Puzzling "posterity when our correspondence bursts forth in the 20th century:"

Byron's letter to the Duke of Portland, 20 November, 1808

Shobhana Bhattacharji

28th International Byron Conference

Kyoto, Japan

2002

[Imperial Hotel, Tokyo] 7 June 1936.

"The passport officials knew the date of Lord Byron's death, and were rather disconcerted -- as though caught out in an examination -- when I said I can't be his grandson as he had only a daughter." (Robert Byron, Letters Home)

2

Newstead Abbey 20 Nov. 1808

My Lord, ---If, in requesting your Grace (as head of his Majesty's Government) to

procure me the permission of the E[ast] I[ndia] Directors, 1 to pass through their

settlements, I have been guilty of any informality, I beg leave to apologize; had any other

means appeared more correct, or more obvious, I should not have troubled your Grace on

the Subject.---Of the success of my application your Grace is the best Judge, "of the

propriety" allow me to observe, there can be no violation of decorum in a British subject

requesting permission to visit any part of the British Dominions.---I have also to assure

your Grace, had I not been serious in my intention, I should neither have trespassed on

your time, or patience.---I should be sorry, that inconvenience or trouble should arise

from any request of mine, and if (as it appears from the tone of your Grace's letter) Both

may be the consequence, I shall regret withdrawing for a moment your Grace's attention

from much more important concerns.---However, I shall certainly not desist from all

proper endeavours to further my design, nor can I conceive that the permission granted

"to persons in the E[ast] I[ndia] service" should be withheld from one who neither seeks

favour or expects emoluments.---(178) Were there a possibility at present, of passing

through the Ottoman dominions to the Interior of Asia, I should hardly prefer the

circuitous route of our own Colonies, the only motive for my request is the

impracticability of proceeding by a more direct Course.

I have the honour to be your Grace's

very obedt. Humble Sert.

BYRON2

3

Puzzling "posterity when our correspondence bursts forth in the 20th century:"3

Byron's letter to the Duke of Portland, 20 November, 1808

Byron told Hanson on 18 November, 1808, that he had written to Government for

permission to visit India (BLJ 1. 192). This was his third plan for travel abroad within

fifteen months. He first thought he would proceed to the "most remarkable of the

Hebrides, & . . sail as far as Iceland" (131-132). That journey did not materialize. A

second trip, to the Mediterranean, did not come through either. In 1808, he thought of

visiting India. Though his plans were more precise than before, this too was abortive, but

it has a bearing on his trip abroad the following year.

The style of Byron's letters about travel is a useful detour that we shall take in a

moment, but with his literary fame still some years away, how must his letters have

appeared to his correspondents? Some facts and conjectures here. In 1808, Byron was

about to leave Cambridge. A world of possibility lay before him, or so it seemed. The

truth is, he needed a career and he needed money. With these two goals, he set about

looking for a way to map his future.

Byron's letter to the Duke of Portland has received surprisingly little attention,4

even though it is replete with unexplained statements. I thought that if we unravelled it, it

might reveal something of his worries and hopes at this time, which in turn may explain

why he was keen to go abroad, though not to Iceland. Through the Prime Minister, the

Duke of Portland, he requested the Directors of the East India Company for permission to

visit their territories in India. In reply, the Duke apparently5 told Byron that he had

trespassed on his time.6 What we have here is Byron's reply to the Duke, which is more

suggestive than it appears and I want to use it to chart his unstated plans for his journey to

India. This will necessarily take us through a history of the times,7 and the curious

business of Byron and maps.

1.

Byron travelled a great deal, but he does not mention consulting maps, a pointless

discovery perhaps, except that he travelled in the great age of cartography. Map making

then was a painstaking, exhilarating, and often money-making matter.8 New instruments

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were invented for the purpose. For the first time, cartographers used grids and

triangulation, and important men like George Washington and the Wellesley brothers

were associated with it.9 Byron was not ignorant of this new science. He refers to his

post-dieting "figure and visage . . .of preternatural Longitude," to the prize for the

longitude clock, and to a topographical account of Asia Minor by Gell.10

But how did he describe places, to whom, and when? The answers provide a map

of sorts in which articulation takes the place of grids and projections. There are well-

marked areas but also some blanks, which can provide clues about his proposed Indian

trip. Byron, in other words, has left us maps but we must recover them from his letters.11

He once damned description for being "`always disgusting," yet when he warned his

mother that Fletcher's next letter home was likely to be full of gothic "apprehensions of

famine & banditti," he was implicitly proud of his own gift for describing things as they

were (239). The detail in Childe Harold, for example, enabled readers to follow Harold's

route in fact and on maps, and Byron's long letters from Europe and Turkey have similar

map-like descriptions (BLJ 1.2).12 Like Childe Harold, they too are stuffed with more

detail after the trips than in the planning stages.13 In addition, Byron's intention to travel

predominates in his letters before a journey, physical detail after it. This ex post facto

quality is the probable reason for obscure passages in his letter to Portland.

A quick list of when Byron chose not to describe places might be useful. He did

not elaborate upon Albania's "natural beauties" possibly because of its "places without a

name, and rivers not laid down in maps" (BLJ 1.238).14 He interrupted his slightly more

forthcoming description of Greece because "these things . . .are . . .written in the Boke of

Gell," who "topographised and typographised King Priam's domain in three days!" (238).

Apparently Byron preferred the slower but more accurate grid and triangulation

cartography. Unhelpful descriptions of place exasperated him. Gell's map and reports

were "picturesque bagatelles" because of their often inadequate information.15 Byron

himself wrote with the imagination and vocabulary of a geographer, describing physical

features in their relationship to each other.16 Cintra, for example, is in his account "about

fifteen miles from the capitol . . .[and] contains . . . Palaces and gardens rising in the

midst of rocks, cataracts, and precipices." (BLJ 1.218).17

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But what of places he had not visited? Without maps, how did he plan his

routes?18 On a couple of occasions he used people in lieu of maps. He employed Friese

because Friese had been "among the worshipers of Fire in Persia and . . .seen Persepolis

and all that" (BLJ 1.208),19 and in Suli, he "proceeded with the help of natives." But that

is all we learn of his reliance on people.

