{"id":1281,"date":"2016-07-18T10:26:28","date_gmt":"2016-07-18T10:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=1281"},"modified":"2016-07-28T12:26:34","modified_gmt":"2016-07-28T12:26:34","slug":"on-this-day-in-1816-18-july-byrons-darkness-and-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=1281","title":{"rendered":"On This Day in 1816: 18 July, apocalypse, and Byron’s ‘Darkness’"},"content":{"rendered":"

July’s ‘On This Day’ post is by Patrick Vincent<\/a>,\u00a0Professor of English and American literature at the University of Neuch\u00e2tel in Switzerland. With Angela Esterhammer and Diane Piccitto, he recently published Rousseau, Romanticism, Switzerland: New Prospects<\/em> (Palgrave 2015). This year he helped organize the \u201cByron is Back! \u201d<\/a> exhibition at Chillon Castle as part of the bicentenary commemoration of the summer of 1816.<\/p>\n

In the post below he considers the way in which the idea of apocalypse shaped the writing of those present during the 1816 Geneva summer, and the extant sources (including the weather reports) that tell us about early\u00a0July 1816.<\/p>\n

We are\u00a0looking for future contributors to this series, which seeks to celebrate the 200th anniversaries of important literary\/historical events of the Romantic Period. Please contact\u00a0<\/em>anna.mercer@york.ac.uk\u00a0if you\u00a0are interested.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On this Day:\u00a018 July 1816<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

by Patrick Vincent<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When the last sunshine of the expiring day<\/p>\n

In summer\u2019s twilight weeps itself away,<\/p>\n

Who hath not felt the softness of the hour<\/p>\n

Sink on the heart\u2014as dew along the flower?<\/p>\n

– Byron, \u201cMonody on the Death of the Righ Honourable R.B. Sheridan\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

On 18 July 1816, the world was expected to come to an end. As Jeffrey Vail and others have noted, an astronomer in Bologna had predicted that the sun would die out on that day, an event often associated with Byron\u2019s composition of the deeply pessimistic \u201cDarkness.\u201d Although we are unsure when the poet composed his apocalyptic dream vision, we do know that he wrote another poem thematizing the sun\u2019s disappearance, the \u201cMonody on the Death of the Righ Honourable R.B. Sheridan\u201d sometime between 7 July 1816, when Richard Sheridan died, and 22 July, when Byron sent the poem to Douglas Kinnaird. Possibly inspired by a Lake Geneva sunset, this lesser known work rehearses many of the same themes as the summer\u2019s other literary productions, most notably its strange atmospheric conditions. The poem\u2019s controlling symbol, the sun is represented as \u201ca Power\u201d that \u201cHath pass\u2019d from day to darkness\u201d, yet whose \u201cPromethean heat\u201d will forever continue \u201cto cast its halo\u201d in spite of the \u201cpublic gaze\u201d, which makes \u201cHearts electric\u2014charged with light from heaven \/ Black with the rude collision\u201d.<\/p>\n

In 1826, the painter William Edward West reported an anecdote in which Byron apparently attributed the composition of \u201cDarkness\u201d to a \u201ccelebrated dark day, on which the fowls went to roost at noon, and the candles were lighted as at midnight.\u201d I have come across no other evidence that such a day occured on or around 18 July, or ever at all, yet the story has contributed to 1816\u2019s gothic reputation. Byron\u2019s prodigious literary productivity during his time in Switzerland, in particular in July when he composed the \u201cMonody,\u201d \u201cPrometheus,\u201d \u201cStanzas to Augusta\u201d and perhaps also \u201cDarkness\u201d in addition to finishing and correcting Childe Harold III <\/em>and The Prisoner of Chillon<\/em>, strikes me as more significant than the Genevan summer\u2019s overly rehashed gothic incidents. It is as if the poet refused to allow the weather, European politics, or even his exile extinguish his own Promethan heat. And while the \u201cMonody\u201d suggests the sun\u2019s extinction may indeed have been a topic of conversation at Diodati, the opening lines\u2019 calm, elegiac tone better captures villa\u2019s daily routine and largely unremarkable incidents than do the many dark and doomsdayish accounts of 1816.<\/p>\n

