Fugitive Pieces

Fugitive Pieces, Byron’s first volume of verse, was privately printed in the autumn of 1806, when Byron was eighteen years of age.  Passages in Byron’s correspondence indicate that as early as August of that year some of the poems were in the printers’ hands and that during the latter part of August and during September the printing was suspended in order that Byron might give his poems an “entire new form.”  The new form consisted, in part, in an enlargement; for he wrote to Elizabeth Pigot about September that he had nearly doubled his poems “partly by the discovery of some I conceived to be lost, and partly by some new productions.”  According to Moore, Fugitive Pieces was ready for distribution in November.  The last poem in the volume bears the date of November 16, 1806.

A difficulty in supposing the date of completion of the volume to be about November 16 is that two copies contain inscriptions in Byron’s hand with earlier dates.  On the copy of the late Mr. J.A.  Spoor, of Chicago, the inscription reads:  “October 21st Tuesday 1806—­Haec poemata ex dono sunt—­Georgii Gordon Byron, Vale.”  That on the copy in the Morgan library reads:  “Nov. 8, 1806, H.P.E.D.S.G.G.B., Southwell.—­Vale!—­Byron,” the initials evidently standing for the Latin words of the preceding inscription.  The Latin “Vale” in each inscription, however, suggests that it commemorates a leave-taking, the date referring not to the presentation but to the farewell.

It has been suggested that copies of the volume were distributed earlier than November and that some of the poems, printed separately and distributed in fly-leaf form, were added later.  This would explain such discrepancies as the early dates of the inscriptions, and the presence of Byron’s name on pages 46 and 48 in a volume otherwise anonymous, but there is little evidence to support it.

Moore’s account of Fugitive Pieces is that it was distributed in November, Byron presenting the first copy to the Reverend J.T.  Becher, prebendary of Southwell minster, who objected to what he considered the too voluptuous coloring of the poem “To Mary.”  The objection led Byron to suppress the edition immediately, he himself burning nearly every copy.  This account is corroborated in part by Miss Pigot and in part by Byron.

Immediately after the destruction, Byron began the preparation of a second volume, to replace Fugitive Pieces.  This appeared in January, 1807, as Poems on Various Occasions, Byron describing it as “vastly correct and miraculously chaste.”  Of the 38 poems that constitute Fugitive Pieces, all except “To Mary,” “To Caroline,” and the last six stanzas of “To Miss E.P.” were reprinted in Poems on Various Occasions.  Nineteen of the original 38 poems occur in Byron’s third work, Hours of Idleness, published in June or July, 1807.  All three editions were printed by S. and J. Ridge, booksellers of Newark, England.

Byron himself never reprinted the poems “To Mary” or “To Caroline,” or the last six stanzas of “To Miss E.P.”  Except in a limited facsimile of Fugitive Pieces, supervised by H. Buxton Forman in 1886, “To Mary” has never been reprinted—­not even in supposedly complete editions of Byron’s works.

Only four copies of Fugitive Pieces are known to-day, and one of these is incomplete.  The copy from which the present facsimile is made was originally given by Byron to Becher and preserved by him in spite of his objections to the poem “To Mary.”  From Becher’s family it passed into the possession of Mr. Faulkner, of Louth, solicitor for the Becher family.  In 1885 it was in the possession of H.W.  Ball, antiquary and bookseller of Barton-on-Humber, who sold it to H. Buxton Forman.  Forman used it for his facsimile, but incorporated certain manuscript corrections of the original, so that his facsimile is not exact.  The original is now owned by Mr. Thomas J. Wise, who has kindly permitted its use for the present facsimile.

Of the other three copies, the incomplete one, lacking pages 17-20 (“To Mary”) and all after page 58, is in the possession of the family of the late Mr. H.C.  Roe, of Nottingham.  This was originally sent by Byron to Pigot, then studying medicine in Edinburgh.  Byron later asked Pigot to destroy the copy and Pigot seems to have complied so far as to tear out the offending verses “To Mary.”  For many years it was thought that only the Pigot and Becher copies had escaped destruction at Byron’s hands.  But another complete copy came to light in 1907 and is now in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.  This contains numerous manuscript corrections and alterations, and seems to have been used as a proof copy for Poems on Various Occasions (not, as has sometimes been stated, for Hours of Idleness).  A fourth copy, also complete, was offered at public sale in 1912, and is now in the hands of the executors of the late Mr. J.A.  Spoor, of Chicago.

The present facsimile is an exact photographic reproduction of the text with all typographical and other errors as in the original, except that certain manuscript corrections which appear in the original perforce appear in the photographic reproduction, as follows: 

Page 3, To E.... line 2. “me” has been inserted by hand.

Page 8, stanza 5, line 2.  A letter (“s”?) has been erased
between “so” and “oft,” and
the second “e” of “meets” has
been inserted to replace “l.”

Page 14, line 10. “j” in “jargon” has been
inserted by hand.

Page 19, stanza (11), line 1. “night” was originally printed
“might,” the “m” later changed
to “n” by erasure.

Page 24, stanza 4, line 4. “s” in “setting” has been
inserted by hand.

Page 25, Thoughts Suggested by “e” in “tremble” has been
a College Examination, inserted, correcting “trimble.”
line 4.

Page 31, line 4. “f” in “fast” was originally
“l,” but was changed by hand.

The text has been collated with that in the Morgan library, and except for later corrections made in ink in the Morgan copy, the only differences noted are as follows: 

1.) On p. 5, in the first line of the footnote, the Morgan
copy reads “piece” where the Wise copy reads “p*ece,” the
“[dotless i]” lacking.

2.) The two pages of signature M are incorrectly numbered in the Wise copy as “41, 41,” this copy having no page numbered 42; and are incorrectly numbered in the Morgan copy as “40, 42,” the latter copy having no page numbered 41.  The text of these pages is identical.

M.K.

FUGITIVE PIECES.