Byron, Catholicism, and Don Juan XVII

Renascence, Spring 1997 by David E Goldweber

To-day, on visiting Lord B., the first thing he said to me was, "Well, I have had another visit from Dr. Kennedy, and I am going to give in; I believe I shall be converted. The fact is, Kennedy has had a good deal of trouble with us all, and it would be a pity were he to lose his time. And, besides, he says we are all to be Christians one day or other-it is just as well to begin now." Then, clasping his hands and looking upwards, he exclaimed, "Oh, I shall begin the 17th Canto of Don Juan a changed man!" He then went on repeating different portions of the conversations that had taken place between himself and Kennedy.

These words might be hastily chalked up as sarcasm, since Byron had already begun the stipulated canto in Italy three months earlier. Yet Muir does not make light of Byron's remarks, and if we turn to Don Juan XVII's completed verses we will find three items indicating that Byron's "changing" may have already begun.

First, Byron offers humorous remarks on Catholic Italian language and culture (st. 3 and note, where we learn that some Italians refer to orphaned foundlings as 'mules'). These remarks are brief, yet they seem conspicuously and remarkably situated after six entire cantos on English people and English manners. Second, Byron makes a quip against the Protestant Martin Luther, whose statements are seen as "obtuse" and as "a paradox," and because of whom, regrettably, "The Sacraments have been reduced to two" (st. 6-7). Third, Byron's opening digression makes commentary on, above all else, orphans (st. 1-4). There are many types of orphans, we learn, including those who lose "parental tenderness" rather than their actual parents (st. 1), and including not only "half-starved" babies but also wealthy ones (st. 3). And not all orphans are in distress because "Many a lonely tree the loftier grows / Than others crowded in the Forest's maze" (st. 1). The mention of wealth, the positive remarks on an orphan's potential loftiness, even the very presence of this commentary, all seem to indicate that the orphaned Aurora will move into the forefront of Don Juan's narrative. She will evidently become a symbol of the "virtue" abandoned by Juan when he chooses not to seek marriage and commitment but to dilly-dally in "vice" with the fleshly and unspiritual Duchess Fitz-Fulke (st. 12).

It seems apparent that Catholicism was foremost among religions in Byron's mind during the last year of his life. When Byron speaks of "beginning" the seventeenth canto, then, could this mean that he intends to begin making Catholicism its central theme? And when Byron speaks of converting, could it be that he is considering becoming Catholic himself? We know that Byron saw greatness in those who practiced religion; we know that Byron saw bad repercussions for those who rejected it. We have seen that Byron took Catholicism quite seriously for his entire life, and that Byron's late poetry involved Catholic themes and Catholic characters. It seems that Catholicism would be Byron's only real choice if his time to "turn devout" had truly come.