Primary sources for the month of July 1816 are scarcer than for the rest of the summer: Polidori had stopped keeping his diary on 2 July, Mary only began hers on the first day of their Chamonix excursion on the 21st<\/sup>, and Byron was either too depressed, or more likely, too busy writing and sailing to keep a regular correspondence. Through Lady Frances Shelley\u2019s diary and several other contemporary accounts, we know that the poet\u2019s nemesis, Henry Brougham, had arrived in town along with 1100 other English visitors, some of whom enjoyed playing cricket at Plainpalais, others spreading gossip on Diodati\u2019s scandalous household. We also know that Byron and Polidori went to Coppet for the first time on 12 July, where the second Duchess of Devonshire pretended to faint and the poet discussed Glenarvon<\/em> with Madame de Sta\u00ebl. In Geneva\u2019s register of foreigners, we can read that the two men received their permis de s\u00e9jour <\/em>the next day. Claire\u2019s two undated notes in July reveal that things between her and Byron had soured\u2014her attemtps at finding a pretext to see him, notably by fair copying his poems, are sure signs of his rejection. Finally, in a lesser known anecdote recorded by a town magistrate and discovered by Claire Eliane Engel, we learn that thieves tried to break into Diodati on 17 July, inciting the Cologny mayor to make an inquiry.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"BLOG1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"BLOG2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Marc-Auguste Pictet, Tableau des observations m\u00e9t\u00e9orologiques faites au Jardin Botanique de Gen\u00e8ve, July 1816, in Biblioth\u00e8que universelle<\/em>, Sciences et Arts, volume 2 (Gen\u00e8ve: Biblioth\u00e8que britannique, 1816).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Another important source, the daily meteorological recordings published in the Biblioth\u00e8que universelle <\/em>indicate the weather that month was not as dramatic as often portrayed: a recent meteorological study based on this data argues that it was the summer\u2019s climate that was extreme, not its weather. The sky was indeed overcast, the temperature lower than the seasonal norms, and it rained an unusual amount, causing flooding around all Switzerland\u2019s lakes, yet the summer also had its good days. On July 17th, for instance, it was 10 degrees and raining, on the 18th it warmed to 16 degrees at 2pm but was still overcast, and the next day the temperature climbed to 20 degrees, allowing Lady Shelley to complain in her diary of the excessive heat. Apocalyptic fears nevertheless did make some headway among Geneva\u2019s well-educated and usually staid populace. In his less than reliable memoirs published in 1883, for example, Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Vernes-Prescott recalls that \u201csermons were attended assiduously\u201d (\u201cles pr\u00e9dications sont tr\u00e8s suivis\u201d). Furthermore, a brief article on the first page of the local Gazette de Lausanne<\/em> on 19 July (the same day that Sheridan\u2019s death and Brougham\u2019s arrival in Geneva were reported) cites Parisian astronomer Charles Rouy\u2019s popular demonstrations at the Mus\u00e9eum uranographique <\/em>in order to help dispell these superstitions:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0Les taches actuellement visibles sur le soleil, le froid, et les pluyes extraordinaires dans cette saison \u00e9tant devenus l\u2019objet de toutes les conversations et d\u2019une crainte presque g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de la prochaine extinction de ce flambeau de notre syst\u00e8me plan\u00e9taire, et par cons\u00e9quent de la fin du monde, M. Rouy a cru devoir contribuer \u00e0 dissiper les craintes chim\u00e9riques que la malveillance et la superstition se plaisent \u00e0 propager. C\u2019est dans ce but qu\u2019il ajout\u00e9 aux d\u00e9monstations qu\u2019il fait chaque soir dans son mus\u00e9um uranographique<\/em> le repr\u00e9sentation des sudites taches sur le disque du soleil, en y ajoutant l\u2019explication de ce ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne\u00a0(p. 1)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[Translation:\u00a0The spots currently visible on the sun, the cold, and the rain that is out of the ordinary at this season have become the topic of all conversations and an almost universal source of fear that the planetary system’s flame will soon die out, hence ending the world. As such, M. Rouy has thought it necessary to help dissipate these chimerical fears propagated by malevolence and superstition. With that goal in mind he added a representation of these sun spots to his evening demonstrations at his Mus\u00e9um uranographique, together with an explanation of this phenomenon.]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

As he noted in his 20 July letter to Kinnaird, Byron intended his \u201cMonody\u201d to be delivered with \u201cEnergy\u201d at Drury Lane. One may argue that poem likewise shares Rouy\u2019s skepticism regarding the possibility of the sun\u2019s extinction, and might be read as a hopeful counterpoint to \u201cDarkness,\u201d dissipating the forces of superstition and fear that belittle man\u2019s genius.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"BLOG3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

