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+Project Gutenberg's Lady Byron Vindicated, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lady Byron Vindicated
+       A History of The Byron Controversy
+
+Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+Release Date: January 29, 2014 [EBook #44791]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY BYRON VINDICATED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+
+  BYRON CONTROVERSY.
+
+
+  LONDON: PRINTED BY
+  SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
+  AND PARLIAMENT STREET
+
+
+
+
+  LADY BYRON VINDICATED.
+
+  A History
+  OF
+  THE BYRON CONTROVERSY
+
+  FROM ITS BEGINNING IN 1816 TO THE PRESENT TIME.
+
+  BY
+  HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
+
+
+  LONDON:
+  SAMPSON LOW, SON, AND MARSTON
+  CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET.
+  1870.
+
+  (_All rights reserved._)
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+BY
+
+THE PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+The subject of this volume is of such painful notoriety that any
+apology from the Publishers may seem unnecessary upon issuing the
+Author's reply to the counter statements which her narrative in
+_Macmillan's Magazine_ has called forth. Nevertheless they consider it
+right to state that their strong regard for the Author, respect for her
+motives, and assurance of her truthfulness, would, even in the absence
+of all other considerations, be sufficient to induce them to place
+their imprint on the title-page.
+
+The publication has been undertaken by them at the Author's request,
+'as her friends,' and as the publishers of her former works, and from
+a feeling that whatever difference of opinion may be entertained
+respecting the Author's judiciousness in publishing 'The True Story,'
+she is entitled to defend it, having been treated with grave injustice,
+and often with much maliciousness, by her critics and opponents, and
+been charged with motives from which no person living is more free.
+An intense love of justice and hatred of oppression, with an utter
+disregard of her own interests, characterise Mrs. STOWE'S
+conduct and writings, as all who know her well will testify; and the
+Publishers can unhesitatingly affirm their belief that neither fear
+for loss of her literary fame, nor hope of gain, has for one moment
+influenced her in the course she has taken.
+
+ LONDON: _January 1870_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  PART I.
+
+
+  CHAPTER I.                                                   PAGE
+
+  INTRODUCTION                                                    1
+
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+
+  THE ATTACK ON LADY BYRON                                        6
+
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+
+  RÉSUMÉ OF THE CONSPIRACY                                       50
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+
+  RESULTS AFTER LORD BYRON'S DEATH                               57
+
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+
+  THE ATTACK ON LADY BYRON'S GRAVE                              102
+
+
+  PART II.
+
+
+  CHAPTER I.
+
+  LADY BYRON AS I KNEW HER                                      132
+
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+
+  LADY BYRON'S STORY AS TOLD ME                                 153
+
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+
+  CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY OF EVENTS                               171
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+
+  THE CHARACTER OF THE TWO WITNESSES COMPARED                   199
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+
+  THE DIRECT ARGUMENT TO PROVE THE CRIME                        217
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+
+  PHYSIOLOGICAL ARGUMENT                                        247
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+
+  HOW COULD SHE LOVE HIM?                                       262
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  CONCLUSION                                                    269
+
+
+  PART III.
+
+  MISCELLANEOUS DOCUMENTS.
+
+  THE TRUE STORY OF LADY BYRON'S LIFE (AS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED
+  IN 'THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY')                                    274
+
+  LORD LINDSAY'S LETTER TO 'THE LONDON TIMES'                   304
+
+  DR. FORBES WINSLOW'S LETTER TO 'THE LONDON TIMES'             310
+
+  EXTRACT FROM LORD BYRON'S EXPUNGED LETTER TO MURRAY           312
+
+  EXTRACTS FROM 'BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE'                          315
+
+  LETTERS OF LADY BYRON TO H. C. ROBINSON                       318
+
+  DOMESTIC POEMS BY LORD BYRON                                  323
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+The interval since my publication of 'The True Story of Lady Byron's
+Life' has been one of stormy discussion and of much invective.
+
+I have not thought it necessary to disturb my spirit and confuse my
+sense of right by even an attempt at reading the many abusive articles
+that both here and in England have followed that disclosure. Friends
+have undertaken the task for me, giving me from time to time the
+substance of anything really worthy of attention which came to view in
+the tumult.
+
+It appeared to me essential that this first excitement should in a
+measure spend itself before there would be a possibility of speaking
+to any purpose. Now, when all would seem to have spoken who can speak,
+and, it is to be hoped, have said the utmost they can say, there seems
+a propriety in listening calmly, if that be possible, to what I have to
+say in reply.
+
+And, first, why have I made this disclosure at all?
+
+_To this I answer briefly, Because I considered it my duty to make it._
+
+I made it in defence of a beloved, revered friend, whose memory stood
+forth in the eyes of the civilised world charged with most repulsive
+crimes, of which I _certainly_ knew her innocent.
+
+I claim, and shall prove, that Lady Byron's reputation has been the
+victim of a concerted attack, begun by her husband during her lifetime,
+and coming to its climax over her grave. I claim, and shall prove, that
+it was not I who stirred up this controversy in this year 1869. I shall
+show _who did do it_, and who is responsible for bringing on me that
+hard duty of making these disclosures, which it appears to me ought to
+have been made by others.
+
+I claim that these facts were given to me unguarded by any promise or
+seal of secrecy, expressed or implied; that they were lodged with me
+as one sister rests her story with another for sympathy, for counsel,
+for defence. _Never_ did I suppose the day would come that I should
+be subjected to so cruel an anguish as this use of them has been to
+me. Never did I suppose that,--when those kind hands, that had shed
+nothing but blessings, were lying in the helplessness of death,--when
+that gentle heart, so sorely tried and to the last so full of love, was
+lying cold in the tomb,--a countryman in England could be found to cast
+the foulest slanders on her grave, and not one in all England to raise
+an effective voice in her defence.
+
+I admit the feebleness of my plea, in point of execution. It was
+written in a state of exhausted health, when no labour of the kind was
+safe for me,--when my hand had not strength to hold the pen, and I was
+forced to dictate to another.
+
+I have been told that I have no reason to congratulate myself on it as
+a literary effort. O my brothers and sisters! is there then nothing in
+the world to think of but literary efforts? I ask any man with a heart
+in his bosom, if he had been obliged to tell a story so cruel, because
+his mother's grave gave no rest from slander,--I ask any woman who had
+been forced to such a disclosure to free a dead sister's name from
+grossest insults, whether she would have thought of making this work of
+bitterness a literary success?
+
+Are the cries of the oppressed, the gasps of the dying, the last
+prayers of mothers,--are _any_ words wrung like drops of blood from the
+human heart to be judged as literary efforts?
+
+My fellow-countrymen of America, men of the press, I have done you one
+act of justice,--of all your bitter articles, I have read not one.
+I shall never be troubled in the future time by the remembrance of
+any unkind word you have said of me, for at this moment I recollect
+not one. I had such faith in you, such pride in my countrymen, as
+men with whom, above all others, the cause of woman was safe and
+sacred, that I was at first astonished and incredulous at what I
+heard of the course of the American press, and was silent, not merely
+from the impossibility of being heard, but from grief and shame. But
+reflection convinces me that you were, in many cases, acting from a
+misunderstanding of facts and through misguided honourable feeling;
+and I still feel courage, therefore, to ask from you a fair hearing.
+Now, as I have done you this justice, will you also do me the justice
+to hear me seriously and candidly?
+
+What interest have you or I, my brother and my sister, in this short
+life of ours, to utter anything but the truth? Is not truth between man
+and man and between man and woman the foundation on which all things
+rest? Have you not, every individual of you, who must hereafter give
+an account yourself alone to God, an interest to know the exact truth
+in this matter, and a duty to perform as respects that truth? Hear me,
+then, while I tell you the position in which I stood, and what was my
+course in relation to it.
+
+A shameless attack on my friend's memory had appeared in the
+'Blackwood' of July 1869, branding Lady Byron as the vilest of
+criminals, and recommending the Guiccioli book to a Christian public
+as interesting from the very fact that it was the avowed production
+of Lord Byron's mistress. No efficient protest was made against
+this outrage in England, and Littell's 'Living Age' reprinted the
+'Blackwood' article, and the Harpers, the largest publishing house in
+America, perhaps in the world, re-published the book.
+
+Its statements--with those of the 'Blackwood,' 'Pall Mall Gazette,' and
+other English periodicals--were being propagated through all the young
+reading and writing world of America. I was meeting them advertised
+in dailies, and made up into articles in magazines, and thus the
+generation of to-day, who had no means of judging Lady Byron but by
+these fables of her slanderers, were being foully deceived. The friends
+who knew her personally were a small select circle in England, whom
+death is every day reducing. They were few in number compared with the
+great world, and were _silent_. I saw these foul slanders crystallising
+into history uncontradicted by friends who knew her personally, who,
+firm in their own knowledge of her virtues and limited in view as
+aristocratic circles generally are, had no idea of the width of the
+world they were living in, and the exigency of the crisis. When time
+passed on and no voice was raised, I spoke. I gave at first a simple
+story, for I knew instinctively that whoever put the first steel point
+of truth into this dark cloud of slander must wait for the storm to
+spend itself. I must say the storm exceeded my expectations, and has
+raged loud and long. But now that there is a comparative stillness I
+shall proceed, first, to prove what I have just been asserting, and,
+second, to add to my true story such facts and incidents as I did not
+think proper at first to state.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE ATTACK ON LADY BYRON.
+
+
+In proving what I asserted in the first chapter, I make four points:
+1st. A concerted attack upon Lady Byron's reputation, begun by Lord
+Byron in self-defence. 2nd. That he transmitted his story to friends to
+be continued after his death. 3rd. That they did so continue it. 4th.
+That the accusations reached their climax over Lady Byron's grave in
+'Blackwood' of 1869, and the Guiccioli book, and that this re-opening
+of the controversy was my reason for speaking.
+
+And first I shall adduce my proofs that Lady Byron's reputation
+was, during the whole course of her husband's life, the subject of
+a concentrated, artfully planned attack, commencing at the time of
+the separation and continuing during his life. By various documents
+carefully prepared, and used publicly or secretly as suited the case,
+he made converts of many honest men, some of whom were writers and men
+of letters, who put their talents at his service during his lifetime in
+exciting sympathy for him, and who, by his own request, felt bound to
+continue their defence of him after he was dead.
+
+In order to consider the force and significance of the documents I
+shall cite, we are to bring to our view just the issues Lord Byron had
+to meet, both at the time of the separation and for a long time after.
+
+In Byron's 'Memoirs,' Vol. IV. Letter 350, under date December 10,
+1819, nearly four years after the separation, he writes to Murray in
+a state of great excitement on account of an article in 'Blackwood,'
+in which his conduct towards his wife had been sternly and justly
+commented on, and which he supposed to have been written by Wilson, of
+the 'Noctes Ambrosianæ.' He says in this letter: 'I like and admire
+W----n, and he should not have indulged himself in such outrageous
+license.... When he talks of Lady Byron's business he talks of what he
+knows nothing about; and you may tell him _no man can desire a public
+investigation of that affair more than I do_.'[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: The italics are mine.]
+
+He shortly after wrote and sent to Murray a pamphlet for publication,
+which was printed, but not generally circulated till some time
+afterwards. Though more than three years had elapsed since the
+separation, the current against him at this time was so strong in
+England that his friends thought it best, at first, to use this article
+of Lord Byron's discreetly with influential persons rather than to give
+it to the public.
+
+The writer in 'Blackwood' and the indignation of the English public,
+of which that writer was the voice, were now particularly stirred up
+by the appearance of the first two cantos of 'Don Juan,' in which the
+indecent caricature of Lady Byron was placed in vicinity with other
+indecencies, the publication of which was justly considered an insult
+to a Christian community.
+
+It must here be mentioned, for the honour of Old England, that at
+first she did her duty quite respectably in regard to 'Don Juan.' One
+can still read, in Murray's standard edition of the poems, how every
+respectable press thundered reprobations, which it would be well enough
+to print and circulate as tracts for our days.
+
+Byron, it seems, had thought of returning to England, but he says, in
+the letter we have quoted, that he has changed his mind, and shall not
+go back, adding: 'I have finished the Third Canto of "Don Juan," but
+the things I have heard and read discourage all future publication.
+You may try the copy question, but you'll lose it; the cry is up, and
+the cant is up. I should have no objection to return the price of the
+copyright, and have written to Mr. Kinnaird on this subject.'
+
+One sentence quoted by Lord Byron from the 'Blackwood' article will
+show the modern readers what the respectable world of that day were
+thinking and saying of him:--
+
+ 'It appears, in short, as if this miserable man, having exhausted
+ _every species_ of sensual gratification--having drained the cup of
+ sin even to its bitterest dregs--were resolved to show us that he is
+ no longer a human being even in his frailties, but a cool, unconcerned
+ fiend, laughing with detestable glee over the whole of the better and
+ worse elements of which human life is composed.'
+
+The defence which Lord Byron makes, in his reply to that paper, is of a
+man cornered and fighting for his life. He speaks thus of the state of
+feeling at the time of his separation from his wife:--
+
+ 'I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and private
+ rancour; my name, which had been a knightly or a noble one since my
+ fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Norman, was
+ tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered and muttered and murmured
+ was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for
+ me. I withdrew; but this was not enough. In other countries--in
+ Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue depth of the
+ lakes--I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight. I crossed
+ the mountains, but it was the same; so I went a little farther, and
+ settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who
+ betakes him to the waters.
+
+ 'If I may judge by the statements of the few friends who gathered
+ round me, the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all
+ precedent, all parallel, even in those cases where political motives
+ have sharpened slander and doubled enmity. I was advised not to go to
+ the theatres lest I should be hissed, nor to my duty in parliament
+ lest I should be insulted by the way; even on the day of my departure
+ my most intimate friend told me afterwards that he was under the
+ apprehension of violence from the people who might be assembled at the
+ door of the carriage.'
+
+Now Lord Byron's charge against his wife was that SHE was
+directly responsible for getting up and keeping up this persecution,
+which drove him from England,--that she did it in a deceitful,
+treacherous manner, which left him no chance of defending himself.
+
+He charged against her that, taking advantage of a time when his
+affairs were in confusion, and an execution in the house, she left him
+suddenly, with treacherous professions of kindness, which were repeated
+by letters on the road, and that soon after her arrival at her home
+her parents sent him word that she would never return to him, and she
+confirmed the message; that when he asked the reason why, she refused
+to state any; and that when this step gave rise to a host of slanders
+against him she silently encouraged and confirmed the slanders. His
+claim was that he was denied from that time forth even the justice of
+any tangible accusation against himself which he might meet and refute.
+
+He observes, in the same article from which we have quoted:--
+
+ 'When one tells me that I cannot "in any way _justify_ my own
+ behaviour in that affair," I acquiesce, because no man can "_justify_"
+ himself until he knows of what he is accused; and I have never
+ had--and, God knows, my whole desire has ever been to obtain it--any
+ specific charge, in a tangible shape, submitted to me by the
+ adversary, nor by others, unless the atrocities of public rumour and
+ the mysterious silence of the lady's legal advisers may be deemed
+ such.'
+
+Lord Byron, his publishers, friends, and biographers, thus agree
+in representing his wife as the secret author and abettor of that
+persecution, which it is claimed broke up his life, and was the source
+of all his subsequent crimes and excesses.
+
+Lord Byron wrote a poem in September 1816, in Switzerland, just after
+the separation, in which he stated, in so many words, these accusations
+against his wife. Shortly after the poet's death Murray published
+this poem, together with the 'Fare thee well,' and the lines to his
+sister, under the title of 'Domestic Pieces,' in his standard edition
+of Byron's poetry. It is to be remarked, then, that this was for some
+time a private document, shown to confidential friends, and made use of
+judiciously, as readers or listeners to his story were able to bear it.
+Lady Byron then had a strong party in England. Sir Samuel Romilly and
+Dr. Lushington were her counsel. Lady Byron's parents were living, and
+the appearance in the public prints of such a piece as this would have
+brought down an aggravated storm of public indignation.
+
+For the general public such documents as the 'Fare thee well' were
+circulating in England, and he frankly confessed his wife's virtues and
+his own sins to Madame de Staël and others in Switzerland, declaring
+himself in the wrong, sensible of his errors, and longing to cast
+himself at the feet of that serene perfection,
+
+  'Which wanted one sweet weakness--to forgive.'
+
+But a little later he drew for his private partisans this bitter
+poetical indictment against her, which, as we have said, was used
+discreetly during his life, and published after his death.
+
+Before we proceed to lay that poem before the reader we will refresh
+his memory with some particulars of the tragedy of Æschylus, which
+Lord Byron selected as the exact parallel and proper illustration of
+his wife's treatment of himself. In his letters and journals he often
+alludes to her as Clytemnestra, and the allusion has run the round of
+a thousand American papers lately, and been read by a thousand good
+honest people, who had no very clear idea who Clytemnestra was, and
+what she did which was like the proceedings of Lady Byron. According
+to the tragedy, Clytemnestra secretly hates her husband Agamemnon,
+whom she professes to love, and wishes to put him out of the way that
+she may marry her lover, Ægistheus. When her husband returns from the
+Trojan war she receives him with pretended kindness, and officiously
+offers to serve him at the bath. Inducing him to put on a garment, of
+which she had adroitly sewed up the sleeves and neck so as to hamper
+the use of his arms, she gives the signal to a concealed band of
+assassins, who rush upon him and stab him. Clytemnestra is represented
+by Æschylus as grimly triumphing in her success, which leaves her free
+to marry an adulterous paramour.
+
+  'I did it, too, in such a cunning wise,
+  That he could neither 'scape nor ward off doom.
+  I staked around his steps an endless net,
+  As for the fishes.'
+
+In the piece entitled 'Lines on hearing Lady Byron is ill,' Lord Byron
+charges on his wife a similar treachery and cruelty. The whole poem
+is in Murray's English edition, Vol. IV. p. 207. Of it we quote the
+following. The reader will bear in mind that it is addressed to Lady
+Byron on a sick-bed:--
+
+  'I am too well avenged, but 'twas my right;
+  Whate'er my sins might be, _thou_ wert not sent
+  To be the Nemesis that should requite,
+  Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument.
+  Mercy is for the merciful! If thou
+  Hast been of such, 't will be accorded now.
+  Thy nights are banished from the realms of sleep,
+  For thou art pillowed on a curse too deep;
+  Yes! they may flatter thee, but thou shalt feel
+  A hollow agony that will not heal.
+  Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap
+  The bitter harvest in a woe as real.
+  _I have had many foes, but none like thee_;
+  For 'gainst the rest myself I could defend,
+  And be avenged, or turn them into friend;
+  But thou, in safe implacability,
+  Hast naught to dread,--in thy own weakness shielded,
+  And in my love, which hath but too much yielded,
+  And spared, for thy sake, some I should not spare.
+  And thus upon the world, trust in thy truth,
+  And the wild fame of my ungoverned youth,--
+  On things that were not and on things that are,--
+  Even upon such a basis thou hast built
+  A monument whose cement hath been guilt!
+  The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord,
+  And hewed down with an unsuspected sword
+  Fame, peace, and hope, and all that better life
+  Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart,
+  Might yet have risen from the grave of strife
+  And found a nobler duty than to part.
+  But of thy virtues thou didst make a vice,
+  Trafficking in them with a purpose cold,
+  And buying others' woes at any price,
+  For present anger and for future gold;
+  And thus, once entered into crooked ways,
+  The early truth, that was thy proper praise,
+  Did not still walk beside thee, but at times,
+  And with a breast unknowing its own crimes,
+  Deceits, averments incompatible,
+  Equivocations, and the thoughts that dwell
+  _In Janus spirits, the significant eye
+  That learns to lie with silence_,[2] the pretext
+  Of prudence with advantages annexed,
+  The acquiescence in all things that tend,
+  No matter how, to the desired end,--
+  All found a place in thy philosophy.
+  The means were worthy and the end is won.
+  I would not do to thee as thou hast done.'
+
+[Footnote 2: The italics are mine.]
+
+Now, if this language means anything, it means, in plain terms, that,
+whereas, in her early days, Lady Byron was peculiarly characterised by
+truthfulness, she has in her recent dealings with him acted the part
+of a liar,--that she is not only a liar, but that she lies for cruel
+means and malignant purposes,--that she is a moral assassin, and her
+treatment of her husband has been like that of the most detestable
+murderess and adulteress of ancient history,--that she has learned to
+lie skilfully and artfully, that she equivocates, says incompatible
+things, and crosses her own tracks,--that she is double-faced, and
+has the art to lie even by silence, and that she has become wholly
+unscrupulous, and acquiesces in _any_thing, no matter what, that tends
+to the desired end, and that end the destruction of her husband. This
+is a brief summary of the story that Byron made it his life's business
+to spread through society, to propagate and make converts to during
+his life, and which has been in substance reasserted by 'Blackwood' in
+a recent article this year.
+
+Now, the reader will please to notice that this poem is dated in
+September 1816, and that on the 29th of March of that same year, he
+had thought proper to tell quite another story. At that time the deed
+of separation was not signed, and negotiations between Lady Byron,
+acting by legal counsel, and himself were still pending. At that time,
+therefore, he was standing in a community who knew all he had said
+in former days of his wife's character, who were in an aroused and
+excited state by the fact that so lovely and good and patient a woman
+had actually been forced for some unexplained cause to leave him. His
+policy at that time was to make large general confessions of sin,
+and to praise and compliment her, with a view of enlisting sympathy.
+Everybody feels for a handsome sinner, weeping on his knees, asking
+pardon for his offences against his wife in the public newspapers.
+
+The celebrated 'Fare thee well', as we are told, was written on the
+17th of March, and accidentally found its way into the newspapers at
+this time 'through the imprudence of a friend whom he allowed to take a
+copy.' These 'imprudent friends' have all along been such a marvellous
+convenience to Lord Byron.
+
+But the question met him on all sides, What is the matter? This wife
+you have declared the brightest, sweetest, most amiable of beings, and
+against whose behaviour as a wife you actually never had nor can have
+a complaint to make,--why is she _now_ all of a sudden so inflexibly
+set against you?
+
+This question required an answer, and he answered by writing another
+poem, which also _accidentally_ found its way into the public prints.
+It is in his 'Domestic Pieces,' which the reader may refer to at the
+end of this volume, and is called 'A Sketch.'
+
+There was a most excellent, respectable, well-behaved Englishwoman, a
+Mrs. Clermont,[3] who had been Lady Byron's governess in her youth,
+and was still, in mature life, revered as her confidential friend. It
+appears that this person had been with Lady Byron during a part of her
+married life, especially the bitter hours of her lonely child-bed, when
+a young wife so much needs a sympathetic friend. This Mrs. Clermont was
+the person selected by Lord Byron at this time to be the scapegoat to
+bear away the difficulties of the case into the wilderness.
+
+[Footnote 3: In Lady Blessington's 'Memoirs' this name is given
+Charlemont; in the late 'Temple Bar' article on the character of Lady
+Byron it is given Clermont. I have followed the latter.]
+
+We are informed in Moore's Life what a noble pride of rank Lord Byron
+possessed, and how when the headmaster of a school, against whom he had
+a pique, invited him to dinner, he declined, saying, 'To tell you the
+truth, Doctor, if you should come to Newstead, I shouldn't think of
+inviting _you_ to dine with _me_, and so I don't care to dine with you
+here.' Different countries, it appears, have different standards as to
+good taste; Moore gives this as an amusing instance of a young lord's
+spirit.
+
+Accordingly, his first attack against this 'lady,' as we Americans
+should call her, consists in gross statements concerning her having
+been born poor and in an inferior rank. He begins by stating that she
+was
+
+  'Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred,
+  Promoted thence to deck her mistress' head;
+  Next--for some gracious service unexpressed
+  And from its wages only to be guessed--
+  Raised from the toilet to the table, where
+  Her wondering betters wait behind her chair.
+  With eye unmoved and forehead unabashed.
+  She dines from off the plate she lately washed;
+  Quick with the tale, and ready with the lie,
+  The genial confidante and general spy,--
+  Who could, ye gods! her next employment guess,--
+  An _only infant's earliest governess_!
+  What had she made the pupil of her art
+  None knows; _but that high soul secured the heart,
+  And panted for the truth it could not hear
+  With longing soul and undeluded ear_!'[4]
+
+[Footnote 4: The italics are mine.]
+
+The poet here recognises as a singular trait in Lady Byron her peculiar
+love of truth,--a trait which must have struck everyone that had any
+knowledge of her through life. He goes on now to give what he certainly
+knew to be the real character of Lady Byron:--
+
+  'Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind,
+  Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind,
+  _Deceit infect_ not, nor contagion soil,
+  Indulgence weaken, or example spoil,
+  Nor mastered science tempt her to look down
+  On humbler talent with a pitying frown,
+  Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain,
+  Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain.
+
+We are now informed that Mrs. Clermont, whom he afterwards says in his
+letters was a spy of Lady Byron's mother, set herself to make mischief
+between them. He says:--
+
+  'If early habits,--those strong links that bind
+  At times the loftiest to the meanest mind,
+  Have given her power too deeply to instil
+  The angry essence of her deadly will;
+  If like a snake she steal within your walls,
+  Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;
+  If like a viper to the heart she wind,
+  And leaves the venom there she did not find,--
+  What marvel that this hag of hatred works
+  Eternal evil latent as she lurks.'
+
+The noble lord then proceeds to abuse this woman of inferior rank in
+the language of the upper circles. He thus describes her person and
+manner:--
+
+  'Skilled by a touch to deepen scandal's tints
+  With all the kind mendacity of hints,
+  While mingling truth with falsehood, sneers with smiles,
+  A thread of candour with a web of wiles;
+  A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming,
+  To hide her bloodless heart's soul-harden'd scheming;
+  A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal,
+  And without feeling mock at all who feel;
+  With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown,--
+  A cheek of parchment and an eye of stone.
+  Mark how the channels of her yellow blood
+  Ooze to her skin and stagnate there to mud,
+  Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,
+  Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale,--
+  (For drawn from reptiles only may we trace
+  Congenial colours in that soul or face,)
+  Look on her features! and behold her mind
+  As in a mirror of itself defined:
+  Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged
+  There is no trait which might not be enlarged.'
+
+The poem thus ends:--
+
+  'May the strong curse of crushed affections light
+  Back on thy bosom with reflected blight,
+  And make thee in thy leprosy of mind
+  As loathsome to thyself as to mankind!
+  Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate,
+  Black--as thy will for others would create;
+  Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,
+  And thy soul welter in its hideous crust.
+  O, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,
+  The widowed couch of fire, that thou hast spread
+  Then when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with prayer,
+  Look on thy earthly victims--and despair!
+  Down to the dust! and as thou rott'st away,
+  Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.
+  _But for the love I bore and still must bear_
+  To her thy malice from all ties would tear,
+  Thy name,--thy human name,--to every eye
+  The climax of all scorn, should hang on high,
+  Exalted o'er thy less abhorred compeers,
+  And festering in the infamy of years.'
+
+  March 16, 1816.
+
+Now, on the 29th of March 1816, this was Lord Byron's story. He states
+that his wife had a truthfulness even from early girlhood that the most
+artful and unscrupulous governess could not pollute,--that she always
+_panted_ for truth,--that flattery could not fool nor baseness blind
+her,--that though she was a genius and master of science, she was yet
+gentle and tolerant, and one whom no envy could ruffle to retaliate
+pain.
+
+In September of the same year she is a monster of unscrupulous deceit
+and vindictive cruelty. Now, what had happened in the five months
+between the dates of these poems to produce such a change of opinion?
+Simply this:--
+
+1st. The negotiation between him and his wife's lawyers had ended in
+his signing a deed of separation in preference to standing a suit for
+divorce.
+
+2nd. Madame de Staël, moved by his tears of anguish and professions of
+repentance, had offered to negotiate with Lady Byron on his behalf, and
+had failed.
+
+The failure of this application is the only apology given by Moore and
+Murray for this poem, which gentle Thomas Moore admits was not in quite
+as generous a strain as the 'Fare thee well'.
+
+But Lord Byron knew perfectly well, when he suffered that application
+to be made, that Lady Byron had been entirely convinced that her
+marriage relations with him could never be renewed, and that duty both
+to man and God required her to separate from him. The allowing the
+negotiation was, therefore, an artifice to place his wife before the
+public in the attitude of a hard-hearted, inflexible woman; her refusal
+was what he knew beforehand must inevitably be the result, and merely
+gave him capital in the sympathy of his friends, by which they should
+be brought to tolerate and accept the bitter accusations of this poem.
+
+We have recently heard it asserted that this last-named piece of poetry
+was the sudden offspring of a fit of ill-temper, and was never intended
+to be published at all. There were certainly excellent reasons why
+his friends should have advised him not to publish it _at that time_.
+But that it was read with sympathy by the circle of his intimate
+friends, and believed by them, is evident from the frequency with which
+allusions to it occur in his confidential letters to them.[5]
+
+[Footnote 5: In Lady Blessington's conversations with Lord Byron, just
+before he went to Greece, she records that he gave her this poem in
+manuscript. It was published in her 'Journal.']
+
+About three months after, under date March 10, 1817, he writes to
+Moore: 'I suppose now I shall never be able to shake off my sables in
+public imagination, more particularly since my moral ---- clove down my
+fame.' Again to Murray in 1819, three years after, he says: 'I never
+hear anything of Ada, the little Electra of Mycenæ.'
+
+Electra was the daughter of Clytemnestra, in the Greek poem, who lived
+to condemn her wicked mother, and to call on her brother to avenge the
+father. There was in this mention of Electra more than meets the ear.
+Many passages in Lord Byron's poetry show that he intended to make this
+daughter a future partisan against her mother, and explain the awful
+words he is stated in Lady Anne Barnard's diary to have used when
+first he looked on his little girl,--'What an instrument of torture I
+have gained in you!'
+
+In a letter to Lord Blessington, April 6, 1823, he says, speaking of
+Dr. Parr:[6]--
+
+ 'He did me the honour once to be a patron of mine, though a great
+ friend of the _other branch of the house of Atreus_, and the Greek
+ teacher, I believe, of my _moral_ Clytemnestra. I say _moral_ because
+ it is true, and is so useful to the virtuous, that it enables them to
+ do anything without the aid of an Ægistheus.'
+
+[Footnote 6: Vol. vi. p. 22.]
+
+If Lord Byron wrote this poem merely in a momentary fit of spleen, why
+were there so many persons evidently quite familiar with his allusions
+to it? and why was it preserved in Murray's hands? and why published
+after his death? That Byron was in the habit of reposing documents in
+the hands of Murray, to be used as occasion offered, is evident from
+a part of a note written by him to Murray respecting some verses so
+intrusted: 'Pray let not these _versiculi_ go forth with my name except
+_to the initiated_.'[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: 'Byron's Miscellany', vol. ii. p. 358. London, 1853.]
+
+Murray, in publishing this attack on his wife after Lord Byron's death,
+showed that he believed in it, and, so believing, deemed Lady Byron a
+woman whose widowed state deserved neither sympathy nor delicacy of
+treatment. At a time when every sentiment in the heart of the most
+deeply wronged woman would forbid her appearing to justify herself from
+such cruel slander of a dead husband, an honest, kind-hearted, worthy
+Englishman actually thought it right and proper to give these lines
+to her eyes and the eyes of all the reading world. Nothing can show
+more plainly what this poem was written for, and how thoroughly it did
+its work! Considering Byron as a wronged man, Murray thought he was
+contributing his mite towards doing him justice. His editor prefaced
+the whole set of 'Domestic Pieces' with the following statements:--
+
+ 'They all refer to the unhappy separation, of which the precise causes
+ are still a mystery, and which he declared to the last were never
+ disclosed to himself. He admitted that pecuniary embarrassments,
+ disordered health, and dislike to family restraints had aggravated his
+ naturally violent temper, and driven him to excesses. He suspected
+ that his mother-in-law had fomented the discord,--which Lady Byron
+ denies,--and that more was due to the malignant offices of a female
+ dependant, who is the subject of the bitterly satirical sketch.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+ 'To these general statements can only be added the still vaguer
+ allegations of Lady Byron, that she conceived his conduct to be the
+ result of insanity,--that, the physician pronouncing him responsible
+ for his actions, she could submit to them no longer, and that
+ Dr. Lushington, her legal adviser, agreed that a reconciliation
+ was neither proper nor possible. _No weight can be attached to
+ the opinions of an opposing counsel upon accusations made by one
+ party behind the back of the other, who urgently demanded and was
+ pertinaciously refused the least opportunity of denial or defence._ He
+ rejected the proposal for an amicable separation, but _consented when
+ threatened with a suit in Doctors' Commons_.'[8]
+
+[Footnote 8: The italics are mine.]
+
+Neither John Murray nor any of Byron's partisans seem to have pondered
+the admission in these last words.
+
+Here, as appears, was a woman, driven to the last despair, standing
+with her child in her arms, asking from English laws protection for
+herself and child against her husband.
+
+She had appealed to the first counsel in England, and was acting under
+their direction.
+
+Two of the greatest lawyers in England have pronounced that there
+has been such a cause of offence on his part that a return to him is
+neither proper nor possible, and that no alternative remains to her but
+separation or divorce.
+
+He asks her to state her charges against him. She, making answer
+under advice of her counsel, says, 'That if he _insists_ on the
+specifications, he must receive them in open court in a suit for
+divorce.'
+
+What, now, ought to have been the conduct of any brave, honest man,
+who believed that his wife was taking advantage of her reputation for
+virtue to turn every one against him, who saw that she had turned on
+her side even the lawyer he sought to retain on his;[9] that she was
+an unscrupulous woman, who acquiesced in every and any thing to gain
+her ends, while he stood before the public, as he says, 'accused of
+every monstrous vice, by public rumour or private rancour'? When she,
+under advice of her lawyers, made the alternative legal _separation_ or
+open investigation in court for divorce, what did he do?
+
+[Footnote 9: Lord Byron says, in his observations on an article in
+'Blackwood': 'I recollect being much hurt by Romilly's conduct:
+he (having a general retainer for me) went over to the adversary,
+alleging, on being reminded of his retainer, that he had forgotten it,
+as his clerk had so many. I observed that some of those who were now so
+eagerly laying the axe to my roof-tree might see their own shaken. His
+fell and crushed him.'
+
+In the first edition of Moore's Life of Lord Byron there was printed a
+letter on Sir Samuel Romilly, so brutal that it was suppressed in the
+subsequent editions. (See Part III.)]
+
+HE SIGNED THE ACT OF SEPARATION AND LEFT ENGLAND.
+
+Now, let any man who knows the legal mind of England,--let any lawyer
+who knows the character of Sir Samuel Romilly and Dr. Lushington, ask
+whether _they_ were the men to take a case into court for a woman that
+had no _evidence_ but her own statements and impressions? Were _they_
+men to go to trial without proofs? Did they not know that there were
+artful, hysterical women in the world, and would _they_, of all people,
+be the men to take a woman's story on her own side, and advise her in
+the last issue to bring it into open court, without legal proof of
+the strongest kind? Now, as long as Sir Samuel Romilly lived, this
+statement of Byron's--that he was condemned unheard, and had no chance
+of knowing whereof he _was accused--never appeared in public_.
