Lord Byron - Fragment of a Novel

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Oct 5, 2020 21:19:29 GMT fritzmaitland said:

5th of Shocktober - meant to go modern, but something lured me further back into the past. Back to 1819 in fact - John Polidori’s The Vampyre. Written during the infamous stay at the Villa Deodati, where Polidori was staying with Lord Byron, Mary Wollenscraft, Percy Shelley and Claire Claremont. Immortalised in Ken Russell’s Gothic. And Howard Brenton’s Bloody Poetry. And Haunted Summer. And a Spanish film with Hugh Grant as Byron and Liz Hurley as Clairmont.
The ghost story writing competition produced Frankenstein as well as The Vampyre. Byron’s effort went nowhere, but produced A Fragment aka Fragment Of A Novel aka The Burial : A Fragment although it appears in the anthology I have that contains The Vampyre as The End Of My Journey.

"Fragment of a Novel", "A Fragment", or "The Burial: A Fragment" is a short work in prose by the poet Lord Byron. It was written as a result of a ghost story challenge given by the poet during a gathering at the Villa Diodati, at Geneva, on the 17th June 1816. Present were Byron, his physician John William Polidori, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin (She had yet to marry Shelley), and Claire Clairmont, Mary's stepsister.
Mary Shelley, in her 1831 Introduction to her novel Frankenstein, explains how this small fragment came about:

In the summer of 1816, we visited Switzerland, and became the neighbours of Lord Byron. At first we spent our pleasant hours on the lake, or wandering on its shores; and Lord Byron, who was writing the third canto of Childe Harold, was the only one among us who put his thoughts upon paper. These, as he brought them successively to us, clothed in all the light and harmony of poetry, seemed to stamp as divine the glories of heaven and earth, whose influences we partook with him.

But it proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house. Some volumes of ghost stories, translated from the German into French, fell into our hands. There was the History of the Inconstant Lover, who, when he thought to clasp the bride to whom he had pledged his vows, found himself in the arms of the pale ghost of her whom he had deserted. There was the tale of the sinful founder of his race, whose miserable doom it was to bestow the kiss of death on all the younger sons of his fated house, just when they reached the age of promise. His gigantic, shadowy form, clothed like the ghost in Hamlet, in complete armour, but with the beaver up, was seen at midnight, by the moon's fitful beams, to advance slowly along the gloomy avenue. The shape was lost beneath the shadow of the castle walls; but soon a gate swung back, a step was heard, the door of the chamber opened, and he advanced to the couch of the blooming youths, cradled in healthy sleep. Eternal sorrow sat upon his face as he bent down and kissed the forehead of the boys, who from that hour withered like flowers snapt upon the stalk. I have not seen these stories since then; but their incidents are as fresh in my mind as if I had read them yesterday.

"We will each write a ghost story," said Lord Byron; and his proposition was acceded to. There were four of us. The noble author began a tale, a fragment of which he printed at the end of his poem of Mazeppa. Shelley, more apt to embody ideas and sentiments in the radiance of brilliant imagery, commenced one founded on the experiences of his early life. Poor Polidori had some terrible idea about a skull-headed lady, who was so punished for peeping through a key-hole—what to see I forget—something very shocking and wrong of course; but when she was reduced to a worse condition than the renowned Tom of Coventry, he did not know what to do with her, and was obliged to despatch her to the tomb of the Capulets, the only place for which she was fitted. The illustrious poets also, annoyed by the platitude of prose, speedily relinquished the uncongenial task.


A Fragment was published alongside Byron's narrative poem Mazeppa, without Byron's permission (and much to his annoyance) by the publisher John Murray in 1819.

A FRAGMENT.

June 17, 1816.

IN the year 17—, having for some time determined on a journey through countries not hitherto much frequented by travellers, I set out, accompanied by a friend, whom I shall designate by the name of Augustus Darvell. He was a few years my elder, and a man of considerable fortune and ancient family—advantages which an extensive capacity prevented him alike from undervaluing or overrating. Some peculiar circumstances in his private history had rendered him to me an object of attention, of interest, and even of regard, which neither the reserve of his manners, nor occasional indications of an inquietude at times nearly approaching to alienation of mind, could extinguish.

Here is Byron's fragment in full:

en.wikisource.org/wiki/Mazeppa,_a_Poem/A_Fragment