A leap now from evidence into guesswork I have come to think that Byron

followed thematic maps that he created for himself. Projection maps are flat pictures of

the earth's round surface; thematic maps are pictures of ideas. A thematic map of the

glory and power of god, for example, might have a large burst of radiance at its centre,

with tiny lands and people tucked into its peripheries, but bathed in the light of god. A

map of the worldwide distribution of cotton, say, is also a thematic map.20

How did Byron make his thematic maps? Sometimes he imposed his reading upon

the topography,21 only it was not so simple. This is a new area where a lot is waiting to be

discovered, but since it is not my primary focus, I will quickly point out some aspects of

it. Byron refers to Constantinople as Byzantium and Stamboul,22 and mentions Ephesus

in connection with it.23 The names and places are markers of political and cultural change

over time, which he explored in Childe Harold.

His invocations of Greek literature add other dimensions. There is camaraderie of

shared classical knowledge with most of his correspondents, though not all. "Of

Constantinople you have Gibbon's description, very correct as far as I have seen," he tells

Hodgson, but he refers Hanson "to various travellers who have scribbled on the subject,"

even though Byron himself did not have much respect for many of these (BLJ.1.242,

243). He adjusted analogy to fact. Thus, he was pleased about swimming the Hellespont

like Leander, but since he had no waiting beloved, he said that his "labour was. . its own

reward" (BLJ 1.248).24

His reading, in short, spurred him on to visit places from where he offered his

correspondents fresh journeys through the past, but he tends not to give detailed

descriptions of places that he has not read about in literature.25 Perhaps the opaque

patches in his letter to Portland derive from this.26 India was not a well-described place in

his reading.

6

A last point linking place and writing: Byron's first travelogue letter was to his

mother in November 1809, twelve days after he began Childe Harold, but he did not tell

her that he was writing the poem.27 His letter to Portland, with which we began this talk,

similarly seems to be transparent, but is a mosaic of empty spots on the Byron map, some

of which we can now consider.

2.

". . [I request] your Grace (as head of his Majesty's Government) to procure me the permission of the E[ast] I[ndia] Directors, to pass through their settlements. . ."

I am trying to follow through a hypothetical journey, asking how Byron conceived his

journeys on the basis of one that was not carried out. It is not easy to do. We have to enter

into Byron's mindset and the conditions of his time to see how he hoped to resolve the

twin problems of a career and money. He knew that

Travelling through the East is rather inconvenient than expensive. . . .A

voyage to India will take me six months, and if I had a dozen attendants

cannot cost me five hundred pounds . . . a like term of months in England

would lead me into four times that expenditure. (BLJ 1.175).

But perhaps he had more than a relatively minor saving in mind.28

Let's take his request for permission first. The East India Company's super governors

were the Directors who sat in England. They were as jealous of the Company's profits as

was the Government, and well they might have been. The Company's servants made vast

amounts of money through commissions and private trade,29 especially after 1757.30 The

profits in the private trade were enormous: one hundred percent on cloth, five hundred

percent on Chinese silks, and one thousand percent on porcelain. "The ideal [was] to

make the maximum of wealth in the minimum of time." 31 By 1762, a sober view was that

"`This is certainly a fine country for a young gentleman to improve a small fortune in.'"32

Byron needed money desperately. His debts alone amounted "to perhaps twelve thousand

pounds," and he would require "perhaps three or four thousand at setting out" for India,

with much more thereafter, for which he asked Hanson to arrange "credit on a Bengal

agent" (BLJ 1.192). Byron was probably thinking about liquidity in India, but the

possibility of trading through an agent, or middle man, is not ruled out.33 Europeans

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sometimes borrowed money, possibly from agents, to invest in trade.34 Had Byron

invested even a portion of four thousand pounds, he would have been a very rich man in

about four years.35

In the late 1700s, the British government attempted to crack down on private

trade, which nevertheless continued illegally through agents.36 Because this cut into the

Company's profits, Europeans could only enter India on a Company's licence. By 1808,

when Byron wrote to the Duke of Portland, it was imperative for private individuals to

get the Directors' permission to enter India.

3.

Now for the Company's settlements. In six years after 1757, from holding a few pockets

of territory, "the Company had expanded into a major power controlling Bengal and

Southern India."37 By 1808, Governor General Wellesley, "determined on building an

empire," and helped by his brother Arthur, had extended British control over most of

India.38 Thus from Calcutta, Byron could only have gone straight into non-British

territory. He would have run into the unfriendly Marathas in the west, but Punjab in the

north was friendly.39 Through Punjab lay the way to Afghanistan, Persia and beyond.

Invaders from Bacchus40 to Alexander the Great had used it as the overland route to

India, and in 1807, Napoleon and Tsar Alexander eyed it for their proposed conquest of

India.41

I think that Byron either hoped for some way to make money without becoming a

Company servant, or he hoped to travel through Punjab, but that makes little sense

without opening another Russian doll in the Portland letter.

4.

"Were there a possibility at present, of passing through the Ottoman dominions to the Interior of Asia, I should hardly prefer the circuitous route of our own Colonies . . . ."

Byron estimated six months for the circuitous route that would have taken him through

Egypt, the Red Sea, down the west coast of India, round its peninsula, up the east coast to

Madras, where he hoped to make a halt, and thence to Calcutta in the rich Bengal

settlement. Some more months would have taken him to the Interior of Asia, but these

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did not enter his calculation, either because he was ignorant of the area or unclear about

his plans.

Unlike Turkey and Europe, India did not have many allusions for Byron,42 or none that

he mentions in his letters. How then did he hope to journey beyond the Company

settlements? A lot of information about India was available in England, but not adequate

maps, especially of the north.43 Nevertheless, some knowledge of the route must have

existed in Europe. After all, though Alexander the Great stopped at the Indus, his men

went on to the Maurya Court in the heart of the Gangetic plain which became "the main

axis of Britain's Asian empire." Along its length ran the Grand Trunk Road which, by

1808, linked British Bengal with the northern plains of India and pointed to the high

regions of Central Asia.44 Was this route an element in Byron's thematic map?

We cannot even begin to guess at an answer until we know what he meant by the Interior

of Asia, the most difficult of the obscure passages in the Portland letter. Of two

possibilities, Smyrna to Ephesus45 is ruled out. In 1808, this was Ottoman territory. The

other possibility is Central Asia. By 1808, "Asia meant much more inland than Anatolia

[and] `interior of Asia' already meant . . .the space bounded by India, China, Russia, [and]

Iran, that is Central Asia. . ..[and] `interior of Asia' . . . is Central Asia, which is not

directly accessible, hence `interior.'"46

A circuitous route of our own now to find a place between these two possibilities,

or one that incorporates them.