+
+It, however, was most actively circulated _in private_. That Byron was
+in the habit of intrusting to different confidants articles of various
+kinds to be shown to different circles as they could bear them, we have
+already shown. We have recently come upon another instance of this
+kind. In the late eagerness to exculpate Byron, a new document has
+turned up, of which Mr. Murray, it appears, had never heard when, after
+Byron's death, he published in the preface to his 'Domestic Pieces'
+the sentence: '_He rejected the proposal for an amicable separation,
+but consented when threatened with a suit in Doctors' Commons_.' It
+appears that, up to 1853, neither John Murray senior, nor the son who
+now fills his place, had taken any notice of this newly found document,
+which we are now informed 'was drawn up by Lord Byron in August 1817,
+while Mr. Hobhouse was staying with him at La Mira, near Venice,
+given to Mr. Matthew Gregory Lewis, _for circulation among friends in
+England_, found in Mr. Lewis's papers after his death, and _now_ in the
+possession of Mr. Murray.' Here it is:--
+
+ 'It has been intimated to me that the persons understood to be the
+ legal advisers of Lady Byron have declared "their lips to be sealed
+ up" on the cause of the separation between her and myself. If their
+ lips are sealed up, they are not sealed up by me, and the greatest
+ favour _they_ can confer upon me will be to open them. From the first
+ hour in which I was apprised of the intentions of the Noel family to
+ the last communication between Lady Byron and myself in the character
+ of wife and husband (a period of some months), I called repeatedly and
+ in vain for a statement of their or her charges, and it was chiefly
+ in consequence of Lady Byron's claiming (in a letter still existing)
+ a promise on my part to consent to a separation, if such was _really_
+ her wish, that I consented at all; this claim, and the exasperating
+ and inexpiable manner in which their object was pursued, which
+ rendered it next to an impossibility that two persons so divided could
+ ever be reunited, induced me reluctantly then, and repentantly still,
+ to sign the deed, which I shall be happy--most happy--to cancel, and
+ go before any tribunal which may discuss the business in the most
+ public manner.
+
+ 'Mr. Hobhouse made this proposition on my part, viz. to abrogate
+ all prior intentions--and go into court--the very day before the
+ separation was signed, and it was declined by the other party, as
+ also the publication of the correspondence during the previous
+ discussion. Those propositions I beg here to repeat, and to call
+ upon her and hers to say their worst, pledging myself to meet their
+ allegations,--whatever they may be,--and only too happy to be informed
+ at last of their real nature.
+
+  'BYRON.'
+
+  'August 9, 1817.
+
+ 'P.S.--I have been, and am now, utterly ignorant of what description
+ her allegations, charges, or whatever name they may have assumed,
+ are; and am as little aware for what purpose they have been kept
+ back,--unless it was to sanction the most infamous calumnies by
+ silence.
+
+  'BYRON.'
+
+  'LA MIRA, near VENICE.'
+
+It appears the circulation of this document must have been _very
+private_, since Moore, not _over_-delicate towards Lady Byron, did not
+think fit to print it; since John Murray neglected it, and since it has
+come out at this late hour for the first time.
+
+If Lord Byron really desired Lady Byron and her legal counsel to
+understand the facts herein stated, and was willing at all hazards to
+bring on an open examination, why was this _privately_ circulated?
+Why not issued as a card in the London papers? Is it likely that
+Mr. Matthew Gregory Lewis, and a chosen band of friends acting as a
+committee, requested an audience with Lady Byron, Sir Samuel Romilly,
+and Dr. Lushington, and formally presented this cartel of defiance?
+
+We incline to think not. We incline to think that this small serpent,
+in company with many others of like kind, crawled secretly and
+privately around, and when it found a good chance, bit an honest
+Briton, whose blood was thenceforth poisoned by an undetected falsehood.
+
+The reader now may turn to the letters that Mr. Moore has thought fit
+to give us of this stay at La Mira, beginning with Letter 286, dated
+July 1, 1817,[10] where he says: 'I have been working up my impressions
+into a _Fourth_ Canto of Childe Harold,' and also 'Mr. Lewis is in
+Venice. I am going up to stay a week with him there.'
+
+[Footnote 10: Vol. iv. p. 40.]
+
+Next, under date La Mira, Venice, July 10,[11] he says, 'Monk Lewis is
+here; how pleasant!'
+
+[Footnote 11: Ibid. p. 46.]
+
+Next, under date July 20, 1817, to Mr. Murray: 'I write to give you
+notice that I have _completed the fourth and ultimate canto of Childe
+Harold_.... It is yet to be copied and polished, and the notes are to
+come.'
+
+Under date of La Mira, August 7, 1817, he records that the new canto is
+one hundred and thirty stanzas in length, and talks about the price for
+it. He is now ready to launch it on the world; and, as now appears, on
+August 9, 1817, _two days after_, he wrote the document above cited,
+and put it into the hands of Mr. Lewis, as we are informed, 'for
+circulation among friends in England.'
+
+The reason of this may now be evident. Having prepared a suitable
+number of those whom he calls in his notes to Murray 'the initiated,'
+by private documents and statements, he is now prepared to publish his
+accusations against his wife, and the story of his wrongs, in a great
+immortal poem, which shall have a band of initiated interpreters, shall
+be read through the civilised world, and stand to accuse her after his
+death.
+
+In the Fourth Canto of 'Childe Harold,' with all his own overwhelming
+power of language, he sets forth his cause as against the silent woman
+who all this time had been making no party, and telling no story,
+and whom the world would therefore conclude to be silent because she
+had no answer to make. I remember well the time when this poetry, so
+resounding in its music, so mournful, so apparently generous, filled
+my heart with a vague anguish of sorrow for the sufferer, and of
+indignation at the cold insensibility that had maddened him. Thousands
+have felt the power of this great poem, which stands, and must stand to
+all time, a monument of what sacred and solemn powers God gave to this
+wicked man, and how vilely he abused this power as a weapon to slay the
+innocent.
+
+It is among the ruins of ancient Rome that his voice breaks forth in
+solemn imprecation:--
+
+  'O Time, thou beautifier of the dead,
+  Adorner of the ruin, comforter,
+  And only healer when the heart hath bled!--
+  Time, the corrector when our judgments err,
+  The test of truth, love,--sole philosopher,
+  For all besides are sophists,--from thy shrift
+  That never loses, though it doth defer!--
+  Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift
+  My hands and heart and eyes, and claim of thee a gift.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  'If thou hast ever seen me too elate,
+  Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne
+  Good, and reserved my pride against the hate
+  Which shall not whelm me, _let me not have worn
+  This iron in my soul in vain,--shall THEY not mourn?_
+  And thou who never yet of human wrong
+  Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis,
+  Here where the ancients paid their worship long,
+  Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss,
+  And round Orestes bid them howl and hiss
+  _For that unnatural retribution,--just
+  Had it but come from hands less near_,--in this
+  Thy former realm I call thee from the dust.
+  Dost thou not hear, my heart? awake thou shalt and must!
+  It is not that I may not have incurred
+  For my ancestral faults and mine, the wound
+  Wherewith I bleed withal, and had it been conferred
+  With a just weapon it had flowed unbound,
+  But now my blood shall not sink in the ground.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  'But in this page a record will I seek;
+  Not in the air shall these my words disperse,
+  Though I be ashes,--a far hour shall wreak
+  The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,
+  And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse.
+  That curse shall be forgiveness. Have I not,--
+  Hear me, my Mother Earth! behold it, Heaven,--
+  Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?
+  Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?
+  Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,
+  Hopes sapped, name blighted, life's life lied away,
+  And only not to desperation driven,
+  Because not altogether of such clay
+  As rots into the soul of those whom I survey?
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  'From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy,
+  Have I not seen what human things could do,--
+  From the loud roar of foaming calumny,
+  To the small whispers of the paltry few,
+  And subtler venom of the reptile crew,
+  _The Janus glance of whose significant eye,
+  Learning to lie with silence, would seem true,
+  And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,
+  Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy_?'[12]
+
+[Footnote 12: The italics are mine.]
+
+The reader will please notice that the lines in italics are almost,
+word for word, a repetition of the lines in italics in the former poem
+on his wife, where he speaks of a _significant eye_ that has _learned
+to lie in silence_, and were evidently meant to apply to Lady Byron and
+her small circle of confidential friends.
+
+Before this, in the Third Canto of 'Childe Harold,' he had claimed the
+sympathy of the world, as a loving father, deprived by a severe fate of
+the solace and society of his only child:--
+
+  'My daughter,--with this name my song began,--
+  My daughter,--with this name my song shall end,--
+  I see thee not and hear thee not, but none
+  Can be so wrapped in thee; thou art the friend
+  To whom the shadows of far years extend.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  'To aid thy mind's developments, to watch
+  The dawn of little joys, to sit and see
+  Almost thy very growth, to view thee catch
+  Knowledge of objects,--wonders yet to thee,--
+  And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,--
+  This it should seem was not reserved for me.
+  Yet this was in my nature,--as it is,
+  I know not what there is, yet something like to this.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  '_Yet though dull hate as duty should be taught_,
+  I know that thou wilt love me; though my name
+  Should be shut out from thee as spell still fraught
+  With desolation and a broken claim,
+  Though the grave close between us,--'t were the same,
+  I know that thou wilt love me, though to drain
+  My blood from out thy being were an aim
+  And an attainment,--all will be in vain.'
+
+To all these charges against her, sent all over the world in verses
+as eloquent as the English language is capable of, the wife replied
+nothing.
+
+  'Assailed by slander and the tongue of strife,
+  Her only answer was,--a blameless life.'
+
+She had a few friends, a very few, with whom she sought solace and
+sympathy. One letter from her, written at this time, preserved by
+accident, is the only authentic record of how the matter stood with her.
+
+We regret to say that the publication of this document was not brought
+forth to clear Lady Byron's name from her husband's slanders, but to
+shield him from the worst accusation against him, by showing that this
+crime was not included in the few private confidential revelations that
+friendship wrung from the young wife at this period.
+
+Lady Anne Barnard, authoress of 'Auld Robin Grey', a friend whose
+age and experience made her a proper confidante, sent for the
+broken-hearted, perplexed wife, and offered her a woman's sympathy.
+
+To her Lady Byron wrote many letters, under seal of confidence, and
+Lady Anne says: 'I will give you a few paragraphs transcribed from
+one of Lady Byron's own letters to me. It is sorrowful to think that
+in a very little time this young and amiable creature, wise, patient,
+and feeling, will have her character mistaken by every one who reads
+Byron's works. To rescue her from this I preserved her letters, and
+when she afterwards expressed a fear that anything of her writing
+should ever fall into hands to injure him (I suppose she meant by
+publication), I safely assured her that it never should. But here this
+letter shall be placed, a sacred record in her favour, unknown to
+herself.
+
+ 'I am a very incompetent judge of the impression which the last Canto
+ of "Childe Harold" may produce on the minds of indifferent readers.
+
+ 'It contains the usual trace of a conscience restlessly awake, though
+ his object has been too long to aggravate its burden, as if it could
+ thus be oppressed into eternal stupor. I will hope, as you do, that it
+ survives for his ultimate good.
+
+ 'It was the acuteness of his remorse, impenitent in its character,
+ which so long seemed to demand from my compassion to spare every
+ semblance of reproach, every look of grief, which might have said to
+ his conscience, "You have made me wretched."
+
+ 'I am decidedly of opinion that he is responsible. He has wished to
+ be thought partially deranged, or on the brink of it, to perplex
+ observers and _prevent them from tracing effects to their real causes_
+ through all the intricacies of his conduct. I was, as I told you, at
+ one time the dupe of his acted insanity, and clung to the former
+ delusions in regard to the motives that concerned me personally, till
+ the whole system was laid bare.
+
+ 'He is the absolute monarch of words, and uses them, as Bonaparte did
+ lives, for conquest, without more regard to their intrinsic value,
+ considering them only as ciphers, which must derive all their import
+ from the situation in which he places them, and the ends to which he
+ adapts them, with such consummate skill.
+
+ 'Why, then, you will say, does he not employ them to give a better
+ colour to his own character? Because he is too good an actor to
+ over-act, or to assume a moral garb, which it would be easy to strip
+ off.
+
+ 'In regard to his poetry, egotism is the vital principle of his
+ imagination, which it is difficult for him to kindle on any subject
+ with which his own character and interests are not identified; but by
+ the introduction of fictitious incidents, by change of scene or time,
+ _he has enveloped his poetical disclosures in a system impenetrable
+ except to a very few_; and his constant desire of creating a sensation
+ makes him not averse to be the object of wonder and curiosity, even
+ though accompanied _by some dark and vague suspicions_.
+
+ 'Nothing has contributed more to the misunderstanding of his real
+ character than the lonely grandeur in which he shrouds it, and his
+ affectation of being above mankind, when he exists almost in their
+ voice. The romance of his sentiments is another feature of this mask
+ of state. I know no one more habitually destitute of that enthusiasm
+ he so beautifully expresses, and to which he can work up his fancy
+ chiefly by contagion.
+
+ '_I had heard he was the best of brothers, the most generous of
+ friends, and I thought such feelings only required to be warmed and
+ cherished into more diffusive benevolence. Though these opinions are
+ eradicated, and could never return but with the decay of my memory_,
+ you will not wonder if there are still moments when the association of
+ feelings which arose from them soften and sadden my thoughts.
+
+ 'But I have not thanked you, dearest Lady Anne, for your kindness in
+ regard to a principal object,--that of rectifying false impressions.
+ I trust you understand my wishes, which never were to injure Lord
+ Byron in any way; for, _though he would not suffer me to remain his
+ wife, he cannot prevent me from continuing his friend; and it was from
+ considering myself as such that I silenced the accusations by which my
+ own conduct might have been more fully justified_.
+
+ 'It is not necessary to speak ill of his heart in general; it is
+ sufficient that to me it was hard and impenetrable,--that my own must
+ have been broken before his could have been touched. I would rather
+ represent this as _my_ misfortune than as _his_ guilt; but, surely,
+ that misfortune is not to be made my crime! Such are my feelings; you
+ will judge how to act.
+
+ 'His allusions to me in "Childe Harold" are cruel and cold, but
+ with such a semblance as to make _me_ appear so, and to attract all
+ sympathy to himself. It is said in this poem that hatred of him will
+ be taught as a lesson to his child. I might appeal to all who have
+ ever heard me speak of him, and still more to my own heart, to witness
+ that there has been no moment when I have remembered injury otherwise
+ than affectionately and sorrowfully.
+
+ 'It is not my duty to give way to hopeless and wholly unrequited
+ affection; but, so long as I live, my chief struggle will probably
+ be not to remember him too kindly. I do not seek the sympathy of the
+ world, but I wish to be known by those whose opinion is valuable and
+ whose kindness is dear to me. Among such, my dear Lady Anne, you will
+ ever be remembered by your truly affectionate
+
+  'A. BYRON.'
+
+On this letter I observe Lord Lindsay remarks that it shows a noble
+but rather severe character, and a recent author has remarked that it
+seemed to be written rather in a 'cold spirit of criticism.' It seems
+to strike these gentlemen as singular that Lady Byron did not enjoy the
+poem! But there are two remarkable sentences in this letter which have
+escaped the critics hitherto. Lord Byron, in this, the Third Canto
+of 'Childe Harold,' expresses in most affecting words an enthusiasm
+of love for his sister. So long as he lived he was her faithful
+correspondent; he sent her his journals; and, dying, he left her and
+her children everything he had in the world. This certainly seems like
+an affectionate brother; but in what words does Lady Byron speak of
+this affection?
+
+'I _had heard he was the best of brothers_, the most generous of
+friends. I thought these feelings only required to be warmed and
+cherished into more diffusive benevolence. THESE OPINIONS ARE
+ERADICATED, AND COULD NEVER RETURN BUT WITH THE DECAY OF MEMORY.'
+Let me ask those who give this letter as a proof that at this time no
+idea such as I have stated was in Lady Byron's mind, to account for
+these words. Let them please answer these questions: Why had Lady Byron
+ceased to think him a good brother? Why does she use so strong a word
+as that the opinion was eradicated, torn up by the roots, and could
+never grow again in her except by decay of memory?
+
+And yet this is a document Lord Lindsay vouches for as authentic, and
+which he brings forward _in defence_ of Lord Byron.
+
+Again she says,'Though he _would not suffer me to remain his wife_, he
+cannot prevent me from continuing his friend.' Do these words not say
+that in some past time, in some decided manner, Lord Byron had declared
+to her his rejection of her as a wife? I shall yet have occasion to
+explain these words.
+
+Again she says, 'I silenced accusations by which my conduct might have
+been more fully justified.'
+
+The people in England who are so very busy in searching out evidence
+against my true story have searched out and given to the world an
+important confirmation of this assertion of Lady Byron's.
+
+It seems that the confidential waiting-maid who went with Lady Byron
+on her wedding journey has been sought out and interrogated, and, as
+appears by description, is a venerable, respectable old person, quite
+in possession of all her senses in general, and of that sixth sense of
+propriety in particular, which appears not to be a common virtue in our
+days.
+
+As her testimony is important, we insert it just here, with a
+description of her person in full. The ardent investigators thus
+speak:--
+
+ 'Having gained admission, we were shown into a small but neatly
+ furnished and scrupulously clean apartment, where sat the object
+ of our visit. Mrs. Mimms is a venerable-looking old lady, of short
+ stature, slight and active appearance, with a singularly bright and
+ intelligent countenance. Although midway between eighty and ninety
+ years of age, she is in full possession of her faculties, discourses
+ freely and cheerfully, hears apparently as well as ever she did,
+ and her sight is so good that, aided by a pair of spectacles, she
+ reads the Chronicle every day with ease. Some idea of her competency
+ to contribute valuable evidence to the subject which now so much
+ engages public attention on three continents may be found from her
+ own narrative of her personal relations with Lady Byron. Mrs. Mimms
+ was born in the neighbourhood of Seaham, and knew Lady Byron from
+ childhood. During the long period of ten years she was Miss Milbanke's
+ lady's-maid, and in that capacity became the close confidante of her
+ mistress. There were circumstances which rendered their relationship
+ peculiarly intimate. Miss Milbanke had no sister or female friend
+ to whom she was bound by the ties of more than a common affection;
+ and her mother, whatever other excellent qualities she may have
+ possessed, was too high-spirited and too hasty in temper to attract
+ the sympathies of the young. Some months before Miss Milbanke was
+ married to Lord Byron, Mrs. Mimms had quitted her service on the
+ occasion of her own marriage with Mr. Mimms; but she continued to
+ reside in the neighbourhood of Seaham, and remained on the most
+ friendly terms with her former mistress. As the courtship proceeded,
+ Miss Milbanke concealed nothing from her faithful attendant; and
+ when the wedding-day was fixed, she begged Mrs. Mimms to return and
+ fulfil the duties of lady's-maid, at least during the honeymoon. Mrs.
+ Mimms at the time was nursing her first child, and it was no small
+ sacrifice to quit her own home at such a moment, but she could not
+ refuse her old mistress's request. Accordingly, she returned to Seaham
+ Hall some days before the wedding, was present at the ceremony, and
+ then preceded Lord and Lady Byron to Halnaby Hall, near Croft, in the
+ North Riding of Yorkshire, one of Sir Ralph Milbanke's seats, where
+ the newly married couple were to spend the honeymoon. Mrs. Mimms
+ remained with Lord and Lady Byron during the three weeks they spent at
+ Halnaby Hall, and then accompanied them to Seaham, where they spent
+ the next six weeks. It was during the latter period that she finally
+ quitted Lady Byron's service; but she remained in the most friendly
+ communication with her ladyship till the death of the latter, and for
+ some time was living in the neighbourhood of Lady Byron's residence
+ in Leicestershire, where she had frequent opportunities of seeing her
+ former mistress. It may be added that Lady Byron was not unmindful of
+ the faithful services of her friend and attendant in the instructions
+ to her executors contained in her will. Such was the position of Mrs.
+ Mimms towards Lady Byron; and we think no one will question that
+ it was of a nature to entitle all that Mrs. Mimms may say on the
+ subject of the relations of Lord and Lady Byron to the most respectful
+ consideration and credit.'
+
+Such is the chronicler's account of the faithful creature whom nothing
+but intense indignation and disgust at Mrs. Beecher Stowe would lead
+to speak on her mistress's affairs; but Mrs. Beecher Stowe feels none
+the less sincere respect for her, and is none the less obliged to her
+for having spoken. Much of Mrs. Mimms's testimony will be referred to
+in another place; we only extract one passage, to show that while Lord
+Byron spent his time in setting afloat slanders against his wife, she
+spent hers in sealing the mouths of witnesses against him.
+
+Of the period of the honeymoon Mrs. Mimms says:--
+
+ 'The happiness of Lady Byron, however, was of brief duration; even
+ during the short three weeks they spent at Halnaby, the irregularities
+ of Lord Byron occasioned her the greatest distress, and she even
+ contemplated returning to her father. Mrs. Mimms was her constant
+ companion and confidante through this painful period, and she does not
+ believe that her ladyship concealed a thought from her. _With laudable
+ reticence, the old lady absolutely refuses to disclose the particulars
+ of Lord Byron's misconduct at this time; she gave Lady Byron a solemn
+ promise not to do so._
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+ 'So serious did Mrs. Mimms consider the conduct of Lord Byron, that
+ she recommended her mistress to confide all the circumstances to her
+ father, Sir Ralph Milbanke, a calm, kind, and most excellent parent,
+ and take his advice as to her future course. At one time Mrs. Mimms
+ thinks Lady Byron had resolved to follow her counsel and impart her
+ wrongs to Sir Ralph; but on arriving at Seaham Hall her ladyship
+ strictly enjoined Mrs. Mimms to preserve absolute silence on the
+ subject--a course which she followed herself;--so that when, six weeks
+ later, she and Lord Byron left Seaham for London, not a word had
+ escaped her to disturb her parents' tranquility as to their daughter's
+ domestic happiness. As might be expected, Mrs. Mimms bears the
+ warmest testimony to the noble and lovable qualities of her departed
+ mistress. She also declares that Lady Byron was by no means of a cold
+ temperament, but that the affectionate impulses of her nature were
+ checked by the unkind treatment she experienced from her husband.'
+
+We have already shown that Lord Byron had been, ever since his
+separation, engaged in a systematic attempt to reverse the judgment of
+the world against himself, by making converts of all his friends to a
+most odious view of his wife's character, and inspiring them with the
+zeal of propagandists to spread these views through society. We have
+seen how he prepared partisans to interpret the Fourth Canto of 'Childe
+Harold.'
+
+This plan of solemn and heroic accusation was the first public attack
+on his wife. Next we see him commencing a scurrilous attempt to turn
+her to ridicule in the First Canto of 'Don Juan.'
+
+It is to our point now to show how carefully and cautiously this Don
+Juan campaign was planned.
+
+Vol. IV. p. 138, we find Letter 325 to Mr. Murray:--
+
+  'VENICE: January 25, 1819.
+
+ 'You will do me the favour to _print privately, for private
+ distribution, fifty copies of "Don Juan."_ The list of the men to whom
+ I wish it presented I will send hereafter.'
+
+The poem, as will be remembered, begins with the meanest and foulest
+attack on his wife that ever ribald wrote, and puts it in close
+neighbourhood with scenes which every pure man or woman must feel
+to be the beastly utterances of a man who had lost all sense of
+decency. Such a potion was too strong to be administered even in a
+time when great license was allowed, and men were not over-nice. But
+Byron chooses fifty armour-bearers of that class of men who would
+find indecent ribaldry about a wife a good joke, and talk about the
+'artistic merits' of things which we hope would make an honest boy
+blush.
+
+At this time he acknowledges that his vices had brought him to a state
+of great exhaustion, attended by such debility of the stomach that
+nothing remained on it; and adds, 'I was obliged to reform my way of
+life, which was conducting me from the yellow leaf to the ground with
+all deliberate speed.'[13] But as his health is a little better he
+employs it in making the way to death and hell elegantly easy for other
+young men, by breaking down the remaining scruples of a society not
+over-scrupulous.
+
+[Footnote 13: Vol. iv. p 143.]
+
+Society revolted, however, and fought stoutly against the nauseous
+dose. His sister wrote to him that she heard such things said of it
+that _she_ never would read it; and the outcry against it on the part
+of all women of his acquaintance was such that for a time he was quite
+overborne; and the Countess Guiccioli finally extorted a promise from
+him to cease writing it. Nevertheless, there came a time when England
+accepted 'Don Juan,'--when Wilson, in the 'Noctes Ambrosianæ,' praised
+it as a classic, and took every opportunity to reprobate Lady Byron's
+conduct. When first it appeared the 'Blackwood' came out with that
+indignant denunciation of which we have spoken, and to which Byron
+replied in the extracts we have already quoted. He did something more
+than reply. He marked out Wilson as one of the strongest literary men
+of the day, and set his 'initiated' with their documents to work upon
+him.
+
+One of these documents to which he requested Wilson's attention was the
+private autobiography, written expressly to give his own story of all
+the facts of the marriage and separation.
+
+In the indignant letter he writes Murray on the 'Blackwood' article,
+Vol. IV., Letter 350--under date December 10, 1819--he says:--
+
+ 'I sent home for Moore, and for Moore only (who has my journal also),
+ my memoir written up to 1816, and I gave him leave to show it to
+ whom he pleased, _but not to publish_ on any account. _You_ may read
+ it, and you may let Wilson read it if he likes--not for his public
+ opinion, but his private, for I like the man, and care very little
+ about the magazine. And I could wish Lady Byron herself to read
+ it, that she may have it in her power to mark anything mistaken or
+ misstated. As it will never appear till after my extinction, it would
+ be but fair she should see it; that is to say, herself willing. Your
+ "Blackwood" accuses me of treating women harshly; but I have been
+ their martyr; my whole life has been sacrificed to them and by them.'
+
+It was a part of Byron's policy to place Lady Byron in positions before
+the world where she _could_ not speak, and where her silence would be
+set down to her as haughty, stony indifference and obstinacy. Such was
+the pretended negotiation through Madame de Staël, and such now this
+apparently fair and generous offer to let Lady Byron see and mark this
+manuscript.
+
+The little Ada is now in her fifth year--a child of singular
+sensibility and remarkable mental powers--one of those exceptional
+children who are so perilous a charge for a mother.
+
+Her husband proposes this artful snare to her,--that she shall mark
+what is false in a statement which is all built on a damning lie, that
+she cannot refute over that daughter's head,--and which would perhaps
+be her ruin to discuss.
+
+Hence came an addition of two more documents, to be used 'privately
+among friends,'[14] and which 'Blackwood' uses after Lady Byron is
+safely out of the world to cast ignominy on her grave--the wife's
+letter, that of a mother standing at bay for her daughter, knowing that
+she is dealing with a desperate, powerful, unscrupulous enemy.
+
+  'KIRKBY MALLORY: March 10, 1820.
+
+ [Footnote 14: Lord Byron took especial pains to point out to Murray
+ the importance of these two letters. Vol. V. Letter 443, he says: 'You
+ must also have from Mr. Moore the correspondence between me and Lady
+ B., to whom I offered a sight of all that concerns herself in these
+ papers. This is important. He has _her_ letter and my answer.']
+
+ 'I received your letter of January 1, offering to my perusal a
+ Memoir of part of your life. I decline to inspect it. I consider
+ the publication or circulation of such a composition at any time as
+ prejudicial to Ada's future happiness. For my own sake, I have no
+ reason to shrink from publication; but, notwithstanding the injuries
+ which I have suffered, I should lament some of the _consequences_.
+
+  'A. BYRON.
+
+  'To Lord Byron.'
+
+Lord Byron, writing for the public, as is his custom, makes reply:--
+
+  'RAVENNA: April 3, 1820.
+
+ 'I received yesterday your answer, dated March 10. My offer was an
+ honest one, and surely could only be construed as such even by the
+ most malignant casuistry. I could answer you, but it is too late, and
+ it is not worth while. To the mysterious menace of the last sentence,
+ whatever its import may be--and I cannot pretend to unriddle it--I
+ could hardly be very sensible even if I understood it, as, before it
+ can take place, I shall be where "nothing can touch him further".... I
+ advise you, however, to anticipate the period of your intention, for,
+ be assured, no power of figures can avail beyond the present; and if
+ it could, I would answer with the Florentine:--
+
+  '"Ed io, che posto son con loro in croce
+                            ... e certo
+  La fiera moglie, più ch' altro, mi nuoce."[15]
+
+  'BYRON.
+
+  'To Lady Byron.'
+
+[Footnote 15:
+
+  'And I, who with them on the cross am placed,
+                                    ... truly
+  My savage wife, more than aught else, doth harm me.'
+
+  _Inferno_, Canto, XVI., Longfellow's translation.
+]
+
+Two things are very evident in this correspondence: Lady Byron
+intimates that, if he publishes his story, some _consequences_ must
+follow which she shall regret.
+
+Lord Byron receives this as a threat, and says he doesn't understand
+it. But directly after he says, 'Before IT can take place, I shall be,'
+&c.
+
+The intimation is quite clear. He _does_ understand what the
+consequences alluded to are. They are evidently that Lady Byron will
+speak out and tell her story. He says she cannot do this till _after
+he is dead_, and then he shall not care. In allusion to her accuracy
+as to dates and figures, he says: 'Be assured no power of figures can
+avail beyond the present' (life); and then ironically _advises_ her to
+_anticipate the period_,--i.e. to speak out while he is alive.
+
+In Vol. VI. Letter 518, which Lord Byron wrote to Lady Byron, but did
+not send, he says: 'I burned your last note for two reasons,--firstly,
+because it was written in a style not very agreeable; and, secondly,
+because I wished to take your word without documents, which are the
+resources of worldly and suspicious people.'
+
+It would appear from this that there _was_ a last letter of Lady Byron
+to her husband, which he did not think proper to keep on hand, or show
+to the 'initiated' with his usual unreserve; that this letter contained
+some kind of _pledge_ for which he preferred to take her word, _without
+documents_.
+
+Each reader can imagine for himself what that _pledge_ might have been;
+but from the tenor of the three letters we should infer that it was a
+promise of silence for his lifetime, on _certain conditions_, and that
+the publication of the autobiography would violate those conditions,
+and make it her duty to speak out.
+
+This celebrated autobiography forms so conspicuous a figure in the
+whole history, that the reader must have a full idea of it, as given by
+Byron himself, in Vol. IV. Letter 344, to Murray:--
+
+ 'I gave to Moore, who is gone to Rome, my life in MS.,--in
+ seventy-eight folio sheets, brought down to 1816 ... also a journal
+ kept in 1814. Neither are for publication during my life, but when I
+ am cold you may do what you please. In the mean time, if you like to
+ read them you may, and show them to anybody you like. I care not....'
+
+He tells him also:--
+
+ 'You will find in it a detailed account of my marriage and its
+ consequences, as true as a party concerned can make such an account.'
+
+Of the extent to which this autobiography was circulated we have the
+following testimony of Shelton Mackenzie, in notes to 'The Noctes' of
+June 1824.
+
+In 'The Noctes' Odoherty says:--
+
+ 'The fact is, the work had been copied for the private reading of a
+ great lady in Florence.'
+
+The note says:--
+
+ 'The great lady in Florence, for whose private reading Byron's
+ autobiography was copied, was the Countess of Westmoreland.... Lady
+ Blessington had the autobiography in her possession for weeks, and
+ confessed to having copied every line of it. Moore remonstrated, and
+ she committed her copy to the flames, but did not tell him that her
+ sister, Mrs. Home Purvis, now Viscountess of Canterbury, had also made
+ a copy!... From the quantity of copy I have seen,--and others were
+ more in the way of falling in with it than myself,--I surmise that at
+ least half a dozen copies were made, and of these _five_ are now in
+ existence. Some particular parts, such as the marriage and separation,
+ were copied separately; but I think there cannot be less than five
+ full copies yet to be found.'
+
+This was written _after the original autobiography was burned_.
+
+We may see the zeal and enthusiasm of the Byron party,--copying
+seventy-eight folio sheets, as of old Christians copied the Gospels.
+How widely, fully, and thoroughly, thus, by this secret process, was
+society saturated with Byron's own versions of the story that related
+to himself and wife! Against her there was only the complaint of an
+absolute silence. She put forth no statements, no documents; had no
+party, sealed the lips of her counsel, and even of her servants; yet
+she could not but have known, from time to time, how thoroughly and
+strongly this web of mingled truth and lies was being meshed around her
+steps.
+
+From the time that Byron first saw the importance of securing Wilson on
+his side, and wrote to have his partisans attend to him, we may date
+an entire revolution in the 'Blackwood.' It became Byron's warmest
+supporter,--is to this day the bitterest accuser of his wife.
+
+Why was this wonderful silence? It appears by Dr. Lushington's
+statements, that, when Lady Byron did speak, she had a story to tell
+that powerfully affected both him and Romilly,--a story supported by
+evidence on which they were willing to have gone to public trial.
+Supposing, now, she had imitated Lord Byron's example, and, avoiding
+public trial, had put her story into private circulation; as he sent
+'Don Juan' to fifty confidential friends, suppose she had sent a
+written statement of her story to fifty judges as intelligent as the
+two that had heard it; or suppose she had confronted his autobiography
+with her own,--what would have been the result?
+
+The first result might have been Mrs. Leigh's utter ruin. The world may
+finally forgive the man of genius anything; but for a woman there is no
+mercy and no redemption.
+
+This ruin Lady Byron prevented by her utter silence and great
+self-command. Mrs. Leigh never lost position. Lady Byron never so
+varied in her manner towards her as to excite the suspicions even of
+her confidential old servant.
+
+To protect Mrs. Leigh effectually, it must have been necessary to
+continue to exclude even her own mother from the secret, as we are
+assured she did at first; for, had she told Lady Milbanke, it is
+not possible that so high-spirited a woman could have restrained
+herself from such outward expressions as would at least have awakened
+suspicion. There was no resource but this absolute silence.
+
+Lady Blessington, in her last conversation with Lord Byron, thus
+describes the life Lady Byron was leading. She speaks of her as
+'wearing away her youth in almost monastic seclusion, questioned by
+some, appreciated by few, seeking consolation alone in the discharge of
+her duties, and avoiding all external demonstrations of a grief that
+her pale cheek and solitary existence alone were vouchers for.'[16]
+
+[Footnote 16: 'Conversations,' p. 108.]
+
+The main object of all this silence may be imagined, if we remember
+that if Lord Byron had not died,--had he truly and deeply repented,
+and become a thoroughly good man, and returned to England to pursue a
+course worthy of his powers, there was on record neither word nor deed
+from his wife to stand in his way.
+
+HIS PLACE WAS KEPT IN SOCIETY, ready for him to return to
+whenever he came clothed and in his right mind. He might have had the
+heart and confidence of his daughter unshadowed by a suspicion. He
+might have won the reverence of the great and good in his own lands and
+all lands. That hope, which was the strong support, the prayer of the
+silent wife, it did not please God to fulfil.
+
+Lord Byron died a worn-out man at thirty-six. But the bitter seeds he
+had sown came up, after his death, in a harvest of thorns over his
+grave; and there were not wanting hands to use them as instruments of
+torture on the heart of his widow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+RÉSUMÉ OF THE CONSPIRACY.
+
+
+We have traced the conspiracy of Lord Byron against his wife up to its
+latest device. That the reader's mind may be clear on the points of the
+process, we shall now briefly recapitulate the documents in the order
+of time.
+
+I. March 17, 1816.--While negotiations for separation were
+pending,--'_Fare thee well, and if for ever_.'
+
+While writing these pages, we have received from England the testimony
+of one who has seen the original draught of that 'Fare thee well.' This
+original copy had evidently been subjected to the most careful and
+acute revision. Scarcely two lines that were not interlined, scarcely
+an adjective that was not exchanged for a better; showing that the
+noble lord was not so far overcome by grief as to have forgotten his
+reputation. (Found its way to the public prints through the imprudence
+of _a friend_.)
+
+II. March 29, 1816.--An attack on Lady Byron's old governess for having
+been born poor, for being homely, and for having unduly influenced his
+wife against him; promising that her grave should be a fiery bed,
+&c.; also praising his wife's perfect and remarkable truthfulness and
+discernment, that made it impossible for flattery to fool, or baseness
+blind her; but ascribing all his woes to her being fooled and blinded
+by this same governess. (Found its way to the prints by the imprudence
+of _a friend_.)
