Gordon: A Tale

Gordon: A Tale. London: T. and J. Allman, 1821.

Consists of two cantos of 41 and 71 stanzas, respectively, and footnotes, totaling 79 pages.

In her preface LCL describes Gordon: A Tale as ‘partly a burlesque parody in the style of Don Juan; partly a sacrifice of praise offered at the shrine of talent, and partly arguments proving its immoral tendency’.[1] This mixture of motives and the much greater length makes the poem a less impressive send-up than A New Canto, though it has its moments. It begins with the narrator purchasing the first two cantos of Don Juan and praising Byron’s abilities to describe scenes, evoke emotions, and in general ‘set all your soul on fire’. The narrator opens the new cantos of Don Juan expecting to find ‘intellectual joys’, but is strangely unaffected by Byron’s ‘persuasive song’, and his fire sympathetically dies in the grate. While the author of Gordon finds some praiseworthy things in Don Juan, Byron is faulted for becoming distracted from doing good with his abilities and losing himself in humorous asides. ‘[J]ust as he is on the point of winning’, notes the narrator disappointedly, ‘[h]e turns aside, sits down, and falls a grinning’.[2] The narrator also laments, ‘Would that he used his talents for our good!’ Instead, Byron’s genius is used ‘but to infect: / Its powers perverted, all its time mispent’.[3]

In the second canto of Gordon, the narrator meets a tall, cadaverous visitor whose attacks on Byron cause the narrator to rise in his defense. A long argument ensues over whether Byron is truly immoral or has simply described nature without being aware of doing probable harm to the morality of readers. To bolster her argument, Lamb introduces in a footnote a lengthy quotation from a review of Don Juan that was published in the Imperial Magazine for May 1820 attacking Byron for treating adultery comically and complaining that in Don Juan ‘sacred things are treated with levity’.[4]

The tall visitor in Gordon is now revealed as a supernatural being who calmly discourses while penetrating screams are heard in the background. Through the keyhole, the narrator glimpses enough to guess that his servants are being tortured.[5] The ghastly stranger compares Don Juan to ‘a destructive stream of filthy water’, a burning desert, Adam’s body before he received his soul, a whirlpool, and a poisoned apple.[6] Gordon’s purpose, it emerges, is identical to that of A New Canto. Byron has squandered his genius merely to show off. His reward ‘for such enormous pains / Is, ‘Byron did it!--is this all he gains?’[7] The best parts of Gordon: A Tale come toward the end, with an apocalyptic scene that is ironically withdrawn in the concluding stanzas, just as it was in the conclusion of A New Canto. Lamb shows that she has thought through the various arguments that might be made for and against Byron’s seeming agnosticism. She has also emulated Byron’s tendency to show off, and seeks to establish her equality in the field of learning by introducing Greek language and allusions.

Lamb paid to have Gordon published, gave copies to friends, and sent some to the magazines. No reviews appeared until two years later, when the Monthly Review printed a notice expressing the hope that the author ‘will suffer many, many suns and moons to rise and set, to grow and wane, before he re-commits himself to the press’.[8]

Reviews:

Monthly Review New Series. London. v.96 (1823): 325-36. An omnibus review of three books, beginning, “Here is a third in the list, and belonging to the third degree of comparison: bad, worse, worst. Charity is said to “cover a multitude of sins,” and surely a multitude of our sins (if unfortunately they are so numerous) must be expiated by the penanace which wew undergo in reading such productions as this! We apprehend that it is the effort of a very young writer; and we sincerely hope that he will suffer many, many, suns and moons to rise and set, to grow and wane, before he re-commits himself to the press, and again attempts the chair of the critic or the car of the poet. . . .”

The Gentlemen's Magazine: and Historical Chronicle v. 92 (1822): 48-50. Review of Gordon: A Tale together with Byron's Don Juan, Cantos III, IV, and V. It quotes Gordon's preface stating that it is "a poem which is partly a burlesque parody on the style of Don Juan, etc. . . . ." The reviewer believes its "lines are occasionally of high character," and quotes Canto I, stanzas 29 and 33 to prove that this is so. But since the reviewer has little taste for Don Juan in the first place, the tribute of Gordon doesn't appeal: ". . . we never could vindicate the taste with which Don Juan has been brought upon our stage, and heartily wish that it had from the first been prohibited by the Lord Chamberlain. It seems to us just as disgusting as fitting up a charnel-house like Vauxhall; as taking the history of the villanies, debaucheries, murders, trial, execution, and judgment after death of an accomplished impenitent criminal, and decorating these horrors with all the fairy charms of pleasurable and attractive embellishments, the awful sympathy excited by a ghost, and the sportive tricks of an ingenious buffoon."

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Notes

[1] The entire Preface reads as follows: "The amazing fecundity of Lord Byron's genius, as proved by his last production, Don Juan, is universally acknowledged. But while the sublimity of his intellect transports us with astonishment, we are, on the other hand, deeply grieved to find he exerts his powerful talents only to destroy what is beneficial to man—Morality. Viewing him and his production in this light, has given birth to the following Poem, which is partly a burlesque parody on the style of Don Juan; partly a sacrifice of praise offered at the shrine of talent, and partly arguments proving its immoral tendency. It need only be added, this Poem was written long before the appearance of the three Cantos of Don Juan recently published, and at a time when it was doubtful whether his Lordship would continue the Tale. Had Don Juan been confined to the two first Cantos, it is more than probable the following Poem would have been limited within the circle of the Author’s friends."

[2] Gordon: A Tale, Canto 1, stanza 36.

[3] Gordon: A Tale, Canto 1, stanzas 37, 39.

[4] Gordon: A Tale, note (g) to Canto 2. (Gordon a Tale p. 75). .

[5] Gordon: A Tale, Canto 2, stanzas 25-30.

[6] Gordon: A Tale, Canto 1, stanza 47.

[7] Gordon: A Tale, Canto 2, stanza 54.

[8] Review of Gordon: A Tale, Monthly Review, second series, Vol. 96 (1822?), pp. 325-26.