(no subject)

I've reemerged from the land of No Internet into the bustling city of Edinburgh, where I'm doing research in the National Library of Scotland.

Today's interesting research moment comes from this letter by Lord Byron to John Murray, written in Venice in 1817, in which Byron contemplates the possibility of his own early death, and the sensation that would cause. Byron really is a funny, swaggering kind of writer: it doesn't come across in typeface, so imagine lots of curly cues and expressive dashes:

"You tell me to 'take care of myself' --'faith - and I will - I won't be posthumous got if I can help it -
- Notwithstanding - only think - what a 'Life & Adventures" -- while I am in full scandal - would be worth -
together with the 'mantra' of my writing death - the sixteen beginnings of poems never to be finished.
-- Do ya think I would not have shot myself last year - had I not luckily recollected that Mrs. Clamant & Lady Noel & all the old women in England would have been delighted? - lends the agreeable 'Lunacy' of 'the Governor's(?) Quest" - and the regrets of two or three or half a dozen . --
- Be assured - that I would live for two reasons - or more -
--:there are one or two people whom I have to put out of the world -- & as many into it -- before I can 'depart in peace' if I do so before - I have not fulfilled my mission. --
--Besides when I turn thirty -- I will turn decent  --
- I feel a great vocation that way - in Catholic churches. (2)
 

My clumsy paraphrase of this letter is as follows:
 

"I won't die if I can help it, -- but only think of how much money you could make off my scandalous biography! And my unpublished work! Do you think I wouldn't have shot myself last year if I hadn't realized that all the moral types in England would be delighted? Sure *some* women might miss me, but it's the expected thing for a bad man to meet a bad end... But be assured, I will live for 2 reasons: there are a couple of people I have to kill first, and a couple more kids I should father, before I can depart in peace. I have not fulfilled my mission.
Besides, when I turn thirty, I will turn decent, and prove it by joining the Catholics. "
(The Catholics being the gothic menace of 19C England, and a scandalous sect to join.)

So there you go. As far as old letters go, Byron's are actually fairly entertaining.