5.

In 1808, an Englishman could not pass through the Ottoman dominions because the

Sultan was friendly with France. Napoleon thought of Constantinople as the key to world

dominion. From Constantinople, he planned to invade India47 by marching 50,000 troops

across Persia and Afghanistan, as Alexander of Macedon had done. There he hoped to

join forces with the Tsar's cossacks for a "final thrust across the Indus into India."48 If

India were to fall to either the Russian or the French empire, it would wipe out the British

empire.49 Alarmed Home authorities in Britain urged the Governor of the East India

Company to "thwart any hostile movement across the Indus and `to cultivate to the

utmost of your power the favourable opinion and co-operation' of all states beyond the

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frontier, and even of the `tartar tribes to the Eastward and Caspian.'"50 The Great Game

between empires for the prize of British India had begun.

By the following year, 1809, through manoeuvres involving Byron that Peter Cochran

has described,51 Britain virtually had Constantinople, which made it unnecessary for

Byron to go to the Interior of Asia via India. But as he waited at Falmouth, he asked

Hanson whether there had been news from the Duke of Portland, perhaps about the

£1000 debt that Portland owed the Byron estate.52 Or perhaps Byron still hoped for

permission to visit India, for in 1809, Mountstuart Elphinstone led the first diplomatic

mission to Afghanistan to ensure that it did not veer to Napoleon's side again.53 From

then on, diplomatic efforts to contain European (and Russian) invaders from the

northwest of India, offered promising careers to ambitious young men.54

6. The stories so far. In 1808, Byron was in debt, needed a career, and planned to go to India, the source of wealth for Britain and individual Europeans. At the same time, Napoleon hoped to defeat Britain by conquering India. Is it possible to weld these into a single story? Byron mentioned the "sad news" of Russia's defeat at Freidland in a letter of June 1807 (BLJ 1.123).55 In July of that year, France and Russia signed the Treaty of Tilsit, inaugurating a new phase in Anglo-French rivalry in which diplomacy played a significant role. By 1808, England had won over the Ottoman Sultan, preempting Napoleon's invasion of India.56 The small but significant evidence of Byron's interest in these events can help to unravel the last obscure phrase in the Portland letter.

7. ". . . had I not been serious in my intention, I should neither have trespassed on your time, or patience."

(Byron to the Duke of Portland, 20 November, 1808)

What was Byron's serious intention? He wanted "In the first place . . .to study India and

the Asiatic policy and manners." Secondly, he was "determined to take a wider field than

is customary with travellers." "If I return," he added, "my judgment will be more mature,

and I shall still be young enough for politics." The "if" could refer to the hazards of health

and travel, but the evidence points elsewhere. When he was abroad in 1810, he said that

though he had no desire to return to England, he would not enter Asia for another year,

after which he would determine whether to proceed to Persia. Not Smyrna or Ephesus,

but Persia. He said he had "intents and projects after Constantinople," but would not

proceed further "till I hear from England."57 Hear about what? From Hanson about

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money, or from government about a diplomatic assignment? But a little later, he said he

was bound for Athens, perhaps for a year, and that he would "not return to England

except in case of war." He then suddenly said, "I shall not proceed to Persia as I

prophesied in rather too great a hurry, but . . . quietly repair home."58

Was his diplomatic career at an end before it started? Perhaps. We can be

reasonably certain, though, that by the Interior of Asia he meant the Persia-Afghanistan-

Hindu Kush region; and that he was thinking of a diplomatic career, or for enough

experience in the rapidly changing Anglo-French rivalry to mature him for a career in

politics in England.59 Equally certainly, a trip to India would have made him wealthy

enough to clear his debts, repair Newstead Abbey, and finance a political career.

8.

This paper has been fun to research but tough to write. Since Byron's Indian project has

received almost no critical attention, I pursued my gut feeling about a connection

between Byron's personal circumstances and the Anglo-French rivalry as it affected

India. Only Peter Cochran's research seemed headed in a similar direction.60 I think the

wooing of Byron by British diplomats that Peter Cochran has described followed from

Byron's letter to Portland, in which he made it known that he was available for a possible

diplomatic job related to the Anglo-French wars. The following year, the British

government used him to please the Ottomans, but he still hoped for a role in the new

diplomacy that became famous as the Great Game. Had this happened, India would have

been as firmly on the Byron map as Greece or Italy.

Shobhana Bhattacharji 2002

New Delhi

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Appendix

Regulating Act (1773) • Under the Regulating Act of 1773, a Council of four members was appointed, and

Warren Hastings (governor-general 1774-85) was empowered to conduct the Company's affairs with the Council's advice. His task was to consolidate the Company's rule in Bengal. He diversified the Company's activities from commerce to farming.

• The governor-general was given the powers of supervision over the other two presidencies of Bombay and Madras. The Act also set up a Supreme Court for administration of justice at Calcutta. Under this Act, periodic reports on the civil and military administration had to be submitted to the British prime Minister.

Pitt's India Bill (1784) • After the Regulating Act of 1773 to regulate the affairs of the Company in India, the

second important step taken by the British Parliament was the appointment of a Board of Control under Pitt's India Bill of 1784. It provided for a joint government of the Company (represented by the Directors), and the Crown (represented by the Board of Control).

• A Board of six members was constituted with two members of the British Cabinet and four of the Privy Council. One of whom was the President and who soon became, in effect, the minister for the affairs of the East India Company. The Board had all the powers and control over all the acts and operations which related to the civil, military and revenues of the Company.

• The Council was reduced to three members and the governor-general was empowered to overrule the majority. The Governors of Bombay and Madras were also deprived of their independent powers. Calcutta was given greater powers in matters of war, revenue, and diplomacy, thus becoming in effect the capital of Company possessions in India.

• By a supplementary the Bill passed in 1786, Lord Cornwallis was appointed as the first governor-general, and he then became the effective ruler of British India under the authority of the Board of Control and the Court of Directors. The constitution set up by the Pitt's India Act did not undergo any major changes during the existence of the Company's rule in India.

