Don Juan must have driven by Pleasant Row, and passed within hail of Paradise Row, on the way from Kennington to Westminster Bridge. (See Cary’s New Pocket Plan of London, Westminster, and Southwark, 1819.) But, perhaps, there is more in the names of streets and places than meets the eye. Here, as elsewhere, there is, or there may be, “a paltering with us in a double sense.” —Editor ↩
Through rows called “Paradise,” by way of showing
—[MS. erased]
Good Christians that to which they all are going.
Compare Childe Harold, Canto I stanza LXIX line 8, var. II, Poetical Works, 1899, II 66, note 2. —Editor ↩
—distilling into the re-kindling glass.
—[MS.]
The streets of London were first regularly lighted with gas in 1812. —Editor ↩
Thomas Pennant, in Some Account of London, 1793, p. 444, writes down the Mansion House (1739–1752) as “damned … to everlasting fame.” —Editor ↩
Fifty years ago “the lights of Piccadilly” were still regarded as one of the “sights” of London. Byron must often have looked at them from his house in Piccadilly Terrace. —Editor ↩
Joseph François Foulon, army commissioner, provoked the penalty of the “lantern” (i.e. an improvised gallows on the yard of a lamppost at the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie) by his heartless sneer, “Eh bien! si cette canaille n’a pas de pain, elle mangera du foin.” He was hanged, July 22, 1789. See The Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, cap. XXII; see, too, Carlyle’s French Revolution, 1839, I 253:
“With wild yells, Sansculottism clutches him, in its hundred hands: he is whirled … to the ‘Lanterne,’ … pleading bitterly for life—to the deaf winds. Only with the third rope (for two ropes broke, and the quavering voice still pleaded), can he be so much as got hanged! His Body is dragged through the streets; his Head goes aloft on a pike, the mouth filled with grass: amid sounds as of Tophet, from a grass-eating people.”
—Editor ↩
Hells, gaming-houses. What their number may now be in this life, I know not. Before I was of age I knew them pretty accurately, both “gold” and “silver.” I was once nearly called out by an acquaintance, because when he asked me where I thought that his soul would be found hereafter, I answered, “In Silver Hell.” ↩
At length the boys drew up before a door,
—[MS.]
From whence poured forth a tribe of well-clad waiters;
(While on the pavement many a hungry w—re
With which the moralest of cities caters
For gentlemen whose passions may boil o’er,
Stood as the unpacking gathered more spectators,)
And Juan found himself in an extensive
Apartment;—fashionable but expensive.
’Twas one of the delightfullest hotels.
—[MS.]
Perhaps Grillion’s Hotel (afterwards Grillion’s Club) in Albemarle Street. In 1822 diplomats patronized more than one hotel in and near St. James’s Street, but among the “Departures from Grillion’s Hotel,” recorded in the Morning Chronicle of September, 17, 1822, appositely enough, is that of H. E. Don Juan Garcia, del Rio. —Editor ↩
—of his loves and wars;
—[MS. erased]
And as romantic heads are pretty painters,
And ladies like a little spice of Mars.
The false attempt at Truth—.
—[MS.]
Compare—
“Lo! Erin, thy Lord!
“The Irish Avatar,” stanza 14, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 558
Kiss his foot with thy blessing”—
—Editor ↩
Kiss hands—or feet—or what Man by and by
—[MS.]
Will kiss, not in sad metaphor—but earnest,
Unless on Tyrants’ sterns—we turn the sternest.
Anent was a Scotch phrase meaning “concerning”—“with regard to:” it has been made English by the Scotch novels; and, as the Frenchman said, “If it be not, ought to be English.” [See, for instance, The Abbot, chap. XVII 132.] ↩
But “Damme’s” simple—dashing—free and daring
—[MS.]
The purest blasphemy—.
About such general matters—but particular
—[MS.]
A poem’s progress should be perpendicular.
Macbeth, act III sc. 4, line 63. —Editor ↩
Blushed, too, but it was hidden by their rouge.
—[MS. erased]
The natural and the prepared ceruse.
—[MS. erased]
Drapery Misses.—This term is probably anything now but a mystery. It was, however, almost so to me when I first returned from the East in 1811–1812. It means a pretty, a highborn, a fashionable young female, well instructed by her friends, and furnished by her milliner with a wardrobe upon credit, to be repaid, when married, by the husband. The riddle was first read to me by a young and pretty heiress, on my praising the “drapery” of the “untochered” but “pretty virginities” (like Mrs. Anne Page) of the then day, which has now been some years yesterday: she assured me that the thing was common in London; and as her own thousands, and blooming looks, and rich simplicity of array, put any suspicion in her own case out of the question, I confess I gave some credit to the allegation. If necessary, authorities might be cited; in which case I could quote both “drapery” and the wearers. Let us hope, however, that it is now obsolete. ↩
Compare “Hints from Horace,” line 173, Poetical Works, 1898, I 401, note 1. —Editor ↩
In his so-called “Dedication” of Marino Faliero to Goethe, Byron makes fun of the “nineteen hundred and eighty-seven poets,” whose names were to be found in A Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors, etc. (See Introduction to Marino Faliero, Poetical Works, 1901,