La Gazette de Lausanne et Journal Suisse<\/em>, Friday 19 July 1816<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Far more worrisome than these imaginary apocalyptic warnings was the all-too-real suffering, already much discussed in this blog, brought upon by the end of the wartime economy, the rain and the cold, but also poor government planning, as historian Daniel Kr\u00e4mer has recently shown. These elements are arguably more important to the genesis of \u201cDarkness\u201d than the Bologna prophecy itself. The Gazette de Lausanne <\/em>regularly reported the hardships but always in its backpages, stating on 16 July for example that snow fell in the Bernese Alps and that cattle had to be killed because of lack of feed. The Biblioth\u00e8que universelle<\/em> in July commented that all the harvests were late, and potatoes rotting. Unlike in other regions of Switzerland, the Genevan government was able to avoid a famine thanks to its emergency storehouse of grain and government intervention in the sale and pricing of flour. As Lady Shelley commented, \u201cScarcity, owing to the destruction of crops, has been felt here also, and white bread is forbidden, under an amende of eight louis d\u2019or.\u201d Thanks to a letter that emerged at an auction in 1975, we know that Byron and Shelley were also aware of the situation. Writing to his friend Peacock on 17 July to describe his tour around Lake Geneva with Byron, Shelley adds at the end of the letter as a sort of afterthought: \u201cAffairs here are rather in a desperate condition. The magistrates of Geneva have prohibited the making of white bread.\u2014all ranks of people are in the greatest distress.\u2014I earnestly hope that England at least will escape.\u201d The passage was curiously cut from the published version of the letter in History of a Six Weeks Tour<\/em>, however, as if these problems were not important enough to impinge on their memories of the Swiss summer. On 17 September, to his credit, Byron donated three hundred francs to the pastor of Cologny in order to help the poor. He then took off on his tour of the Alps, the weather having at last turned warm and sunny.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n

Auchmann, S. Br\u00f6nnimann, L. Breda, M. B\u00fchler, R. Spadin, and A. Stickler, \u201cExtreme Climate, Not Extreme Weather: the Summer of 1816 in Geneva, Switzerland,\u201d Climate of the Past<\/em>, 8 (24 February 2012), pp. 325-335, http:\/\/www.clim-past.net\/8\/325\/2012\/<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lord Byron, Byron\u2019s Letters and Journals<\/em>, ed. Leslie Marchand, 13 volumes (London: John Murray, 1973-1984), vol. 5.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lord Byron, Monody on the Death of the Righ Honourable R.B. Sheridan,<\/em> London: John Murray, 1816.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Claire Clairmont, The Clairmont Correspondence: Letters of Claire Clairmont, Charles Clairmont, and Fanny Imlay Godwin<\/em>, ed. Marion Kingston Stocking, 2 volumes (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995), vol. 1.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Claire-Eliane Engel, Byron et Shelley en Suisse et en Savoie<\/em>, mai-octobre 1816<\/em> (Chamb\u00e9ry: Dardel, 1930).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Daniel Kr\u00e4mer, \u2018<\/em>Menschen grasten nun mit dem Vieh<\/em>\u2019<\/em>: Die letzte grosse Hungerkrise der Schweiz <\/em>(Basel: Schwabe, 2015).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Gazette de Lausanne: http:\/\/www.letempsarchives.ch\/<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Marc-Auguste Pictet, \u201cTableau des observations m\u00e9t\u00e9orologiques,\u201d Biblioth\u00e8que universelle<\/em>, Sciences et Arts, volume 2 (Gen\u00e8ve: Biblioth\u00e8que britannique, 1816).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Registre des permis de s\u00e9jour. Archives de l\u2019Etat de Gen\u00e9ve. Cote D. Etrangers, n. 3<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lady Frances Shelley, The Diary of Lady Shelley<\/em>, ed. Richard Edgecumbe, London: John Murray, vol. 1.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Percy Bysshe Shelley, \u201cUnpublished letter to Thomas Love Peacock, 17 July 1816.\u201d In Donald Reiman and Doucet Devin Fischer, eds. Shelley and his Circle 1773-1822<\/em> (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1986), vol. 7, pp. 28-34.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Vernes-Prescott, Causeries d\u2019un octag\u00e9naire genevois <\/em>(Geneva: Jules Carey 1883).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jeffrey Vail, \u201c \u2018The Bright Sun was Extinguis\u2019d\u2019: The Bologna Prophecy and Byron\u2019s Darkness,\u201d Wordsworth Circle <\/em>28 (1997), pp. 183-192.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

William Edward West, \u201cByron\u2019s Last portrait,\u201d The New Monthly Magazine<\/em>, vol 16 (1826), pp. 246-247.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July’s ‘On This Day’ post is by Patrick Vincent,\u00a0Professor of English and American literature at the University of Neuch\u00e2tel in Switzerland. With Angela Esterhammer and Diane Piccitto, he recently published… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1281"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1310,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions\/1310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}