Letters to the Editor

Dear Sir,

I write to correct a minor error of fact in the last issue of The Byron Journal. In Maurizio Ascari's informative and carefully researched article, '"Not in a Christian Church": Westminster Abbey and the Memorialisation of Byron', the author writes that 'a statue by John Bell was finally erected in Hamilton Gardens (Hyde Park) in 1880'. Although John Bell (1811-95) did complete a representation of Byron in terracotta in 1877, the statue of Byron in Hyde Park is in fact by Richard Charles Belt. Ascari correctly writes that it is now 'on an inaccessible island round which traffic moves so rapidly […] that it is almost impossible to see the statue close-up'. However, if you can get across the road, you can see the words 'R. C. Belt Sc. London 1880' on the statue's base.

Yours faithfully,

Professor Tom Mole,
McGill University, Canada.

Dear Sir,

Last January I started to publish an online review entitled Dossiers Lord Byron, the first to be entirely dedicated to the poet in my language, and completely free. For issue number 2, I chose to reproduce the account of a meeting between Byron and a Frenchman called Coulmann first published in 1826 in the Mercure du XIXe siècle (vol. 12, pp. 352-67). The meeting also figures in E. J. Lovell's His Very Self and Voice (p. 339), and the two extant letters from Byron to Coulmann have been included in every collected edition of Byron's letters (they are in BLJ, X, pp. 207-09). But I have discovered that all the editors of these editions make a mistake about Byron's first letter. A longer account of the meeting between the two men is to be found in Coulmann's memoirs, entitled Réminiscences (3 vols, 1862-69), in which the Frenchman explains that this letter was written 'en italien' (II, p. 156) and gives the original text (II, p. 152). He also indicates that the meeting at the Casa Saluzzo took place 'le lendemain, 7 janvier' (II, p. 157). This implies that the letter is dated 6 January 1823, and not July (Marchand was right to doubt this). While preparing the Dossier, I checked this date against other information in Réminiscences and it fits perfectly - indeed, Coulmann was back in France by May. The second letter, though dated 12 July, is probably wrongly dated, since Byron writes in the postscript: 'the tenth or twelfth of this month I shall embark for Greece'.

I have also found a lot of new information about this mysterious Coulmann. His name was Jean-Jacques Coulmann. He was born 3 January 1796 in Brumath (Bas-Rhin), and died 17 September 1870 in Paris. He wrote in many newspapers (Le Nain jaune, Journal des arts and Le Constitutionnel, among others), and published several books, including a successful booklet-account of his meeting with Byron and his three-volume memoirs, reprinted in 1973 by Slatkine. He was a close friend of Benjamin Constant, but also met Mme de Staël, Béranger, Scribe, Jouy and most of the great names of the times. He was related to the Cuvier brothers and to General Walther. He became an advocate, and was elected as a deputy in 1831, but failed to get re-elected in 1834 and 1846. (This information comes mainly from his memoirs, and from the archives of the Assemblée Nationale.) Readers will find many more details in the Dossier <http://www.editionsfougerouse.com>, which includes Coulmann's recollections and Byron's letters to him, carefully edited with notes and an introduction. I hope this modest discovery will be useful.

Yours faithfully,

Davy Pernet,
France.

Dear Sir,

I read with interest Murray Pittock's essay in the first 2009 issue of The Byron Journal on 'Byron's Networks and Scottish Romanticism', and found its detailing of the Scottish nature of Byron's philhellenic networks particularly illuminating. For so long, the British discussion of philhellenism has been dominated by Anglo-centric prejudices. These prejudices have also obscured the history of Irish philhellenes, a history that directly...