• The Charter Act of 1813 abolished the trading activities of the Company and henceforth became purely an administrative body under the Crown. Thereafter, with few exceptions, the governor-general and the Council could make all the laws and regulations for people (Indians and British).

[from Itihaas.com]

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I presented this paper more or less in this form at the 28th International Byron Conference, Byron the

Traveller, 2002, at Kyoto, Japan. The conference was held at the Omiya Campus of the Ryukoku

University, published as ‘Puzzling `Posterity when our Correspondence bursts forth in the 20th century'.’

Byron the Traveller: Proceedings of the 28th International Byron Conference, Kyoto, Japan, 2002

I am grateful to Bernard Beatty, Peter Cochran, Madhavan Palat, Kamala Menon, and Arjun Mahey for

their help with this paper.

1 Byron calls it the E.I.Company, a contraction that would confuse most people today. People in Byron’s

time the Company and its activities were very familiar in England. 2 Byron's Letters and Journals, ed. Leslie A.Marchand, Vol.1 (London: John Murray, 1973), 177-78. Byron's Letters

and Journals edited by Marchand are cited as BLJ followed by an Arabic number for the volume, and then the page

number. Byron’s Complete Poetical Works edited by Prothero and Coleridge is cited as LJ, with and Arabic numeral

for the volume number. 3 BLJ 2.240. 4 Thus Alan Massie in Byron's Travels, mentions part of the letter to Portland but makes nothing of it (my

thanks to Bernard Beatty for bringing this to my attention). The Byron Chronology in Romantic Circles is

even more neglectful. Its entry for 1809 says, "Byron continues his plans to go abroad," but makes no

mention of India. In it, what Byron did seems to have precedence over his plans, while I think that the

plans are important. 5 I would be grateful for any help in locating the Duke's reply to Byron. Marchand, possibly following

Prothero, guesses at its tone, but I have not seen any other reference to it. I do not even know if it exists,

but it may be in the Portland papers in the Nottingham University, or in the Public Record Office, which

has some papers from his second premiership of 1807-09. 6 An annoyed Byron mocked the Duke in a letter to Hodgson and a joking note to English Bards (LJ 1.) 7 Especially 1807-1809, the years that Portland was Prime Minister, a coincidence has no significance to

this paper except that Byron wrote to him in 1808.This was his second stint as Prime Minister. 8 See Matthew H.Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843

(1997; rpt. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1999), cited as Edney, 128-132. Trelawney says of Byron: "The poet

had an antipathy to everything scientific; maps and charts offended him; he would not look through a spy-

glass, and only knew the cardinal points of the compass" [quoted in His Very Self and Voice: Collected

Conversations of Lord Byron ed. Ernest J.Lovell Jr. (New York: Macmillan, 1954), cited as His Very Self

and Voice, 393]. My thanks to Bernard Beatty for bringing this to my attention. 9 The Wellesley brothers were patrons of William Lambton who initiated the Great Trigonometrical Survey

of India; Arthur Wellesley became master general of Ordnance (Edney 279; and see 274-279). ". . .the

years after 1800 saw the first of many detailed surveys that were to define the subsequent British

13

comprehension of India's lands and peoples. Preeminent among them were those of Francis Buchanan, who

surveyed Mysore and then eastern India for the East India (26) Company , Colin Mackenzie, cartographer

and indefatigable traveler throughout southern India who became India's first surveyor general" (Metcalf

25-26). Metcalf puts this down to the desire of Romantic politicians "committed to a sympathetic

understanding of India and its people" (25). 10 In his letters of 1805 to July 1810. 11 For critical blanks with regard to India, see note 2. I have focussed almost exclusively on Byron's letters

of 1805-1810. 12 Benjamin Disraeli and Bernard Beatty, respectively, but there must be others. 13 Byron's letters from Europe and Asia Minor in BLJ 1 are in a class of their own -- long, detailed, and in

their of map-like descriptions, almost like a Childe Harold in prose. For a good example of a map-like

letter, see Byron's letter to Henry Drury in BLJ 1. 237. For an instance of ex post facto detail in his letters,

see Byron's letter to Hanson from Gibraltar on 7 August, 1809 (BLJ 1.217-218). 14 For another example of "beauty" without details, see BLJ 1.226. 15 Review of Gell's Geography of Ithaca, and Itinerary of Greece (LJ 1. 350-365); "Mr.Gell mentions gold

mines in Greece: he should have specified their situation, as it certainly is not universally known" (LJ

1.362). 16 I am indebted to geographer and Byronist Dr.Kamala Menon for this insight. Byron wrote of topography

only after describing the people, clothes and customs of a place. See, e.g., his letters to his mother and

Henry Drury of 12 November, 1809 and 3 May, 1810. 17 See also, BLJ.1.121-22. 18 In 1808-1809, he must have discussed with Hobhouse about where and how they would travel, the

distance and time involved. From July 1807, when Byron returned briefly to Cambridge and became better

acquainted with Hobhouse, they were together off and on, for a year, at Cambridge, Brighton, and

Newstead, until they left for the Mediterranean in 1810. Perhaps this is why there is no written record of

their travel plans.

Hobhouse, on the other hand, mentions maps twice in his diary of 1809. On October 13, 1809, he wrote

that "The mountains seem to run, not as given in the maps, from north to south, but from west to east – the

Calamas in the same direction – east to west – through this lovely valley." Two days later, he made a note

to get "Meliteo’s geography [Geografia Palaia kai Nea (1728) by Bishop Meletios]." By December, they

had found a copy. "[W]e stole it from the Bishop of Chrysso,” said Byron (BLJ II 60). (This information is

from www.Hobby-O.com, Peter Cochran's website). 19 Friese, a German, went with Byron on his 1809 trip as his valet (Byron Chronology, Romantics Circle). 20 Projection maps are notoriously prejudiced and can be identical with ideological thematic maps. E.g., a

map produced by the USA may show the US dominating over everything else on the globe. 21 Most travel writers, the famous and the ordinary, do this.