+
+III. September 1816.--Lines on hearing that Lady Byron is ill. Calls
+her a Clytemnestra, who has secretly set assassins on her lord; says
+she is a mean, treacherous, deceitful liar, and has entirely departed
+from her early truth, and become the most unscrupulous and unprincipled
+of women. (Never printed till after Lord Byron's death, but circulated
+_privately_ among the '_initiated_.')
+
+IV. Aug. 9, 1817.--Gives to M. G. Lewis a paper for circulation
+among friends in England, stating that what he most wants is _public
+investigation_, which has always been denied him; and daring Lady Byron
+and her counsel to come out publicly. (Found in M. G. Lewis's portfolio
+after his death; never heard of before, except among the 'initiated.')
+
+Having given M. G. Lewis's document time to work,--
+
+January 1818.--Gives the Fourth Canto of 'Childe Harold'[17] to the
+public.
+
+[Footnote 17: Murray's edition of 'Byron's Works,' Vol. ii. p. 189;
+date of dedication to Hobhouse, Jan. 2, 1818.]
+
+Jan. 25, 1819.--Sends to Murray to print for private circulation among
+the 'initiated' the First Canto of 'Don Juan.'
+
+Is nobly and severely rebuked for this insult to his wife by the
+'Blackwood,' August 1819.
+
+October 1819.--Gives Moore the manuscript 'Autobiography,' with leave
+to show it to whom he pleases, and print it after his death.
+
+Oct. 29, 1819, Vol. IV. Letter 344.--Writes to Murray, that he may read
+all this 'Autobiography,' and show it to anybody he likes.
+
+Dec. 10, 1819.--Writes to Murray on this article in 'Blackwood'
+against 'Don Juan' and himself, which he supposes written by Wilson;
+sends a complimentary message to Wilson, and asks him to read his
+'Autobiography' sent by Moore. (Letter 350.)
+
+March 15, 1820.--Writes and dedicates to I. Disraeli, Esq., a
+vindication of himself in reply to the 'Blackwood' on 'Don Juan,'
+containing an indignant defence of his own conduct in relation to his
+wife, and maintaining that he never yet has had an opportunity of
+knowing whereof he has been accused; accusing Sir S. Romilly of taking
+his retainer, and then going over to the adverse party, &c. (Printed
+for _private circulation_; to be found in the standard English edition
+of Murray, vol. ix. p. 57.)
+
+To this condensed account of Byron's strategy we must add the crowning
+stroke of policy which transmitted this warfare to his friends, to be
+continued after his death.
+
+During the last visit Moore made him in Italy, and just before Byron
+presented to him his 'Autobiography,' the following scene occurred, as
+narrated by Moore (vol. iv. p. 221):--
+
+ 'The chief subject of conversation, when alone, was his marriage, and
+ the load of obloquy which it had brought upon him. He was most anxious
+ to know _the worst_ that had been alleged of his conduct; and, as this
+ was our first opportunity of speaking together on the subject, I did
+ not hesitate to put his candour most searchingly to the proof, not
+ only by enumerating the various charges I had heard brought against
+ him by others, but by specifying such portions of these charges as I
+ had been inclined to think not incredible myself.
+
+ 'To all this he listened with patience, and answered with the most
+ unhesitating frankness; laughing to scorn the tales of unmanly outrage
+ related of him, but at the same time acknowledging that there had
+ been in his conduct but too much to blame and regret, and stating one
+ or two occasions during his domestic life when he had been irritated
+ into letting the "breath of bitter words" escape him, ... which he now
+ evidently remembered with a degree of remorse and pain which might
+ well have entitled them to be forgotten by others.
+
+ 'It was, at the same time, manifest, that, whatever admissions he
+ might be inclined to make respecting his own delinquencies, _the
+ inordinate measure of the punishment dealt out to him had sunk deeply
+ into his mind, and, with the usual effect of such injustice, drove him
+ also to be unjust himself; so much so, indeed, as to impute to the
+ quarter to which he now traced all his ill fate a feeling of fixed
+ hostility to himself, which would not rest, he thought, even at his
+ grave, but continue to persecute his memory as it was now embittering
+ his life_. So strong was this impression upon him, that, during one of
+ our few intervals of seriousness, he conjured me by our friendship,
+ if, as he both felt and hoped, I should survive him, not to let
+ unmerited censure settle upon his name.'
+
+In this same account, page 218, Moore testifies that
+
+ 'Lord Byron disliked his countrymen, but only because he knew that his
+ morals were held in contempt by them. The English, themselves rigid
+ observers of family duties, could not pardon him the neglect of his,
+ nor his trampling on principles; therefore, neither did he like being
+ presented to them, nor did they, especially when they had wives with
+ them, like to cultivate his acquaintance. Still there was a strong
+ desire in all of them to see him; and the women in particular, who did
+ not dare to look at him but by stealth, said in an under-voice, "What
+ a pity it is!" If, however, any of his compatriots of exalted rank and
+ high reputation came forward to treat him with courtesy, he showed
+ himself obviously flattered by it. It seemed that, to the wound which
+ remained open in his ulcerated heart, such soothing attentions were as
+ drops of healing balm, which comforted him.'
+
+When in society, we are further informed by a lady quoted by Mr.
+Moore, he was in the habit of speaking of his wife with much respect
+and affection, as an illustrious lady, distinguished for her qualities
+of heart and understanding; saying that all the fault of their
+cruel separation lay with himself. Mr. Moore seems at times to be
+somewhat puzzled by these contradictory statements of his idol, and
+speculates not a little on what could be Lord Byron's object in using
+such language in public; mentally comparing it, we suppose, with
+the free handling which he gave to the same subject in his private
+correspondence.
+
+The innocence with which Moore gives himself up to be manipulated by
+Lord Byron, the _naïveté_ with which he shows all the process, let
+us a little into the secret of the marvellous powers of charming and
+blinding which this great actor possessed.
+
+Lord Byron had the beauty, the wit, the genius, the dramatic talent,
+which have constituted the strength of some wonderfully fascinating
+women.
+
+There have been women able to lead their leashes of blinded adorers; to
+make them swear that black was white, or white black, at their word;
+to smile away their senses, or weep away their reason. No matter what
+these sirens may say, no matter what they may do, though caught in a
+thousand transparent lies, and doing a thousand deeds which would have
+ruined others, still men madly rave after them in life, and tear their
+hair over their graves. Such an enchanter in man's shape was Lord Byron.
+
+He led captive Moore and Murray by being beautiful, a genius, and a
+lord; calling them 'Dear Tom' and 'Dear Murray,' while they were only
+commoners. He first insulted Sir Walter Scott, and then witched his
+heart out of him by ingenuous confessions and poetical compliments; he
+took Wilson's heart by flattering messages and a beautifully-written
+letter; he corresponded familiarly with Hogg; and, before his death,
+had made fast friends, in one way or another, of the whole 'Noctes
+Ambrosianæ' Club.
+
+We thus have given the historical _résumé_ of Lord Byron's attacks
+on his wife's reputation: we shall add, that they were based on
+philosophic principles, showing a deep knowledge of mankind. An
+analysis will show that they can be philosophically classified:--
+
+1st. Those which addressed the sympathetic nature of man, representing
+her as cold, methodical, severe, strict, unforgiving.
+
+2nd. Those addressed to the faculty of association, connecting her with
+ludicrous and licentious images; taking from her the usual protection
+of womanly delicacy and sacredness.
+
+3rd. Those addressed to the moral faculties, accusing her as artful,
+treacherous, untruthful, malignant.
+
+All these various devices he held in his hand, shuffling and dealing
+them as a careful gamester his pack of cards according to the
+exigencies of the game. He played adroitly, skilfully, with blinding
+flatteries and seductive wiles, that made his victims willing dupes.
+
+Nothing can more clearly show the power and perfectness of his
+enchantments than the masterly way in which he turned back the moral
+force of the whole English nation, which had risen at first in its
+strength against him. The victory was complete.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+RESULTS AFTER LORD BYRON'S DEATH.
+
+
+At the time of Lord Byron's death, the English public had been so
+skilfully manipulated by the Byron propaganda, that the sympathy of
+the whole world was with him. A tide of emotion was now aroused in
+England by his early death--dying in the cause of Greece and liberty.
+There arose a general wail for him, as for a lost pleiad, not only
+in England, but over the whole world; a great rush of enthusiasm for
+his memory, to which the greatest literary men of England freely gave
+voice. By general consent, Lady Byron seems to have been looked upon as
+the only cold-hearted unsympathetic person in this general mourning.
+
+From that time the literary world of England apparently regarded Lady
+Byron as a woman to whom none of the decorums, nor courtesies of
+ordinary womanhood, nor even the consideration belonging to common
+humanity, were due.
+
+'She that is a widow indeed, and desolate,' has been regarded in all
+Christian countries as an object made sacred by the touch of God's
+afflicting hand, sacred in her very helplessness; and the old Hebrew
+Scriptures give to the Supreme Father no dearer title than 'the widow's
+God.' But, on Lord Byron's death, men not devoid of tenderness, men
+otherwise generous and of fine feeling, acquiesced in insults to his
+widow with an obtuseness that seems, on review, quite incredible.
+
+Lady Byron was not only a widow, but an orphan. She had no sister for
+confidante; no father and mother to whom to go in her sorrows--sorrows
+so much deeper and darker to her than they could be to any other human
+being. She had neither son nor brother to uphold and protect her. On
+all hands it was acknowledged that, so far, there was no fault to be
+found in her but her utter silence. Her life was confessed to be pure,
+useful, charitable; and yet, in this time of her sorrow, the writers
+of England issued article upon article not only devoid of delicacy,
+but apparently injurious and insulting towards her, with a blind
+unconsciousness which seems astonishing.
+
+One of the greatest literary powers of that time was the 'Blackwood:'
+the reigning monarch on that literary throne was Wilson, the
+lion-hearted, the brave, generous, tender poet, and, with some sad
+exceptions, the noble man. But Wilson had believed the story of Byron,
+and, by his very generosity and tenderness and pity, was betrayed into
+injustice.
+
+In 'The Noctes' of November 1824 there is a conversation of the Noctes
+Club, in which North says, 'Byron and I knew each other pretty well;
+and I suppose there's no harm in adding, that we appreciated each
+other pretty tolerably. Did you ever see his letter to me?'
+
+The footnote to this says, '_This letter, which was PRINTED in Byron's
+lifetime, was not published till_ 1830, when it appeared in Moore's
+"Life of Byron." It is one of the most vigorous prose compositions in
+the language. Byron had the highest opinion of Wilson's genius and
+noble spirit.'
+
+In the first place, with our present ideas of propriety and good taste,
+we should reckon it an indecorum to make the private affairs of a
+pure and good woman, whose circumstances under any point of view were
+trying, and who evidently shunned publicity, the subject of public
+discussion in magazines which were read all over the world.
+
+Lady Byron, as they all knew, had on her hands a most delicate and
+onerous task, in bringing up an only daughter, necessarily inheriting
+peculiarities of genius and great sensitiveness; and the many
+mortifications and embarrassments which such intermeddling with her
+private matters must have given, certainly should have been considered
+by men with any pretensions to refinement or good feeling.
+
+But the literati of England allowed her no consideration, no rest, no
+privacy.
+
+In 'The Noctes' of November 1825 there is the record of a free
+conversation upon Lord and Lady Byron's affairs, interlarded with
+exhortations to push the bottle, and remarks on whisky-toddy. Medwin's
+'Conversations with Lord Byron' is discussed, which, we are told in a
+note, appeared a few months after the _noble_ poet's death.
+
+There is a rather bold and free discussion of Lord Byron's
+character--his fondness for gin and water, on which stimulus he wrote
+'Don Juan;' and James Hogg says pleasantly to Mullion, 'O Mullion! it's
+a pity you and Byron could na ha' been acquaint. There would ha' been
+brave sparring to see who could say the wildest and the dreadfullest
+things; for he had neither fear of man or woman, and would ha' his joke
+or jeer, cost what it might.' And then follows a specimen of one of
+his jokes with an actress, that, in indecency, certainly justifies the
+assertion. From the other stories which follow, and the parenthesis
+that occurs frequently ('Mind your glass, James, a little more!'), it
+seems evident that the party are progressing in their peculiar kind of
+_civilisation_.
+
+It is in this same circle and paper that Lady Byron's private affairs
+come up for discussion. The discussion is thus elegantly introduced:--
+
+ _Hogg._--'Reach me the black bottle. I say, Christopher, what, after
+ all, is your opinion o' Lord and Leddy Byron's quarrel? Do you
+ yoursel' take part with him, or with her? I wad like to hear your real
+ opinion.'
+
+ _North._--'Oh, dear! Well, Hogg, since you will have it, I think
+ Douglas Kinnard and Hobhouse are bound to tell us whether there be any
+ truth, and how much, in this story about the _declaration_, signed by
+ Sir Ralph' [Milbanke].
+
+The note here tells us that this refers to a statement that appeared
+in 'Blackwood' immediately after Byron's death, to the effect that,
+previous to the formal separation from his wife, Byron required and
+obtained from Sir Ralph Milbanke, Lady Byron's father, a statement to
+the effect that Lady Byron had no charge of moral delinquency to bring
+against him.[18]
+
+[Footnote 18: Recently, Lord Lindsay has published another version of
+this story, which makes it appear that he has conversed with a lady who
+conversed with Hobhouse during his lifetime, in which this story is
+differently reported. In the last version, it is made to appear that
+Hobhouse had this declaration from Lady Byron herself.]
+
+North continues:--
+
+ 'And I think Lady Byron's letter--the "Dearest Duck" one I
+ mean--should really be forthcoming, if her ladyship's friends wish to
+ stand fair before the public. At present we have nothing but loose
+ talk of society to go upon; and certainly, _if the things that are
+ said be true, there must be thorough explanation from some quarter,
+ or the tide will continue, as it has assuredly begun, to flow in a
+ direction very opposite to what we were for years accustomed_. Sir,
+ they must _explain this business of the letter_. You have, of course,
+ heard about the invitation it contained, the warm, affectionate
+ invitation, to Kirkby Mallory'----
+
+Hogg interposes,--
+
+ 'I dinna like to be interruptin' ye, Mr. North; but I must inquire, Is
+ the _jug_ to stand still while ye're going on at that rate?'
+
+ _North._--'There, Porker! These things are part and parcel of
+ the chatter of every bookseller's shop; _à fortiori_, of every
+ drawing-room in May Fair. _Can_ the matter stop here? Can a great
+ man's memory be permitted to incur damnation while these saving
+ clauses are afloat anywhere uncontradicted?'
+
+And from this the conversation branches off into strong, emphatic
+praise of Byron's conduct in Greece during the last part of his life.
+
+The silent widow is thus delicately and considerately reminded in the
+'Blackwood' that she is the talk, not only over the whisky-jug of the
+Noctes, but in every drawing-room in London; and that she _must_ speak
+out and explain matters, or the whole world will set against her.
+
+But she does not speak yet. The public persecution, therefore,
+proceeds. Medwin's book being insufficient, another biographer is to
+be selected. Now, the person in the Noctes Club who was held to have
+the most complete information of the Byron affairs, and was, on that
+account, first thought of by Murray to execute this very delicate task
+of writing a memoir which should include the most sacred domestic
+affairs of a noble lady and her orphan daughter, was _Maginn_. Maginn,
+the author of the pleasant joke, that 'man never reaches the apex of
+civilisation till he is too drunk to pronounce the word,' was the first
+person in whose hands the 'Autobiography,' Memoirs, and Journals of
+Lord Byron were placed with this view.
+
+The following note from Shelton Mackenzie, in the June number of 'The
+Noctes,' 1824, says,--
+
+ 'At that time, had he been so minded, Maginn (Odoherty) could have got
+ up a popular Life of Byron as well as most men in England. Immediately
+ on the account of Byron's death being received in London, John Murray
+ proposed that Maginn should bring out Memoirs, Journals, and Letters
+ of Lord Byron, and, with this intent, placed in his hand every line
+ that he (Murray) possessed in Byron's handwriting.... The strong
+ desire of _Byron's family and executors_ that the "Autobiography"
+ should be burned, to which desire Murray foolishly yielded, made such
+ an hiatus in the materials, that Murray and Maginn agreed it would not
+ answer to bring out the work then. Eventually Moore executed it.'
+
+The character of the times in which this work was to be undertaken will
+appear from the following note of Mackenzie's to 'The Noctes' of August
+1824, which we copy, with the _author's own Italics_:--
+
+ 'In the "Blackwood" of July 1824 was a poetical epistle by the
+ renowned Timothy Tickler to the editor of the "John Bull" magazine,
+ on an article in his first number. This article ... _professed_ to
+ be a portion of the veritable "Autobiography" of Byron which was
+ burned, and was called "My Wedding Night." It appeared to relate
+ in detail _everything_ that occurred in the twenty-four hours
+ immediately succeeding that in which Byron was married. It had plenty
+ of coarseness, and some to spare. It went into particulars such as
+ hitherto had been given only by Faublas; and it had, notwithstanding,
+ many phrases and some facts which evidently did not belong to a mere
+ fabricator. Some years after, I compared this "Wedding Night" with
+ what I had all assurance of having been transcribed from the actual
+ manuscripts of Byron, and was persuaded that the magazine-writer must
+ have had the _actual_ statement before him, or have had a perusal of
+ it. The writer in "Blackwood" declared his conviction that it really
+ was Byron's own writing.'
+
+The reader must remember that Lord Byron died April 1824; so that,
+according to this, his 'Autobiography' was made the means of this gross
+insult to his widow three months after his death.
+
+If some powerful cause had not paralysed all feelings of gentlemanly
+honour, and of womanly delicacy, and of common humanity, towards Lady
+Byron, throughout the whole British nation, no editor would have dared
+to open a periodical with such an article; or, if he had, he would have
+been overwhelmed with a storm of popular indignation, which, like the
+fire upon Sodom, would have made a pillar of salt of him for a warning
+to all future generations.
+
+'Blackwood' reproves the 'John Bull' in a poetical epistle, recognising
+the article as coming from Byron, and says to the _author_,--
+
+  'But that _you_, sir, a wit and a scholar like you,
+  Should not blush to produce what he blushed not to do,--
+  Take your compliment, youngster; this doubles, almost,
+  The sorrow that rose when his honour was lost.'
+
+We may not wonder that the 'Autobiography' was burned, as Murray says
+in a recent account, by a committee of Byron's _friends_, including
+Hobhouse, his sister, and Murray himself.
+
+Now, the 'Blackwood' of July 1824 thus declares its conviction that
+this outrage on every sentiment of human decency came from Lord Byron,
+and that his honour was lost. Maginn does not undertake the memoir. No
+memoir at all is undertaken; till finally Moore is selected, as, like
+Demetrius of old, a well-skilled gilder and 'maker of silver shrines,'
+though _not_ for Diana. To Moore is committed the task of doing his
+best for this battered image, in which even the worshippers recognise
+foul sulphurous cracks, but which they none the less stand ready to
+worship as a genuine article that 'fell down from Jupiter.'
+
+Moore was a man of no particular nicety as to moralities, but in that
+matter seems not very much below what this record shows his average
+associates to be. He is so far superior to Maginn, that his vice is
+rose-coloured and refined. He does not burst out with such heroic
+stanzas as Maginn's frank invitation to Jeremy Bentham:--
+
+  'Jeremy, throw your pen aside,
+    And come get drunk with me;
+  And we'll go where Bacchus sits astride,
+    Perched high on barrels three.'
+
+Moore's vice is cautious, soft, seductive, slippery, and covered at
+times with a thin, tremulous veil of religious sentimentalism.
+
+In regard to Byron, he was an unscrupulous, committed partisan: he was
+as much bewitched by him as ever man has been by woman; and therefore
+to him, at last, the task of editing Byron's 'Memoirs' was given.
+
+This Byron, whom they all knew to be obscene beyond what even their
+most drunken tolerance could at first endure; this man, whose foul
+license _spoke out_ what most men conceal from mere respect to the
+decent instincts of humanity; whose 'honour was lost,'--was submitted
+to this careful manipulator, to be turned out a perfected idol for a
+world longing for an idol, as the Israelites longed for the calf in
+Horeb.
+
+The image was to be invested with deceitful glories and shifting
+haloes,--admitted faults spoken of as peculiarities of sacred
+origin,--and the world given to understand that no common rule or
+measure could apply to such an undoubtedly divine production; and so
+the hearts of men were to be wrung with pity for his sorrows as the
+yearning pain of a god, and with anger at his injuries as sacrilege on
+the sacredness of genius, till they were ready to cast themselves at
+his feet, and adore.
+
+Then he was to be set up on a pedestal, like Nebuchadnezzar's image on
+the plains of Dura; and what time the world heard the sound of cornet,
+sackbut, and dulcimer, in his enchanting verse, they were to fall down
+and worship.
+
+For Lady Byron, Moore had simply the respect that a commoner has for
+a lady of rank, and a good deal of the feeling that seems to underlie
+all English literature,--that it is no matter what becomes of the woman
+when the man's story is to be told. But, with all his faults, Moore was
+not a cruel man; and we cannot conceive such outrageous cruelty and
+ungentlemanly indelicacy towards an unoffending woman, as he shows in
+these 'Memoirs,' without referring them to Lord Byron's own influence
+in making him an unscrupulous, committed partisan on his side.
+
+So little pity, so little sympathy, did he suppose Lady Byron to be
+worthy of, that he laid before her, in the sight of all the world,
+selections from her husband's letters and journals, in which the
+privacies of her courtship and married life were jested upon with a
+vulgar levity; letters filled, from the time of the act of separation,
+with a constant succession of sarcasms, stabs, stings, epigrams, and
+vindictive allusions to herself, bringing her into direct and insulting
+comparison with his various mistresses, and implying their superiority
+over her. There, too, were gross attacks on her father and mother, as
+having been the instigators of the separation; and poor Lady Milbanke,
+in particular, is sometimes mentioned with epithets so offensive, that
+the editor prudently covers the terms with stars, as intending language
+too gross to be printed.
+
+The last mistress of Lord Byron is uniformly brought forward in
+terms of such respect and consideration, that one would suppose that
+the usual moral laws that regulate English family life had been
+specially repealed in his favour. Moore quotes with approval letters
+from Shelley, stating that Lord Byron's connection with La Guiccioli
+has been of inestimable benefit to him; and that he is now becoming
+what he should be, 'a virtuous man.' Moore goes on to speak of the
+connection as one, though somewhat reprehensible, yet as having all
+those advantages of marriage and settled domestic ties that Byron's
+affectionate spirit had long sighed for, but never before found; and in
+his last _résumé_ of the poet's character, at the end of the volume, he
+brings the mistress into direct comparison with the wife in a single
+sentence: 'The woman to whom he gave the love of his maturer years
+idolises his name; and, _with a single unhappy exception_, scarce an
+instance is to be found of one brought ... into relations of amity with
+him who did not retain a kind regard for him in life, and a fondness
+for his memory.'
+
+Literature has never yet seen the instance of a person, of Lady Byron's
+rank in life, placed before the world in a position more humiliating to
+womanly dignity, or wounding to womanly delicacy.
+
+The direct implication is, that she has no feelings to be hurt, no
+heart to be broken, and is not worthy even of the consideration which
+in ordinary life is to be accorded to a widow who has received those
+awful tidings which generally must awaken many emotions, and call for
+some consideration, even in the most callous hearts.
+
+The woman who we are told walked the room, vainly striving to control
+the sobs that shook her frame, while she sought to draw from the
+servant that last message of her husband which she was never to hear,
+was not thought worthy even of the rights of common humanity.
+
+The first volume of the 'Memoir' came out in 1830. Then for the first
+time came one flash of lightning from the silent cloud; and she who
+had never spoken before spoke out. The libels on the memory of her
+dead parents drew from her what her own wrongs never did. During all
+this time, while her husband had been keeping her effigy dangling
+before the public as a mark for solemn curses, and filthy lampoons,
+and _secretly_-circulated disclosures, that spared no sacredness
+and violated every decorum, she had not uttered a word. She had
+been subjected to nameless insults, discussed in the assemblies of
+drunkards, and challenged to speak for herself. Like the chaste lady
+in 'Comus,' whom the vile wizard had bound in the enchanted seat to
+be 'grinned at and chattered at' by all the filthy rabble of his
+dehumanised rout, she had remained pure, lofty, and undefiled; and the
+stains of mud and mire thrown upon her had fallen from her spotless
+garments.
+
+Now that she is dead, a recent writer in 'The London Quarterly' dares
+give voice to an insinuation which even Byron gave only a _suggestion_
+of when he called his wife Clytemnestra; and hints that she tried the
+power of youth and beauty to win to her the young solicitor Lushington,
+and a handsome young officer of high rank.
+
+At this time, _such_ insinuations had not been thought of; and the only
+and chief allegation against Lady Byron had been a cruel severity of
+virtue.
+
+At all events, when Lady Byron spoke, the world listened with respect,
+and believed what she said.
+
+Here let us, too, read her statement, and give it the careful attention
+she solicits (Moore's 'Life of Byron,' vol. vi. p. 275):--
+
+ 'I have disregarded various publications in which facts within my
+ own knowledge have been grossly misrepresented; but I am called upon
+ to notice some of the erroneous statements proceeding from one who
+ claims to be considered as Lord Byron's confidential and authorised
+ friend. Domestic details ought not to be intruded on the public
+ attention: if, however, they _are_ so intruded, the persons affected
+ by them have a right to refute injurious charges. Mr. Moore has
+ promulgated his own impressions of private events in which I was most
+ nearly concerned, as if he possessed a competent knowledge of the
+ subject. Having survived Lord Byron, I feel increased reluctance to
+ advert to any circumstances connected with the period of my marriage;
+ nor is it now my intention to disclose them further than may be
+ indispensably requisite for the end I have in view. Self-vindication
+ is not the motive which actuates me to make this appeal, and the
+ spirit of accusation is unmingled with it; but when the conduct of
+ my parents is brought forward in a disgraceful light by the passages
+ selected from Lord Byron's letters, and by the remarks of his
+ biographer, I feel bound to justify their characters from imputations
+ which I _know_ to be false. The passages from Lord Byron's letters, to
+ which I refer, are,--the aspersion on my mother's character (p. 648,
+ l. 4):[19] "My child is very well and flourishing, I hear; but I must
+ see also. I feel no disposition to resign it to the _contagion of its
+ grandmother's society_." The assertion of her dishonourable conduct
+ in employing a spy (p. 645, l. 7, &c.): "A Mrs. C. (now a kind of
+ housekeeper and _spy of Lady N.'s_), who, in her better days, was a
+ washerwoman, is supposed to be--by the learned--very much the occult
+ cause of our domestic discrepancies." The seeming exculpation of
+ myself in the extract (p. 646), with the words immediately following
+ it, "Her nearest relations are a----;" where the blank clearly implies
+ something too offensive for publication. These passages tend to throw
+ suspicion on my parents, and give reason to ascribe the separation
+ either to their direct agency, or to that of "officious spies"
+ employed by them.[20] From the following part of the narrative (p.
+ 642), it must also be inferred that an undue influence was exercised
+ by them for the accomplishment of this purpose: "It was in a few
+ weeks after the latter communication between us (Lord Byron and Mr.
+ Moore) that Lady Byron adopted the determination of parting from him.
+ She had left London at the latter end of January, on a visit to her
+ father's house in Leicestershire; and Lord Byron was in a short time
+ to follow her. They had parted in the utmost kindness,--she wrote
+ him a letter, full of playfulness and affection, on the road; and,
+ immediately on her arrival at Kirkby Mallory, her father wrote to
+ acquaint Lord Byron that she would return to him no more."
+
+ [Footnote 19: The references are to the first volume of the first
+ edition of Moore's Life', originally published by itself.]
+
+ [Footnote 20: 'The officious spies of his privacy,' p. 650.]
+
+ 'In my observations upon this statement, I shall, as far as possible,
+ avoid touching on any matters relating personally to Lord Byron
+ and myself. The facts are,--I left London for Kirkby Mallory, the
+ residence of my father and mother, on the 15th of January, 1816.
+ Lord Byron had signified to me in writing (Jan. 6) his absolute
+ desire that I should leave London on the earliest day that I could
+ conveniently fix. It was not safe for me to undertake the fatigue of a
+ journey sooner than the 15th. Previously to my departure, it had been
+ strongly impressed on my mind that Lord Byron was under the influence
+ of insanity. This opinion was derived in a great measure from the
+ communications made to me by his nearest relatives and personal
+ attendant, who had more opportunities than myself of observing him
+ during the latter part of my stay in town. It was even represented to
+ me that he was in danger of destroying himself. _With the concurrence
+ of his family_, I had consulted Dr. Baillie, as a friend (Jan. 8),
+ respecting this supposed malady. On acquainting him with the state of
+ the case, and with Lord Byron's desire that I should leave London, Dr.
+ Baillie thought that my absence might be advisable as an experiment,
+ _assuming_ the fact of mental derangement; for Dr. Baillie, not
+ having had access to Lord Byron, could not pronounce a positive
+ opinion on that point. He enjoined that, in correspondence with Lord
+ Byron, I should avoid all but light and soothing topics. Under these
+ impressions I left London, determined to follow the advice given by
+ Dr. Baillie. Whatever might have been the nature of Lord Byron's
+ conduct towards me from the time of my marriage, yet, supposing him
+ to be in a state of mental alienation, it was not for _me_, nor for
+ any person of common humanity, to manifest at that moment a sense
+ of injury. On the day of my departure, and again on my arrival at
+ Kirkby (Jan. 16), I wrote to Lord Byron in a kind and cheerful tone,
+ according to those medical directions.
+
+ 'The last letter was circulated, and employed as a pretext for the
+ charge of my having been subsequently _influenced_ to "desert"[21] my
+ husband. It has been argued that I parted from Lord Byron in perfect
+ harmony; that feelings incompatible with any deep sense of injury had
+ dictated the letter which I addressed to him; and that my sentiments
+ must have been changed by persuasion and interference when I was
+ under the roof of my parents. These assertions and inferences are
+ wholly destitute of foundation. When I arrived at Kirkby Mallory, my
+ parents were unacquainted with the existence of any causes likely to
+ destroy my prospects of happiness; and, when I communicated to them
+ the opinion which had been formed concerning Lord Byron's state of
+ mind, they were most anxious to promote his restoration by every means
+ in their power. They assured those relations who were with him in
+ London, that "they would devote their whole care and attention to the
+ alleviation of his malady;" and hoped to make the best arrangements
+ for his comfort if he could be induced to visit them.
+
+ [Footnote 21: 'The deserted husband,' p. 651.]
+
+ 'With these intentions, my mother wrote on the 17th to Lord Byron,
+ inviting him to Kirkby Mallory. She had always treated him with an
+ affectionate consideration and indulgence, which extended to every
+ little peculiarity of his feelings. Never did an irritating word
+ escape her lips in her whole intercourse with him. The accounts given
+ me after I left Lord Byron, by the persons in constant intercourse
+ with him, added to those doubts which had before transiently occurred
+ to my mind as to the reality of the alleged disease; and the reports
+ of his medical attendant were far from establishing the existence of
+ anything like lunacy. Under this uncertainty, I deemed it right to
+ communicate to my parents, that, if I were to consider Lord Byron's
+ past conduct as that of a person of sound mind, nothing could induce
+ me to return to him. It therefore appeared expedient, both to them and
+ myself, to consult the ablest advisers. For that object, and also
+ to obtain still further information respecting the appearances which
+ seemed to indicate mental derangement, my mother determined to go to
+ London. She was empowered by me to take legal opinions on a written
+ statement of mine, though I had then reasons for reserving a part
+ of the case from the knowledge even of my father and mother. Being
+ convinced by the result of these inquiries, and by the tenor of Lord
+ Byron's proceedings, that the notion of insanity was an illusion, I no
+ longer hesitated to authorise such measures as were necessary in order
+ to secure me from being ever again placed in his power. Conformably
+ with this resolution, my father wrote to him on the 2nd of February
+ to propose an amicable separation. Lord Byron at first rejected this
+ proposal; but when it was distinctly notified to him that, if he
+ persisted in his refusal, recourse must be had to legal measures, he
+ agreed to sign a deed of separation. Upon applying to Dr. Lushington,
+ who was intimately acquainted with all the circumstances, to state in
+ writing what he recollected upon this subject, I received from him the
+ following letter, by which it will be manifest that my mother cannot
+ have been actuated by any hostile or ungenerous motives towards Lord
+ Byron:--
+
+ '"MY DEAR LADY BYRON,--I can rely upon the accuracy of
+ my memory for the following statement. I was originally consulted
+ by Lady Noel, on your behalf, whilst you were in the country. The
+ circumstances detailed by her were such as justified a separation;
+ but they were not of that aggravated description as to render such
+ a measure indispensable. On Lady Noel's representation, I deemed a
+ reconciliation with Lord Byron practicable, and felt most sincerely
+ a wish to aid in effecting it. There was not on Lady Noel's part
+ any exaggeration of the facts; nor, so far as I could perceive, any
+ determination to prevent a return to Lord Byron: certainly none was
+ expressed when I spoke of a reconciliation. When you came to town,
+ in about a fortnight, or perhaps more, after my first interview with
+ Lady Noel, I was for the first time informed by you of facts utterly
+ unknown, as I have no doubt, to Sir Ralph and Lady Noel. On receiving
+ this additional information, my opinion was entirely changed: I
+ considered a reconciliation impossible. I declared my opinion, and
+ added, that, if such an idea should be entertained, I could not,
+ either professionally or otherwise, take any part towards effecting it.
+
+  '"Believe me, very faithfully yours,
+
+  '"STEPH. LUSHINGTON.
+
+  '"Great George Street, Jan. 31, 1830."
+
+ 'I have only to observe, that, if the statements on which my legal
+ advisers (the late Sir Samuel Romilly and Dr. Lushington) formed
+ their opinions were false, the responsibility and the odium should
+ rest with _me only_. I trust that the facts which I have here briefly
+ recapitulated will absolve my father and mother from all accusations
+ with regard to the part they took in the separation between Lord Byron
+ and myself.
+
+ 'They neither originated, instigated, nor advised that separation;
+ and they cannot be condemned for having afforded to their daughter
+ the assistance and protection which she claimed. There is no other
+ near relative to vindicate their memory from insult. I am therefore
+ compelled to break the silence which I had hoped always to observe,
+ and to solicit from the readers of Lord Byron's "Life" an impartial
+ consideration of the testimony extorted from me.
+
+  'A. I. NOEL BYRON.
+
+  'Hanger Hill, Feb. 19, 1830.'
+
+The effect of this statement on the literary world may be best judged
+by the discussion of it by Christopher North (Wilson) in the succeeding
+May number of 'The Noctes,' where the bravest and most generous of
+literary men that then were--himself the husband of a gentle wife--thus
+gives sentence: the conversation is between North and the Shepherd:--
+
+ _North._--'God forbid I should wound the feelings of Lady Byron, of
+ whose character, known to me but by the high estimation in which
+ it is held by all who have enjoyed her friendship, I have always
+ spoken with respect!... But may I, without harshness or indelicacy,
+ say, here among ourselves, James, that, by marrying Byron, she took
+ upon herself, with eyes wide open and conscience clearly convinced,
+ duties very different from those of which, even in common cases, the
+ presaging foresight shadows ... the light of the first nuptial moon?'
+
+ _Shepherd._--'She did that, sir; by my troth, she did that.'
