Lord Byron

It was a recitation of "Christabel" by Walter Scott that first introduced Lord Byron to Coleridge's poem; Byron records in a letter that the recitation took place during the "first week of June 1815" at the house of John Murray--Byron's publisher, and the founder and publisher of The Quarterly Review.(1) Byron writes warmly of this recitation in a letter to Coleridge on 18 October 1815:

Last Spring I saw Wr. Scott. He repeated to me a considerable portion of an unpublished poem of yours--the wildest and finest I ever heard in that kind of composition. The title he did not mention, but I think the heroine's name was Geraldine. At all events 'the toothless mastiff bitch' and 'witch lady,' the description of the hall, the lamp suspended from the image, and more particularly of the girl herself as she went forth in the evening all took a hold on my imagination which I shall never wish to shake off.(2)

On 22 October, Coleridge responds with a brief history of the poem's composition and manuscript reception:

The Christabel, which you have mentioned in so obliging a manner, was composed by me in the [year] 1797--I should say, that the plan of the whole poem was formed and the first Book and half the second were finished--and it was not till after my return from Germany in the year 1800 that I resumed it--and finished the second and part of the Third Book.--This is all that Mr. W Scott can have seen. Before I went to Malta, I heard from Lady Beaumont, I know not whether more gratified or more surprised, that Mr. Scott had recited the Christabel and expressed no common admiration... It is not yet a Whole: and it will be 5 Books, I meant to publish it by itself: or with another Poem entitled, the Wanderings of Cain... --A Lady is presently transcribing the Christabel, in the form as far as it existed before my voyage to the Mediterranean.--I hope to inclose it for your Lordship's gracious acceptance tomorrow or next day.(3)

The transcription that Coleridge refers to here--if indeed it was made--is now lost and was probably copied by Charlotte Brent or Mrs. John Morgan.(4) True to his promise, Coleridge forwarded a copy of the poem to Byron. On 27 October, Byron acknowledges that he has received Sarah Hutchinson's 1801 transcription of an 1800 autograph manuscript.(5)

Like Walter Scott and John Stoddart, Byron frequently recited "Christabel." He recited the Hutchinson transcript, for example, in July 1816 for John Polidori, Percy Shelley, and Mary Godwin. The recitation--as Polidori records in his diary--is now famous because of the reaction it elicited in Shelley. During the recitation of Geraldine's disrobing in the Bedroom scene of Part I, Shelley "ran out of the room... shrieking and putting his hands to his head." After Shelley calmed down, he explained that he "thought of a woman... who had eyes instead of nipples, which taking hold of him, horrified him."(6) Byron's recitation is also important because it inspires Byron, Polidori and Godwin to enter into a competition to write ghost stories that, in the end, sees the production of The Vampyre and the origins of Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus.

Following receipt of the Hutchinson transcript, Byron writes to Coleridge on 27 October 1815:

If you will allow me, in publishing it (which I shall perhaps do quietly in Murray's collected Edition of my rhymes--though not separately), I will give the extract from you, and state that the original thought and expression have been many years in the Christabelle.(7)

Byron refers here to his own use of "Christabel" in The Siege of Corinth--written from 1812 to 1815 and printed on 13 February 1816.(8) Moreover, Byron attached the "friends in youth" passage (lines 396-414) as a preface to "Fare thee Well" in early June 1816. These are the only lines in "Christabel" that William Hazlitt praises in his Examiner review.(9) Byron's plan to publish "Christabel" is not as straightforward as he suggests in his letter to Coleridge, however. Rather than approaching a printer on Coleridge's behalf, Byron first writes to Thomas Moore (a potential future reviewer of the poem), asking if Moore will consider reviewing "Christabel." The day after receiving the Hutchinson transcript, Byron again writes Moore, asking him to pen a favorable review of "Christabel" for theEdinburgh Review.(10) Byron then approaches his own printer, John Murray, in early November 1815, about the publication of "Christabel."

Notes

1. George Gordon Byron, Byron's Letters and Journals, ed. Leslie A. Marchand, 9 vols. (Cambridge: Belknap at Harvard University Press, 1973-79), 4: 318. (back)
2. Byron's Letters and Journals, 4: 318-19. (back)
3. Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, E.L. Griggs, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956- 71), 4: 601-02. (back)
4. Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 4: 602. (back)
5. Byron's Letters and Journals, 4: 321. (back)
6. Polidori quoted in Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1974), 328-29. (back)
7. Byron's Letters and Journals, 4: 321; Byron's emphasis. (back)
8. Complete Poetical Works of Lord Byron, ed. Jerome J. McGann, 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980-93), 3: 479, 481. (back)
9. Complete Poetical Works of Lord Byron, 3: 494. (back)
10. Byron's Letters and Journals, 4: 322-24. (back)