14

22 Istanbul, the popular name for Constantinople in Byron's time, became its official name in the early

twentieth century. 23 From the time he was in Falmouth in June 1809 waiting for a favourable wind to begin his journey. 24 Confronted by the treacherous rocks of the Bosphorus, he thought of the Argonauts. His attention was

not on Jason but on Medea's nurse, a part of whose "dole" he translated in a letter to Henry Drury. "[H]ad

not this sublime passage been in my head, I should never have dreamed of ascending the said rocks, and

bruising my carcass in honour of the ancients" (BLJ.1.246). "Sublime" is tongue-in-cheek for the

translation is as follows:

Oh how I wish that an embargo

Had kept in port the good ship Argo!

Who, still unlaunch'd from Grecian docks,

Had never pass'd the Azure rocks;

But now I fear her trip will be a

Damned business for my Miss Medea, &c. &c. (BLJ.1. 246). 25 Is it just my impression or a fact that Byron does not describe what is not on a map of his reading, survey

or projection? He may have interrupted his description of the classical parts of Greece but he does begin to

describe it, whereas the natural beauties of Albania that have no place in either ancient Greek literature or

contemporary maps are not described. If my impression is correct, then it would fit in with Byron's dim

sense of adventure, his lack of curiosity about new places. But perhaps this was because he was a traveller,

not an explorer [a general distinction made by Fergus Fleming in Killing Dragons: The Conquest of the

Alps (London: Granta, 2000) ii-iii]. 26 Paradoxically, while he was in England, his letters even about places that he associated with literature

were relatively starved word maps. Once he was in a European or Asian town or village, however, the map-

like details proliferated. But even these descriptions remain on the niggardly side until 12 November, 1809,

when he wrote his first recognisable travelogue letter to his mother. 27 "This is of a piece of course with his reticence in showing the poem to Murray" (Bernard Beatty, in

private correspondence. Professor Beatty's help at every stage of this paper has been invaluable). 28 But see note on Col.Rennel below. 29 Between 1765-85, factors became soldiers and statesmen who ensured that they made money, by taking

commissions for clothing and food for the Companies, even if the company didn't. It wasn't a big scandal,

but it burgeoned until it was discovered that a regiment that was to be disbanded existed only on paper (see

Nabobs 28). 30 After 1757, the Company's civil service was a certain road to fortune, but the merchants were intensely

jealous of outside interference [see Percival Spear, The Nabobs: A Study of the Social Life of the English in

Eighteenth Century India (1932; rpt. London: Curzon P, 1980), cited as Nabobs, 2]. 31 As the French, who were permitted private trade, knew [see Rose Vincent, Empire of Dust: Jeanne

Dupleix and her times (1982), translated from the French by Uma Narayan with Prema Seetharaman (New

15

Delhi: Affiliated East-West P, n.d.), cited as Vincent, 49]. The British East India Company, too, had long

acknowledged that "private wealth and public good were by no means exclusive" (John Keay, The

Honourable Company: A History of the East India Company (1991; rpt. London: HarperCollins, 1993),

cited as The Honourable Company, 319). Keay cites the instance of Robert Clive's wealth, made through

the no-holds-barred method common to Europeans in India. The division of the Murshidabad treasury after

Plassey was as follows. The Treasury had only £1.5 million, but Mir Jaffer had promised over £2.5 million

to the British as compensation and presents. Less than half of this was due to the Company; the rest was for

private individuals as prize money etc. Clive got £234,000, and there was more to come. He had thereafter

a house in Berkeley Square for £10,000, 10 square miles of rural Shropshire which he bought for £70,000.

He was gifted the fertile area of Bengal known as 24 Parganas which had been the Company's but was

given to Mir Jaffer who now gave it to Clive. Clive thus became the Company's landlord, and too grand to

be a servant (see 320-322). 32 So wrote Col.Rennel, first Surveyor General of Bengal, in his diary in 1762, when the chairman was

going home with £300,000. This despite ostentatious living. "`Few private gentlemen live at less expense

that £5-6000 a year and those married about £8,000 £10,000. The Governor lives at the rate of £20,000 per

annum'" (Nabobs 39). 33 Europeans became wealthy in the service of native princes. Consider the case of Claude Martin's wealth.

In charge of the nawab of Avadh's arsenals, his first salary with the nawab was Rs.1,800 a month. As

superintendent of the arsenal he took a commission on all purchases, as well as on the purchase of curios

from Europe. He also cultivated indigo on hired or purchased land. He died in 1800 worth Rs.3,300,000

[see Nabobs 83; for a wonderful fictional account of Martin's life and times, see I.Allan Sealy, The Trotter-

nama (New Delhi: India Ink, 1999)]. Byron must have known of such Europeans. Could he have

considered a similar career for himself? 34 Since the Battle of Plassey (Nabobs 43). Travellers were fed with vague stories of untold wealth and

oriental luxury and extravagance, incredible vice, pomp, power. Nabobs was a household word in England

from the 1750s (Nabobs 14). Agents or dalals bought and sold goods, largely for interior trade 35 Private individuals who hoped to make money in India would come for about four years, hoping that

fever would not strike them dead. 36 See Holden Furber, "Trade and politics in Madras and Bombay" in Trade and Finance in Colonial India

1750-1860, edited by Asiya Siddiqi, Oxford India Readings, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995) 66-98, cited as

Furber, 72-73. Furber writes of the many ways in which the Company was cheated. The Company sent

woollens, lead, copper, iron and steel to Bombay. The Company's agents in the Persian Gulf disposed of

whatever remained unsold in India (84). Obviously the markets were being used for more than buying and

selling. Thus, when the factory at Basra ran at a loss, "its existence [was justified] as the key to the

overland route for sending dispatches to India via Vienna, Constantinople, and Aleppo." The Regulating

Act of 1773, prohibited revenue and administrative servants from private trade; Calcutta's Company

servants retained the right until 1789; its commercial servants were never restrained. (Marshall 167). Illicit

16

traders of all nationalities and agents of French, Dutch, Danish E.I.Companies were affected by the

parliamentary prohibitions (Furber 67). For details of these two Acts, see appendix. In 1787 Sir Archibald

Campbell, the new governor of Madras Presidency, asked every European who was not a Company servant

to give an account of himself (see Marshall 66). For a commentary on Pitt's India Act, see George

D.Bearce, British Attitudes to India: 1784-1858 (1961; rpt. Westpoint, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1982),

cited as Bearce, 13-14. A more recent historian attributes the ban on private trade to Whig attitudes towards

governance: " By 1793, when he left India. Cornwallis had set in place the institutional structure of the

