a memory, or that had a heart” would be filled with happiness at this but Juan, “apprehensive of his spectral guest … sate, with feelings awkward to express” (XVI.109, 111). Unable or unwilling to cast off his awkwardness, Juan seeks the ghost a second time and, upon encountering it, finds it to be another of the guests, the Duchess Fitz-Fulke, in disguise. This Duchess is “voluptuous” and “frolic” (XVI.123), of all the Abbey's guests the most earthly and “graceless” (XVI.49). Byron would “rather not say what might be related / Of her exploits” but informs us that these exploits were most “ticklish” (XIV.42). Alas, the irresolute Juan forgoes the chaste Aurora and consents to lascivious Fitz-Fulke's advances. When we meet him again, in his last appearance in the poem, Juan is no longer animated and gentlemanly but “wan and worn, with eyes that hardly brooked / The light, that through the Gothic windows shone” (XVII.14). It may be because of Juan's abandonment of the spirituality represented by Aurora that Byron intended to ultimately bring Juan to an ignoble demise (see BLJ 8:68 and Medwin 165), guillotined during the French Revolution.

Byron himself hoped to avoid Juan's mistakes. At the time he wrote the late cantos of Don Juan, he was engaging a course of thinking that we may view as the exact opposite of his protagonist's—for it is a course that steers towards Christianity rather than away from it. Byron journeyed to Greece in July of 1823, bringing books with him that show a continuation of the regard and respect for Christianity he demonstrated through his idealized portrait of Aurora. Shortly after arriving in Greece, Byron became fast friends with a Methodist doctor and proselytizer named James Kennedy, with whom he had numerous conversations about religion. Byron saw Kennedy as “a clever but eccentric man” who is “very pious and tries in good earnest to make converts … I like what I have seen of him” (BLJ 11:46). Kennedy's records of the conversations overwhelmingly concern his own ideas rather than Byron's, but they do depict Byron's continuing fascination with Christianity and continuing hopes of “believing” and of being “converted” so that he might practice Christianity “in earnest” (see esp. 35, 78, 95, 140, 180, 236).

With the aid of the London Greek Committee, Byron intended to lead the conquered Greeks against the ruling Turks and, if successful, to help establish a proper government for the newly liberated nation. The books Byron had with him at the time (listed in Carlton 43-45) suggest that he was considering spiritual ideals as well as political ones. We might categorize these sixty-odd books under four headings: miscellaneous, history, literature, and religion. The miscellaneous group is the largest, comprising roughly twenty volumes of politics, philosophy, law, science, linguistics, and travel narrative. History and literature come next, with roughly fifteen volumes each; Rome and Greece are best represented under history, Scott's novels and Italian poetry best represented under literature.

The most interesting group of books is the religious one. The largest single category of books after history and literature, it includes a collection of Discourses & Sermons; an edition of French Reflexions sur L'Evidence du Christianisme; three volumes by the Greek saint Sinaita Anastasius (who in the seventh century wrote sermons, commentaries on Byzantine church doctrines, and a defense of Christianity); a selection of Matins and Vespers (1823) compiled by Byron's associate John Bowring; the famous Call to the Unconverted (1657) by the Presbyterian minister Richard Baxter; and, most interestingly, another famous work, The Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity proved from Scripture (1750) by William Jones of Nayland, the third edition of which included A Letter to the Common People in Answer to Some Popular Arguments against the Trinity (1767).

The presence of these books illuminates a conspicuous statement of Byron's that had been made only months after the appearance of Aurora in Don Juan, immediately following one of Byron's conversations with Dr. Kennedy. Dr. Henry Muir, one of Byron's close friends in Greece, recorded the statement in his journal:

To-day, on visiting Lord B., the first thing he said to me was, “Well, I have had another visit from Dr. Kennedy, and I am going to give in; I believe I shall be converted. The fact is, Kennedy has had a good deal of trouble with us all, and it would be a pity were he to lose his time. And, besides, he says we are all to be Christians one day or other—it is just as well to begin now.” Then, clasping his hands and looking upwards, he exclaimed, “Oh, I shall begin the 17th Canto of Don Juan a changed man!” He then went on repeating different portions of the conversations that had taken place between himself and Kennedy.