+
+ _North._--'Miss Milbanke knew that he was reckoned a rake and a
+ _roué_; and although his genius wiped off, by impassioned eloquence
+ in love-letters that were felt to be irresistible, or hid the worst
+ stain of, that reproach, still Miss Milbanke must have believed it a
+ perilous thing to be the wife of Lord Byron.... But still, by joining
+ her life to his in marriage, she pledged her troth and her faith and
+ her love, under probabilities of severe, disturbing, perhaps fearful
+ trials, in the future....
+
+ 'But I think Lady Byron ought not to have printed that Narrative.
+ Death abrogates not the rights of a husband to his wife's silence
+ when speech is fatal ... to his character as a man. Has she not
+ flung suspicion over his bones interred, that they are the bones of
+ a--monster?... If Byron's sins or crimes--for we are driven to use
+ terrible terms--were unendurable and unforgivable as if against the
+ Holy Ghost, ought the wheel, the rack, or the stake to have extorted
+ that confession from his widow's breast.... But there was no such
+ pain here, James: the declaration was voluntary, and it was calm.
+ Self-collected, and gathering up all her faculties and feelings
+ into unshrinking strength, she denounced before all the world--and
+ throughout all space and all time--her husband, as excommunicated by
+ his vices from woman's bosom.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+ ''Twas to vindicate the character of her parents that Lady Byron
+ wrote,--a holy purpose and devout, nor do I doubt sincere. But filial
+ affection and reverence, sacred as they are, may be blamelessly, nay,
+ righteously, subordinate to conjugal duties, which die not with the
+ dead, are extinguished not even by the sins of the dead, were they as
+ foul as the grave's corruption.'
+
+Here is what John Stuart Mill calls the literature of slavery for
+woman, in length and breadth; and, that all women may understand the
+doctrine, the Shepherd now takes up his parable, and expounds the true
+position of the wife. We render his Scotch into English:--
+
+ 'Not a few such widows do I know, whom brutal, profligate, and savage
+ husbands have brought to the brink of the grave,--as good, as bright,
+ as innocent as, and far more forgiving than, Lady Byron. There
+ they sit in their obscure, rarely-visited dwellings; for sympathy
+ instructed by suffering knows well that the deepest and most hopeless
+ misery is least given to complaint.'
+
+Then follows a pathetic picture of one such widow, trembling and
+fainting for hunger, obliged, on her way to the well for a can of
+water, her only drink, to sit down on a '_knowe_' and say a prayer.
+
+ 'Yet she's decently, yea, tidily dressed, poor creature! in sair worn
+ widow's clothes, a single suit for Saturday and Sunday; her hair,
+ untimely gray, is neatly braided under her crape cap; and sometimes,
+ when all is still and solitary in the fields, and all labour has
+ disappeared into the house, you may see her stealing by herself, or
+ leading one wee orphan by the hand, with another at her breast, to the
+ kirkyard, where the love of her youth and the husband of her prime is
+ buried.
+
+ 'Yet,' says the Shepherd, 'he was a brute, a ruffian, a monster. When
+ drunk, how he raged and cursed and swore! Often did she dread that, in
+ his fits of inhuman passion, he would have murdered the baby at her
+ breast; for she had seen him dash their only little boy, a child of
+ eight years old, on the floor, till the blood gushed from his ears;
+ and then the madman threw himself down on the body, and howled for
+ the gallows. Limmers haunted his door, and he theirs; and it was hers
+ to lie, not sleep, in a cold, forsaken bed, once the bed of peace,
+ affection, and perfect happiness. Often he struck her; and once when
+ she was pregnant with that very orphan now smiling on her breast,
+ reaching out his wee fingers to touch the flowers on his father's
+ grave....
+
+ 'But she tries to smile among the neighbours, and speaks of her boy's
+ likeness to its father; nor, when the conversation turns on bygone
+ times, does she fear to let his name escape her white lips, "My
+ Robert; the bairn's not ill-favoured, but he will never look like his
+ father,"--and such sayings, uttered in a calm, sweet voice. Nay, I
+ remember once how her pale countenance reddened with a sudden flush
+ of pride, when a gossiping crone alluded to their wedding; and the
+ widow's eye brightened through her tears to hear how the bridegroom,
+ sitting that sabbath in his front seat beside his bonny bride, had
+ not his equal for strength, stature, and all that is beauty in man,
+ in all the congregation. That, I say, sir, whether right or wrong,
+ _was--forgiveness_.'
+
+Here is a specimen of how even generous men had been so perverted by
+the enchantment of Lord Byron's genius, as to turn all the pathos and
+power of the strongest literature of that day against the persecuted,
+pure woman, and for the strong, wicked man. These 'Blackwood' writers
+knew, by Byron's own filthy, ghastly writings, which had gone sorely
+against their own moral stomachs, that he was foul to the bone. They
+could see, in Moore's 'Memoirs' right before them, how he had caught an
+innocent girl's heart by sending a love-letter, and offer of marriage,
+at the end of a long friendly correspondence,--a letter that had been
+written to _show_ to his libertine set, and sent on the toss-up of a
+copper, because he cared nothing for it one way or the other.
+
+They admit that, having won this poor girl, he had been savage, brutal,
+drunken, cruel. They had read the filthy taunts in 'Don Juan,' and the
+nameless abominations in the 'Autobiography.' They had admitted among
+themselves that his honour was lost; but still this abused, desecrated
+woman must _reverence_ her brutal master's memory, and not speak, even
+to defend the grave of her own kind father and mother.
+
+That there was _no_ lover of her youth, that the marriage-vow had been
+a hideous, shameless cheat, is on the face of Moore's account; yet
+the 'Blackwood' does not see it nor feel it, and brings up against
+Lady Byron this touching story of a poor widow, who really had had a
+true lover once,--a lover maddened, imbruted, lost, through that very
+drunkenness in which the Noctes Club were always glorying.
+
+It is because of such transgressors as Byron, such supporters as
+Moore and the Noctes Club, that there are so many helpless, cowering,
+broken-hearted, abject women, given over to the animal love which they
+share alike with the poor dog,--the dog, who, beaten, kicked, starved,
+and cuffed, still lies by his drunken master with great anxious eyes
+of love and sorrow, and with sweet, brute forgiveness nestles upon his
+bosom, as he lies in his filth in the snowy ditch, to keep the warmth
+of life in him. Great is the mystery of this fidelity in the poor,
+loving brute,--most mournful and most sacred!
+
+But, oh that a noble man should have no higher ideal of the love of a
+high-souled, heroic woman! Oh that men should teach women that they
+owe no higher duties, and are capable of no higher tenderness, than
+this loving, unquestioning animal fidelity! The dog is ever-loving,
+ever-forgiving, because God has given him no high range of moral
+faculties, no sense of justice, no consequent horror at impurity and
+vileness.
+
+Much of the beautiful patience and forgiveness of women is made
+possible to them by that utter _deadness to the sense of justice_ which
+the laws, literature, and misunderstood religion of England have sought
+to induce in woman as a special grace and virtue.
+
+The lesson to woman in this pathetic piece of special pleading is,
+that man may sink himself below the brute, may wallow in filth like
+the swine, may turn his home into a hell, beat and torture his
+children, forsake the marriage-bed for foul rivals; yet all this does
+not dissolve the marriage-vow on her part, nor free his bounden serf
+from her obligation to honour his memory,--nay, to sacrifice to it
+the honour due to a kind father and mother, slandered in their silent
+graves.
+
+Such was the sympathy, and such the advice, that the best literature
+of England could give to a young widow, a peeress of England, whose
+husband, as they verily believed and admitted, might have done
+_worse_ than all this; whose crimes might have been 'foul, monstrous,
+unforgivable as the sin against the Holy Ghost.' If these things be
+done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry? If the peeress
+_as a wife_ has no rights, what is the state of the cotter's wife?
+
+But, in the same paper, North again blames Lady Byron for not
+having come out with the whole story before the world at the time
+she separated from her husband. He says of the time when she first
+consulted counsel through her mother, keeping back one item,--
+
+ 'How weak, and worse than weak, at such a juncture, on which hung her
+ whole fate, to ask legal advice on an imperfect document! Give the
+ delicacy of a virtuous woman its due; but at such a crisis, when the
+ question was whether her conscience was to be free from the oath of
+ oaths, delicacy should have died, and nature was privileged to show
+ unashamed--if such there were--the records of uttermost pollution.'
+
+ _Shepherd._--'And what think ye, sir, that a' this pollution could hae
+ been, that sae electrified Dr. Lushington?'
+
+ _North._--'Bad--bad--bad, James. Nameless, it is horrible; named,
+ it might leave Byron's memory yet within the range of pity and
+ forgiveness; and, where they are, their sister affections will not be
+ far; though, like weeping seraphs, standing aloof, and veiling their
+ wings.'
+
+ _Shepherd._--'She should indeed hae been silent--till the grave had
+ closed on her sorrows as on his sins.'
+
+ _North._--'_Even now she should speak_,--or some one else for her,--
+ ... and a few words will suffice. _Worse_ the condition of the dead
+ man's name cannot be--far, far better it might--I believe it would
+ be--were _all_ the truth somehow or other declared; and declared it
+ must be, not for Byron's sake only, but for the sake of humanity
+ itself; and then a mitigated sentence, or eternal silence.'
+
+We have another discussion of Lady Byron's duties in a further number
+of 'Blackwood.'
+
+The 'Memoir' being out, it was proposed that there should be a complete
+annotation of Byron's works gotten up, and adorned, for the further
+glorification of his memory, with portraits of the various women whom
+he had delighted to honour.
+
+Murray applied to Lady Byron for her portrait, and was met with a cold,
+decided negative. After reading all the particulars of Byron's harem of
+mistresses, and Moore's comparisons between herself and La Guiccioli,
+one might _imagine_ reasons why a lady, with proper self-respect,
+should object to appearing in this manner. One would suppose there
+might have been gentlemen who could well appreciate the _motive_ of
+that refusal; but it was only considered a new evidence that she was
+indifferent to her conjugal duties, and wanting in that _respect_ which
+Christopher North had told her she owed a husband's memory, though his
+crimes were foul as the rottenness of the grave.
+
+Never, since Queen Vashti refused to come at the command of a drunken
+husband to show herself to his drunken lords, was there a clearer case
+of disrespect to the marital dignity on the part of a wife. It was a
+plain act of insubordination, rebellion against law and order; and
+how shocking in Lady Byron, who ought to feel herself but too much
+flattered to be exhibited to the public as the head wife of a man of
+genius!
+
+Means were at once adopted to subdue her contumacy, of which one may
+read in a note to the 'Blackwood' (Noctes), September 1832. An artist
+was sent down to Ealing to take her picture by stealth as she sat in
+church. Two sittings were thus obtained without her knowledge. In the
+third one, the artist placed himself boldly before her, and sketched,
+so that she could not but observe him. We shall give the rest in
+Mackenzie's own words, as a remarkable specimen of the obtuseness,
+not to say indelicacy of feeling, which seemed to pervade the literary
+circles of England at the time:--
+
+ 'After prayers, Wright and his friend (the artist) were visited by
+ an ambassador from her ladyship to inquire the meaning of what she
+ had seen. The reply was, that Mr. Murray _must_ have her portrait,
+ and was compelled to take what she refused to give. The result was,
+ Wright was requested to visit her, which he did; taking with him,
+ not _the_ sketch, which was very good, but another, in which there
+ was a strong touch of caricature. Rather than allow _that_ to appear
+ as her likeness (a very natural and womanly feeling by the way), she
+ consented to sit for the portrait to W. J. Newton, which was engraved,
+ and is here alluded to.'
+
+The artless barbarism of this note is too good to be lost; but it
+is quite borne out by the conversation in the Noctes Club, which it
+illustrates.
+
+It would appear from this conversation that these Byron beauties
+appeared successively in pamphlet form; and the picture of Lady Byron
+is thus discussed:--
+
+ _Mullion._--'I don't know if you have seen the last brochure. It has a
+ charming head of Lady Byron, who, it seems, sat on purpose: and that's
+ very agreeable to hear of; for it shows her ladyship has got over any
+ little soreness that Moore's "Life" occasioned, and is now willing
+ to contribute anything in her power to the real monument of Byron's
+ genius.'
+
+ _North._--'I am delighted to hear of this: 'tis really very noble in
+ the unfortunate lady. I never saw her. Is the face a striking one?'
+
+ _Mullion._--'Eminently so,--a most calm, pensive, melancholy style of
+ native beauty,--and a most touching contrast to the maids of Athens,
+ Annesley, and all the rest of them. I'm sure you'll have the proof
+ Finden has sent you framed for the Boudoir at the Lodge.'
+
+ _North._--'By all means. I mean to do that for all the Byron Beauties.'
+
+But it may be asked, Was there not a man in all England with delicacy
+enough to feel for Lady Byron, and chivalry enough to speak a bold word
+for her? Yes: there was one. Thomas Campbell the poet, when he read
+Lady Byron's statement, believed it, as did Christopher North; but it
+affected him differently. It appears he did not believe it a wife's
+duty to burn herself on her husband's funeral-pile, as did Christopher
+North; and held the singular idea, that a wife had _some_ rights as a
+human being as well as a husband.
+
+Lady Byron's own statement appeared in pamphlet form in 1830: at
+least, such is the date at the foot of the document. Thomas Campbell,
+in 'The New Monthly Magazine,' shortly after, printed a spirited,
+gentlemanly defence of Lady Byron, and administered a pointed rebuke to
+Moore for the rudeness and indelicacy he had shown in selecting from
+Byron's letters the coarsest against herself, her parents, and her
+old governess Mrs. Clermont, and by the indecent comparisons he had
+instituted between Lady Byron and Lord Byron's last mistress.
+
+It is refreshing to hear, at last, from somebody who is not altogether
+on his knees at the feet of the popular idol, and who has some chivalry
+for woman, and some idea of common humanity. He says,--
+
+ 'I found my right to speak on this painful subject on its now
+ _irrevocable publicity_, brought up afresh as it has been by Mr.
+ Moore, to be the theme of discourse to millions, and, if I err not
+ much, the cause of misconception to innumerable minds. I claim to
+ speak of Lady Byron in the right of a man, and of a friend to the
+ rights of woman, and to liberty, and to natural religion. I claim a
+ right, more especially, as one of the many friends of Lady Byron,
+ who, one and all, feel aggrieved by this production. It has virtually
+ dragged her forward from the shade of retirement, where she had hid
+ her sorrows, and compelled her to defend the heads of her friends and
+ her parents from being crushed under the tombstone of Byron. Nay, in a
+ general view, it has forced her to defend _herself_; though, with her
+ true sense and her pure taste, she stands above all special pleading.
+ To plenary explanation she _ought_ not--she never _shall_ be driven.
+ Mr. Moore is too much a gentleman not to shudder at the thought of
+ that; but if other Byronists, of a far different stamp, were to force
+ the savage ordeal, it is her enemies, and not she, that would have to
+ dread the burning plough-shares.
+
+ 'We, her friends, have no wish to prolong the discussion: but a few
+ words we _must_ add, even to her admirable statement; for hers is a
+ cause not only dear to her friends, but having become, from Mr. Moore
+ and her misfortunes, a publicly-agitated cause, it concerns morality,
+ and the most sacred rights of the sex, that she should (and that,
+ too, without more special explanations) be acquitted out and out, and
+ honourably acquitted, in this business, of all share in the blame,
+ which is one and indivisible. Mr. Moore, on further reflection, may
+ see this; and his return to candour will surprise us less than his
+ momentary deviation from its path.
+
+ 'For the tact of Mr. Moore's conduct in this affair, I have not to
+ answer; but, if indelicacy be charged upon me, I scorn the charge.
+ Neither will I submit to be called Lord Byron's accuser; because a
+ word against him I wish not to say beyond what is painfully wrung
+ from me by the necessity of owning or illustrating Lady Byron's
+ unblamableness, and of repelling certain misconceptions respecting
+ her, which are now walking the fashionable world, and which have been
+ fostered (though Heaven knows where they were born) most delicately
+ and warily by the Christian godfathership of Mr. Moore.
+
+ 'I write not at Lady Byron's bidding. I have never humiliated either
+ her or myself by asking _if_ I should write, or _what_ I should write;
+ that is to say, I never applied to her for information against Lord
+ Byron, though I was justified, as one intending to criticise Mr.
+ Moore, in inquiring into the truth of some of his statements. Neither
+ will I suffer myself to be called her champion, if by that word be
+ meant the advocate of her mere legal innocence; for that, I take it,
+ nobody questions.
+
+ 'Still less is it from the sorry impulse of pity that I speak of
+ this noble woman; for I look with wonder and even envy at the proud
+ purity of her sense and conscience, that have carried her exquisite
+ sensibilities in triumph through such poignant tribulations. But
+ I am proud to be called her friend, the humble illustrator of her
+ cause, and the advocate of those principles which make it to me more
+ interesting than Lord Byron's. Lady Byron (if the subject must be
+ discussed) belongs to sentiment and morality (at least as much as Lord
+ Byron); nor is she to be suffered, when compelled to speak, to raise
+ her voice as in a desert, with no friendly voice to respond to her.
+ Lady Byron could not have outlived her sufferings if she had not wound
+ up her fortitude to the high point of trusting mainly for consolation,
+ not to the opinion of the world, but to her own inward peace; and,
+ having said what ought to convince the world, I verily believe that
+ she has less care about the fashionable opinion respecting her than
+ any of her friends can have. But we, her friends, mix with the world;
+ and we hear offensive absurdities about her, which we have a right to
+ put down.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+ 'I proceed to deal more generally with Mr. Moore's book. You speak,
+ Mr. Moore, against Lord Byron's censurers in a tone of indignation
+ which is perfectly lawful towards calumnious traducers, but which will
+ not terrify me, or any other man of courage who is no calumniator,
+ from uttering his mind freely with regard to this part of your hero's
+ conduct. I question your philosophy in assuming that all that is
+ noble in Byron's poetry was inconsistent with the possibility of his
+ being devoted to a pure and good woman; and I repudiate your morality
+ for canting too complacently about "the lava of his imagination,"
+ and the unsettled fever of his passions, being any excuses for his
+ planting the _tic douloureux_ of domestic suffering in a meek woman's
+ bosom.
+
+ 'These are hard words, Mr. Moore; but you have brought them on
+ yourself by your voluntary ignorance of facts known to me; for you
+ might and ought to have known both sides of the question; and, if the
+ subject was too delicate for you to consult Lady Byron's confidential
+ friends, you ought to have had nothing to do with the subject. But you
+ cannot have submitted your book even to Lord Byron's sister, otherwise
+ she would have set you right about the imaginary spy, Mrs. Clermont.'
+
+Campbell now goes on to print, at his own peril, he says, and without
+time to ask leave, the following note from Lady Byron in reply to an
+application he made to her, when he was about to review Moore's book,
+for an 'estimate as to the correctness of Moore's statements.'
+
+The following is Lady Byron's reply:--
+
+ 'DEAR MR. CAMPBELL,--In taking up my pen to point out
+ for your private information[22] those passages in Mr. Moore's
+ representation of my part of the story which were open to
+ contradiction, I find them of still greater extent than I had
+ supposed; and to deny an assertion _here and there_ would virtually
+ admit the truth of the rest. If, on the contrary, I were to enter into
+ a full exposure of the falsehood of the views taken by Mr. Moore, I
+ must detail various matters, which, consistently with my principles
+ and feelings, I cannot under the existing circumstances disclose. I
+ may, perhaps, convince you better of the difficulty of the case by
+ an example: It is not true that pecuniary embarrassments were the
+ cause of the disturbed state of Lord Byron's mind, or formed the
+ chief reason for the arrangements made by him at that time. But is it
+ reasonable for me to expect that you or any one else should believe
+ this, unless I show you what were the causes in question? and this I
+ cannot do. 'I am, &c.,
+
+  'A. I. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+[Footnote 22: 'I (Campbell) had not time to ask Lady Byron's permission
+to print this private letter; but it seemed to me important, and I have
+published it _meo periculo_.']
+
+Campbell then goes on to reprove Moore for his injustice to Mrs.
+Clermont, whom Lord Byron had denounced as a spy, but whose
+respectability and innocence were vouched for by Lord Byron's own
+family; and then he pointedly rebukes one false statement of great
+indelicacy and cruelty concerning Lady Byron's courtship, as follows:--
+
+ 'It is a further mistake on Mr. Moore's part, and I can prove it to be
+ so, if proof be necessary, to represent Lady Byron, in the course of
+ their courtship, as one inviting her future husband to correspondence
+ by letters after she had at first refused him. She never proposed a
+ correspondence. On the contrary, he sent her a message after that
+ first refusal, stating that he meant to go abroad, and to travel for
+ some years in the East; that he should depart with a heart aching,
+ but not angry; and that he only begged a verbal assurance that she
+ had still some interest in his happiness. Could Miss Milbanke, as a
+ well-bred woman, refuse a courteous answer to such a message? She sent
+ him a verbal answer, which was merely kind and becoming, but which
+ signified no encouragement that he should renew his offer of marriage.
+
+ 'After that message, he wrote to her a most interesting letter about
+ himself,--about his views, personal, moral, and religious,--to which
+ it would have been uncharitable not to have replied. The result was
+ an insensibly increasing correspondence, which ended in her being
+ devotedly attached to him. About that time, I occasionally saw Lord
+ Byron; and though I knew less of him than Mr. Moore, yet I suspect I
+ knew as much of him as Miss Milbanke then knew. At that time, he was
+ so pleasing, that, if I had had a daughter with ample fortune and
+ beauty, I should have trusted her in marriage with Lord Byron.
+
+ 'Mr. Moore at that period evidently understood Lord Byron better than
+ either his future bride or myself; but this speaks more for Moore's
+ shrewdness than for Byron's ingenuousness of character.
+
+ 'It is more for Lord Byron's sake than for his widow's that I resort
+ not to a more special examination of Mr. Moore's misconceptions. The
+ subject would lead me insensibly into hateful disclosures against poor
+ Lord Byron, who is more unfortunate in his rash defenders than in
+ his reluctant accusers. Happily, his own candour turns our hostility
+ from himself against his defenders. It was only in wayward and bitter
+ remarks that he misrepresented Lady Byron. He would have defended
+ himself irresistibly if Mr. Moore had left only his acknowledging
+ passages. But Mr. Moore has produced a "Life" of him which reflects
+ blame on Lady Byron so dexterously, that "more is meant than meets
+ the ear." The almost universal impression produced by his book is,
+ that Lady Byron must be a precise and a wan, unwarming spirit, a
+ blue-stocking of chilblained learning, a piece of insensitive goodness.
+
+ 'Who that knows Lady Byron will not pronounce her to be everything the
+ reverse? Will it be believed that this person, so unsuitably matched
+ to her moody lord, has written verses that would do no discredit to
+ Byron himself; that her sensitiveness is surpassed and bounded only by
+ her good sense; and that she is
+
+  '"Blest with a temper, whose unclouded ray
+  Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day"?
+
+ 'She brought to Lord Byron beauty, manners, fortune, meekness,
+ romantic affection, and everything that ought to have made her to
+ the most transcendent man of genius--_had he been what he should
+ have been_--his pride and his idol. I speak not of Lady Byron in the
+ commonplace manner of attesting character: I appeal to the gifted Mrs.
+ Siddons and Joanna Baillie, to Lady Charlemont, and to other ornaments
+ of their sex, whether I am exaggerating in the least when I say, that,
+ in their whole lives, they have seen few beings so intellectual and
+ well-tempered as Lady Byron.
+
+ 'I wish to be as ingenuous as possible in speaking of her. Her manner,
+ I have no hesitation to say, is cool at the first interview, but is
+ modestly, and not insolently, cool: she contracted it, I believe, from
+ being exposed by her beauty and large fortune, in youth, to numbers
+ of suitors, whom she could not have otherwise kept at a distance.
+ But this manner could have had no influence with Lord Byron; for
+ it vanishes on nearer acquaintance, and has no origin in coldness.
+ All her friends like her frankness the better for being preceded by
+ this reserve. This manner, however, though not the slightest apology
+ for Lord Byron, has been inimical to Lady Byron in her misfortunes.
+ It endears her to her friends; but it piques the indifferent. Most
+ odiously unjust, therefore, is Mr. Moore's assertion, that she has had
+ the advantage of Lord Byron in public opinion. She is, comparatively
+ speaking, unknown to the world; for though she has many friends, that
+ is, a friend in everyone who knows her, yet her pride and purity and
+ misfortunes naturally contract the circle of her acquaintance.
+
+ 'There is something exquisitely unjust in Mr. Moore comparing her
+ chance of popularity with Lord Byron's, the poet who can command
+ men of talents,--putting even Mr. Moore into the livery of his
+ service,--and who has suborned the favour of almost all women by the
+ beauty of his person and the voluptuousness of his verses. Lady Byron
+ has nothing to oppose to these fascinations but the truth and justice
+ of her cause.
+
+ 'You said, Mr. Moore, that Lady Byron was unsuitable to her lord: the
+ word is cunningly insidious, and may mean as much or as little as may
+ suit your convenience. But, if she was unsuitable, I remark that it
+ tells all the worse against Lord Byron. I have not read it in your
+ book (for I hate to wade through it); but they tell me that you have
+ not only warily depreciated Lady Byron, but that you have described a
+ lady that would have suited him. If this be true, "it is the unkindest
+ cut of all,"--to hold up a florid description of a woman suitable to
+ Lord Byron, as if in mockery over the forlorn flower of virtue that
+ was drooping in the solitude of sorrow.
+
+ 'But I trust there is no such passage in your book. Surely you must be
+ conscious of your woman, with her "_virtue loose about her, who would
+ have suited Lord Byron_," to be as imaginary a being as the woman
+ without a head. A woman to suit Lord Byron! Poo, poo! I could paint to
+ you the woman that could have _matched_ him, if I had not bargained to
+ say as little as possible against him.
+
+ 'If Lady Byron was not suitable to Lord Byron, so much the worse
+ for his lordship; for let me tell you, Mr. Moore, that neither your
+ poetry, nor Lord Byron's, nor all our poetry put together, ever
+ delineated a more interesting being than the woman whom you have so
+ coldly treated. This was not kicking the dead lion, but wounding
+ the living lamb, who was already bleeding and shorn, even unto the
+ quick. I know, that, collectively speaking, the world is in Lady
+ Byron's favour; but it is coldly favourable, and you have not warmed
+ its breath. Time, however, cures everything; and even your book,
+ Mr. Moore, may be the means of Lady Byron's character being better
+ appreciated.
+
+  'THOMAS CAMPBELL.'
+
+Here is what seems to be a gentlemanly, high-spirited, chivalric man,
+throwing down his glove in the lists for a pure woman.
+
+What was the consequence? Campbell was crowded back, thrust down,
+overwhelmed, his eyes filled with dust, his mouth with ashes.
+
+There was a general confusion and outcry, which reacted both on him
+and on Lady Byron. Her friends were angry with him for having caused
+this re-action upon her; and he found himself at once attacked by
+Lady Byron's enemies, and deserted by her friends. All the literary
+authorities of his day took up against him with energy. Christopher
+North, professor of moral philosophy in the Edinburgh University,
+in a fatherly talk in 'The Noctes,' condemns Campbell, and justifies
+Moore, and heartily recommends his 'Biography,' as containing nothing
+materially objectionable on the score either of manners or morals. Thus
+we have it in 'The Noctes' of May 1830:--
+
+ 'Mr. Moore's biographical book I admired; and I said so to my little
+ world, in two somewhat lengthy articles, which many approved, and
+ some, I am sorry to know, condemned.'
+
+On the point in question between Moore and Campbell, North goes on
+to justify Moore altogether, only admitting that 'it would have been
+better had he not printed any coarse expression of Byron's about the
+old people;' and, finally, he closes by saying,--
+
+ 'I do not think that, under the circumstances, Mr. Campbell himself,
+ had he written Byron's "Life," could have spoken, with the sentiments
+ he then held, in a better, more manly, and more gentlemanly spirit, in
+ so far as regards Lady Byron, than Mr. Moore did: and I am sorry he
+ has been deterred from "swimming" through Mr. Moore's work by the fear
+ of "wading;" for the waters are clear and deep; nor is there any mud,
+ either at the bottom or round the margin.'
+
+Of the conduct of Lady Byron's so-called friends on this occasion it is
+more difficult to speak.
+
+There has always been in England, as John Stuart Mill says, a class
+of women who glory in the utter self-abnegation of the wife to the
+husband, as the special crown of womanhood. Their patron saint is
+the Griselda of Chaucer, who, when her husband humiliates her, and
+treats her as a brute, still accepts all with meek, unquestioning,
+uncomplaining devotion. He tears her from her children; he treats her
+with personal abuse; he repudiates her,--sends her out to nakedness
+and poverty; he installs another mistress in his house, and sends for
+the first to be her handmaid and his own: and all this the meek saint
+accepts in the words of Milton,--
+
+                  'My guide and head,
+  What thou hast said is just and right.'
+
+Accordingly, Miss Martineau tells us that when Campbell's defence came
+out, coupled with a note from Lady Byron,--
+
+ 'The first obvious remark was, that there was no real disclosure; and
+ the whole affair had the appearance of a desire, on the part of Lady
+ Byron, to exculpate herself, while yet no adequate information was
+ given. Many, who had regarded her with favour till then, gave her up
+ so far as to believe that feminine weakness had prevailed at last.'
+
+The saint had fallen from her pedestal! She had shown a human frailty!
+Quite evidently she is not a Griselda, but possessed with a shocking
+desire to exculpate herself and her friends.
+
+Is it, then, only to slandered _men_ that the privilege belongs of
+desiring to exculpate themselves and their families and their friends
+from unjust censure?
+
+Lord Byron had made it a life-long object to vilify and defame his
+wife. He had used for that one particular purpose every talent that
+he possessed. He had left it as a last charge to Moore to pursue
+the warfare after death, which Moore had done to some purpose; and
+Christopher North had informed Lady Byron that her private affairs
+were discussed, not only with the whisky-toddy of the Noctes Club,
+but in every drawing-room in May Fair; and declared that the 'Dear
+Duck' letter, and various other matters, must be explained, and urged
+somebody to speak; and then, when Campbell does speak with all the
+energy of a real gentleman, a general outcry and an indiscriminate
+_mêlée_ is the result.
+
+The world, with its usual injustice, insisted on attributing Campbell's
+defence to Lady Byron.
+
+The reasons for this seemed to be, first, that Campbell states that he
+did _not_ ask Lady Byron's leave, and that she did _not_ authorise him
+to defend her; and, second, that, having asked some explanations from
+her, he prints a note in which she declines to give any.
+
+We know not how a lady could more gently yet firmly decline to make
+a gentleman her confidant than in this published note of Lady Byron;
+and yet, to this day, Campbell is spoken of by the world as having
+been Lady Byron's confidant at this time. This simply shows how very
+trustworthy are the general assertions about Lady Byron's confidants.
+
+The final result of the matter, so far as Campbell was concerned, is
+given in Miss Martineau's sketch, in the following paragraph:--
+
+ 'The whole transaction was one of poor Campbell's freaks. He excused
+ himself by saying it was a mistake of his; that he did not know what
+ he was about when he published the paper.'
+
+It is the saddest of all sad things to see a man, who has spoken from
+moral convictions, in advance of his day, and who has taken a stand for
+which he ought to honour himself, thus forced down and humiliated, made
+to doubt his own better nature and his own honourable feelings, by the
+voice of a wicked world.
+
+Campbell had no steadiness to stand by the truth he saw. His whole
+story is told incidentally in a note to 'The Noctes,' in which it is
+stated, that in an article in 'Blackwood,' January 1825, on Scotch
+poets, the palm was given to Hogg over Campbell; 'one ground being,
+that _he_ could drink "eight and twenty tumblers of punch, while
+Campbell is hazy upon seven."'
+
+There is evidence in 'The Noctes,' that in due time Campbell was
+reconciled to Moore, and was always suitably ashamed of having tried to
+be any more generous or just than the men of his generation.
+
+And so it was settled as a law to Jacob, and an ordinance in Israel,
+that the Byron worship should proceed, and that all the earth should
+keep silence before him. 'Don Juan,' that, years before, had been
+printed by stealth, without Murray's name on the title-page, that had
+been denounced as a book which no woman should read, and had been given
+up as a desperate enterprise, now came forth in triumph, with banners
+flying and drums beating. Every great periodical in England that had
+fired moral volleys of artillery against it in its early days, now
+humbly marched in the glorious procession of admirers to salute this
+edifying work of genius.
+
+'Blackwood,' which in the beginning had been the most indignantly
+virtuous of the whole, now grovelled and ate dust as the serpent in
+the very abjectness of submission. Odoherty (Maginn) declares that he
+would rather have written a page of 'Don Juan' than a ton of 'Childe
+Harold.'[23] Timothy Tickler informs Christopher North that he means
+to tender Murray, as Emperor of the North, an interleaved copy[24] of
+'Don Juan,' with illustrations, as the _only_ work of Byron's he cares
+much about; and Christopher North, professor of _moral_ philosophy in
+Edinburgh, smiles approval! We are not, after this, surprised to see
+the assertion, by a recent much-aggrieved writer in 'The London Era,'
+that 'Lord Byron has been, more than any other man of the age, the
+_teacher_ of the _youth_ of England;' and that he has 'seen his works
+on the bookshelves of _bishops'_ palaces, no less than on the tables of
+university undergraduates.'
+
+[Footnote 23: 'Noctes,' July 1822.]
+
+[Footnote 24: 'Noctes,' September 1832.]
+
+A note to 'The Noctes' of July 1822 informs us of another instance of
+Lord Byron's triumph over English morals:--
+
+ 'The mention of this' (Byron's going to Greece) reminds me, by the by,
+ of what the Guiccioli said in her visit to London, where she was so
+ lionised as having been the lady-love of Byron. She was rather fond
+ of speaking on the subject, designating herself by some Venetian pet
+ phrase, which she interpreted as meaning "Love-Wife."'
+
+What was Lady Byron to do in such a world? She retired to the
+deepest privacy, and devoted herself to works of charity, and the
+education of her only child,--that brilliant daughter, to whose eager,
+opening mind the whole course of current literature must bring so
+many trying questions in regard to the position of her father and
+mother,--questions that the mother might not answer. That the cruel
+inconsiderateness of the literary world added thorns to the intricacies
+of the path trodden by every mother who seeks to guide, restrain, and
+educate a strong, acute, and precociously intelligent child, must
+easily be seen.
+
+What remains to be said of Lady Byron's life shall be said in the words
+of Miss Martineau, published in 'The Atlantic Monthly:'--
+
+ 'Her life, thenceforth, was one of unremitting bounty to society
+ administered with as much skill and prudence as benevolence. She lived
+ in retirement, changing her abode frequently; partly for the benefit
+ of her child's education and the promotion of her benevolent schemes,
+ and partly from a restlessness which was one of the few signs of
+ injury received from the spoiling of associations with _home_.
+
+ 'She felt a satisfaction which her friends rejoiced in when her
+ daughter married Lord King, at present the Earl of Lovelace, in 1835
+ and when grief upon grief followed, in the appearance of mortal
+ disease in her only child, her quiet patience stood her in good stead
+ as before. She even found strength to appropriate the blessings of the
+ occasion, and took comfort, as did her dying daughter, in the intimate
+ friendship, which grew closer as the time of parting drew nigh.
+
+ 'Lady Lovelace died in 1852; and, for her few remaining years, Lady
+ Byron was devoted to her grandchildren. But nearer calls never
+ lessened her interest in remoter objects. Her mind was of the large
+ and clear quality which could comprehend remote interests in their
+ true proportions, and achieve each aim as perfectly as if it were the
+ only one. Her agents used to say that it was impossible to mistake her
+ directions; and thus her business was usually well done. There was no
+ room, in her case, for the ordinary doubts, censures, and sneers about
+ the misapplication of bounty.