Whig vision. The Company's servants were no longer allowed to engage in private trade or to amass large

(23) incomes by extortion; instead they were paid high, but foxed, salaries. . . . The district judge, given

magisterial authority and control of the police, embodied the Whig ideal of a government whose primary

task was the impartial administration of laws that secured property and order; the era of `flights of birds of

prey and passage' had come to an end, and with it British fear of their own complicity in practices of

`Oriental' despotism" [Thomas R.Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj in The New Cambridge History of India

III.4 (Cambridge UP; this edn. New Delhi: Foundations Books, 1998), cited as Metcalf, 21-23]. 37 Michael Edwardes, British India, 1772-1947: A survey of the nature and effects of alien rule (London:

Sidgwick and Jackson, 1967), cited as Edwardes, 27. The English were only one of many rivals competing

for the India trade, all equally ready to over-reach each other, but eventually the British held the field. From

1757, when Robert Clive, aided by the treacherous Mir Jaffer, defeated the Nawab of Bengal, the Company

was no longer a trading organization but became administrator and revenue collector of Bengal. 38 See Marshall 27. 39 It suited Britain to have this friendly buffer state between its territories and the overland route to India. 40 Bachhus' conquest of India is a major motif in Byron's Sardanapalus. 41 Overland routes through the western passes (Khyber, Bolan) had been known to antiquity, and became a

busy invader's channel thereafter. 3000 years before E.I.Company, there had been waves of Aryan

invaders; then circa 500 BC, Darius the Persian; in 300BC, Alexander the Macedonian; 997-1026 AD,

Mahmoud of Ghazni's 15 invasions; 1175-1206, Mohammad of Gor's 6 invasions; 1398, Tamerlane's sack

of Delhi; 1526, Babur the Turk from Kabul; 1739,Nadir Shah of Persia briefly seized Delhi; and in 1756,

Ahmad Shah Abdali the Afghan. The British were rightly worried! But until his death in 1843, Ranjit Singh

provided safe passage to the British, and saved them the trouble of fighting off the Afghan Ahmad Shah

Abdali themselves (see Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game (1990. Rpt. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990) cited as

Hopkirk, chapter 5. Among other overland travellers who went across Asia, to China, Persia, and/or India

were:

"ca. 1316-1330. Odoric of Pordenone. Franciscan monk who traveled via Constantinople and the Black

Sea to Persia, and then via the Indian Ocean to India in the early 1320s. From there he sailed around

southeast Asia to the east coast of China and spent several years in Beijing. His claim to have returned via

Tibet is dubious, although he apparently traveled overland, arriving back in Venice via the Black Sea and

Constantinople. His lengthy travel account, which he dictated in 1330, became a "best seller," in part

17

because of Odoric's indiscriminate mixture of tall tales with more authentic information. He occasionally

notes aspects of Chinese culture that were ignored by Marco Polo, "with whose account he was certainly

familiar" (de Rachewiltz). Important portions of his material were re-worked and given a further fictional

gloss by the author of the very popular late medieval travel fable attributed to John Mandeville.

1325-1354. Ibn Battuta. A native of Tangier (Morocco), Shams al-Din Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad Ibn

Battuta (1304-1368/9 or 1377) is famous for spending the years between 1325 and 1354, when he returned

home, traveling across North Africa and through much of Eurasia, all the way to China. His initial goal was

to participate in the pilgrimage to Mecca (the hajj); his interest in Muslim holy men and places dominates

portions of his text. While he may have kept notes, the account as we have it is "a work of literature, part

autobiography and part descriptive compendium" (Dunn). It was dictated to Ibn Djuzayy between 1354 and

1357. Some sections clearly do not contain eye-witness material; chronology is often confused. There are

critical views of the value of his material on Iran and questions about how much he saw in China. Among

the most valuable sections are his descriptions of Anatolia, the territories and customs of the Golden Horde,

and Southern India.

1339-1353. John of Marignolli. Franciscan sent as papal legate to Yüan (Mongol) Emperor of China.

Entered the lands of the Golden Horde via the Black Sea. His route probably ran through Urgench (S. of

Aral Sea), via Hami (north of the Taklamakan) to Beijing and Shang-tu, where he was received in August

1342. After three years, headed home via ship to Hormuz and then overland to the Levant. Included his

travel recollections in his chronicle of the history of Bohemia; his account was ignored until the nineteenth

century. . . .

1436-1452, 1473-1479. Giosofat Barbaro. A merchant who spent a decade and a half in the Venetian

colony of Tana at the mouth of the Don River and then in the 1470s traveled as an ambassador to Persia. In

his "Journey to Tana" he describes the regions adjoining the Black Sea as well as distant Muscovy, which

he never visited; his "Journey to Persia" follows closely his official report on his mission. The latter, at

least, incorporates information from other travelers and presumably was influenced by the author's having

seen the Persian travels of Contrarini. . . .

1466-1472. Afanasii Nikitin. A merchant from the Russian city of Tver on the upper Volga River who

traveled through Persia to India and spent more than 18 months there. He died just before reaching home.

The largest part of his travel account describes India; the account is of some interest for his advice to fellow

Christian merchants to leave their faith at home and profess Islam if they wished to prosper on the Silk

Road. There is a 1958 Russian film based on his journey; a Soviet oceanographic expedition named a

newly discovered undersea mount off the southern coast of India for Nikitin.

1474-1477. Ambrogio Contarini.Venetian ambassador to Persia, who traveled through Central Europe,

Ukraine, the Crimea and the Caucasus. In Persia he spent time in Tabriz and Isfahan, and returned home via

Muscovy and Poland. Although he traveled rapidly, he was a good observer. Apart from what he relates

about conditions in the Caucasus and Persia under Uzun Hasan, his narrative is of considerable interest for

its material on Moscow in the important reign of Grand Prince Ivan III.

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[And of course, there was]

1490s-1530. Babur. The great-great-great-grandson of Timur (Tamerlane), Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur

(1483-1530) wrote a stunning memoir of his early life and struggles in Central Asia and Afghanistan before

finally settling in northern India and founding the Mughal Empire. His Baburnama offers a highly educated

Central Asian Muslim's observations of the world in which he moved. There is much on the political and

military struggles of his time but also extensive descriptive sections on the physical and human geography,

the flora and fauna, nomads in their pastures and urban environments enriched by the architecture, music

and Persian and Turkic literature patronized by the Timurids. His most recent translator declares, "said to

'rank with the Confessions of St. Augustine and Rousseau, and the memoirs of Gibbon and Newton,'

Babur's memoirs are the first--and until relatively recent times, the only--true autobiography in Islamic

literature.