These words might be hastily chalked up as sarcasm, since Byron had already begun the stipulated canto in Italy three months earlier. Yet Muir does not make light of Byron's remarks, and if we turn to Don Juan XVII's completed verses we will find three items indicating that Byron's “changing” may have already begun.

First, Byron offers humorous remarks on Catholic Italian language and culture (st. 3 and note, where we learn that some Italians refer to orphaned foundlings as ‘mules’). These remarks are brief, yet they seem conspicuously and remarkably situated after six entire cantos on English people and English manners. Second, Byron makes a quip against the Protestant Martin Luther, whose statements are seen as “obtuse” and as “a paradox,” and because of whom, regrettably, “The Sacraments have been reduced to two” (st. 6-7). Third, Byron's opening digression makes commentary on, above all else, orphans (st. 1-4). There are many types of orphans, we learn, including those who lose “parental tenderness” rather than their actual parents (st. 1), and including not only “half-starved” babies but also wealthy ones (st. 3). And not all orphans are in distress because “Many a lonely tree the loftier grows / Than others crowded in the Forest's maze” (st. 1). The mention of wealth, the positive remarks on an orphan's potential loftiness, even the very presence of this commentary, all seem to indicate that the orphaned Aurora will move into the forefront of Don Juan's narrative. She will evidently become a symbol of the “virtue” abandoned by Juan when he chooses not to seek marriage and commitment but to dilly-dally in “vice” with the fleshly and unspiritual Duchess Fitz-Fulke (st. 12).

It seems apparent that Catholicism was foremost among religions in Byron's mind during the last year of his life. When Byron speaks of “beginning” the seventeenth canto, then, could this mean that he intends to begin making Catholicism its central theme? And when Byron speaks of converting, could it be that he is considering becoming Catholic himself? We know that Byron saw greatness in those who practiced religion; we know that Byron saw bad repercussions for those who rejected it. We have seen that Byron took Catholicism quite seriously for his entire life, and that Byron's late poetry involved Catholic themes and Catholic characters. It seems that Catholicism would be Byron's only real choice if his time to “turn devout” had truly come.

Sadly, Byron was unable to add to the fourteen short stanzas of Don Juan's seventeenth canto that he had written just before he left Italy.⁷ In Greece he devoted himself to military and political matters, then sickened, then died, and we can only guess where he would next have taken his poem and his thinking. We might continue to view him as a skeptic scoffer, ever without a compass and ever filled with contempt. But a different picture may be closer to the truth: a man who grew wiser and more disciplined after a reckless youth, a man who would continue to wander both geographically and poetically, but who would do so guided by the principles and traditions of the Catholic faith.

Notes

1. Christensen, most recently, has seen Byron as, culturally, a subverter of English commercial morality and imperialism, and, intellectually, as a postmodern skeptic whose nature it is to have “no position” (218).

2. See Hoagwood, Thorslev, and Marjarum on Byron's skepticism. See Lovell on Byron's Deism. See Marchand and Blessington on the superstitions. On the drinking, gambling, and whoring see Marchand, esp. 102ff.; see also a letter from Byron to Hobhouse where he reports being with Italian prostitutes—“at least two hundred of one sort or another” (BLJ 6:66). On Byron's homosexuality see Crompton; see also Christensen. On the incest see Maurois and Marchand.

3. Poetry is culled from the McGann edition (Childe Harold abbreviated as CHP and Don Juan abbreviated as DJ), letters from the Marchand edition (abbreviated as BLJ). Lovell's His Very Self and Voice will be abbreviated HVSV.

4. Byron's last poem, The Island (1823), depicts a more general idealism. Its protagonist, unlike the doomed heroes of the early Byronic Tales (1813-16), manages to survive calamity and hardship to find a spiritual and sensual paradise on earth. See Brewer for recent commentary on how The Island stems from a quasi-Shelleyan idealism that arose late in Byron's life. See Lang for a different perspective, where Don Juan heads towards unhappiness and where Aurora is a sham-ideal.