+
+ 'Her taste did not lie in the "Charity-Ball" direction; her funds
+ were not lavished in encouraging hypocrisy and improvidence among
+ the idle and worthless; and the quality of her charity was, in fact,
+ as admirable as its quantity. Her chief aim was the extension and
+ improvement of popular education; but there was no kind of misery that
+ she heard of that she did not palliate to the utmost, and no kind of
+ solace that her quick imagination and sympathy could devise that she
+ did not administer.
+
+ 'In her methods, she united consideration and frankness with singular
+ success. For one instance among a thousand: A lady with whom she had
+ had friendly relations some time before, and who became impoverished
+ in a quiet way by hopeless sickness, preferred poverty with an easy
+ conscience to a competency attended by some uncertainty about the
+ perfect rectitude of the resource. Lady Byron wrote to an intermediate
+ person exactly what she thought of the case. Whether the judgment
+ of the sufferer was right or mistaken was nobody's business but her
+ own: this was the first point. Next, a voluntary poverty could never
+ be pitied by anybody: that was the second. But it was painful to
+ others to think of the mortification to benevolent feelings which
+ attends poverty; and there could be no objection to arresting that
+ pain. Therefore she, Lady Byron, had lodged in a neighbouring bank
+ the sum of one hundred pounds, to be used for benevolent purposes;
+ and, in order to preclude all outside speculation, she had made the
+ money payable to the order of the intermediate person, so that the
+ sufferer's name need not appear at all.
+
+ 'Five and thirty years of unremitting secret bounty like this must
+ make up a great amount of human happiness; but this was only one of
+ a wide variety of methods of doing good. It was the unconcealable
+ magnitude of her beneficence, and its wise quality, which made her a
+ second time the theme of English conversation in all honest households
+ within the four seas. Years ago, it was said far and wide that Lady
+ Byron was doing more good than anybody else in England; and it was
+ difficult to imagine how anybody could do more.
+
+ 'Lord Byron spent every shilling that the law allowed him out of
+ her property while he lived, and left away from her every shilling
+ that he could deprive her of by his will; yet she had, eventually, a
+ large income at her command. In the management of it, she showed the
+ same wise consideration that marked all her practical decisions. She
+ resolved to spend her whole income, seeing how much the world needed
+ help at the moment. Her care was for the existing generation, rather
+ than for a future one, which would have its own friends. She usually
+ declined trammelling herself with annual subscriptions to charities;
+ preferring to keep her freedom from year to year, and to achieve
+ definite objects by liberal bounty, rather than to extend partial help
+ over a large surface which she could not herself superintend.
+
+ 'It was her first industrial school that awakened the admiration of
+ the public, which had never ceased to take an interest in her, while
+ sorely misjudging her character. We hear much now--and everybody hears
+ it with pleasure--of the spread of education in "common things;" but
+ long before Miss Coutts inherited her wealth, long before a name was
+ found for such a method of training, Lady Byron had instituted the
+ thing, and put it in the way of making its own name.
+
+ 'She was living at Ealing, in Middlesex, in 1834; and there she
+ opened one of the first industrial schools in England, if not the
+ very first. She sent out a master to Switzerland, to be instructed
+ in De Fellenburgh's method. She took, on lease, five acres of land,
+ and spent several hundred pounds in rendering the buildings upon it
+ fit for the purposes of the school. A liberal education was afforded
+ to the children of artisans and labourers during the half of the day
+ when they were not employed in the field or garden. The allotments
+ were rented by the boys, who raised and sold produce, which afforded
+ them a considerable yearly profit if they were good workmen. Those who
+ worked in the field earned wages; their labour being paid by the hour,
+ according to the capability of the young labourer. They kept their
+ accounts of expenditure and receipts, and acquired good habits of
+ business while learning the occupation of their lives. Some mechanical
+ trades were taught, as well as the arts of agriculture.
+
+ 'Part of the wisdom of the management lay in making the pupils pay.
+ Of one hundred pupils, half were boarders. They paid little more than
+ half the expenses of their maintenance, and the day-scholars paid
+ threepence per week. Of course, a large part of the expense was borne
+ by Lady Byron, besides the payments she made for children who could
+ not otherwise have entered the school. The establishment flourished
+ steadily till 1852, when the owner of the land required it back for
+ building purposes. During the eighteen years that the Ealing schools
+ were in action, they did a world of good in the way of incitement
+ and example. The poor-law commissioners pointed out their merits.
+ Land-owners and other wealthy persons visited them, and went home and
+ set up similar establishments. During those years, too, Lady Byron had
+ herself been at work in various directions to the same purpose.
+
+ 'A more extensive industrial scheme was instituted on her
+ Leicestershire property, and not far off she opened a girls' school
+ and an infant school; and when a season of distress came, as such
+ seasons are apt to befall the poor Leicestershire stocking-weavers,
+ Lady Byron fed the children for months together, till they could
+ resume their payments. These schools were opened in 1840. The next
+ year, she built a schoolhouse on her Warwickshire property; and, five
+ years later, she set up an iron schoolhouse on another Leicestershire
+ estate.
+
+ 'By this time, her educational efforts were costing her several
+ hundred pounds a year in the mere maintenance of existing
+ establishments; but this is the smallest consideration in the case.
+ She has sent out tribes of boys and girls into life fit to do their
+ part there with skill and credit and comfort. Perhaps it is a still
+ more important consideration, that scores of teachers and trainers
+ have been led into their vocation, and duly prepared for it, by what
+ they saw and learned in her schools. As for the best and the worst of
+ the Ealing boys, the best have, in a few cases, been received into the
+ Battersea Training School, whence they could enter on their career as
+ teachers to the greatest advantage; and the worst found their school
+ a true reformatory, before reformatory schools were heard of. At
+ Bristol, she bought a house for a reformatory for girls; and there her
+ friend, Miss Carpenter, faithfully and energetically carries out her
+ own and Lady Byron's aims, which were one and the same.
+
+ 'There would be no end if I were to catalogue the schemes of which
+ these are a specimen. It is of more consequence to observe that her
+ mind was never narrowed by her own acts, as the minds of benevolent
+ people are so apt to be. To the last, her interest in great political
+ movements, at home and abroad, was as vivid as ever. She watched every
+ step won in philosophy, every discovery in science, every token of
+ social change and progress in every shape. Her mind was as liberal
+ as her heart and hand. No diversity of opinion troubled her: she
+ was respectful to every sort of individuality, and indulgent to all
+ constitutional peculiarities. It must have puzzled those who kept up
+ the notion of her being "strait-laced" to see how indulgent she was
+ even to Epicurean tendencies,--the remotest of all from her own.
+
+ 'But I must stop; for I do not wish my honest memorial to degenerate
+ into panegyric. Among her latest known acts were her gifts to the
+ Sicilian cause, and her manifestations on behalf of the antislavery
+ cause in the United States. Her kindness to William and Ellen Craft
+ must be well known there; and it is also related in the newspapers,
+ that she bequeathed a legacy to a young American to assist him under
+ any disadvantages he might suffer as an abolitionist.
+
+ 'All these deeds were done under a heavy burden of ill health. Before
+ she had passed middle life, her lungs were believed to be irreparably
+ injured by partial ossification. She was subject to attacks so
+ serious, that each one, for many years, was expected to be the last.
+ She arranged her affairs in correspondence with her liabilities: so
+ that the same order would have been found, whether she died suddenly
+ or after long warning.
+
+ 'She was to receive one more accession of outward greatness before she
+ departed. She became Baroness Wentworth in November, 1856. This is one
+ of the facts of her history; but it is the least interesting to us, as
+ probably to her. We care more to know that her last days were bright
+ in honour, and cheered by the attachment of old friends worthy to pay
+ the duty she deserved. Above all, it is consoling to know that she who
+ so long outlived her only child was blessed with the unremitting and
+ tender care of her grand-daughter. She died on the 16th of May, 1860.
+
+ 'The portrait of Lady Byron as she was at the time of her marriage
+ is probably remembered by some of my readers. It is very engaging.
+ Her countenance afterwards became much worn; but its expression of
+ thoughtfulness and composure was very interesting. Her handwriting
+ accorded well with the character of her mind. It was clear, elegant,
+ and womanly. Her manners differed with circumstances. Her shrinking
+ sensitiveness might embarrass one visitor; while another would be
+ charmed with her easy, significant, and vivacious conversation. It
+ depended much on whom she talked with. The abiding certainty was, that
+ she had strength for the hardest of human trials, and the composure
+ which belongs to strength. For the rest, it is enough to point to her
+ deeds, and to the mourning of her friends round the chasm which her
+ departure has made in their life, and in the society in which it is
+ spent. All that could be done in the way of personal love and honour
+ was done while she lived: it only remains now to see that her name and
+ fame are permitted to shine forth at last in their proper light.'
+
+We have simply to ask the reader whether a life like this was not the
+best, the noblest answer that a woman could make to a doubting world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE ATTACK ON LADY BYRON'S GRAVE.
+
+
+We have now brought the review of the antagonism against Lady Byron
+down to the period of her death. During all this time, let the candid
+reader ask himself which of these two parties seems to be plotting
+against the other.
+
+_Which_ has been active, aggressive, unscrupulous? which has been
+silent, quiet, unoffending? Which of the two has laboured to make a
+party, and to make that party active, watchful, enthusiastic?
+
+Have we not proved that Lady Byron remained perfectly silent during
+Lord Byron's life, patiently looking out from her retirement to see
+the waves of popular sympathy, that once bore her up, day by day
+retreating, while his accusations against her were resounding in his
+poems over the whole earth? And after Lord Byron's death, when all
+the world with one consent began to give their memorials of him, and
+made it appear, by their various 'recollections of conversations,' how
+incessantly he had obtruded his own version of the separation upon
+every listener, did she manifest any similar eagerness?
+
+Lady Byron had seen the 'Blackwood' coming forward, on the first
+appearance of 'Don Juan,' to rebuke the cowardly lampoon in words
+eloquent with all the unperverted vigour of an honest Englishman. Under
+the power of the great conspirator, she had seen _that_ 'Blackwood'
+become the very eager recipient and chief reporter of the stories
+against her, and the blind admirer of her adversary.
+
+All this time, she lost sympathy daily by being silent. The world
+will embrace those who court it; it will patronise those who seek its
+favour; it will make parties for those who seek to make parties: but
+for the often accused who do not speak, who make no confidants and no
+parties, the world soon loses sympathy.
+
+When at last she spoke, Christopher North says '_she astonished
+the world_.' Calm, clear, courageous, exact as to time, date, and
+circumstance, was that first testimony, backed by the equally clear
+testimony of Dr. Lushington.
+
+It showed that her secret had been kept even from her parents. In words
+precise, firm, and fearless, she says, 'If these statements on which
+Dr. Lushington and Sir Samuel Romilly formed their opinion were false,
+the responsibility and the odium should rest with me only.' Christopher
+North did not pretend to disbelieve this statement. He breathed not a
+doubt of Lady Byron's word. He spoke of the crime indicated, as one
+which might have been foul as the grave's corruption, unforgivable as
+the sin against the Holy Ghost. He rebuked the wife for bearing this
+testimony, even to save the memory of her dead father and mother, and,
+in the same breath, declared that she ought now to go farther, and
+speak fully the one awful word, and then--'a mitigated sentence, or
+eternal silence!'
+
+But Lady Byron took no counsel with the world, nor with the literary
+men of her age. One knight, with some small remnant of England's old
+chivalry, set lance in rest for her: she saw him beaten back unhorsed,
+rolled in the dust, and ingloriously vanquished, and perceived that
+henceforth nothing but injury could come to any one who attempted to
+speak for her.
+
+She turned from the judgments of man and the fond and natural hopes of
+human nature, to lose herself in sacred ministries to the downcast and
+suffering. What nobler record for woman could there be than that which
+Miss Martineau has given?
+
+Particularly to be noted in Lady Byron was her peculiar interest in
+reclaiming fallen women. Among her letters to Mrs. Prof. Follen, of
+Cambridge, was one addressed to a society of ladies who had undertaken
+this difficult work. It was full of heavenly wisdom and of a large and
+tolerant charity. Fénelon truly says, it is only perfection that can
+tolerate imperfection; and the very purity of Lady Byron's nature made
+her most forbearing and most tender towards the weak and the guilty.
+This letter, with all the rest of Lady Byron's, was returned to the
+hands of her executors after her death. Its publication would greatly
+assist the world in understanding the peculiarities of its writer's
+character.
+
+Lady Byron passed to a higher life in 1860.[25] After her death, I
+looked for the publication of her Memoir and Letters as the event that
+should give her the same opportunity of being known and judged by her
+life and writings that had been so freely accorded to Lord Byron.
+
+[Footnote 25: Miss Martineau's Biographical Sketches.]
+
+She was, in her husband's estimation, a woman of genius. She was
+the friend of many of the first men and women of her times, and
+corresponded with them on topics of literature, morals, religion,
+and, above all, on the benevolent and philanthropic movements of the
+day, whose principles she had studied with acute observation, and in
+connection with which she had acquired a large experience.
+
+The knowledge of her, necessarily diffused by such a series of letters,
+would have created in America a comprehension of her character, of
+itself sufficient to wither a thousand slanders.
+
+Such a Memoir was contemplated. Lady Byron's letters to Mrs. Follen
+were asked for from Boston; and I was applied to by a person in
+England, who I have recently learned is one of the existing trustees
+of Lady Byron's papers, to furnish copies of her letters to me for the
+purpose of a Memoir. Before I had time to have copies made, another
+letter came, stating that the trustees had concluded that it was best
+not to publish any Memoir of Lady Byron at all.
+
+This left the character of Lady Byron in our American world precisely
+where the slanders of her husband, the literature of the Noctes Club,
+and the unanimous verdict of May Fair as recorded by 'Blackwood,' had
+placed it.
+
+True, Lady Byron had nobly and quietly lived down these slanders in
+England by deeds that made her name revered as a saint among all those
+who valued saintliness.
+
+But in France and Italy, and in these United States, I have had
+abundant opportunity to know that Lady Byron stood judged and condemned
+on the testimony of her brilliant husband, and that the feeling against
+her had a vivacity and intensity not to be overcome by mere allusions
+to a virtuous life in distant England.
+
+This is strikingly shown by one fact. In the American edition of
+Moore's 'Life of Byron,' by Claxton, Remsen, and Haffelfinger,
+Philadelphia, 1869, which I have been consulting, Lady Byron's
+statement, which is found in the Appendix of Murray's standard edition,
+_is entirely omitted_. Every other paper is carefully preserved. This
+one incident showed how the tide of sympathy was setting in this New
+World. Of course, there is no stronger power than a virtuous life; but,
+for a virtuous life to bear testimony to the world, its details must be
+_told_, so that the world may know them.
+
+Suppose the memoirs of Clarkson and Wilberforce had been suppressed
+after their death, how soon might the coming tide have wiped out the
+record of their bravery and philanthropy! Suppose the lives of Francis
+Xavier and Henry Martyn had never been written, and we had lost the
+remembrance of what holy men could do and dare in the divine enthusiasm
+of Christian faith! Suppose we had no Fénelon, no Book of Martyrs!
+
+Would there not be an outcry through all the literary and artistic
+world if a perfect statue were allowed to remain buried for ever
+because some painful individual history was connected with its burial
+and its recovery? But is not a noble life a greater treasure to mankind
+than any work of art?
+
+We have heard much mourning over the burned Autobiography of Lord
+Byron, and seen it treated of in a magazine as 'the lost chapter in
+history.' The lost chapter in history is _Lady_ Byron's Autobiography
+in her life and letters; and the suppression of them is the root of
+this whole mischief.
+
+We do not in this intend to censure the parties who came to this
+decision.
+
+The descendants of Lady Byron revere her memory, as they have every
+reason to do. That it was _their_ desire to have a Memoir of her
+published, I have been informed by an individual of the highest
+character in England, who obtained the information directly from Lady
+Byron's grandchildren.
+
+But the trustees in whose care the papers were placed drew back on
+examination of them, and declared, that, as Lady Byron's papers could
+not be fully published, they should regret anything that should call
+public attention once more to the discussion of her history.
+
+Reviewing this long history of the way in which the literary world
+had treated Lady Byron, we cannot wonder that her friends should have
+doubted whether there was left on earth any justice, or sense that
+anything is due to woman as a human being with human rights. Evidently
+this lesson had taken from them all faith in the moral sense of the
+world. Rather than re-awaken the discussion, so unsparing, so painful,
+and so indelicate, which had been carried on so many years around
+that loved form, now sanctified by death, they sacrificed the dear
+pleasure of the memorials, and the interests of mankind, who have an
+indefeasible right to all the help that can be got from the truth of
+history as to the living power of virtue, and the reality of that great
+victory that overcometh the world.
+
+There are thousands of poor victims suffering in sadness,
+discouragement, and poverty; heart-broken wives of brutal, drunken
+husbands; women enduring nameless wrongs and horrors which the delicacy
+of their sex forbids them to utter,--to whom the lovely letters lying
+hidden away under those seals might bring courage and hope from springs
+not of this world.
+
+But though the friends of Lady Byron, perhaps from despair of their
+kind, from weariness of the utter injustice done her, wished to cherish
+her name in silence, and to confine the story of her virtues to that
+circle who knew her too well to ask a proof, or utter a doubt, the
+partisans of Lord Byron were embarrassed with no such scruple.
+
+Lord Byron had artfully contrived during his life to place his wife in
+such an antagonistic position with regard to himself, that his intimate
+friends were forced to believe that one of the two had deliberately
+and wantonly injured the other. The published statement of Lady Byron
+contradicted boldly and point-blank all the statement of her husband
+concerning the separation; so that, unless _she_ was convicted as a
+false witness, _he_ certainly was.
+
+The best evidence of this is Christopher North's own shocked,
+astonished statement, and the words of the Noctes Club.
+
+The noble life that Lady Byron lived after this hushed every voice,
+and silenced even the most desperate calumny, _while she was in the
+world_. In the face of Lady Byron as the world saw her, of what use was
+the talk of Clytemnestra, and the assertion that she had been a mean,
+deceitful conspirator against her husband's honour in life, and stabbed
+his memory after death?
+
+But when she was in her grave, when her voice and presence and good
+deeds no more spoke for her, and a new generation was growing up that
+knew her not, _then_ was the time selected to revive the assault on her
+memory, and to say over her grave what none would ever have dared to
+say of her while living.
+
+During these last two years, I have been gradually awakening to the
+evidence of a new crusade against the memory of Lady Byron, which
+respected no sanctity,--not even that last and most awful one of death.
+
+Nine years after her death, when it was fully understood that no
+story on her side or that of her friends was to be forthcoming, then
+her calumniators raked out from the ashes of her husband's sepulchre
+all his bitter charges, to state them over in even stronger and more
+indecent forms.
+
+There seems to be reason to think that the materials supplied by Lord
+Byron for such a campaign yet exist in society.
+
+To 'The Noctes' of November 1824, there is the following note _apropos_
+to a discussion of the Byron question:--
+
+ 'Byron's Memoirs, given by him to Moore, were burned, as everybody
+ knows. But, before this, Moore had lent them to several persons. Mrs.
+ Home Purvis, afterwards Viscountess of Canterbury, is _known_ to have
+ sat up all one night, in which, aided by her daughter, she had a
+ copy made. I have the strongest reason for believing that one other
+ person made a copy; for the description of the first twenty-four hours
+ after the marriage ceremonial has been in my hands. _Not until after
+ the death of Lady Byron, and Hobhouse_, who was the poet's literary
+ executor, can the poet's Autobiography see the light; _but I am
+ certain it will be published_.'
+
+Thus speaks Mackenzie in a note to a volume of 'The Noctes,' published
+in America in 1854. Lady Byron died in 1860.
+
+Nine years after Lady Byron's death, when it was ascertained that her
+story was not to see the light, when there were no means of judging
+her character by her own writings, commenced a well-planned set of
+operations to turn the public attention once more to Lord Byron, and
+to represent him as an injured man, whose testimony had been unjustly
+suppressed.
+
+It was quite possible, supposing copies of the Autobiography to exist,
+that this might occasion a call from the generation of to-day, in
+answer to which the suppressed work might appear. This was a rather
+delicate operation to commence; but the instrument was not wanting.
+It was necessary that the subject should be first opened by some
+irresponsible party, whom more powerful parties might, as by accident,
+recognise and patronise, and on whose weakness they might build
+something stronger.
+
+Just such an instrument was to be found in Paris. The mistress of Lord
+Byron could easily be stirred up and flattered to come before the world
+with a book which should re-open the whole controversy; and she proved
+a facile tool. At first, the work appeared prudently in French, and was
+called 'Lord Byron jugé par les Témoins de sa Vie,' and was rather a
+failure. Then it was translated into English, and published by Bentley.
+
+The book was inartistic, and helplessly, childishly stupid as to any
+literary merits,--a mere mass of gossip and twaddle; but after all,
+when one remembers the taste of the thousands of circulating-library
+readers, it must not be considered the less likely to be widely read
+on that account. It is only once in a century that a writer of real
+genius has the art to tell his story so as to take both the cultivated
+few and the average many. De Foe and John Bunyan are almost the only
+examples. But there is a certain class of reading that sells and
+spreads, and exerts a vast influence, which the upper circles of
+literature despise too much ever to fairly estimate its power.
+
+However, the Guiccioli book did not want for patrons in the high places
+of literature. The 'Blackwood'--the old classic magazine of England;
+the defender of conservatism and aristocracy; the paper of Lockhart,
+Wilson, Hogg, Walter Scott, and a host of departed grandeurs--was
+deputed to usher into the world this book, and to recommend it and its
+author to the Christian public of the nineteenth century.
+
+The following is the manner in which 'Blackwood' calls attention to
+it:--
+
+ 'One of the most beautiful of the songs of Béranger is that addressed
+ to his Lisette, in which he pictures her, in old age, narrating to a
+ younger generation the loves of their youth; decking his portrait with
+ flowers at each returning spring, and reciting the verses that had
+ been inspired by her vanished charms:--
+
+  'Lorsque les yeux chercheront sous vos rides
+  Les traits charmants qui m'auront inspiré,
+  Des doux récits les jeunes gens avides,
+  Diront: Quel fut cet ami tant pleuré?
+  De mon amour peignez, s'il est possible,
+  L'ardeur, l'ivresse, et même les soupçons,
+  Et benne vieille, au coin d'un feu paisible
+  De votre ami répétez les chansons.
+
+  "On vous dira: Savait-il être aimable?
+  Et sans rougir vous direz: Je l'aimais.
+  D'un trait méchant se montra-t-il capable?
+  Avec orgueil vous répondrez: Jamais!"'
+
+ 'This charming picture,' 'Blackwood' goes on to say, 'has been
+ realised in the case of a poet greater than Béranger, and by a
+ mistress more famous than Lisette. The Countess Guiccioli has at
+ length given to the world her "Recollections of Lord Byron." The
+ book first appeared in France under the title of "Lord Byron jugé
+ par les Témoins de sa Vie," without the name of the countess. A
+ more unfortunate designation could hardly have been selected. The
+ "witnesses of his life" told us nothing but what had been told before
+ over and over again; and the uniform and exaggerated tone of eulogy
+ which pervaded the whole book was fatal to any claim on the part of
+ the writer to be considered an impartial judge of the wonderfully
+ mixed character of Byron.
+
+ '_When, however, the book is regarded as the avowed production of
+ the Countess Guiccioli, it derives value and interest from its very
+ faults._[26] There is something inexpressibly touching in the picture
+ of the old lady calling up the phantoms of half a century ago; not
+ faded and stricken by the hand of time, but brilliant and gorgeous as
+ they were when Byron, in his manly prime of genius and beauty, first
+ flashed upon her enraptured sight, and she gave her whole soul up to
+ an absorbing passion, the embers of which still glow in her heart.
+
+ [Footnote 26: The italics are mine.--H. B. S.]
+
+ 'To her there has been no change, no decay. The god whom she
+ worshipped with all the ardour of her Italian nature at seventeen is
+ still the "Pythian of the age" to her at seventy. To try such a book
+ by the ordinary canons of criticism would be as absurd as to arraign
+ the authoress before a jury of British matrons, or to prefer a bill of
+ indictment against the Sultan for bigamy to a Middlesex grand jury.'
+
+This, then, is the introduction which one of the oldest and most
+classical periodicals of Great Britain gives to a very stupid book,
+simply because it was written by Lord Byron's mistress. _That fact_, we
+are assured, lends grace even to its faults.
+
+Having brought the authoress upon the stage, the review now goes on to
+define her position, and assure the Christian world that
+
+ 'The Countess Guiccioli was the daughter of an impoverished noble. At
+ the age of sixteen, she was taken from a convent, and sold as third
+ wife to the Count Guiccioli, who was old, rich, and profligate. A
+ fouler prostitution never profaned the name of marriage. A short time
+ afterwards, she accidentally met Lord Byron. Outraged and rebellious
+ nature vindicated itself in the deep and devoted passion with which
+ he inspired her. With the full assent of husband, father, and
+ brother, and in compliance with the usages of Italian society, he was
+ shortly afterwards installed in the office, and invested with all the
+ privileges, of her "Cavalier Servente."'
+
+It has been asserted that the Marquis de Boissy, the late husband of
+this Guiccioli lady, was in the habit of introducing her in fashionable
+circles as 'the Marquise de Boissy, my wife, formerly mistress to Lord
+Byron'! We do not give the story as a verity; yet, in the review of
+this whole history, we may be pardoned for thinking it quite possible.
+
+The mistress, being thus vouched for and presented as worthy of
+sympathy and attention by one of the oldest and most classic organs
+of English literature, may now proceed in her work of glorifying the
+popular idol, and casting abuse on the grave of the dead wife.
+
+Her attacks on Lady Byron are, to be sure, less skilful and adroit
+than those of Lord Byron. They want his literary polish and tact; but
+what of that? 'Blackwood' assures us that even the faults of manner
+derive a peculiar grace from the fact that the narrator is Lord Byron's
+mistress; and so we suppose the literary world must find grace in
+things like this:--
+
+ 'She has been called, after his words, the moral Clytemnestra of
+ her husband. Such a surname is severe: but the repugnance we feel
+ to condemning a woman cannot prevent our listening to the voice of
+ justice, which tells us that the comparison is still in favour of
+ the guilty one of antiquity; for _she_, driven to crime by fierce
+ passion overpowering reason, at least only deprived her husband of
+ physical life, and, in committing the deed, exposed herself to all its
+ consequences; while Lady Byron left her husband at the very moment
+ that she saw him struggling amid a thousand shoals in the stormy sea
+ of embarrassments created by his marriage, and precisely when he more
+ than ever required a friendly, tender, and indulgent hand to save him.
+
+ 'Besides, she shut herself up in silence a thousand times more cruel
+ than Clytemnestra's poniard: _that_ only killed the body; whereas
+ Lady Byron's silence was destined to kill the soul,--and such a
+ soul!--leaving the door open to calumny, and making it to be supposed
+ that her silence was magnanimity destined to cover over frightful
+ wrongs, perhaps even depravity. In vain did he, feeling his conscience
+ at ease, implore some inquiry and examination. She refused; and the
+ only favour she granted was to send him, one fine day, two persons to
+ see whether he were not mad.
+
+ 'And, why, then, had she believed him mad? Because she, a methodical,
+ inflexible woman, with that unbendingness which a profound moralist
+ calls the worship rendered to pride by a feelingless soul,--because
+ she could not understand the possibility of tastes and habits
+ different to those of ordinary routine, or of her own starched life.
+ Not to be hungry when she was; not to sleep at night, but to write
+ while she was sleeping, and to sleep when she was up; in short, to
+ gratify the requirements of material and intellectual life at hours
+ different to hers,--all that was not merely annoying for her, but it
+ must be _madness_; or, if not, it betokened depravity that she could
+ neither submit to nor tolerate without perilling her own morality.
+
+ 'Such was the grand secret of the cruel silence which exposed Lord
+ Byron to the most malignant interpretations, to all the calumny and
+ revenge of his enemies.
+
+ 'She was, perhaps, the only woman in the world so strangely
+ organised,--the only one, perhaps, capable of not feeling happy and
+ proud at belonging to a man superior to the rest of humanity; and
+ fatally was it decreed that this woman _alone_ of her species should
+ be Lord Byron's wife!'
+
+In a note is added,--
+
+ 'If an imaginary fear, and even an unreasonable jealousy, may be her
+ excuse (just as one excuses a monomania), can one equally forgive her
+ silence? Such a silence is morally what are physically the poisons
+ which kill at once, and defy all remedies; thus insuring the culprit's
+ safety. This silence it is which will ever be her crime; for by it she
+ poisoned the life of her husband.'
+
+The book has several chapters devoted to Lord Byron's peculiar virtues;
+and under the one devoted to magnanimity and heroism, his _forgiving_
+disposition receives special attention. The climax of all is stated to
+be that he forgave Lady Byron. All the world knew that, since he had
+declared this fact in a very noisy and impassioned manner in the fourth
+canto of 'Childe Harold,' together with a statement of the wrongs which
+he forgave; but the Guiccioli thinks his virtue, at this period, has
+not been enough appreciated. In her view, it rose to the sublime. She
+says of Lady Byron,--
+
+ 'An absolute moral monstrosity, an anomaly in the history of types
+ of female hideousness, had succeeded in showing itself in the light
+ of magnanimity. But false as was this high quality in Lady Byron, so
+ did it shine out in him true and admirable. The position in which
+ Lady Byron had placed him, and where she continued to keep him by
+ her harshness, silence, and strange refusals, was one of those which
+ cause such suffering, that the highest degree of self-control seldom
+ suffices to quiet the promptings of human weakness, and to cause
+ persons of even slight sensibility to preserve moderation. Yet, with
+ his sensibility and the knowledge of his worth, how did he act? what
+ did he say? I will not speak of his "farewell;" of the care he took
+ to shield her from blame by throwing it on others, by taking much too
+ large a share to himself.'
+
+With like vivacity and earnestness does the narrator now proceed to
+make an incarnate angel of her subject by the simple process of denying
+everything that he himself ever confessed,--everything that has ever
+been confessed in regard to him by his best friends. He has been in
+the world as an angel unawares from his cradle. His guardian did not
+properly appreciate him, and is consequently mentioned as that _wicked_
+Lord Carlisle. Thomas Moore is never to be sufficiently condemned
+for the facts told in his biography. Byron's own frank and lawless
+admissions of evil are set down to a peculiar inability he had for
+speaking the truth about himself,--sometimes about his near relations;
+all which does not in the least discourage the authoress from giving a
+separate chapter on 'Lord Byron's Love of Truth.'
+
+In the matter of his relations with women, she complacently repeats
+(what sounds rather oddly as coming from her) Lord Byron's own
+assurance, that he _never_ seduced a woman; and also the equally
+convincing statement, that he had told _her_ (the Guiccioli) that his
+married fidelity to his wife was perfect. She discusses Moore's account
+of the mistress in boy's clothes who used to share Byron's apartments
+in college, and ride with him to races, and whom he presented to
+_ladies_ as his brother.
+
+She has her own view of this matter. The disguised boy was a lady
+of rank and fashion, who sought Lord Byron's chambers, as, we are
+informed, noble ladies everywhere, both in Italy and England, were
+constantly in the habit of doing; throwing themselves at his feet, and
+imploring permission to become his handmaids.
+
+In the authoress's own words, 'Feminine overtures still continued
+to be made to Lord Byron; but the fumes of incense never hid from
+his sight his IDEAL.' We are told that in the case of
+these poor ladies, generally 'disenchantment took place on his side
+without a corresponding result on the other: THENCE many
+heart-breakings.' Nevertheless, we are informed that there followed the
+indiscretions of these ladies 'none of those proceedings that the world
+readily forgives, but which his feelings as a man of honour would have
+condemned.'
+
+As to drunkenness, and all that, we are informed he was an anchorite.
+Pages are given to an account of the biscuits and soda-water that on
+this and that occasion were found to be the sole means of sustenance to
+this ethereal creature.
+
+As to the story of using his wife's money, the lady gives, directly in
+the face of his own Letters and Journal, the same account given before
+by Medwin, and which caused such merriment when talked over in the
+Noctes Club,--that he had with her only a marriage portion of £10,000;
+and that, on the separation, he not only paid it back, but doubled
+it.[27]
+
+[Footnote 27: In 'The Noctes' of November, 1824 Christopher North says,
+'I don't call Medwin a liar.... Whether Byron bammed him, or he, by
+virtue of his own stupidity, was the sole and sufficient bammifier of
+himself, I know not.' A note says that Murray had been much shocked by
+Byron's misstatements to Medwin as to money-matters with him. The note
+goes on to say, 'Medwin could not have invented them, for they were
+mixed up with acknowledged facts; and the presumption is that Byron
+mystified his gallant acquaintance. He was fond of such tricks.']
+
+So on the authoress goes, sowing right and left the most transparent
+absurdities and misstatements with what Carlyle well calls 'a composed
+stupidity, and a cheerful infinitude of ignorance.' Who _should_ know,
+if not she, to be sure? Had not Byron told her all about it? and was
+not his family motto _Crede Byron_?
+
+The 'Blackwood,' having a dim suspicion that this confused style of
+attack and defence in reference to the two parties under consideration
+may not have great weight, itself proceeds to make the book an occasion
+for re-opening the controversy of Lord Byron with his wife.
+
+The rest of the review is devoted to a powerful attack on Lady Byron's
+character,--the most fearful attack on the memory of a dead woman we
+have ever seen made by living man. The author proceeds, like a lawyer,
+to gather up, arrange, and restate, in a most workmanlike manner, the
+confused accusations of the book.
+
+Anticipating the objection, that such a re-opening of the inquiry was
+a violation of the privacy due to womanhood and to the feelings of a
+surviving family, he says, that though marriage usually is a private
+matter which the world has no right to intermeddle with or discuss,
+yet--
+
+ 'Lord Byron's was an exceptional case. It is not too much to say,
+ that, had his marriage been a happy one, the course of events of the
+ present century might have been materially changed; that the genius
+ which poured itself forth in "Don Juan" and "Cain" might have flowed
+ in far different channels; that the ardent love of freedom which sent
+ him to perish at six and thirty at Missolonghi might have inspired
+ a long career at home; and that we might at this moment have been
+ appealing to the counsels of his experience and wisdom at an age
+ not exceeding that which was attained by Wellington, Lyndhurst, and
+ Brougham.
+
+ 'Whether the world would have been a gainer or a loser by the exchange
+ is a question which every man must answer for himself, according to
+ his own tastes and opinions; but the possibility of such a change in
+ the course of events warrants us in treating what would otherwise be a
+ strictly private matter as one of public interest.
+
+ 'More than half a century has elapsed, the actors have departed from
+ the stage, the curtain has fallen; and whether it will ever again be
+ raised so as to reveal the real facts of the drama, may, as we have
+ already observed, be well doubted. But the time has arrived when we
+ may fairly gather up the fragments of evidence, clear them as far as
+ possible from the incrustations of passion, prejudice, and malice, and
+ place them in such order, as, if possible, to enable us to arrive
+ at some probable conjecture as to what the skeleton of the drama
+ originally was.'
+
+Here the writer proceeds to put together all the facts of Lady Byron's
+case, just as an adverse lawyer would put them as against her, and
+for her husband. The plea is made vigorously and ably, and with an
+air of indignant severity, as of an honest advocate who is thoroughly
+convinced that he is pleading the cause of a wronged man who has been
+ruined in name, ship-wrecked in life, and driven to an early grave, by
+the arts of a bad woman,--a woman all the more horrible that her malice
+was disguised under the cloak of religion.
+
+Having made an able statement of facts, adroitly leaving out
+ONE,[28] of which he could not have been ignorant had he
+studied the case carefully enough to know all the others, he proceeds
+to sum up against the criminal thus:--
+
+[Footnote 28: This one fact is, that Lord Byron might have had an open
+examination in court, if he had only persisted in refusing the deed of
+separation.]
