New Light on Byron, Trelawny,
and Lady Hester Stanhope

CARL R. WOODRING

Among the papers of John Howard Payne which are being pre¬
sented to Columbia University by the heirs of the late Colonel
Thatcher Taylor Payne Luquer (C.E. i88i),E.E., 18(^2) is a manu¬
script diary of singular fascination. Although it is in Payne's hand,
it is not, as we first assumed, a record of his own experiences.
Rather, Payne has copied entries from someone else's account
which had come into his hands, and which contained material of
great interest to him. Professor Woodring, who writes the follow¬
ing article, has established the identity of the original diarist, but
the manner of Payne's coming into possession of the account
remains a mystery.^                                               E.dit'or's Note

JOHN HOWARD PAYNE, "America's first Hamlet,"
playwright, producer, poet, and twice consul to Tunis,
often transcribed for admirers two or three stanzas from
his best-loved poem, "Home, Sweet Home." Fortunately for us,
he was in fact an avid transcriber of both his own writings and the
writings of others. In 1825, when the widow of the poet Shelley
declined Payne's proposal of marriage, he transcribed all his cor-

1 The Payne nianu-script conipruses forty pages (on twenty-two leaves) of
closely written text, and is entitled: "Reniiniscencies Isic] of Cursory visits to
various places in and round the shores of the .Mediterranean." It is in two approxi¬
mately equal parts, which mav have been brought together at some later time.
The first half of the manuscript is a fair copv on sheets with ruled lines and
margins; the latter part is on unruled sheets, and though the script is clear and
easily read, there is reason to suppose that this portion of the text may comprise
a preliminary draft. Between the ruled and unruled sections (and elsewhere in
the draft portion) stubs remain of leaves that have been torn out. The inference
is that as Payne transcribed the text (and in some measure edited it), he removed
the leaves that had been copied. One bit of circumstantial evidence is of great
importance. The paper on which the account is written is watermarked 1823;
Payne, therefore, must have had the original diary of 1823-1825—or excerpts from
it—in his hands almost before the ink on it was dry.