[Of especial interest here is the next traveller who went to "inner Asia"]

1602-1607. Benedict Goës. In 1594 the Portuguese Jesuit Benedict Goës joined a mission to the Mughal

Emperor Akbar, where he was chosen by the Jesuit leadership (partly because of his knowledge of Persian)

to travel on an exploratory mission to China via Kashgar. He died before reaching Beijing; what survived

of his notes and letters and some oral accounts were later (1615) combined by the famous Jesuit missionary

Matteo Ricci into his travel journal. Despite some inconsistencies and problems in dating, the account is a

unique record by a European of travel on the overland trade routes in inner Asia at the beginning of

the seventeenth century. One is struck by the route itself-- heading northwest into Afghanistan before going

north across the Hindu Kush to the headwaters of the Amu Darya, then east to Sarikol and on to Yarkand

and Kashgar before skirting the Taklamakan on the north. The account details human and natural threats to

travel and other aspects of the inner Asian trade, and provides some valuable information on the political

divisions of the time (emphasis added).

[And there were British commercial agents who traversed the area I believe Byron was interested in.]

1615-1616. Richard Steele and John Crowther. Agents for the British East India Company, traveled

from Agra, the Mughal capital in N. India, overland via Kandahar to the Safavid capital Isfahan. Their

account highlights the continuing importance of the overland trade routes, in part as a way of avoiding the

Portuguese control of the Indian Ocean ports. There is interesting information on the role of the Afghan

nomads along the route and an emphasis on the relative safety of travel in the period of Mughal and Safavid

strength and stability. Steele then returned to England by traveling overland to the Mediterranean and

taking a boat via Marseilles; Crowther returned to India/

1629-1675. Jean Baptiste Tavernier. French merchant/jeweler who probably knew the overland trade

routes through Persia better than any other European in the seventeenth century. His six voyages took him

to the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Persia and Mughal India; his interactions with the merchant communities

(notably the Armenians in Persia) gave him an insider's perspective. His account reflects the editing of a

professional writer but is precise and detailed. . . .

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1664-1667, 1671-1677. John Chardin. A French Hugenot jeweler, Chardin spent significant time in the

Caucasus and Persia and traveled to India. His is one of the major European accounts of Safavid Persia,

whose value is enhanced by his good knowledge of Persian. Persecution of Protestants in France forced

him to flee to England, where he was recognized as an expert on the Middle East" (http://www.silk-

road.com/toc/index.html). 42 One of Bernard Beatty's helpful formulations. 43 The Great Trigonometrical Survey, a cartographic landmark, began in 1812. Once Byron was in India, he

could have found his way to Afghanistan, but there was probably not much information available to him in

England. British Indian territory extended up to the Sutlej river in Punjab, but that was recent history. At a

time when it took more than six months to simply get from England to India, the possibility of information

from India having first found its way to England, then out of Government and Company offices into the

domain of young aristocrats is remote. But in his Third Discourse delivered on 2 February 1786, Sir

William Jones had said, " India, then, on its most enlarged scale in which the ancients appear to have

understood it, comprises an area forty degrees on each side, including a space almost as large as Europe;

being divided on the west from {Persia by the Arachosian mountains, limited on the east by the Chinese

part of the further peninsula, confined on the north by the wilds of Tartary, and extending to the south (6)

as far as the isles of Java. This trapezium . . .comprehends the stupendous hills of Tibet, the beautiful

valley of Kashmir, and all the domains of the old Indoseythians, the countries of Nepal and Bhutan,

Camrup or Assam, together with Siam, Ava, Racan, and the bordering kingdoms, as far as the China of the

hindus, or Sin of the Arabian geographers, not to mention the whole western peninsula, with the celebrated

island of Sinhala, at its southern extremity" ("On the Hindus" [Third Discourse] Sir William Jones:

Discourses an Essays, ed. Moni Bagchee (New Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1984), cited as Jones, 5-

6] 44 C.A.Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770-

1870 (1983; rpt. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1992) 1. The Madras presidency was bankrupt since 1780s and was

subsidised by Bengal (Furber 72). This would explain perhaps why Byron was keen on going to Bengal,

and not simply stopping at Madras. 45 Peter Cochran's suggestion (in private correspondence). Byron did not use capitalized words

indiscriminately, so I attached some significance to the upper case in "Interior." If the phrase was a proper

noun, its meaning of Byron's time is so thoroughly lost to us that we assumed we knew what it meant. I

found myself using Interior of Asia and Central Asia synonymously, even before I had any evidence that

this was a possibility in Byron's time. My research even brought in the possibility of Tibet via Bhutan, and

parts of the Silk Route to China. Questioning a Byron scholar who has worked on the region (Peter

Cochran: "Anywhere out of sight of the Mediterranean"), a geographer who is interested in Byron and

travel (Kamala Menon: "The Levant"), and a My research even brought in the possibility of Tibet via

Bhutan, and parts of the Silk Route to China.Russian history specialist (Madhavan Palat), made it obvious

20

that there was no certainty about what Byron meant. My research even brought in the possibility of Tibet

via Bhutan, and parts of the Silk Route to China. 46 Professor Madhavan Palat (in private correspondence). 47 That was the only way to defeat Britain. Other enemies of England had the same idea, but only the

Japanese put it practice in 1945, and they came through the eastern passage (see Madhavan Palat, Tsarist

Russian Imperialism, Studies in History 4. 1 & 2 n.s. (1988) (New Delhi: Sage, 1988). 48 Napoleon thought of himself as a new Alexander, and Alexander of Macedon had taken 50,000 men

overland to the banks of the Indus "`It is always wise and politic to do what destiny commands,'" said

