John William Polidori - The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori

Remounting, we soon arrived at Dover, where we slept, when the packet-boat captain had sufficiently disturbed us.

April 25. —This day was spent at Dover. The greater part was occupied in procuring what had been neglected in London, and in seeing the carriage well packed up. After dinner, however, we went in search of Churchill's tomb, raised, we had learned, to his memory by his friend Wilkes. Arrived at the house of the sexton, he led us to a ruined church, passing through which we came into a churchyard, where children, heedless and unconscious of what they trampled on, sportively ran amid the raised turf graves. He pointed out to us a tombstone, undistinguished from those of the tradesmen near him, having merely, like them, a square tablet stuck into the ground, whereon was written, "Here lie the remains of the celebrated Churchill.

[By Churchill.] The green turf was beginning already to decay upon his tomb, which when the sexton heard us lamenting he assured us that his grave, as well as the rest, would be newly decked as soon as Nature had vested its fullest green—for that was an old custom. Churchill owed, then, only to a common hand what the pride of a friend refused—the safety of his burial-place. Wilkes only sought the gratification of his vanity. While he consigned his friend's last relics to the keeping of a tablet, he consigned his own pride in such a friend to the keeping of a column in his own grounds. Yet I do not know whether the scene was not more moving, though no vainly pompous inscription pointed out the spot where this poet was buried.

There were two authors; one, the most distinguished of his age; another, whose name is rising rapidly; (and a third, ambitious for literary distinction). What a lesson it was for them when, having asked the sexton if he knew why so many came to see this tomb, he said: "I cannot tell; I had not the burying of him."

[Byron, after settling in the Villa Diodati near Geneva, recorded this same incident in a composition entitled Churchill's Grave, a Fact Literally Rendered . He wrote a memorandum to say that in this poem he had intentionally imitated the style of Wordsworth, "its beauties and its defects." The composition therefore is essentially un-Byronic in method, and perhaps Wordsworth would not have recognized in it many of his own "beauties." The lines are as follows—

Charles Churchill the satirist, a clergyman who had given up his standing in the Church, had died in 1764 at Boulogne, aged only thirty-three. It is clear that his renown was still considerable in 1816; it is now barely more than a literary reminiscence.]

We then returned home, where, having delivered my play into their hands, I had to hear it laughed at—(an author has always a salvo) partly, I think, from the way in which it was read. One of the party, however—to smoothe, I suppose, my ruffled spirits—took up my play, and apparently read part with great attention, drawing applause from those who before had laughed. He read on with so much attention that the others declared he had never been so attentive before.

[Further on it would appear that this play was named Cajetan . I know nothing about it. The name Cajetan is in Italian Gaetano, which was the Christian name of Polidori's father.]

I afterwards went out, and did a very absurd thing, which I told; and found I had not only hurt myself but might possibly hurt others for whom I cared much more.

April 26. —We embarked at 9 o'clock, much hurried, with three servants.

[This means, to judge from a published letter by Byron, 9 o'clock on the evening of April 25. The three servants were Berger (a Swiss), William Fletcher, and Robert Rushton. Mr. Davies and Mr. Hobhouse, it will be understood, remained ashore.]

When at a distance, we waved our hands and hats, bidding adieu. The wind was completely in our teeth, but we made the passage in sixteen hours. The coast of Dover is very striking, though miserably barren-looking. The cliff is steep, though not such as Shakespear paints. The castle—at a distance, which is the only way I viewed it—is miserable. Sailing from England, I for a long time kept my eye upon its stern white cliffs, thinking on her who bade me join her remembrance with the last sight of my native soil.

[This points pretty clearly to a love-passage, perhaps a matrimonial engagement. As a fact Polidori never married. The lady may possibly have been Eliza Arrow, a relative in India, with whom he, at a rather earlier date, had interchanged various letters.]

They at last faded from my sight, and all on board looked dreary; the sea dashed over us, and all wore an aspect of grief. Towards night a most beautiful spectacle was seen by myself, who alone remained on deck. The stars shedding merely a twilight enabled me to see the phosphoric light of the broken foam in all its splendour. But the most beautiful moment was that of its first appearance: no sound around save the sullen rushing of the vessel, and the hoarse cries of the heaving sailor; no light save a melancholy twilight, which soothed the mind into forgetfulness of its grief for a while—a beautiful streak following the lead through the waves. We arrived at Ostend at 2 o'clock in the morning.

[Polidori's chronology is a little confusing here. If the party left Dover at 9 p.m. on April 25, and took sixteen hours in the sea-passage, they must have reached Ostend at 1 in the afternoon . There is also a confusion immediately afterwards, for he repeats the date for which he has already accounted, viz.]

April 26. —We passed through the gates, paying a franc a head, and went to the Cour Impériale. We were astonished at the excellent inn and good treatment, except that I got a dreadful headache from the smell of paint in my bedroom, and that the tea was perfumed.