+
+ 'We would deal tenderly with the memory of Lady Byron. Few women have
+ been juster objects of compassion. It would seem as if Nature and
+ Fortune had vied with each other which should be most lavish of her
+ gifts, and yet that some malignant power had rendered all their bounty
+ of no effect. Rank, beauty, wealth, and mental powers of no common
+ order, were hers; yet they were of no avail to secure her happiness.
+ The spoilt child of seclusion, restraint, and parental idolatry,
+ a fate (alike evil for both) cast her into the arms of the spoilt
+ child of genius, passion, and the world. What real or fancied wrongs
+ she suffered, we may never know; but those which she inflicted are
+ sufficiently apparent.
+
+ 'It is said that there are some poisons so subtle that they will
+ destroy life, and yet leave no trace of their action. The murderer
+ who uses them may escape the vengeance of the law; but he is not the
+ less guilty. So the slanderer who makes no charge; who deals in hints
+ and insinuations: who knows melancholy facts he would not willingly
+ divulge,--things too painful to state; who forbears, expresses pity,
+ sometimes even affection, for his victim, shrugs his shoulders, looks
+ with
+
+        "The significant eye,
+  Which learns to lie with silence,--"
+
+ is far more guilty than he who tells the bold falsehood which may be
+ met and answered, and who braves the punishment which must follow upon
+ detection.
+
+ 'Lady Byron has been called
+
+  "The moral Clytemnestra of her lord."
+
+ The "moral Brinvilliers" would have been a truer designation.
+
+ 'The conclusion at which we arrive is, that there is no proof whatever
+ that Lord Byron was guilty of any act that need have caused a
+ separation, or prevented a re-union, and that the imputations upon him
+ rest on the vaguest conjecture; that whatever real or fancied wrongs
+ Lady Byron may have endured are shrouded in an impenetrable mist of
+ her own creation,--a poisonous miasma in which she enveloped the
+ character of her husband, raised by her breath, and which her breath
+ only could have dispersed.
+
+  "She dies and makes no sign. O God! forgive her."'
+
+As we have been obliged to review accusations on Lady Byron founded
+on old Greek tragedy, so now we are forced to abridge a passage from
+a modern conversations-lexicon, that we may understand what sort of
+comparisons are deemed in good taste in a conservative English review,
+when speaking of ladies of rank in their graves.
+
+Under the article 'Brinvilliers,' we find as follows:--
+
+ 'MARGUERITE D'AUBRAI, MARCHIONESS OF BRINVILLIERS.--The
+ singular atrocity of this woman gives her a sort of infamous claim to
+ notice. She was horn in Paris in 1651; being daughter of D'Aubrai,
+ lieutenant-civil of Paris, who married her to the Marquis of
+ Brinvilliers. Although possessed of attractions to captivate lovers,
+ she was for some time much attached to her husband, but at length
+ became madly in love with a Gascon officer. Her father imprisoned
+ the officer in the Bastille; and, while there, he learned the art of
+ compounding subtle and most mortal poisons; and, when he was released,
+ he taught it to the lady, who exercised it with such success, that,
+ in one year, her father, sister, and two brothers became her victims.
+ She professed the utmost tenderness for her victims, and nursed them
+ assiduously. On her father she is said to have made eight attempts
+ before she succeeded. She was _very religious_, and devoted to works
+ of charity; and visited the hospitals a great deal, where it is said
+ she tried her poisons on the sick.'
+
+People have made loud outcries lately, both in America and England,
+about violating the repose of the dead. We should like to know what
+they call this. Is this, then, what they mean by _respecting_ the dead?
+
+Let any man imagine a leading review coming out with language equally
+brutal about his own mother, or any dear and revered friend.
+
+Men of America, men of England, what do you think of this?
+
+When Lady Byron was publicly branded with the names of the foulest
+ancient and foulest modern assassins, and Lord Byron's mistress was
+publicly taken by the hand, and encouraged to go on and prosper in her
+slanders, by one of the oldest and most influential British reviews,
+what was said and what was done in England?
+
+That is a question we should be glad to have answered. Nothing was done
+that ever reached us across the water.
+
+And why was nothing done? Is this language of a kind to be passed over
+in silence?
+
+Was it no offence to the house of Wentworth to attack the pure
+character of its late venerable head, and to brand her in her sacred
+grave with the name of one of the vilest of criminals?
+
+Might there not properly have been an indignant protest of family
+solicitors against this insult to the person and character of the
+Baroness Wentworth?
+
+If virtue went for nothing, benevolence for nothing, a long life of
+service to humanity for nothing, one would at least have thought, that,
+in aristocratic countries, rank might have had its rights to decent
+consideration, and its guardians to rebuke the violation of those
+rights.
+
+We Americans understand little of the advantages of rank; but we did
+understand that it secured certain decorums to people, both while
+living and when in their graves. From Lady Byron's whole history, in
+life and in death, it would appear that we were mistaken.
+
+What a life was hers! Was ever a woman more evidently desirous of
+the delicate and secluded privileges of womanhood, of the sacredness
+of individual privacy? Was ever a woman so rudely dragged forth,
+and exposed to the hardened, vulgar, and unfeeling gaze of mere
+curiosity?--her maiden secrets of love thrown open to be handled by
+_roués_; the sanctities of her marriage-chamber desecrated by leering
+satyrs; her parents and best friends traduced and slandered, till one
+indignant public protest was extorted from her, as by the rack,--a
+protest which seems yet to quiver in every word with the indignation of
+outraged womanly delicacy!
+
+Then followed coarse blame and coarser comment,--blame for speaking
+at all, and blame for not speaking more. One manly voice, raised for
+her in honourable protest, was silenced and overborne by the universal
+roar of ridicule and reprobation; and henceforth what refuge? Only this
+remained: 'Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the
+keeping of their souls to him as to a faithful Creator.'
+
+Lady Byron turned to this refuge in silence, and filled up her life
+with a noble record of charities and humanities. So pure was she, so
+childlike, so artless, so loving, that those who knew her best, feel,
+to this day, that a memorial of her is like the relic of a saint. And
+could not all this preserve her grave from insult? O England, England!
+
+I speak in sorrow of heart to those who must have known, loved, and
+revered Lady Byron, and ask them, Of what were you thinking when you
+allowed a paper of so established literary rank as the 'Blackwood,' to
+present and earnestly recommend to our New World such a compendium of
+lies as the Guiccioli book?
+
+Is the great English-speaking community, whose waves toss from Maine
+to California, and whose literature is yet to come back in a thousand
+voices to you, a thing to be so despised?
+
+If, as the solicitors of the Wentworth family observe, you might be
+entitled to treat with silent contempt the slanders of a mistress
+against a wife, was it safe to treat with equal contempt the
+indorsement and recommendation of those slanders by one of your oldest
+and most powerful literary authorities?
+
+No European magazine has ever had the weight and circulation in America
+that the 'Blackwood' has held. In the days of my youth, when New
+England was a comparatively secluded section of the earth, the wit
+and genius of the 'Noctes Ambrosianæ' were in the mouths of men and
+maidens, even in our most quiet mountain-towns. There, years ago, we
+saw all Lady Byron's private affairs discussed, and felt the weight of
+Christopher North's decisions against her. Shelton Mackenzie, in his
+American edition, speaks of the American circulation of 'Blackwood'
+being greater than that in England.[29] It was and is now reprinted
+monthly; and, besides that, 'Littell's Magazine' reproduces all its
+striking articles, and they come with the weight of long established
+position. From the very fact that it has long been considered the Tory
+organ, and the supporter of aristocratic orders, all its admissions
+against the character of individuals in the privileged classes have a
+double force.
+
+[Footnote 29: In the history of 'Blackwood's Magazine,' prefaced to
+the American edition of 1854, Mackenzie says of the 'Noctes' papers,
+'Great as was their popularity in England it was peculiarly in
+America that their high merit and undoubted originality received the
+heartiest recognition and appreciation. Nor is this wonderful when it
+is considered that for one reader of "Blackwood's Magazine" in the old
+country there cannot be less than fifty in the new.']
+
+When 'Blackwood,' therefore, boldly denounces a lady of high rank as a
+modern Brinvilliers, and no sensation is produced, and no remonstrance
+follows, what can people in the New World suppose, but that Lady
+Byron's character was a point entirely given up; that her depravity was
+so well established and so fully conceded, that nothing was to be said,
+and that even the defenders of aristocracy were forced to admit it?
+
+I have been blamed for speaking on this subject without consulting Lady
+Byron's friends, trustees, and family. More than ten years had elapsed
+since I had had any intercourse with England, and I knew none of them.
+How was I to know that any of them were living? I was astonished to
+learn, for the first time, by the solicitors' letters, that there were
+trustees, who held in their hands all Lady Byron's carefully prepared
+proofs and documents, by which this falsehood might immediately have
+been refuted.
+
+If they had spoken, they might have saved all this confusion. Even
+if bound by restrictions for a certain period of time, they still
+might have called on a Christian public to frown down such a cruel
+and indecent attack on the character of a noble lady who had been a
+benefactress to so many in England. They might have stated that the
+means of wholly refuting the slanders of the 'Blackwood' were in their
+hands, and only delayed in coming forth from regard to the feelings
+of some in this generation. Then might they not have announced her
+Life and Letters, that the public might have the same opportunity as
+themselves for knowing and judging Lady Byron by her own writings?
+
+Had this been done, I had been most happy to have remained silent. I
+have been astonished that any one should have supposed this speaking
+on my part to be anything less than it is,--the severest act of
+self-sacrifice that one friend can perform for another, and the most
+solemn and difficult tribute to justice that a human being can be
+called upon to render.
+
+I have been informed that the course I have taken would be contrary to
+the wishes of my friend. I think otherwise. I know her strong sense
+of justice, and her reverence for truth. Nothing ever moved her to
+speak to the public but an attack upon the honour of the dead. In her
+statement, she says of her parents, 'There is no other near relative to
+vindicate their memory from insult: I am therefore compelled to break
+the silence I had hoped always to have observed.'
+
+If there was any near relative to vindicate Lady Byron's memory, I
+had no evidence of the fact; and I considered the utter silence to
+be strong evidence to the contrary. In all the storm of obloquy and
+rebuke that has raged in consequence of my speaking, I have had two
+unspeakable sources of joy; first, that they could not touch _her_;
+and, second, that they could not blind the all-seeing God. It is worth
+being in darkness to see the stars.
+
+It has been said that _I_ have drawn on Lady Byron's name greater
+obloquy than ever before. I deny the charge. Nothing fouler has been
+asserted of her than the charges in the 'Blackwood,' because nothing
+fouler _could_ be asserted. No satyr's hoof has ever crushed this pearl
+deeper in the mire than the hoof of the 'Blackwood,' but none of them
+have defiled it or trodden it so deep that God cannot find it in the
+day 'when he maketh up his jewels.'
+
+I have another word, as an American, to say about the contempt shown
+to our great people in thus suffering the materials of history to be
+falsified to subserve the temporary purposes of family feeling in
+England.
+
+Lord Byron belongs not properly either to the Byrons or the Wentworths.
+He is not one of their family jewels to be locked up in their cases.
+He belongs to the world for which he wrote, to which he appealed, and
+before which he dragged his reluctant, delicate wife to a publicity
+equal with his own: the world has, therefore, a right to judge him.
+
+We Americans have been made accessories, after the fact, to every
+insult and injury that Lord Byron and the literary men of his day have
+heaped upon Lady Byron. We have been betrayed into injustice and a
+complicity with villany. After Lady Byron had nobly lived down slanders
+in England, and died full of years and honours, the 'Blackwood' takes
+occasion to re-open the controversy by recommending a book full of
+slanders to a rising generation who knew nothing of the past. What
+was the consequence in America? My attention was first called to the
+result, not by reading the 'Blackwood' article, but by finding in a
+popular monthly magazine two long articles,--the one an enthusiastic
+recommendation of the Guiccioli book, and the other a lamentation over
+the burning of the Autobiography as a lost chapter in history.
+
+Both articles represented Lady Byron as a cold, malignant, mean,
+persecuting woman, who had been her husband's ruin. They were so full
+of falsehoods and misstatements as to astonish me. Not long after, a
+literary friend wrote to me, '_Will_ you, _can_ you, reconcile it to
+your conscience to sit still and allow that mistress so to slander that
+wife,--you, perhaps, the only one knowing the real facts, and able to
+set them forth?'
+
+Upon this, I immediately began collecting and reading the various
+articles and the book, and perceived that the public of this generation
+were in a way of having false history created, uncontradicted, under
+their own eyes.
+
+I claim for my country, men and women, our right to _true_ history.
+For years, the popular literature has held up publicly before our eyes
+the facts as to this man and this woman, and called on us to praise or
+condemn. Let us have _truth_ when we are called on to judge. It is our
+_right_.
+
+There is no conceivable obligation on a human being greater than
+that of _absolute justice_. It is the deepest personal injury to an
+honourable mind to be made, through misrepresentation, an accomplice
+in injustice. When a noble name is accused, any person who possesses
+truth which might clear it, and withholds that truth, is guilty of a
+sin against human nature and the inalienable rights of justice. I claim
+that I have not only a right, but an obligation, to bring in my solemn
+testimony upon this subject.
+
+For years and years, the silence-policy has been tried; and what has it
+brought forth? As neither word nor deed could be proved against Lady
+Byron, her silence has been spoken of as a monstrous, unnatural crime,
+'a poisonous miasma,' in which she enveloped the name of her husband.
+
+Very well; since silence is the crime, I thought I would tell the world
+that Lady Byron had spoken.
+
+Christopher North, years ago, when he condemned her for speaking, said
+that she should speak further,--
+
+'She should speak, or some one for her. One word would suffice.'
+
+That one word has been spoken.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+LADY BYRON AS I KNEW HER.
+
+
+An editorial in 'The London Times' of Sept. 18 says:--
+
+ 'The perplexing feature in this "True Story" is, that it is impossible
+ to distinguish what part in it is the editress's, and what Lady
+ Byron's own. We are given the _impression_ made on Mrs. Stowe's mind
+ by Lady Byron's statements; but it would have been more satisfactory
+ if the statement itself had been reproduced as bare as possible, and
+ been left to make its own impression on the public.'
+
+In reply to this, I will say, that in my article I gave a brief
+synopsis of the subject-matter of Lady Byron's communications;
+and I think it must be quite evident to the world that the _main
+fact_ on which the story turns was one which could not possibly be
+misunderstood, and the remembrance of which no lapse of time could ever
+weaken.
+
+Lady Byron's communications were made to me in language clear, precise,
+terrible; and many of her phrases and sentences I could repeat at this
+day, word for word. But if I had reproduced them at first, as 'The
+Times' suggests, word for word, the public horror and incredulity would
+have been doubled. It was necessary that the brutality of the story
+should, in some degree, be veiled and softened.
+
+The publication, by Lord Lindsay, of Lady Anne Barnard's communication,
+makes it now possible to tell fully, and in Lady Byron's own words,
+certain incidents that yet remain untold. To me, who know the whole
+history, the revelations in Lady Anne's account, and the story related
+by Lady Byron, are like fragments of a dissected map: they fit
+together, piece by piece, and form one connected whole.
+
+In confirmation of the general facts of this interview, I have the
+testimony of a sister who accompanied me on this visit, and to whom,
+immediately after it, I recounted the story.
+
+Her testimony on the subject is as follows:--
+
+ 'MY DEAR SISTER,--I have a perfect recollection of going
+ with you to visit Lady Byron at the time spoken of in your published
+ article. We arrived at her house in the morning; and, after lunch,
+ Lady Byron and yourself spent the whole time till evening alone
+ together.
+
+ 'After we retired to our apartment that night, you related to me
+ the story given in your published account, though with many more
+ particulars than you have yet thought fit to give to the public.
+
+ 'You stated to me that Lady Byron was strongly impressed with the idea
+ that it might be her duty to publish a statement during her lifetime,
+ and also the reasons which induced her to think so. You appeared at
+ that time quite disposed to think that justice required this step, and
+ asked my opinion. We passed most of the night in conversation on the
+ subject,--a conversation often resumed, from time to time, during
+ several weeks in which you were considering what opinion to give.
+
+ 'I was strongly of opinion that justice required the publication of
+ the truth, but felt exceedingly averse to its being done by Lady Byron
+ herself during her own lifetime, when she personally would be subject
+ to the comments and misconceptions of motives which would certainly
+ follow such a communication.
+
+  'Your sister,
+
+  'M. F. PERKINS.'
+
+I am now about to complete the account of my conversation with Lady
+Byron; but as the credibility of a history depends greatly on the
+character of its narrator, and as especial pains have been taken
+to destroy the belief in this story by representing it to be the
+wanderings of a broken-down mind in a state of dotage and mental
+hallucination, I shall preface the narrative with some account of
+Lady Byron as she was during the time of our mutual acquaintance and
+friendship.
+
+This account may, perhaps, be deemed superfluous in England, where so
+many knew her; but in America, where, from Maine to California, her
+character has been discussed and traduced, it is of importance to give
+interested thousands an opportunity of learning what kind of a woman
+Lady Byron was.
+
+Her character as given by Lord Byron in his Journal, after her first
+refusal of him, is this:--
+
+ 'She is a very superior woman, and very little spoiled; which is
+ strange in an heiress, a girl of twenty, a peeress that is to be in
+ her own right, an only child, and a savante, who has always had her
+ own way. She is a poetess, a mathematician, a metaphysician; yet,
+ withal, very kind, generous, and gentle, with very little pretension.
+ Any other head would be turned with half her acquisitions and a tenth
+ of her advantages.'
+
+Such was Lady Byron at twenty. I formed her acquaintance in the year
+1853, during my first visit in England. I met her at a lunch-party in
+the house of one of her friends.
+
+The party had many notables; but, among them all, my attention was
+fixed principally on Lady Byron. She was at this time sixty-one years
+of age, but still had, to a remarkable degree, that personal attraction
+which is commonly considered to belong only to youth and beauty.
+
+Her form was slight, giving an impression of fragility; her motions
+were both graceful and decided; her eyes bright, and full of interest
+and quick observation. Her silvery-white hair seemed to lend a grace
+to the transparent purity of her complexion, and her small hands
+had a pearly whiteness. I recollect she wore a plain widow's cap of
+a transparent material; and was dressed in some delicate shade of
+lavender, which harmonised well with her complexion.
+
+When I was introduced to her, I felt in a moment the words of her
+husband:--
+
+  'There was awe in the homage that she drew;
+  Her spirit seemed as seated on a throne.'
+
+Calm, self-poised, and thoughtful, she seemed to me rather to resemble
+an interested spectator of the world's affairs, than an actor involved
+in its trials; yet the sweetness of her smile, and a certain very
+delicate sense of humour in her remarks, made the way of acquaintance
+easy.
+
+Her first remarks were a little playful; but in a few moments we were
+speaking on what every one in those days was talking to me about,--the
+slavery question in America.
+
+It need not be remarked, that, when any one subject especially occupies
+the public mind, those known to be interested in it are compelled to
+listen to many weary platitudes. Lady Byron's remarks, however, caught
+my ear and arrested my attention by their peculiar incisive quality,
+their originality, and the evidence they gave that she was as well
+informed on all our matters as the best American statesman could be.
+I had no wearisome course to go over with her as to the difference
+between the General Government and State Governments, nor explanations
+of the United States Constitution; for she had the whole before her
+mind with a perfect clearness. Her morality upon the slavery question,
+too, impressed me as something far higher and deeper than the common
+sentimentalism of the day. Many of her words surprised me greatly, and
+gave me new material for thought.
+
+I found I was in company with a commanding mind, and hastened to
+gain instruction from her on another point where my interest had
+been aroused. I had recently been much excited by Kingsley's novels,
+'Alton Locke' and 'Yeast,' on the position of religious thought in
+England. From these works I had gathered, that under the apparent
+placid uniformity of the Established Church of England, and of 'good
+society' as founded on it, there was moving a secret current of
+speculative enquiry, doubt, and dissent; but I had met, as yet, with
+no person among my various acquaintances in England who seemed either
+aware of this fact, or able to guide my mind respecting it. The moment
+I mentioned the subject to Lady Byron, I received an answer which
+showed me that the whole ground was familiar to her, and that she was
+capable of giving me full information. She had studied with careful
+thoughtfulness all the social and religious tendencies of England
+during her generation. One of her remarks has often since occurred to
+me. Speaking of the Oxford movement, she said the time had come when
+the English Church could no longer remain as it was. It must either
+_restore the past, or create a future_. The Oxford movement attempted
+the former; and of the future she was beginning to speak, when our
+conversation was interrupted by the presentation of other parties.
+
+Subsequently, in reply to a note from her on some benevolent business,
+I alluded to that conversation, and expressed a wish that she would
+finish giving me her views of the religious state of England. A portion
+of the letter that she wrote me in reply I insert, as being very
+characteristic in many respects:--
+
+ 'Various causes have been assigned for the decaying state of the
+ English Church; which seems the more strange, because the clergy have
+ improved, morally and intellectually, in the last twenty years. Then
+ why should their influence be diminished? I think it is owing to the
+ diffusion of a spirit of free enquiry.
+
+ 'Doubts have arisen in the minds of many who are unhappily bound by
+ subscription _not_ to doubt; and, in consequence, they are habitually
+ _pretending_ either to believe or to disbelieve. The state of Denmark
+ cannot but be rotten, when _to seem_ is the first object of the
+ witnesses of truth.
+
+ 'They may lead better lives, and bring forward abler arguments; but
+ their efforts are paralysed by that unsoundness. I see the High
+ Churchman professing to believe in the existence of a church, when the
+ most palpable facts must show him that no _such_ church exists; the
+ "Low" Churchman professing to believe in exceptional interpositions
+ which his philosophy secretly questions; the "Broad" Churchman
+ professing as absolute an attachment to the Established Church as the
+ narrowest could feel, while he is preaching such principles as will at
+ last pull it down.
+
+ 'I ask you, my friend, whether there would not be more faith, as
+ well as earnestness, if _all_ would speak out. There would be more
+ unanimity too, because they would all agree in a certain basis. Would
+ not a wider love supersede the _creed-bound_ charity of sects?
+
+ 'I am aware that I have touched on a point of difference between
+ us, and I will not regret it; for I think the differences of mind
+ are analogous to those differences of nature, which, in the most
+ comprehensive survey, are the very elements of harmony.
+
+ 'I am not at all prone to put forth my own opinions; but the tone in
+ which you have written to me claims an unusual degree of openness
+ on my part. I look upon creeds of all kinds as chains,--far worse
+ chains than those you would break,--as the causes of much hypocrisy
+ and infidelity. I hold it to be a sin to _make_ a child say, "_I
+ believe_." Lead it to utter that belief spontaneously. I also consider
+ the institution of an exclusive priesthood, though having been of
+ service in some respects, as retarding the progress of Christianity at
+ present. I desire to see a _lay_ ministry.
+
+ 'I will not give you more of my heterodoxy at present: perhaps I need
+ your pardon, connected as you are with the Church, for having said so
+ much.
+
+ 'There are causes of decay known to be at work in my frame, which lead
+ me to believe I may not have time to grow wiser; and I must therefore
+ leave it to others to correct the conclusions I have now formed from
+ my life's experience. I should feel happy to discuss them personally
+ with you; for it would be _soul to soul_. In that confidence I am
+ yours most truly,
+
+ 'A. I. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+It is not necessary to prove to the reader that this letter is not in
+the style of a broken-down old woman subject to mental hallucinations.
+It shows Lady Byron's habits of clear, searching analysis, her
+thoughtfulness, and, above all, that peculiar reverence for _truth_ and
+sincerity which was a leading characteristic of her moral nature.[30]
+It also shows her views of the probable shortness of her stay on earth,
+derived from the opinion of physicians about her disease, which was a
+gradual ossification of the lungs. It has been asserted that pulmonary
+diseases, while they slowly and surely sap the physical life, often
+appear to give added vigour to the play of the moral and intellectual
+powers.
+
+[Footnote 30: The reader is here referred to Lady Byron's other
+letters, in Part III.; which also show the peculiarly active and
+philosophical character of her mind, and the class of subjects on which
+it habitually dwelt.]
+
+I parted from Lady Byron, feeling richer in that I had found one more
+pearl of great price on the shore of life.
+
+Three years after this, I visited England to obtain a copyright for the
+issue of my novel of 'Dred.'
+
+The hope of once more seeing Lady Byron was one of the brightest
+anticipations held out to me in this journey. I found London quite
+deserted; but, hearing that Lady Byron was still in town, I sent to
+her, saying in my note, that, in case she was not well enough to call,
+I would visit her. Her reply I give:--
+
+ 'MY DEAR FRIEND,--I _will_ be indebted to you for our
+ meeting, as I am barely able to leave my room. It is not a time for
+ small personalities, if they could ever exist with _you_; and, dressed
+ or undressed, I shall hope to see you after two o'clock.
+
+  'Yours very truly,
+  'A. I. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+I found Lady Byron in her sick-room,--that place which she made so
+different from the chamber of ordinary invalids. Her sick-room seemed
+only a telegraphic station whence her vivid mind was flashing out all
+over the world.
+
+By her bedside stood a table covered with books, pamphlets, and files
+of letters, all arranged with exquisite order, and each expressing some
+of her varied interests. From that sick-bed she still directed, with
+systematic care, her various works of benevolence, and watched with
+intelligent attention the course of science, literature, and religion;
+and the versatility and activity of her mind, the flow of brilliant
+and penetrating thought on all the topics of the day, gave to the
+conversations of her retired room a peculiar charm. You forgot that
+she was an invalid; for she rarely had a word of her own personalities,
+and the charm of her conversation carried you invariably from herself
+to the subjects of which she was thinking. All the new books, the
+literature of the hour, were lighted up by her keen, searching, yet
+always kindly criticism; and it was charming to get her fresh, genuine,
+clear-cut modes of expression, so different from the world-worn phrases
+of what is called good society. Her opinions were always perfectly
+clear and positive, and given with the freedom of one who has long
+stood in a position to judge the world and its ways from her own
+standpoint. But it was not merely in general literature and science
+that her heart lay; it was following always with eager interest the
+progress of humanity over the whole world.
+
+This was the period of the great battle for liberty in Kansas. The
+English papers were daily filled with the thrilling particulars of that
+desperate struggle, and Lady Byron entered with heart and soul into it.
+
+Her first letter to me, at this time, is on this subject. It was while
+'Dred' was going through the press.
+
+ 'CAMBRIDGE TERRACE, Aug. 15.
+
+ 'MY DEAR MRS. STOWE,--Messrs. Chambers liked the proposal to
+ publish the Kansas Letters. The more the public know of these matters,
+ the better prepared they will be for your book. The moment for its
+ publication seems well chosen. There is always in England a floating
+ fund of sympathy for what is above the everyday sordid cares of life;
+ and these better feelings, so nobly invested for the last two years in
+ Florence Nightingale's career, are just set free. To what will they
+ next be attached? If you can lay hold of them, they may bring about
+ a deeper abolition than any legislative one,--the abolition of the
+ heart-heresy that man's worth comes, not from God, but from man.
+
+ 'I have been obliged to give up exertion again, but hope soon to be
+ able to call and make the acquaintance of your daughters. In case you
+ wish to consult H. Martineau's pamphlets, I send more copies. Do not
+ think of answering: I have occupied too much of your time in reading.
+
+  'Yours affectionately,
+
+  'A. I. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+As soon as a copy of 'Dred' was through the press, I sent it to
+her, saying that I had been reproved by some excellent people for
+representing too faithfully the profane language of some of the wicked
+characters. To this she sent the following reply:--
+
+ 'Your book, dear Mrs. Stowe, is of the little leaven kind, and must
+ prove a great moral force; perhaps not manifestly so much as secretly.
+ And yet I can hardly conceive so much power without immediate and
+ sensible effects: only there will be a strong disposition to resist
+ on the part of all hollow-hearted professors of religion, whose
+ heathenisms you so unsparingly expose. They have a class feeling like
+ others.
+
+ 'To the young, and to those who do not reflect much on what is offered
+ to their belief, you will do great good by showing how spiritual food
+ is often adulterated. The bread from heaven is in the same case as
+ bakers' bread.
+
+ 'If there is truth in what I heard Lord Byron say, that works of
+ fiction live only by the amount _of truth_ which they contain, your
+ story is sure of a long life. Of the few critiques I have seen, the
+ best is in "The Examiner." I find an obtuseness as to the spirit and
+ aim of the book, as if you had designed to make the best novel of the
+ season, or to keep up the reputation of one. You are reproached, as
+ Walter Scott was, with too much scriptural quotation; not, that I
+ have heard, with phrases of an opposite character.
+
+ 'The effects of such reading till a late hour one evening appeared to
+ influence me very singularly in a dream. The most horrible spectres
+ presented themselves, and I woke in an agony of fear; but a faith
+ still stronger arose, and I became courageous from trust in God, and
+ felt calm. Did you do this? It is very insignificant among the many
+ things you certainly will do unknown to yourself. I know more than
+ ever before how to value communion with you. I have sent Robertson's
+ Sermons for you; and, with kind regards to your family, am
+
+  'Yours affectionately,
+
+  'A. I. NOEL BYRON.
+
+I was struck in this note with the mention of Lord Byron, and, the next
+time I saw her, alluded to it, and remarked upon the peculiar qualities
+of his mind as shown in some of his more serious conversations with Dr.
+Kennedy.
+
+She seemed pleased to continue the subject, and went on to say many
+things of his singular character and genius, more penetrating and more
+appreciative than is often met with among critics.
+
+I told her that I had been from childhood powerfully influenced by
+him; and began to tell her how much, as a child, I had been affected
+by the news of his death,--giving up all my plays, and going off to
+a lonely hillside, where I spent the afternoon thinking of him. She
+interrupted me before I had quite finished, with a quick, impulsive
+movement. 'I know all that,' she said: 'I heard it all from Mrs. ----;
+and it was one of the things that made me wish to _know_ you. I think
+_you_ could understand him.' We talked for some time of him then; she,
+with her pale face slightly flushed, speaking, as any other great
+man's widow might, only of what was purest and best in his works, and
+what were his undeniable virtues and good traits, especially in early
+life. She told me many pleasant little speeches made by him to herself;
+and, though there was running through all this a shade of melancholy,
+one could never have conjectured that there were under all any deeper
+recollections than the circumstances of an ordinary separation might
+bring.
+
+Not many days after, with the unselfishness which was so marked a
+trait with her, she chose a day when she could be out of her room,
+and invited our family party, consisting of my husband, sister, and
+children, to lunch with her.
+
+What showed itself especially in this interview was her tenderness
+for all young people. She had often enquired after mine; asked about
+their characters, habits, and tastes; and on this occasion she found an
+opportunity to talk with each one separately, and to make them all feel
+at ease, so that they were able to talk with her. She seemed interested
+to point out to them what they should see and study in London; and
+the charm of her conversation left on their minds an impression that
+subsequent years have never effaced. I record this incident, because it
+shows how little Lady Byron assumed the privileges or had the character
+of an invalid absorbed in herself, and likely to brood over her own
+woes and wrongs.
+
+Here was a family of strangers stranded in a dull season in London, and
+there was no manner of obligation upon her to exert herself to show
+them attention. Her state of health would have been an all-sufficient
+reason why she should not do it; and her doing it was simply a specimen
+of that unselfish care for others, even down to the least detail, of
+which her life was full.
+
+A little while after, at her request, I went, with my husband and son,
+to pass an evening at her house.
+
+There were a few persons present whom she thought I should be
+interested to know,--a Miss Goldsmid, daughter of Baron Goldsmid, and
+Lord Ockham, her grandson, eldest son and heir of the Earl of Lovelace,
+to whom she introduced my son.
+
+I had heard much of the eccentricities of this young nobleman, and
+was exceedingly struck with his personal appearance. His bodily frame
+was of the order of the Farnese Hercules,--a wonderful development of
+physical and muscular strength. His hands were those of a blacksmith.
+He was broadly and squarely made, with a finely-shaped head, and dark
+eyes of surpassing brilliancy. I have seldom seen a more interesting
+combination than his whole appearance presented.
+
+When all were engaged in talking, Lady Byron came and sat down by
+me, and glancing across to Lord Ockham and my son, who were talking
+together, she looked at me, and smiled. I immediately expressed my
+admiration of his fine eyes and the intellectual expression of his
+countenance, and my wonder at the uncommon muscular development of his
+frame.
+
+She said that _that_ of itself would account for many of Ockham's
+eccentricities. He had a body that required a more vigorous animal life
+than his station gave scope for, and this had often led him to seek
+it in what the world calls low society; that he had been to sea as a
+sailor, and was now working as a mechanic on the iron work of 'The
+Great Eastern.' He had laid aside his title, and went in daily with the
+other workmen, requesting them to call him simply Ockham.
+
+I said that there was something to my mind very fine about this, even
+though it might show some want of proper balance.
+
+She said he had noble traits, and that she felt assured he would
+yet accomplish something worthy of himself. 'The great difficulty
+with our nobility is apt to be, that they do not _understand_ the
+working-classes, so as to feel for them properly; and Ockham is now
+going through an experience which may yet fit him to do great good when
+he comes to the peerage. I am trying to influence him to do good among
+the workmen, and to interest himself in schools for their children. I
+think,' she added, 'I have great influence over Ockham,--the greater,
+perhaps, that I never make any claim to authority.'
+
+This conversation is very characteristic of Lady Byron as showing her
+benevolent analysis of character, and the peculiar hopefulness she
+always had in regard to the future of every one brought in connection
+with her. Her moral hopefulness was something very singular; and in
+this respect she was so different from the rest of the world, that it
+would be difficult to make her understood. Her tolerance of wrong-doing
+would have seemed to many quite latitudinarian, and impressed them
+as if she had lost all just horror of what was morally wrong in
+transgression; but it seemed her fixed habit to see faults only as
+diseases and immaturities, and to expect them to fall away with time.
+
+She saw the germs of good in what others regarded as only evil. She
+expected valuable results to come from what the world looked on only
+as eccentricities;[31] and she incessantly devoted herself to the task
+of guarding those whom the world condemned, and guiding them to those
+higher results of which she often thought that even their faults were
+prophetic.
+
+[Footnote 31: See her character of Dr. King, Part III.]
+
+Before I quit this sketch of Lady Byron as I knew her, I will give one
+more of her letters. My return from that visit in Europe was met by the
+sudden death of the son mentioned in the foregoing account. At the time
+of this sorrow, Lady Byron was too unwell to write to me. The letter
+given alludes to this event, and speaks also of two coloured persons
+of remarkable talent, in whose career in England she had taken a deep
+interest. One of them is the 'friend' she speaks of.
+
+  'LONDON, Feb. 6, 1859.
+
+ 'DEAR MRS. STOWE,--I seem to feel our friend as a bridge,
+ over which our broken _outward_ communication can be renewed without
+ effort. Why broken? The words I would have uttered _at one time_ were
+ like drops of blood from my heart. Now I sympathise with the calmness
+ you have gained, and can speak of your loss as I do of my own. Loss
+ and restoration are more and more linked in my mind, but "to the
+ _present_ live." As long as _they_ are in God's world they are in
+ ours. I ask no other consolation.
+
+ 'Mrs. W----'s recovery has astonished me, and her husband's prospects
+ give me great satisfaction. They have achieved a benefit to their
+ coloured people. She had a mission which her burning soul has worked
+ out, almost in defiance of death. But who is "called" without being
+ "crucified," man or woman? I know of none.
