Byron and the Black Horse
The flamboyant English poet went to extreme lengths to get a refund on an unsatisfactory purchase.
1819
King George III 1760-1820
The flamboyant English poet went to extreme lengths to get a refund on an unsatisfactory purchase.
1819
King George III 1760-1820
After moving to Ravenna in 1819, poet Lord Byron bought a black horse which had a tendency to trip and throw his rider, as Byron discovered only the second time he rode him. Byron demanded his money back, and as he cheerfully confessed to Edward Trelawny, things started to get a little ugly.
abridged
“THE black horse I bought of a captain of the Pope’s guard at Ravenna, warranted. I sent for the captain and demanded my money paid. He refused; I waxed wroth. He blustered, and said he was descended from a noble Roman family, was commander of a troop of his Holiness the Pope’s Guard.
“‘Then I’ll give you satisfaction.’ I opened a chest in the hall, and told him to choose his arms. I took a Spanish rapier; he had his sword. I drew my toledo, an heirloom, and went towards him. He faltered and retreated, and as I neared him, he exclaimed, ‘I don’t fight in the dark, and we are forbidden duelling.’ As I lifted my arm to strike he decamped in haste.”
“Should you not, [interposed Trelawny,] as a Carbonaro,* have (as Iago has it) removed him by yerking him under the ribs?* At Ravenna they say manslaughter is not considered a heinous offence.”
“It used not to be so, but it is now. I am a respecter of the law. When I want to punish a man, I let an attorney loose at him.”*
abridged
The Carbonari were members of various loosely interconnected secret societies in Italy from the turn of the Nineteenth century. They became particularly active after the fall of Napoleon in 1815, which appeared to offer hope for a liberal, unified and sovereign Italy. However, a revolution in 1820 was crushed by the ‘Holy Alliance’ of Russia, Austria and Prussia, alarmed at the spread of such popular liberalism.
‘Yerk’ is a verb meaning ‘strike a blow’, now rare. Trelawny’s reference is to ‘Othello’ by William Shakespeare, where Iago says:
Though in the trade of war I have slain men,
Yet do I hold it very stuff o’ the conscience
To do no contrived murder: I lack iniquity
Sometimes to do me service: nine or ten times
I had thought to have yerk’d him here under the ribs.
Byron kept the horse. “He is now reserved” he told Trelawny impishly “for my particular friends.”
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why did Byron challenge a man to a duel in Ravenna?
He had sold Byron a dud horse.