Napoleon, something "`that will make this crowd of pygmies bow their heads: the pygmies who cannot see

that the prototype of the present age must be sought in the remote periods of history, and not in the

newspaper articles of the century that has just closed. . . . '"[Napoleon, quoted in Emile Ludwig, Napoleon,

trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (Bombay: Jaico, 1991), cited as Ludwig, 263]. But to reach Persia, Napoleon

would need to pass through Turkey. These plans, contained in the secret clauses of the Treaty of Tilsit, had

been instantly conveyed by spies to Britain. The British "began to view with apprehension the countries

bordering the western frontiers of their territories -- Persia, Afghanistan, and the Central Asian Khanates"

(Edwardes 14) 49 "Byron's reasons for going to India were not literary but quasi-political. He knew that Napoleon had his

eye on it and Byron was interested (Rome Assyria) in World Empires. Going there would be like

Alexander the Great or Napoleon, something that a man of action not a poet did. A rehearsal potentially of

his final rather than first trip to Greece. I think you need to push points like this to a Byron audience"

(Bernard Beatty's comment on an earlier draft of this paper). Professor Beatty's point is well taken, but

Byron's interest in empires must have been consequent upon the fact that new European empires were then

being forged. Why else would he refer to the Assyrian, Macedonian, and Roman empires (Sardanapalus,

The Deformed Transfromed), but have virtually no reference to the great empires of the East (barring a

stereotypical remark about a non-developing China)? 50 Boards Secret Drafts, March 2, 1808, in Suhash Chakravarty, From Khyber to Oxus: A Study in Imperial

Expansion (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1976), cited as Chakravarty, 10. Afghanistan had been a

launching pad for conquerors aiming for Central Asia (Babur, descendant of Chengiz Khan and Taimur) as

well as India (Alexander, Taimur, Babur, Nadir Shah, Ahmad Shah Abdali). Kinneir was dispatched to

Afghanistan to see whether an invasion from the northwest was possible. He found that one land route lay

"directly eastward through the Middle East," which "a Napoleon" might take, and another "south-eastward

through Central Asia . . .would be Russia's most obvious choice" (Hopkirk 71) 51 Peter Cochran, "Nature’s Gentler Errors: Byron, Ali Pasha and the Ionian Islands," BJ 1995: 22-35. By

1809, Talleyrand had openly betrayed Napoleon to Britain. 52 In a correspondence full of curious silences and statements, here is another. The Duke of Portland,

known for his carelessness with money, owed the Byron estate £1000 for which he had given a mortgage

but had failed to pay the interest for several years. In April 1809, Byron asked Hanson to "if possible, get

21

the principal, as well as the interest which may be due, pray attend to this as I must have cash any way &

every way . . ." (BLJ 1. 201). Nine days later, he told Hanson that "the Duke of Portland will not pay his

debt. . . .my debts are increasing, and it is with difficulty I can command a shilling. . ." (202). As happens

repeatedly in these letters, his urgent need for money and for going abroad occur together, but even if could

have used the Duke's debt to lever permission for India, he did not.52 53 R.C.Dallas, in his recollection of April 25 to June 11, 1809, says that Byron "had arranged with Mr

.Hobhouse his plan of going abroad early in June, but whither, I believe, was not exactly settled; for he

sometmes talked to me of crossing the line, sometimes of Persia and India" (His Very Self and Voice 21-

22). John Galt, looking back to March 26-April 5, 1810, the time when Byron ended his visit to Albania,

says that he "was struck by a new phase in [Byron's] character; he seemed actuated by no purpose--he

spoke no more of passing `beyond Aurora and the Ganges,' but seemed disposed to let the current of

chances carry him as it might. If he had any specific object in view, it was something that made him

hesitate between going home and returning to Athens when he should have reached Constantinople, now

become the ultimate goal of his intended travels" (His Very Self and Voice 29). 54 Two hundred years since it began, the Great Game continues to build reputations and careers, as a visit to

www will show. 55 The battle of Freidland was fought in June 1807; the Treaty of Tilsit was signed on 7 July, 1807. 56 The Tsar and Napoleon thought of carving up the Ottoman empire between them. Napoleon had

suggested to Tsar Alexander that they might get back Constantinople for Christianity, but this was not their

real reason for their wanting Constantinople. It was strategically important. The Mediterranean and

Constantinople were crucial to Napoleon's plans. He is reported to have said, "`Constantinople? That

carries world dominion with it!'" (Ludwig, 254). "`An army of 50,000 . . .could march to Constantinople,

and thence hurl itself on Asia. Once it reached the Euphrates, England would be at the feet of the

Continent'" (262). He had to take the overland route since England was bound to defeat him at sea. This

plan was the start of the Great Game. "The `Great Game' between London and St.Petersburg. . . .was

pursued throughout the century . . . .[it] dates back to the Treaty of Tilsit (1807) and Napoleon's plan for an

Indian and Persian expeditions [sic] in 1809 (with Russian help). . . .it was a policy of the government of

India, in the main supported by London, to build up a buffer of smaller - preferably allied - states between

itself and the Russian Empire. Either because a direct boundary between Britain and Russia might lead to a

war between them, or because it might lead to Indian states siding with Russia. This vitally concerned

Persia and Afghanistan, to some extent also Mesopotamia and, much less importantly, Bukhara - -which

British India more or less recognized as a Russian sphere of influence. Thus the Great Game did not

primarily concern Central Asia. . . . Nor was it a frontiersmen struggle, but the central policy of the

Government of India (and London as well). . . "(R.J.Barendse, Letter to Editor, IIAS newsletter Online /

No.18 / Regions / Central Asia). 57 BLJ 1.230, 232, 234, 238, 244. 58 BLJ 1. 246, 252, 254 (June 17, 1810 to July 4, 1810); my emphasis.

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59 In this context Byron's Whig affiliations mattered little. There was only one British view about

consolidating and protecting Britain's hold over India: India belonged to Britain, and every other imperial

wannabe had to be kept out. As regards reputations being made or repaired in India, Stephen Popham,

brother of the future admiral Sir Henry Popham, "fled to India bankrupt, spent four years in Madras, during

which he made his fortune and his reputation." (Furber 77; my emphasis). Popham's was not an unusual

story, emulated by young Englishmen of the time. Clive's is a more famous instance. 60 Peter Cochran, "Nature’s Gentler Errors." Peter Cochran alerts us to Byron's obscure phrases for his

possible political plans, but he has not said that among the things Byron did not mention in 1809-1810 were

the new political conditions by which he could to visit Constantinople, which he could not do in 1808.