+
+ 'I fear that H. Martineau was too sanguine in her persuasion that the
+ slave power had received a serious check from the ruin of so many of
+ your Mammon-worshippers. With the return of commercial facilities,
+ _that_ article of commerce will again find purchasers enough to raise
+ its value. Not that way is the iniquity to be overthrown. A deeper
+ moral earthquake is needed.[32] We English had ours in India; and
+ though the cases are far from being alike, yet a consciousness of what
+ we ought to have been and ought to be toward the natives could not
+ have been awakened by less than the reddened waters of the Ganges. So
+ I fear you will have to look on a day of judgment worse than has been
+ painted.
+
+ [Footnote 32: Alluding to the financial crisis in the United States in
+ 1857.]
+
+ 'As to all the frauds and impositions which have been disclosed by
+ the failures, what a want of the sense of personal responsibility
+ they show. It seems to be thought that "association" will "cover a
+ multitude of sins;" as if "and Co." could enter heaven. A firm may be
+ described as a partnership for lowering the standard of morals. Even
+ ecclesiastical bodies are not free from the "and Co.;" very different
+ from "the goodly fellowship of the apostles."
+
+ 'The better class of young gentlemen in England are seized with
+ a mediæval mania, to which Ruskin has contributed much. The
+ chief reason for regretting it is that taste is made to supersede
+ benevolence. The money that would save thousands from perishing or
+ suffering must be applied to raise the Gothic edifice where their last
+ prayer may be uttered. Charity may be dead, while Art has glorified
+ her. This is worse than Catholicism, which cultivates heart and eye
+ together. The first cathedral was Truth, at the beginning of the
+ fourth century, just as Christianity was exchanging a heavenly for an
+ earthly crown. True religion may have to cast away the symbol for the
+ spirit before "the kingdom" can come.
+
+ 'While I am speculating to little purpose, perhaps you are
+ _doing_--what? Might not a biography from your pen bring forth again
+ some great, half-obscured soul to act on the world? Even Sir Philip
+ Sidney ought to be superseded by a still nobler type.
+
+ 'This must go immediately, to be in time for the bearer, of whose
+ meeting with you I shall think as the friend of both. May it be happy!
+
+  'Your affectionate
+  A. I. N. B.'
+
+One letter more from Lady Byron I give,--the last I received from her:--
+
+  LONDON, May 3, 1859.
+
+ 'DEAR FRIEND,--I have found, particularly as to yourself,
+ that, if I did not answer from the first impulse, all had evaporated.
+ Your letter came by 'The Niagara' which brought Fanny Kemble to learn
+ the loss of her best friend, the Miss F---- whom you saw at my house.
+
+ 'Her death, after an illness in which she was to the last a minister
+ of good to others, is a soul-loss to me also; and your remarks are
+ most appropriate to my feelings. I have been taught, however, to
+ accept survivorship; even to feel it, in some cases, Heaven's best
+ blessing.
+
+ 'I have an intense interest in your new novel.[33] More power in
+ these few numbers than in any of your former writings, relating, at
+ least, to my own mind. It would amuse you to hear my grand-daughter
+ and myself attempting to foresee the future of the love-story; being,
+ for the moment, quite persuaded that James is at sea, and the minister
+ about to ruin himself. We think that Mary will labour to be in love
+ with the self-devoted man, under her mother's influence, and from that
+ hyper-conscientiousness so common with good girls; but we don't wish
+ her to succeed. Then what is to become of her older lover? Time will
+ show.
+
+ [Footnote 33: 'The Minister's Wooing.']
+
+ 'The lady you desired to introduce to me will be welcomed as of you.
+ She has been misled with respect to my having any house in Yorkshire
+ (New Leeds). I am in London now to be of a little use to A----; not
+ ostensibly, for I can neither go out, nor give parties: but I am the
+ confidential friend to whom she likes to bring her social gatherings,
+ as she can see something of the world with others. Age and infirmity
+ seem to be overlooked in what she calls the harmony between us,--not
+ perfect agreement of opinion (which I should regret, with almost fifty
+ years of difference), but the spirit-union: can you say what it is?
+
+ 'I am interrupted by a note from Mrs. K----. She says that she cannot
+ write of our lost friend yet, though she is less sad than she will
+ be. Mrs. F---- may like to hear of her arrival, should you be in
+ communication with our friend. She is the type of youth in age.
+
+ 'I often converse with Miss S----, a judicious friend of the W----s,
+ about what is likely to await them. She would not succeed here as well
+ as where she was a novelty. The character of our climate this year has
+ been injurious to the respiratory organs; but I hope still to serve
+ them.
+
+ 'I have just missed Dale Owen, with whom I wished to have conversed on
+ spiritualism.[34] Harris is lecturing here on religion. I do not hear
+ him praised.
+
+ [Footnote 34: See her letter on spiritualistic phenomena, Part III.]
+
+ 'People are looking for helps to believe, everywhere but in life,--in
+ music, in architecture, in antiquity, in ceremony; and upon all
+ these is written, "Thou shalt _not_ believe." At least, if this be
+ faith, happier the unbeliever. I am willing to see _through_ that
+ materialism; but, if I am to rest there, I would rend the veil.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+  'June 1.
+
+ 'The day of the packet's sailing. I shall hope to be visited by you
+ here. The best flowers sent me have been placed in your little vases,
+ giving life to the remembrance of you, though not, like them, to pass
+ away.
+
+  'Ever yours,
+  'A. I. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+Shortly after, I was in England again, and had one more opportunity of
+resuming our personal intercourse. The first time that I called on Lady
+Byron, I saw her in one of those periods of utter physical exhaustion
+to which she was subject on account of the constant pressure of cares
+beyond her strength. All who knew her will testify, that, in a state of
+health which would lead most persons to become helpless absorbents of
+service from others, she was assuming burdens, and making outlays of
+her vital powers in acts of love and service, with a generosity that
+often reduced her to utter exhaustion. But none who knew or loved her
+ever misinterpreted the coldness of those seasons of exhaustion. We
+knew that it was _not_ the spirit that was chilled, but only the frail
+mortal tabernacle. When I called on her at this time, she could not see
+me at first; and when, at last, she came, it was evident that she was
+in a state of utter prostration. Her hands were like ice; her face was
+deadly pale; and she conversed with a restraint and difficulty which
+showed what exertion it was for her to keep up at all. I left as soon
+as possible, with an appointment for another interview. That interview
+was my last on earth with her, and is still beautiful in memory. It was
+a long, still summer afternoon, spent alone with her in a garden, where
+we walked together. She was enjoying one of those bright intervals
+of freedom from pain and languor, in which her spirits always rose
+so buoyant and youthful; and her eye brightened, and her step became
+elastic.
+
+One last little incident is cherished as most expressive of her. When
+it became time for me to leave, she took me in her carriage to the
+station. As we were almost there, I missed my gloves, and said, 'I must
+have left them; but there is not time to go back.'
+
+With one of those quick, impulsive motions which were so natural to her
+in doing a kindness, she drew off her own and said, 'Take mine if they
+will serve you.'
+
+I hesitated a moment; and then the thought, that I might never see
+her again, came over me, and I said, 'Oh, yes! thanks.' That was the
+last earthly word of love between us. But, thank God, those who love
+worthily never meet for the _last_ time: there is always a future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+LADY BYRON'S STORY AS TOLD TO ME.
+
+
+I now come to the particulars of that most painful interview which has
+been the cause of all this controversy. My sister and myself were going
+from London to Eversley to visit the Rev. C. Kingsley. On our way, we
+stopped, by Lady Byron's invitation, to lunch with her at her summer
+residence on Ham Common, near Richmond; and it was then arranged, that
+on our return, we should make her a short visit, as she said she had a
+subject of importance on which she wished to converse with me alone.
+
+On our return from Eversley, we arrived at her house in the morning.
+
+It appeared to be one of Lady Byron's _well_ days. She was up and
+dressed, and moved about her house with her usual air of quiet
+simplicity; as full of little acts of consideration for all about her
+as if they were the habitual invalids, and she the well person.
+
+There were with her two ladies of her most intimate friends, by whom
+she seemed to be regarded with a sort of worship. When she left the
+room for a moment, they looked after her with a singular expression of
+respect and affection, and expressed freely their admiration of her
+character, and their fears that her unselfishness might be leading her
+to over-exertion.
+
+After lunch, I retired with Lady Byron; and my sister remained with
+her friends. I should here remark, that the chief subject of the
+conversation which ensued was not entirely new to me. In the interval
+between my first and second visits to England, a lady who for many
+years had enjoyed Lady Byron's friendship and confidence, had, with her
+consent, stated the case generally to me, giving some of the incidents:
+so that I was in a manner prepared for what followed.
+
+Those who accuse Lady Byron of being a person fond of talking upon this
+subject, and apt to make unconsidered confidences, can have known very
+little of her, of her reserve, and of the apparent difficulty she had
+in speaking on subjects nearest her heart.
+
+Her habitual calmness and composure of manner, her collected dignity
+on all occasions, are often mentioned by her husband, sometimes with
+bitterness, sometimes with admiration. He says, 'Though I accuse Lady
+Byron of an excess of self-respect, I must in candour admit that, if
+ever a person had excuse for an extraordinary portion of it, she has;
+as, in all her thoughts, words, and deeds, she is the most decorous
+woman that ever existed, and must appear, what few I fancy could, a
+perfectly refined gentlewoman, even to her _femme de chambre_.
+
+This calmness and dignity were never more manifested than in this
+interview. In recalling the conversation at this distance of time, I
+cannot remember all the language used. Some particular words and forms
+of expression I do remember, and those I give; and in other cases I
+give my recollection of the substance of what was said.
+
+There was something awful to me in the intensity of repressed emotion
+which she showed as she proceeded. The great fact upon which all turned
+was stated in words that were unmistakable:--
+
+'He was guilty of incest with his sister!'
+
+She here became so deathly pale, that I feared she would faint; and
+hastened to say, 'My dear friend, I have heard that.' She asked
+quickly, 'From whom? and I answered, 'From Mrs. ----;' when she
+replied, 'Oh, yes!' as if recollecting herself.
+
+I then asked her some questions; in reply to which she said, 'I will
+tell you.'
+
+She then spoke of her first acquaintance with Lord Byron; from which I
+gathered that she, an only child, brought up in retirement, and living
+much within herself, had been, as deep natures often were, intensely
+stirred by his poetry; and had felt a deep interest in him personally,
+as one that had the germs of all that is glorious and noble.
+
+When she was introduced to him, and perceived his admiration of
+herself, and at last received his offer, although deeply moved, she
+doubted her own power to be to him all that a wife should be. She
+declined his offer, therefore, but desired to retain his friendship.
+After this, as she said, a correspondence ensued, mostly on moral and
+literary subjects; and, by this correspondence, her interest in him was
+constantly increased.
+
+At last, she said, he sent her a very beautiful letter, offering
+himself again. 'I thought,' she added, 'that it was sincere, and that I
+might now show him all I felt. I wrote just what was in my heart.
+
+'Afterwards,' she said, 'I found in one of his journals this notice of
+my letter: "A letter from Bell,--never rains but it pours."'
+
+There was through her habitual calm a shade of womanly indignation as
+she spoke these words; but it was gone in a moment. I said, 'And did he
+not love you, then?' She answered, 'No, my dear: he did not love me.'
+
+'Why, then, did he wish to marry you?' She laid her hand on mine, and
+said in a low voice, 'You will see.'
+
+She then told me, that, shortly after the declared engagement, he came
+to her father's house to visit her as an accepted suitor. The visit was
+to her full of disappointment. His appearance was so strange, moody,
+and unaccountable, and his treatment of her so peculiar, that she came
+to the conclusion that he did not love her, and sought an opportunity
+to converse with him alone.
+
+She told him that she saw from his manner that their engagement did not
+give him pleasure; that she should never blame him if he wished to
+dissolve it; that his nature was exceptional; and if, on a nearer view
+of the situation, he shrank from it, she would release him, and remain
+no less than ever his friend.
+
+Upon this, she said, he fainted entirely away.
+
+She stopped a moment, and then, as if speaking with great effort,
+added, '_Then_ I was _sure_ he must love me.'
+
+'And did he not?' said I. 'What other cause could have led to this
+emotion?'
+
+She looked at me very sadly, and said, '_Fear of detection_.'
+
+'What!' said I, 'did _that cause_ then exist?'
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'it did.' And she explained that she _now_ attributed
+Lord Byron's great agitation to fear, that, in some way, suspicion of
+the crime had been aroused in her mind, and that on this account she
+was seeking to break the engagement. She said, that, from that moment,
+her sympathies were aroused for him, to soothe the remorse and anguish
+which seemed preying on his mind, and which she then regarded as the
+sensibility of an unusually exacting moral nature, which judged itself
+by higher standards, and condemned itself unsparingly for what most
+young men of his times regarded as venial faults. She had every hope
+for his future, and all the enthusiasm of belief that so many men and
+women of those times and ours have had in his intrinsic nobleness. She
+said the gloom, however, seemed to be even deeper when he came to the
+marriage; but she looked at it as the suffering of a peculiar being,
+to whom she was called to minister. I said to her, that, even in the
+days of my childhood, I had heard of something very painful that had
+passed as they were in the carriage, immediately after marriage. She
+then said that it was so; that almost his first words, when they were
+alone, were, that she _might_ once have saved him; that, if she had
+accepted him when he first offered, she might have made him anything
+she pleased; but that, as it was, she would find she had married a
+devil.
+
+The conversation, as recorded in Lady Anne Barnard's Diary, seems only
+a continuation of the foregoing, and just what might have followed upon
+it.
+
+I then asked how she became certain of the true cause.
+
+She said, that, from the outset of their married life, his conduct
+towards her was strange and unaccountable, even during the first
+weeks after the wedding, while they were visiting her friends, and
+outwardly on good terms. He seemed resolved to shake and combat both
+her religious principles and her views of the family state. He tried
+to undermine her faith in Christianity as a rule of life by argument
+and by ridicule. He set before her the Continental idea of the liberty
+of marriage; it being a simple partnership of friendship and property,
+the parties to which were allowed by one another to pursue their own
+separate individual tastes. He told her, that, as he could not be
+expected to confine himself to her, neither should he expect or wish
+that she should confine herself to him; that she was young and pretty,
+and could have her lovers, and he should never object; and that she
+must allow him the same freedom.
+
+She said that she did not comprehend to what this was tending till
+after they came to London, and his sister came to stay with them.
+
+At what precise time the idea of an improper connection between her
+husband and his sister was first forced upon her, she did not say;
+but she told me _how_ it was done. She said that one night, in her
+presence, he treated his sister with a liberty which both shocked and
+astonished her. Seeing her amazement and alarm, he came up to her, and
+said, in a sneering tone, 'I suppose you perceive _you_ are not wanted
+here. Go to your own room, and leave us alone. We can amuse ourselves
+better without you.'
+
+She said, 'I went to my room, trembling. I fell down on my knees, and
+prayed to my heavenly Father to have mercy on them. I thought, "What
+shall I do?"'
+
+I remember, after this, a pause in the conversation, during which she
+seemed struggling with thoughts and emotions; and, for my part, I was
+unable to utter a word, or ask a question.
+
+She did not tell me what followed immediately upon this, nor how soon
+after she spoke on the subject with either of the parties. She first
+began to speak of conversations afterwards held with Lord Byron, in
+which he boldly avowed the connection as having existed in time past,
+and as one that was to continue in time to come; and implied that she
+must submit to it. She put it to his conscience as concerning his
+sister's soul, and he said that it was no sin; that it was the way
+the world was first peopled: the Scriptures taught that all the world
+descended from one pair; and how could that be unless brothers married
+their sisters? that, if not a sin then, it could not be a sin now.
+
+I immediately said, 'Why, Lady Byron, those are the very arguments
+given in the drama of "Cain."'
+
+'The very same,' was her reply. 'He could reason very speciously on
+this subject.' She went on to say, that, when she pressed him hard with
+the universal sentiment of mankind as to the horror and the crime, he
+took another turn, and said that the horror and crime were the very
+attraction; that he had worn out all _ordinary_ forms of sin, and that
+he '_longed for the stimulus of a new kind of vice_.' She set before
+him the dread of detection; and then he became furious. _She_ should
+never be the means of his detection, he said. She should leave him;
+_that_ he was resolved upon: but she should always bear all the blame
+of the separation. In the sneering tone which was common with him,
+he said, 'The world will believe me, and it will _not_ believe you.
+The world has made up its mind that "By" is a glorious boy; and the
+world will go for "By," right or wrong. Besides, I shall make it my
+life's object to discredit you: I shall use all my powers. Read "Caleb
+Williams,"[35] and you will see that I shall do by you just as Falkland
+did by Caleb.'
+
+[Footnote 35: This novel of Godwin's is a remarkably powerful story. It
+is related in the first person by the supposed hero, Caleb Williams. He
+represents himself as private secretary to a gentleman of high family
+named Falkland. Caleb accidentally discovers that his patron has, in a
+moment of passion, committed a murder. Falkland confesses the crime to
+Caleb, and tells him that henceforth he shall always suspect him, and
+keep watch over him. Caleb finds this watchfulness insupportable, and
+tries to escape, but without success. He writes a touching letter to
+his patron, imploring him to let him go, and promising never to betray
+him. The scene where Falkland refuses this is the most highly wrought
+in the book. He says to him, "Do not imagine that I am afraid of you;
+I wear an armour against which all your weapons are impotent. I have
+dug a pit for you: and whichever way you move, backward or forward, to
+the right or the left, it is ready to swallow you. Be still! If once
+you fall, call as loud as you will, no man on earth shall hear your
+cries: prepare a tale however plausible or however true, the whole
+world shall execrate you for an impostor. Your innocence shall be of no
+service to you. I laugh at so feeble a defence. It is I that say it:
+you may believe what I tell you. Do you know, miserable wretch!" added
+he, stamping on the ground with fury, "that I have sworn to preserve
+my reputation, whatever be the expense; that I love it more than the
+whole world and its inhabitants taken together? and do you think that
+you shall wound it?" The rest of the book shows how this threat was
+executed.]
+
+I said that all this seemed to me like insanity. She said that she was
+for a time led to think that it was insanity, and excused and pitied
+him; that his treatment of her expressed such hatred and malignity,
+that she knew not what else to think of it: that he seemed resolved to
+drive her out of the house at all hazards, and threatened her, if she
+should remain, in a way to alarm the heart of any woman: yet, thinking
+him insane, she left him at last with the sorrow with which anyone
+might leave a dear friend whose reason was wholly overthrown, and to
+whom in this desolation she was no longer permitted to minister.
+
+I inquired in one of the pauses of the conversation whether Mrs. Leigh
+was a peculiarly beautiful or attractive woman.
+
+'No, my dear: she was plain.'
+
+'Was she, then, distinguished for genius or talent of any kind?'
+
+'Oh, no! Poor woman! she was weak, relatively to him, and wholly under
+his control.'
+
+'And what became of her?' I said.
+
+'She afterwards repented, and became a truly good woman.' I think it
+was here she mentioned that she had frequently seen and conversed with
+Mrs. Leigh in the latter part of her life; and she seemed to derive
+comfort from the recollection.
+
+I asked, 'Was there a child?' I had been told by Mrs. ---- that there
+was a daughter, who had lived some years.
+
+She said there was one, a daughter, who made her friends much trouble,
+being of a very difficult nature to manage. I had understood that at
+one time this daughter escaped from her friends to the Continent, and
+that Lady Byron assisted in efforts to recover her. Of Lady Byron's
+kindness both to Mrs. Leigh and the child, I had before heard from Mrs.
+----, who gave me my first information.
+
+It is also strongly impressed on my mind, that Lady Byron, in answer
+to some question of mine as to whether there was ever any meeting
+between Lord Byron and his sister after he left England, answered,
+that she had insisted upon it, or made it a condition, that Mrs. Leigh
+should not go abroad to him.
+
+When the conversation as to events was over, as I stood musing, I said,
+'Have you no evidence that he repented?' and alluded to the mystery of
+his death, and the message he endeavoured to utter.
+
+She answered quickly, and with great decision, that whatever might have
+been his meaning at that hour, she felt sure he had finally repented;
+and added with great earnestness, 'I do not believe that _any_ child of
+the heavenly Father is ever left to eternal sin.'
+
+I said that such a hope was most delightful to my feelings, but that I
+had always regarded the indulgence of it as a dangerous one.
+
+Her look, voice, and manner, at that moment, are indelibly fixed in my
+mind. She looked at me so sadly, so firmly, and said,--
+
+'Danger, Mrs. Stowe! What danger can come from indulging that hope,
+like the danger that comes from not having it?'
+
+I said in my turn, 'What danger comes from not having it?'
+
+'The danger of losing all faith in God,' she said, 'all hope for
+others, all strength to try and save them. I once knew a lady,' she
+added, 'who was in a state of scepticism and despair from belief in
+that doctrine. I think I saved her by giving her my faith.'
+
+I was silent; and she continued: 'Lord Byron believed in eternal
+punishment fully: for though he reasoned against Christianity as it is
+commonly received, he could not reason himself out of it; and I think
+it made him desperate. He used to say, "The worst of it is I _do_
+believe." Had he seen God as I see him, I am sure his heart would have
+relented.'
+
+She went on to say, that his sins, great as they were, admitted of
+much palliation and excuse; that he was the child of singular and
+ill-matched parents; that he had an organisation originally fine, but
+one capable equally of great good or great evil; that in his childhood
+he had only the worst and most fatal influences; that he grew up into
+manhood with no guide; that there was everything in the classical
+course of the schools to develop an unhealthy growth of passion, and no
+moral influence of any kind to restrain it; that the manners of his day
+were corrupt; that what were now considered vices in society were then
+spoken of as matters of course among young noblemen; that drinking,
+gaming, and licentiousness everywhere abounded: and that, up to a
+certain time, he was no worse than multitudes of other young men of his
+day,--only that the vices of his day were worse for him. The excesses
+of passion, the disregard of physical laws in eating, drinking, and
+living, wrought effects on him that they did not on less sensitively
+organised frames, and prepared him for the evil hour when he fell
+into the sin which shaded his whole life. All the rest was a struggle
+with its consequences,--sinning more and more to conceal the sin of
+the past. But she believed he never outlived remorse; that he always
+suffered; and that this showed that God had not utterly forsaken him.
+Remorse, she said, always showed moral sensibility, and, while _that_
+remained, there was always hope.
+
+She now began to speak of her grounds for thinking it might be her duty
+fully to publish this story before she left the world.
+
+First she said that, through the whole course of her life, she had
+felt the eternal value of truth, and seen how dreadful a thing was
+falsehood, and how fearful it was to be an accomplice in it, even by
+silence. Lord Byron had demoralised the moral sense of England, and he
+had done it in a great degree by the sympathy excited by falsehood.
+This had been pleaded in extenuation of all his crimes and vices, and
+led to a lowering of the standard of morals in the literary world. Now
+it was proposed to print cheap editions of his works, and sell them
+among the common people, and interest them in him by the circulation of
+this same story.
+
+She then said in effect, that she believed in retribution and suffering
+in the future life, and that the consequences of sins _here_ follow us
+_there_; and it was strongly impressed upon her mind that Lord Byron
+must suffer in looking on the evil consequences of what he had done in
+this life, and in seeing the further extension of that evil.
+
+'It has sometimes strongly appeared to me,' she said, 'that he cannot
+be at peace until this injustice has been righted. Such is the strong
+feeling that I have when I think of going where he is.'
+
+These things, she said, had led her to inquire whether it might not be
+her duty to make a full and clear disclosure before she left the world.
+
+Of course, I did not listen to this story as one who was investigating
+its worth. I received it as truth. And the purpose for which it was
+communicated was not to enable me to prove it to the world, but to ask
+my opinion whether _she_ should show it to the world before leaving
+it. The whole consultation was upon the assumption that she had at her
+command such proofs as could not be questioned.
+
+Concerning what they were I did not minutely inquire: only, in answer
+to a general question, she said that she had letters and documents
+in proof of her story. Knowing Lady Byron's strength of mind, her
+clear-headedness, her accurate habits, and her perfect knowledge of the
+matter, I considered her judgment on this point decisive.
+
+I told her that I would take the subject into consideration, and give
+my opinion in a few days. That night, after my sister and myself had
+retired to our own apartment, I related to her the whole history, and
+we spent the night in talking of it. I was powerfully impressed with
+the justice and propriety of an immediate disclosure; while she, on the
+contrary, represented the painful consequences that would probably come
+upon Lady Byron from taking such a step.
+
+Before we parted the next day, I requested Lady Byron to give me some
+memoranda of such dates and outlines of the general story as would
+enable me better to keep it in its connection; which she did.
+
+On giving me the paper, Lady Byron requested me to return it to her
+when it had ceased to be of use to me for the purpose indicated.
+
+Accordingly, a day or two after, I enclosed it to her in a hasty note,
+as I was then leaving London for Paris, and had not yet had time fully
+to consider the subject.
+
+On reviewing my note, I can recall that then the whole history appeared
+to me like one of those singular cases where unnatural impulses to
+vice are the result of a taint of constitutional insanity. This has
+always seemed to me the only way of accounting for instances of
+utterly motiveless and abnormal wickedness and cruelty. These my first
+impressions were expressed in the hasty note written at the time:--
+
+  'LONDON, Nov. 5, 1856.
+
+ 'DEAREST FRIEND,--I return these. They have held mine eyes
+ waking! How strange! how unaccountable! Have you ever subjected the
+ facts to the judgment of a medical man learned in nervous pathology?
+
+ '_Is_ it not insanity?
+
+  "Great wits to madness nearly are allied,
+  And thin partitions do their bounds divide."
+
+ 'But my purpose to-night is not to write you fully what I think of
+ this matter. I am going to write to you from Paris more at leisure.'
+
+The rest of the letter was taken up in the final details of a
+charity in which Lady Byron had been engaged with me in assisting an
+unfortunate artist. It concludes thus:--
+
+ 'I write now in all haste, _en route_ for Paris. As to America, all
+ is not lost yet.[36] Farewell! I love you, my dear friend, as never
+ before, with an intense feeling I cannot easily express. God bless you!
+
+  'H. B. S.'
+
+The next letter is as follows:--
+
+  'PARIS, Dec. 17, 1856.
+
+ [Footnote 36: Alluding to Buchanan's election.]
+
+ 'DEAR LADY BYRON,--The Kansas Committee have written me a
+ letter desiring me to express to Miss ---- their gratitude for the
+ five pounds she sent them. I am not personally acquainted with her,
+ and must return these acknowledgments through you.
+
+ 'I wrote you a day or two since, enclosing the reply of the Kansas
+ Committee to you.
+
+ 'On _that subject_ on which you spoke to me the last time we were
+ together, I have thought often and deeply.
+
+ 'I have changed my mind somewhat. Considering the peculiar
+ circumstances of the case, I could wish that the sacred veil of
+ silence, so bravely thrown over the past, should never be withdrawn
+ during the time that you remain with us.
+
+ 'I would say, then, Leave all with some discreet friends, who, after
+ _both_ have passed from earth, shall say what was due to _justice_.
+
+ 'I am led to think this by seeing how low, how unjust, how unworthy,
+ the judgments of this world are; and I would not that what I so much
+ respect, love, and revere should be placed within reach of its harpy
+ claw, which pollutes what it touches.
+
+ 'The day will yet come which will bring to light every hidden thing.
+ "There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that
+ shall not be known;" and so _justice will not fail_.
+
+ 'Such, my dear friend, are my thoughts; different from what they were
+ since first I heard that strange, sad history. Meanwhile, _I love you
+ ever_, whether we meet again on earth or not.
+
+  'Affectionately yours,
+
+  'H. B. S.'
+
+The following letter will here be inserted as confirming a part of Lady
+Byron's story:--
+
+
+ TO THE EDITOR OF 'MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE.'
+
+ 'SIR,--I trust that you will hold me excused from any desire
+ to be troublesome, or to rush into print. Both these things are far
+ from my wish. But the publication of a book having for its object the
+ vindication of Lord Byron's character, and the subsequent appearance
+ in your magazine of Mrs. Stowe's article in defence of Lady Byron,
+ having led to so much controversy in the various newspapers of the
+ day, I feel constrained to put in a few words among the rest.
+
+ 'My father was intimately acquainted with Lady Byron's family for many
+ years, both before and after her marriage; being, in fact, steward to
+ Sir Ralph Milbanke at Seaham, where the marriage took place; and, from
+ all my recollections of what he told me of the affair (and he used
+ often to talk of it, up to the time of his death, eight years ago), I
+ fully agree with Mrs. Stowe's view of the case, and desire to add my
+ humble testimony to the truth of what she has stated.
+
+ 'Whilst Byron was staying at Seaham, previous to his marriage, he
+ spent most of his time pistol-shooting in the plantations adjoining
+ the hall, often making use of his glove as a mark; his servant being
+ with him to load for him.
+
+ 'When all was in readiness for the wedding-ceremony (which took place
+ in the drawing-room of the hall), Byron had to be sought for in the
+ grounds, where he was walking in his usual surly mood.
+
+ 'After the marriage, they posted to Halnaby Lodge in Yorkshire, a
+ distance of about forty miles; to which place my father accompanied
+ them, and he always spoke strongly of Lady Byron's apparent distress
+ during and at the end of the journey.
+
+ 'The insulting words mentioned by Mrs. Stowe were spoken by Byron
+ before leaving the park at Seaham; after which he appeared to sit
+ in moody silence, reading a book, for the rest of the journey. At
+ Halnaby, a number of persons, tenants and others, were met to cheer
+ them on their arrival. Of these he took not the slightest notice, but
+ jumped out of the carriage, and walked away, leaving his bride to
+ alight by herself. She shook hands with my father, and begged that he
+ would see that some refreshment was supplied to those who had thus
+ come to welcome them.
+
+ 'I have in my possession several letters (which I should be glad to
+ show to anyone interested in the matter) both from Lady Byron, and her
+ mother, Lady Milbanke, to my father, all showing the deep and kind
+ interest which they took in the welfare of all connected with them,
+ and directing the distribution of various charities, &c. Pensions were
+ allowed both to the old servants of the Milbankes and to several poor
+ persons in the village and neighbourhood for the rest of their lives;
+ and Lady Byron never ceased to take a lively interest in all that
+ concerned them.
+
+ 'I desire to tender my humble thanks to Mrs. Stowe for having
+ come forward in defence of one whose character has been much
+ misrepresented; and to you, sir, for having published the same in your
+ pages.
+
+  'I have the honour to be, sir, yours obediently,
+
+  'G. H. AIRD.
+
+  'DAOURTY, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, Sept. 29, 1869.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY OF EVENTS.
+
+
+I have now fulfilled as conscientiously as possible the requests of
+those who feel that they have a right to know exactly what was said in
+this interview.
+
+It has been my object, in doing this, to place myself just where I
+should stand were I giving evidence under oath before a legal tribunal.
+In my first published account, there were given some smaller details of
+the story, of no particular value to the main purpose of it, which I
+received _not_ from Lady Byron, but from her confidential friend. One
+of these was the account of her seeing Lord Byron's favourite spaniel
+lying at his door, and the other was the scene of the parting.
+
+The first was communicated to me before I ever saw Lady Byron, and
+under these circumstances:--I was invited to meet her, and had
+expressed my desire to do so, because Lord Byron had been all my life
+an object of great interest to me. I inquired what sort of a person
+Lady Byron was. My friend spoke of her with enthusiasm. I then said,
+'but of course she never _loved_ Lord Byron, or she would not have left
+him.' The lady answered, 'I can show you with what feelings she left
+him by relating this story;' and then followed the anecdote.
+
+Subsequently, she also related to me the other story of the
+parting-scene between Lord and Lady Byron. In regard to these two
+incidents, my recollection is clear.
+
+It will be observed by the reader that Lady Byron's conversation with
+me was simply for consultation _on one point_, and that point whether
+_she herself_ should publish the story before her death. It was not,
+therefore, a complete history of all the events in their order, but
+specimens of a few incidents and facts. Her object was, not to prove
+her story to me, nor to put me in possession of it with a view to _my_
+proving it, but simply and briefly to show me _what it was_, that I
+might judge as to the probable results of its publication at that time.
+
+It therefore comprised primarily these points:--
+
+1. An exact statement, in so many words, of the crime.
+
+2. A statement of the manner in which it was first forced on her
+attention by Lord Byron's words and actions, including: his admissions
+and defences of it.
+
+3. The admission of a period when she had ascribed his whole conduct to
+insanity.
+
+4. A reference to later positive evidences of guilt,--the existence of
+a child, and Mrs. Leigh's subsequent repentance.
+
+And here I have a word to say in reference to the alleged inaccuracies
+of my true story.
+
+The dates that Lady Byron gave me on the memoranda did not relate
+either to the time of the first disclosure, or the period when her
+doubts became certainties; nor did her conversation touch either of
+these points: and, on a careful review of the latter, I see clearly
+that it omitted dwelling upon anything which I might be supposed to
+have learned from her already published statement.
+
+I re-enclosed that paper to her from London, and have never seen it
+since.
+
+In writing my account, which I designed to do in the most general
+terms, I took for my guide Miss Martineau's published Memoir of Lady
+Byron, which has long stood uncontradicted before the public, of which
+Macmillan's London edition is now before me. The reader is referred to
+page 316, which reads thus:--
+
+'She was born 1792; married in January 1814; returned to her father's
+house in 1816; died on May 16, 1860.' This makes her married life two
+years; but we need not say that the date is inaccurate, as Lady Byron
+was married in 1815.
+
+Supposing Lady Byron's married life to have covered two years, I
+could only reconcile its continuance for that length of time to her
+uncertainty as to his sanity; to deceptions practised on her, making
+her doubt at one time, and believe at another; and his keeping her in a
+general state of turmoil and confusion, till at last he took the step
+of banishing her.
+
+Various other points taken from Miss Martineau have also been attacked
+as inaccuracies; for example, the number of executions in the house:
+but these points, though of no importance, are substantially borne out
+by Moore's statements.
+
+This controversy, unfortunately, cannot be managed with the accuracy of
+a legal trial. Its course, hitherto, has rather resembled the course of
+a drawing-room scandal, where everyone freely throws in an assertion,
+with or without proof. In making out my narrative, however, I shall use
+only certain authentic sources, some of which have for a long time been
+before the public, and some of which have floated up from the waves of
+the recent controversy. I consider as authentic sources,--
+
+Moore's Life of Byron;
+
+Lady Byron's own account of the separation, published in 1830;
+
+Lady Byron's statements to me in 1856;
+
+Lord Lindsay's communication, giving an extract from Lady Anne
+Barnard's diary, and a copy of a letter from Lady Byron dated 1818,
+about three years after her marriage;
+
+Mrs. Mimms' testimony, as given in a daily paper published at
+Newcastle, England;
+
+And Lady Byron's letters, as given recently in the late 'London
+Quarterly.'
+
+All which documents appear to arrange themselves into a connected
+series.
+
+From these, then, let us construct the story.
+
+According to Mrs. Mimms' account, which is likely to be accurate, the
+time spent by Lord and Lady Byron in bridal-visiting was three weeks at
+Halnaby Hall, and six weeks at Seaham, when Mrs. Mimms quitted their
+service.
+
+During this first period of three weeks, Lord Byron's treatment of his
+wife, as testified to by the servant, was such that she advised her
+young mistress to return to her parents; and, at one time, Lady Byron
+had almost resolved to do so.
+
+What the particulars of his conduct were, the servant refuses to state;
+being bound by a promise of silence to her mistress. She, however,
+testifies to a warm friendship existing between Lady Byron and Mrs.
+Leigh, in a manner which would lead us to feel that Lady Byron received
+and was received by Lord Byron's sister with the greatest affection.