5. There is skepticism in BLJ 2:97-98, and in CHP II.3, 7-9, and 44. See also DJ II.55 where “It costs three francs for every mass that's said” or DJ IV.81 on the lasciviousness of slothful monks. There is a joke about the ephemerality of religions in HVSV 297.

6. Earlier in this canto we are reminded that, although Christ's words have been at times ill-applied by others, his creed is truly “pure” and capable of “Redeeming worlds” (DJ XV.18). Byron's note to this stanza informs us that “If ever God was man—or Man God—he was both. I never arraigned his creed, but the use—or abuse—made of it.”

7. In BLJ 10:206 and 10:212 Byron regrets that, dealing with Greek affairs, he has no time to write poetry.

Works Cited

Beatty, Bernard. Byron's Don Juan. Totowa: Barnes and Noble, 1985.

Blessington, Marguerite Power Farmer Gardiner. Lady Blessington's Conversations of Lord Byron. Ed. Ernest J. Lovell, Jr. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1969.

Brewer, William D. The Shelley-Byron Conversation. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1994.

Byron, George Gordon, Lord. Byron's Letters and Journals. 12 vols. Ed. Leslie A. Marchand. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1973-82.

Byron, George Gordon, Lord. The Complete Miscellaneous Prose. Ed. Andrew Nicholson. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991.

Byron, George Gordon, Lord. The Complete Poetical Works. 7 vols. Ed. Jerome J. McGann. Oxford: Clarendon, 1980-93.

Calvert, William. Byron: Romantic Paradox. New York: Russell and Russell, 1962.

Carlton, W. N. C. “Books of Lord Byron.” Poems and Letters of Lord Byron, Edited from the Original Manuscripts in the Possession of W. K. Bixby. Chicago: Society of Dofobs, 1912.

Christensen, Jerome. Lord Byron's Strength. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1993.

Crompton, Louis. Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in Nineteenth-Century England. Berkeley: U of California, 1985.

Donnelly, William. “Byron and Catholicism.” Ed. Angus Calder. Byron and Scotland: Radical or Dandy? Totowa: Barnes and Noble, 1989.

Guiccioli, Teresa. My Recollections of Lord Byron. 2 vols. Trans. Hubert E. H. Jerningham. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1869.

Hirst, Wolf Z., ed. Byron, The Bible, and Religion. Newark: U of Delaware, 1991.

Hirst, Wolf Z., ed. “Byron's Revisionary Struggle with the Bible.” Hirst 77-100.

Hoagwood, Terrence Allan. Byron's Dialectic. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1993.

Kennedy, James. Conversations on Religion with Lord Byron and Others, Held in Cephalonia. Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1833.

Knight, G. Wilson. Lord Byron: Christian Virtues. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952.

Lang, Cecil Y. “Narcissus Jilted: Byron, Don Juan, and the Biographical Imperative.” Ed. Jerome J. McGann. Historical Studies and Literary Criticism. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1985. 143-79.

Lovell Jr., Ernest J. Byron: The Record of a Quest. Hamden: Archon, 1966.

Lovell Jr., ed. His Very Self and Voice. New York: Macmillan, 1954.

Marjarum, Edward Wayne. Byron as Skeptic and Believer. New York: Russell and Russell, 1962.

Marchand, Leslie. Byron: A Biography. 3 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957.

Maurois, Andre. Byron. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1964.

McGann, Jerome J. Fiery Dust: Byron's Poetic Development. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1968.

McGann, Jerome J., ed. Historical Studies and Literary Criticism. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1985.

Medwin, Thomas. Conversations of Lord Byron. Ed. Ernest J. Lovell, Jr. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1966.

Muir, Henry. “Byroniana.” Notes and Queries, 6th Series, 9 (1884): 81-82.

Thorslev, Jr., Peter L. “Byron and Bayle: Biblical Skepticism and Romantic Irony.” Hirst 58-76.