+Lady Byron herself says to Lady Anne Barnard, 'I had heard that he was
+the best of brothers;' and the inference is, that she, at an early
+period of her married life, felt the greatest confidence in his sister,
+and wished to have her with them as much as possible. In Lady Anne's
+account, this wish to have the sister with her was increased by Lady
+Byron's distress at her husband's attempts to corrupt her principles
+with regard to religion and marriage.
+
+In Moore's Life, vol. iii., letter 217, Lord Byron writes from Seaham
+to Moore, under date of March 8, sending a copy of his verses in Lady
+Byron's handwriting, and saying, 'We shall leave this place to-morrow,
+and shall stop on our way to town, in the interval of taking a house
+there, at Colonel Leigh's, near Newmarket, where any epistle of yours
+will find its welcome way. I have been very comfortable here, listening
+to that d----d monologue which elderly gentlemen call conversation, in
+which my pious father-in-law repeats himself every evening, save one,
+when he played upon the fiddle. However, they have been vastly kind and
+hospitable, and I like them and the place vastly; and I hope they will
+live many happy months. Bell is in health and unvaried good-humour and
+behaviour; but we are in all the agonies of packing and parting.'
+
+Nine days after this, under date of March 17, Lord Byron says, 'We
+mean to metropolize to-morrow, and you will address your next to
+Piccadilly.' The inference is, that the days intermediate were spent
+at Colonel Leigh's. The next letters, and all subsequent ones for six
+months, are dated from Piccadilly.
+
+As we have shown, there is every reason to believe that a warm
+friendship had thus arisen between Mrs. Leigh and Lady Byron, and that,
+during all this time, Lady Byron desired as much of the society of her
+sister-in-law as possible. She was a married woman and a mother, her
+husband's nearest relative; and Lady Byron could with more propriety
+ask, from her, counsel or aid in respect to his peculiarities than she
+could from her own parents. If we consider the character of Lady Byron
+as given by Mrs. Mimms,--that of a young person of warm but repressed
+feeling, without sister or brother, longing for human sympathy,
+and having so far found no relief but in talking with a faithful
+dependant,--we may easily see that the acquisition of a sister through
+Lord Byron might have been all in all to her, and that the feelings
+which he checked and rejected for himself might have flowed out towards
+his sister with enthusiasm. The date of Mrs. Leigh's visit does not
+appear.
+
+The first domestic indication in Lord Byron's letters from London is
+the announcement of the death of Lady Byron's uncle, Lord Wentworth,
+from whom came large expectations of property. Lord Byron had mentioned
+him before in his letters as so kind to Bell and himself that he
+could not find it in his heart to wish him in heaven if he preferred
+staying here. In his letter of April 23, he mentions going to the play
+immediately after hearing this news, 'although,' as he says, 'he ought
+to have stayed at home in sackcloth for "unc."'
+
+On June 12, he writes that Lady Byron is more than three months
+advanced in her progress towards maternity; and that they have been out
+very little, as he wishes to keep her quiet. We are informed by Moore
+that Lord Byron was at this time a member of the Drury-Lane Theatre
+Committee; and that, in this unlucky connection, one of the fatalities
+of the first year of trial as a husband lay. From the strain of Byron's
+letters, as given in Moore, it is apparent, that, while he thinks it
+best for his wife to remain at home, he does not propose to share the
+retirement, but prefers running his own separate career with such
+persons as thronged the greenroom of the theatre in those days.
+
+In commenting on Lord Byron's course, we must not by any means be
+supposed to indicate that he was doing any more or worse than most gay
+young men of his time. The licence of the day as to getting drunk at
+dinner-parties, and leading, generally, what would, in these days, be
+called a disorderly life, was great. We should infer that none of the
+literary men of Byron's time would have been ashamed of being drunk
+occasionally. The Noctes Ambrosianæ Club of 'Blackwood' is full of
+songs glorying, in the broadest terms, in out-and-out drunkenness, and
+inviting to it as the highest condition of a civilised being.[37]
+
+[Footnote 37: Shelton Mackenzie, in a note to the 'Noctes' of July
+1822, gives the following saying of Maginn, one of the principal lights
+of the club: 'No man, however much he might tend to civilisation,
+was to be regarded as having absolutely reached its apex until he
+was drunk.' He also records it as a further joke of the club, that a
+man's having reached this apex was to be tested by his inability to
+pronounce the word 'civilisation,' which, he says, after ten o'clock at
+night ought to be abridged to _civilation_, 'by syncope, or vigorously
+speaking by hic-cup.']
+
+But drunkenness upon Lord Byron had a peculiar and specific effect,
+which he notices afterwards, in his Journal, at Venice: 'The effect
+of all wines and spirits upon me is, however, strange. It settles,
+but makes me gloomy--gloomy at the very moment of their effect: it
+composes, however, though _sullenly_.'[38] And, again, in another
+place, he says, 'Wine and spirits make me sullen, and savage to
+ferocity.'
+
+[Footnote 38: Vol. v. pp. 61, 75.]
+
+It is well known that the effects of alcoholic excitement are various
+as the natures of the subjects. But by far the worst effects, and the
+most destructive to domestic peace, are those that occur in cases where
+spirits, instead of acting on the nerves of motion, and depriving
+the subject of power in that direction, stimulate the brain so as to
+produce there the ferocity, the steadiness, the utter deadness to
+compassion or conscience, which characterise a madman. How fearful
+to a sensitive young mother in the period of pregnancy might be the
+return of such a madman to the domestic roof! Nor can we account for
+those scenes described in Lady Anne Barnard's letters, where Lord Byron
+returned from his evening parties to try torturing experiments on his
+wife, otherwise than by his own statement, that spirits, while they
+_steadied_ him, made him 'gloomy, and savage to ferocity.'
+
+Take for example this:--
+
+ 'One night, coming home from one of his lawless parties, he saw me
+ (Lady B.) so indignantly collected, and bearing all with such a
+ determined calmness, that a rush of remorse seemed to come over him.
+ He called himself a monster, and, though his sister was present, threw
+ himself in agony at my feet. "I could not, no, I could not, forgive
+ him such injuries! He had lost me for ever!" Astonished at this return
+ to virtue, my tears, I believe, flowed over his face; and I said,
+ "Byron, all is forgotten; _never_, never shall you hear of it more."
+
+ 'He started up, and folding his arms while he looked at me, burst
+ out into laughter. "What do you mean?" said I. "Only a philosophical
+ experiment; that's all," said he. "I wished to ascertain the value of
+ your resolutions."'
+
+To ascribe such deliberate cruelty as this to the effect of drink upon
+Lord Byron, is the most charitable construction that can be put upon
+his conduct.
+
+Yet the manners of the period were such, that Lord Byron must have
+often come to this condition while only doing what many of his
+acquaintances did freely, and without fear of consequences.
+
+Mr. Moore, with his usual artlessness, gives us an idea of a private
+supper between himself and Lord Byron. We give it, with our own
+italics, as a specimen of many others:--
+
+ 'Having taken upon me to order the repast, and knowing that Lord Byron
+ for the last two days had done nothing towards sustenance beyond
+ eating a few biscuits and (to appease appetite) chewing mastic, I
+ desired that we should have a good supply of at least two kinds of
+ fish. My companion, however, confined himself to lobsters; and of
+ these finished two or three, to his own share, interposing, sometimes,
+ a small liqueur-glass of strong white brandy, sometimes a tumbler of
+ very hot water, and then pure brandy again, to the amount of near half
+ a dozen small glasses of the latter, without which, alternately with
+ the hot water, he appeared to think the lobster could not be digested.
+ After this, we had claret, of which, having despatched two bottles
+ between us, at about four o'clock in the morning we parted.
+
+ 'As Pope has thought his "delicious lobster-nights" worth
+ commemorating, these particulars of one in which Lord Byron was
+ concerned may also have some interest.
+
+ 'Among _other nights of the same description which I had the happiness
+ of passing with him_, I remember once, in returning home from some
+ assembly at rather a late hour, we saw lights in the windows of his
+ old haunt, Stevens's in Bond Street, and agreed to stop there and
+ sup. On entering, we found an old friend of his, Sir G---- W----, who
+ joined our party; and, the _lobsters and brandy and water being put
+ in requisition, it was (as usual on such occasions) broad daylight
+ before we separated_.'--Vol. iii. p. 83.
+
+During the latter part of Lady Byron's pregnancy, it appears from Moore
+that Byron was, night after night, engaged out at dinner parties,
+in which getting drunk was considered as of course the _finale_, as
+appears from the following letters:--
+
+
+(LETTER 228.)
+
+TO MR. MOORE.
+
+  TERRACE, PICCADILLY, Oct. 31, 1815.
+
+ 'I have not been able to ascertain precisely the time of duration of
+ the stock-market; but I believe it is a good time for selling out, and
+ I hope so. First, because I shall see you; and, next, because I shall
+ receive certain moneys on behalf of Lady B., the which will materially
+ conduce to my comfort; I wanting (as the duns say) "to make up a sum."
+
+ 'Yesterday I dined out with a large-ish party, where were Sheridan
+ and Colman, Harry Harris, of C. G., and his brother, Sir Gilbert
+ Heathcote, Ds. Kinnaird, and others of note and notoriety. _Like
+ other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then
+ argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible,[39] then
+ altogethery, then inarticulate, and then drunk._ When we had reached
+ the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down
+ again without stumbling; and, to crown all, Kinnaird and I had
+ to conduct Sheridan down a d----d corkscrew staircase, which had
+ certainly been constructed before the discovery of fermented liquors,
+ and to which no legs, however crooked, could possibly accommodate
+ themselves. We deposited him safe at home, where his man, _evidently
+ used to the business_,[40] waited to receive him in the hall.
+
+ [Footnote 39: These italics are ours.]
+
+ [Footnote 40: These italics are ours.]
+
+ 'Both he and Colman were, as usual, very good; but I carried away much
+ wine, and the wine had previously carried away my memory: so that
+ all was hiccough and happiness for the last hour or so, and I am
+ not impregnated with any of the conversation. Perhaps you heard of a
+ late answer of Sheridan to the watchman who found him bereft of that
+ "divine particle of air" called reason.... He (the watchman) found
+ Sherry in the street fuddled and bewildered, and almost insensible.
+ "Who are _you_, sir?"--No answer. "What's your name?"--A hiccough.
+ "What's your name?"--Answer, in a slow, deliberate, and impassive
+ tone, "Wilberforce!" Is not that Sherry all over?--and, to my mind,
+ excellent. Poor fellow, _his_ very dregs are better than the "first
+ sprightly runnings" of others.
+
+ 'My paper is full, and I have a grievous headache.
+
+ 'P.S.--Lady B. is in full progress. Next month will bring to light
+ (with the aid of "Juno Lucina, _fer opem_," or rather _opes_, for the
+ last are most wanted) the tenth wonder of the world; Gil Blas being
+ the eighth, and he (my son's father) the ninth.'
+
+Here we have a picture of the whole story,--Lady Byron within a month
+of her confinement; her money being used to settle debts; her husband
+out at a dinner-party, going through the _usual course_ of such
+parties, able to keep his legs and help Sheridan downstairs, and going
+home 'gloomy, and savage to ferocity,' to his wife.
+
+Four days after this (letter 229), we find that this dinner-party is
+not an exceptional one, but one of a series: for he says, 'To-day I
+dine with Kinnaird,--we are to have Sheridan and Colman again; and
+to-morrow, once more, at Sir Gilbert Heathcote's.'
+
+Afterward, in Venice, he reviews the state of his health, at this
+period in London; and his account shows that his excesses in the
+vices of his times had wrought effects on his sensitive, nervous
+organisation, very different from what they might on the more
+phlegmatic constitutions of ordinary Englishmen. In his journal, dated
+Venice, Feb. 2, 1821, he says,--
+
+ 'I have been considering what can be the reason why I always wake at
+ a certain hour in the morning, and always in very bad spirits,--I may
+ say, in actual despair and despondency, in all respects, even of that
+ which pleased me over night. In about an hour or two this goes off,
+ and I compose either to sleep again, or at least to quiet. In England,
+ five years ago, I had the same kind of hypochondria, but accompanied
+ with so violent a thirst, that I have drunk as many as fifteen bottles
+ of soda-water in one night, after going to bed, and been still
+ thirsty,--calculating, however, some lost from the bursting-out and
+ effervescence and overflowing of the soda-water in drawing the corks,
+ or striking off the necks of the bottles from mere thirsty impatience.
+ At present, I have _not_ the thirst; but the depression of spirits is
+ no less violent.'--Vol. v. p. 96.
+
+These extracts go to show what _must_ have been the condition of the
+man whom Lady Byron was called to receive at the intervals when he
+came back from his various social excitements and pleasures. That his
+nerves were exacerbated by violent extremes of abstinence and reckless
+indulgence; that he was often day after day drunk, and that drunkenness
+made him savage and ferocious,--such are the facts clearly shown by Mr.
+Moore's narrative. Of the natural peculiarities of Lord Byron's temper,
+he thus speaks to the Countess of Blessington:--
+
+ 'I often think that I inherit my violence and bad temper from my poor
+ mother,--not that my father, from all I could ever learn, had a much
+ better; so that it is no wonder I have such a very bad one. As long
+ as I can remember anything, I recollect being subject to violent
+ paroxysms of rage, so disproportioned to the cause as to surprise me
+ when they were over; and this still continues. I cannot coolly view
+ any thing which excites my feelings; and, once the lurking devil in
+ me is roused, I lose all command of myself. I do not recover a good
+ fit of rage for days after. Mind, I do not by this mean that the
+ ill humour continues, as, on the contrary, that quickly subsides,
+ exhausted by its own violence; but it shakes me terribly, and leaves
+ me low and nervous after.'--_Lady Blessington's Conversations_, p. 142.
+
+That during this time also his irritation and ill temper were increased
+by the mortification of duns, debts, and executions, is on the face of
+Moore's story. Moore himself relates one incident, which gives some
+idea of the many which may have occurred at these times, in a note
+on p. 215, vol. iv., where he speaks of Lord Byron's destroying a
+favourite old watch that had been his companion from boyhood, and gone
+with him to Greece. 'In a fit of vexation and rage, brought upon him by
+some of these humiliating embarrassments, to which he was now almost
+daily a prey, he furiously dashed this watch on the hearth, and ground
+it to pieces with the poker among the ashes.'
+
+It is no wonder, that, with a man of this kind to manage, Lady Byron
+should have clung to the only female companionship she could dare to
+trust in the case, and earnestly desired to retain with her the sister,
+who seemed, more than herself, to have influence over him.
+
+The first letter given by 'The Quarterly,' from Lady Byron to Mrs.
+Leigh, without a date, evidently belongs to this period, when the
+sister's society presented itself as a refuge in her approaching
+confinement. Mrs. Leigh speaks of leaving. The young wife conscious
+that the house presents no attractions, and that soon she herself shall
+be laid by, cannot urge Mrs. Leigh's stay as likely to give her any
+pleasure, but only as a comfort to herself.
+
+ 'You will think me very foolish; but I have tried two or three times,
+ and cannot _talk_ to you of your departure with a decent visage: so
+ let me say one word in this way to spare my philosophy. With the
+ expectations which I have, I never will nor can ask you to stay one
+ moment longer than you are inclined to do. It would [be] the worst
+ return for all I ever received from you. But in this at least I _am_
+ "truth itself," when I say, that whatever the situation may be, there
+ is no one whose society is dearer to me, or can contribute more to my
+ happiness. These feelings will not change under any circumstances,
+ and I should be grieved if you did not understand them. Should you
+ hereafter condemn me, I shall not love you less. I will say no more.
+ Judge for yourself about going or staying. I wish you to consider
+ _yourself_, if you could be wise enough to do that, for the first time
+ in your life.
+
+  'Thine,
+
+  'A. I. B.'
+
+  Addressed on the cover, 'To The Hon. Mrs. Leigh.'
+
+This letter not being dated, we have no clue but what we obtain from
+its own internal evidence. It certainly is not written in Lady Byron's
+usual clear and elegant style; and is, in this respect, in striking
+contrast to all her letters that I have ever seen.
+
+But the notes written by a young woman under such peculiar and
+distressing circumstances must not be judged by the standard of calmer
+hours.
+
+Subsequently to this letter, and during that stormy, irrational period
+when Lord Byron's conduct became daily more and more unaccountable, may
+have come that startling scene in which Lord Byron took every pains to
+convince his wife of improper relations subsisting between himself and
+his sister.
+
+What an _utter_ desolation this must have been to the wife, tearing
+from her the last hold of friendship, and the last refuge to which she
+had clung in her sorrows, may easily be conceived.
+
+In this crisis, it appears that the _sister_ convinced Lady Byron that
+the whole was to be attributed to insanity. It would be a conviction
+gladly accepted, and bringing infinite relief, although still
+surrounding her path with fearful difficulties.
+
+That such was the case is plainly asserted by Lady Byron in her
+statement published in 1830. Speaking of her separation, Lady Byron
+says:--
+
+ 'The facts are, I left London for Kirkby Mallory, the residence of
+ my father and mother, on the 15th of January, 1816. Lord Byron had
+ signified to me in writing, Jan. 6, his _absolute desire_ that I
+ should leave London on the earliest day that I could conveniently fix.
+ It was not safe for me to encounter the fatigues of a journey sooner
+ than the 15th. _Previously to my departure, it had been strongly
+ impressed on my mind that Lord Byron was under the influence of
+ insanity._
+
+ 'This opinion was in a great measure derived from the communications
+ made to me by his _nearest relatives_ and personal attendant.'
+
+Now there was no nearer relative than Mrs. Leigh; and the personal
+attendant was Fletcher. It was therefore presumably Mrs. Leigh who
+convinced Lady Byron of her husband's insanity.
+
+Lady Byron says, 'It was even represented to me that he was in danger
+of destroying himself.
+
+'_With the concurrence_ of his family, I had consulted with Dr.
+Baillie, as a friend, on Jan. 8, as to his supposed malady.' Now, Lord
+Byron's written order for her to leave came on Jan. 6. It appears,
+then, that Lady Byron, acting in concurrence with Mrs. Leigh and
+others of her husband's family, consulted Dr. Baillie, on Jan. 8, as
+to what she should do; the symptoms presented to Dr. Baillie being,
+evidently, insane hatred of his wife on the part of Lord Byron, and a
+determination to get her out of the house. Lady Byron goes on:--
+
+ 'On acquainting him with the state of the case, and with Lord
+ Byron's desire that I should leave London, Dr. Baillie thought my
+ absence might be advisable as an experiment, _assuming_ the fact of
+ mental derangement; for Dr. Baillie, not having had access to Lord
+ Byron, could not pronounce an opinion on that point. He enjoined,
+ that, in correspondence with Lord Byron, I should avoid all but
+ light and soothing topics. Under these impressions, I left London,
+ determined to follow the advice given me by Dr. Baillie. Whatever
+ might have been the nature of Lord Byron's treatment of me from the
+ time of my marriage, yet, supposing him to have been in a state of
+ mental alienation, it was not for _me_, nor for any person of common
+ humanity, to manifest at that moment a sense of injury.'
+
+It appears, then, that the domestic situation in Byron's house at the
+time of his wife's expulsion was one so grave as to call for family
+counsel; for Lady Byron, generally accurate, speaks in the plural
+number. 'His _nearest_ relatives' certainly includes Mrs. Leigh. 'His
+family' includes more. That some of Lord Byron's own relatives were
+cognisant of facts at this time, and that they took Lady Byron's side,
+is shown by one of his own chance admissions. In vol. vi. p. 394, in a
+letter on Bowles, he says, speaking of this time, '_All my relations_,
+save one, fell from me like leaves from a tree in autumn.' And in
+Medwin's Conversations he says, 'Even my cousin George Byron, who had
+been brought up with me, and whom I loved as a brother, took my wife's
+part.' The conduct must have been marked in the extreme that led to
+this result.
+
+We cannot help stopping here to say that Lady Byron's situation at
+this time has been discussed in our days with a want of ordinary human
+feeling that is surprising. Let any father and mother, reading this,
+look on their own daughter, and try to make the case their own.
+
+After a few short months of married life,--months full of patient
+endurance of the strangest and most unaccountable treatment,--she comes
+to them, expelled from her husband's house, an object of hatred and
+aversion to him, and having to settle for herself the awful question,
+whether he is a dangerous madman or a determined villain.
+
+Such was this young wife's situation.
+
+With a heart at times wrung with compassion for her husband as a
+helpless maniac, and fearful that all may end in suicide, yet compelled
+to leave him, she writes on the road the much-quoted letter, beginning
+'Dear Duck.' This is an exaggerated and unnatural letter, it is
+true, but of precisely the character that might be expected from an
+inexperienced young wife when dealing with a husband supposed to be
+insane.
+
+The next day, she addressed to Augusta this letter:--
+
+ 'MY DEAREST A.,--It is my great comfort that _you_ are still
+ in Piccadilly.'
+
+And again, on the 23rd:--
+
+ 'DEAREST A.,--I know you feel for me, as 1 do for you; and
+ perhaps I am better understood than I think. You have been, ever since
+ I knew you, my best comforter; and will so remain, unless you grow
+ tired of the office,--which may well be.'
+
+We can see here how self-denying and heroic appears to Lady Byron the
+conduct of the sister, who patiently remains to soothe and guide and
+restrain the moody madman, whose madness takes a form, at times, so
+repulsive to every womanly feeling. She intimates that she should not
+wonder should Augusta grow weary of the office.
+
+Lady Byron continues her statement thus:--
+
+ 'When I arrived at Kirkby Mallory, my parents were unacquainted
+ with the existence of any causes likely to destroy my prospects of
+ happiness; and, when I communicated to them the opinion that had been
+ formed concerning Lord Byron's state of mind, they were most anxious
+ to promote his restoration by every means in their power. They assured
+ those relations that were with him in London that "they would devote
+ their whole care and attention to the alleviation of his malady."'
+
+Here we have a _quotation_[41] from a letter written by Lady Milbanke
+to the anxious 'relations' who are taking counsel about Lord Byron in
+town. Lady Byron also adds, in justification of her mother from Lord
+Byron's slanders, 'She had always treated him with an affectionate
+consideration and indulgence, which extended to every little
+peculiarity of his feelings. Never did an irritating word escape her
+lips in her whole intercourse with him.'
+
+[Footnote 41: This little incident shows the characteristic carefulness
+and accuracy of Lady Byron's habits. This statement was written
+_fourteen_ years after the events spoken of; but Lady Byron carefully
+quotes a passage from her mother's letter written at that time. This
+shows that a copy of Lady Milbanke's letter had been preserved, and
+makes it appear probable that copies of the whole correspondence of
+that period were also kept. Great light could be thrown on the whole
+transaction, could these documents be consulted.]
+
+Now comes a remarkable part of Lady Byron's statement:--
+
+ 'The accounts given me after I left Lord Byron, by those in constant
+ intercourse with him,[42] _added_ to those doubts which had before
+ transiently occurred to my mind as to the reality of the alleged
+ disease; and the reports of his medical attendants were far from
+ establishing anything like lunacy.'
+
+[Footnote 42: Here, again, Lady Byron's sealed papers might furnish
+light. The letters addressed to her at this time by those in constant
+intercourse with Lord Byron are doubtless preserved, and would show her
+ground of action.]
+
+When these doubts arose in her mind, it is not natural to suppose
+that they should, at first, involve Mrs. Leigh. She still appears to
+Lady Byron as the devoted, believing sister, fully convinced of her
+brother's insanity, and endeavouring to restrain and control him.
+
+But if Lord Byron were sane, if the purposes he had avowed to his wife
+were real, he must have lied about his sister in the past, and perhaps
+have the worst intentions for the future.
+
+The horrors of that state of vacillation between the conviction of
+insanity and the commencing conviction of something worse can scarcely
+be told.
+
+At all events, the wife's doubts extend so far that she speaks out to
+her parents. 'UNDER THIS UNCERTAINTY,' says the statement,
+'I deemed it right to communicate to my parents, that, if I were to
+consider Lord Byron's past conduct as that of a person of sound mind,
+_nothing could induce me to return to him_. It therefore appeared
+expedient, both to them and to myself, to consult the ablest advisers.
+For that object, and also to obtain still further information
+respecting appearances which indicated mental derangement, my mother
+determined to go to London. She was empowered by me to take legal
+opinion on a written statement of mine; though I then had reasons for
+reserving a _part of the case from the knowledge even of my father and
+mother_.'
+
+It is during this time of uncertainty that the next letter to Mrs.
+Leigh may be placed. It seems to be rather a fragment of a letter
+than a whole one: perhaps it is an extract; in which case it would be
+desirable, if possible, to view it in connection with the remaining
+text:--
+
+  'Jan. 25, 1816.
+
+ 'MY DEAREST AUGUSTA,--Shall I still be your sister? I must
+ resign my right to be so considered; but I don't think that will make
+ any difference in the kindness I have so uniformly experienced from
+ you.'
+
+This fragment is not signed, nor finished in any way, but indicates
+that the writer is about to take a decisive step.
+
+On the 17th, as we have seen, Lady Milbanke had written, inviting
+Lord Byron. Subsequently she went to London to make more particular
+inquiries into his state. This fragment seems part of a letter from
+Lady Byron, called forth in view of some evidence resulting from her
+mother's observations.[43]
+
+[Footnote 43: Probably Lady Milbanke's letters are among the sealed
+papers, and would more fully explain the situation.]
+
+Lady Byron now adds:--
+
+ 'Being convinced by the result of these inquiries, and by the tenour
+ of Lord Byron's proceedings, that the notion of insanity was an
+ illusion, I no longer hesitated to authorize such measures as were
+ necessary in order to secure me from ever being again placed in his
+ power.
+
+ 'Conformably with this resolution, my father wrote to him, on the 2nd
+ of February, to request an amicable separation.'
+
+The following letter to Mrs. Leigh is dated the day after this
+application, and is in many respects a noticeable one:--
+
+  'KIRKBY MALLORY, Feb. 3, 1816.
+
+ 'MY DEAREST AUGUSTA,--You are desired by your brother to ask
+ if my father has acted with my concurrence in proposing a separation.
+ He has. It cannot be supposed, that, in my present distressing
+ situation, I am capable of stating in a detailed manner the reasons
+ which will not only justify this measure, but compel me to take it;
+ and it never can be my wish to remember _unnecessarily_ [_sic_]
+ those injuries for which, however deep, I feel no resentment. I will
+ now only recall to Lord Byron's mind his avowed and insurmountable
+ aversion to the married state, and the desire and determination
+ he has expressed ever since its commencement to free himself from
+ that bondage, as finding it quite insupportable, though candidly
+ acknowledging that no effort of duty or affection has been wanting on
+ my part. He has too painfully convinced me that all these attempts
+ to contribute towards his happiness were wholly useless, and most
+ unwelcome to him. I enclose this letter to my father, wishing it to
+ receive his sanction.
+
+  'Ever yours most affectionately,
+
+  'A. I. BYRON.'
+
+We observe in this letter that it is written to _be shown_ to Lady
+Byron's father, and receive his sanction; and, as that father was
+in ignorance of all the deeper causes of trouble in the case, it
+will be seen that the letter must necessarily be a reserved one.
+This sufficiently accounts for the guarded character of the language
+when speaking of the causes of separation. One part of the letter
+incidentally overthrows Lord Byron's statement, which he always
+repeated during his life, and which is repeated for him now; namely,
+that his wife _forsook_ him, instead of being, as she claims,
+_expelled_ by him.
+
+She recalls to Lord Byron's mind the 'desire and _determination_ he has
+expressed ever since his marriage to free himself from its bondage.'
+
+This is in perfect keeping with the '_absolute_ desire,' signified
+by writing, that she should leave his house on the earliest day
+possible; and she places the cause of the separation on his having 'too
+painfully' convinced her that he does not want her--as a wife.
+
+It appears that Augusta hesitates to show this note to her brother. It
+is bringing on a crisis which she, above all others, would most wish to
+avoid.
+
+In the meantime, Lady Byron receives a letter from Lord Byron, which
+makes her feel it more than ever essential to make the decision final.
+I have reason to believe that this letter is preserved in Lady Byron's
+papers:--
+
+  'Feb. 4, 1816.
+
+ 'I hope, my dear A., that you would on no account withhold from your
+ brother the letter which I sent yesterday in answer to yours written
+ by his desire, particularly as one which I have received from himself
+ to-day renders it still more important that he should know the
+ contents of that addressed to you, I am, in haste and not very well,
+
+  'Yours most affectionately,
+
+  'A. I. BYRON.'
+
+The last of this series of letters is less like the style of Lady Byron
+than any of them. We cannot judge whether it is a whole consecutive
+letter, or fragments from a letter, selected and united. There is a
+great want of that clearness and precision which usually characterised
+Lady Byron's style. It shows, however, that the decision is made,--a
+decision which she regrets on account of the sister who has tried so
+long to prevent it.
+
+  'KIRKBY MALLORY, Feb. 14, 1816.
+
+ 'The present sufferings of all may yet be repaid in blessings. Do
+ not despair absolutely, dearest; and leave me but enough of your
+ interest to afford you any consolation by partaking of that sorrow
+ which I am most unhappy to cause thus unintentionally. _You will_ be
+ of my opinion hereafter; and at present your bitterest reproach would
+ be forgiven, though Heaven knows you have considered me more than a
+ thousand would have done,--more than anything but my affection for
+ B., one most dear to you, could deserve. I must not remember these
+ feelings. Farewell! God bless you from the bottom of my heart!
+
+  'A. I. B.'
+
+We are here to consider that Mrs. Leigh has stood to Lady Byron in
+all this long agony as her only confidante and friend; that she has
+denied the charges her brother has made, and referred them to insanity,
+admitting insane _attempts_ upon herself which she has been obliged to
+watch over and control.
+
+Lady Byron has come to the conclusion that Augusta is mistaken as to
+insanity; that there is a real wicked _purpose_ and desire on the part
+of the brother, not as yet believed in by the sister. She regards the
+sister as one, who, though deceived and blinded, is still worthy of
+confidence and consideration; and so says to her, '_You will be of my
+opinion hereafter_.'
+
+She says, 'You have considered me more than a thousand would have
+done.' Mrs. Leigh is, in Lady Byron's eyes, a most abused and innocent
+woman, who, to spare her sister in her delicate situation, has taken on
+herself the whole charge of a maniacal brother, although suffering from
+him language and actions of the most injurious kind. That Mrs. Leigh
+did not flee the house at once under such circumstances, and wholly
+decline the management of the case, seems to Lady Byron consideration
+and self-sacrifice greater than she can acknowledge.
+
+The knowledge of the _whole extent of the truth_ came to Lady Byron's
+mind at a later period.
+
+We now take up the history from Lushington's letter to Lady Byron,
+published at the close of her statement.
+
+The application to Lord Byron for an act of separation was positively
+refused at first; it being an important part of his policy that all the
+responsibility and insistance should come from his wife, and that he
+should appear forced into it contrary to his will.
+
+Dr. Lushington, however, says to Lady Byron,--
+
+ 'I was originally consulted by Lady Noel on your behalf while you
+ were in the country. The circumstances detailed by her were such
+ as justified a separation; but they were not of that aggravated
+ description as to render such a measure indispensable. On Lady
+ Noel's representations, I deemed a reconciliation with Lord Byron
+ practicable, and felt most sincerely a wish to aid in effecting it.
+ There was not, on Lady Noel's part, any exaggeration of the facts,
+ nor, so far as I could perceive, any determination to prevent a
+ return to Lord Byron: certainly none was expressed when I spoke of a
+ reconciliation.'
+
+In this crisis, with Lord Byron refusing the separation, with
+Lushington expressing a wish to aid in a reconciliation, and Lady Noel
+not expressing any aversion to it, the whole strain of the dreadful
+responsibility comes upon the wife.
+
+She resolves to ask counsel of her lawyer, in view of a statement of
+the _whole_ case.
+
+Lady Byron is spoken of by Lord Byron (letter 233) as being in town
+with her father on the 29th of February; viz., fifteen days after the
+date of the last letter to Mrs. Leigh. It must have been about this
+time, then, that she laid her whole case before Lushington; and he gave
+it a thorough examination.
+
+The result was, that Lushington expressed in the most decided terms his
+conviction that reconciliation was impossible. The language he uses is
+very striking:--
+
+ 'When you came to town in about a fortnight, or perhaps more, after my
+ first interview with Lady Noel, I was, for the first time, informed
+ by you of facts utterly unknown, as I have no doubt, to Sir Ralph and
+ Lady Noel. On receiving this additional information, my opinion was
+ entirely changed. I considered a reconciliation impossible. I declared
+ my opinion, and added, that, if such an idea should be entertained, I
+ could not, either professionally or otherwise, take any part towards
+ effecting it.'
+
+It does not appear in this note what effect the lawyer's examination
+of the case had on Lady Byron's mind. By the expressions he uses, we
+should infer that she may still have been hesitating as to whether a
+reconciliation might not be her duty.
+
+This hesitancy he does away with most decisively, saying, 'A
+reconciliation is impossible;' and, supposing Lady Byron or her
+friends desirous of one, he declares positively that he cannot, either
+professionally as a lawyer or privately as a friend, have anything to
+do with effecting it.
+
+The lawyer, it appears, has drawn, from the facts of the case,
+inferences deeper and stronger than those which presented themselves to
+the mind of the young woman; and he instructs her in the most absolute
+terms.
+
+Fourteen years after, in 1830, for the first time the world was
+astonished by this declaration from Dr. Lushington, in language so
+pronounced and positive that there could be no mistake.
+
+Lady Byron had stood all these fourteen years slandered by her husband,
+and misunderstood by his friends, when, had she so chosen, this opinion
+of Dr. Lushington's could have been at once made public, which fully
+justified her conduct.
+
+If, as the 'Blackwood' of July insinuates, the story told to Lushington
+was a malignant slander, meant to injure Lord Byron, why did she
+suppress the judgment of her counsel at a time when all the world
+was on her side, and this decision would have been the decisive blow
+against her husband? Why, by sealing the lips of counsel, and of all
+whom she could influence, did she deprive herself finally of the very
+advantage for which it has been assumed she fabricated the story?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE CHARACTER OF THE TWO WITNESSES COMPARED.
+
+
+It will be observed, that, in this controversy, we are confronting two
+opposing stories,--one of Lord and the other of Lady Byron; and the
+statements from each are in point-blank contradiction.
+
+Lord Byron states that his wife deserted him. Lady Byron states that he
+expelled her, and reminds him, in her letter to Augusta Leigh, that the
+expulsion was a deliberate one, and that he had purposed it from the
+beginning of their marriage.
+
+Lord Byron always stated that he was ignorant why his wife left him,
+and was desirous of her return. Lady Byron states that he told her that
+he would force her to leave him, and to leave him in such a way that
+the whole blame of the separation should always rest on her, and not on
+him.
+
+To say nothing of any deeper or darker accusations on either side,
+here, in the very outworks of the story, the two meet point-blank.
+
+In considering two opposing stories, we always, as a matter of fact,
+take into account the character of the witnesses.
+
+If a person be literal and exact in his usual modes of speech,
+reserved, careful, conscientious, and in the habit of observing
+minutely the minor details of time, place, and circumstances, we give
+weight to his testimony from these considerations. But if a person
+be proved to have singular and exceptional principles with regard to
+truth; if he be universally held by society to be so in the habit of
+mystification, that large allowances must be made for his statements;
+if his assertions at one time contradict those made at another; and if
+his statements, also, sometimes come in collision with those of his
+best friends, so that, when his language is reported, difficulties
+follow, and explanations are made necessary,--all this certainly
+disqualifies him from being considered a trustworthy witness.
+
+All these disqualifications belong in a remarkable degree to Lord
+Byron, on the oft-repeated testimony of his best friends.
+
+We shall first cite the following testimony, given in an article from
+'Under the Crown,' which is written by an early friend and ardent
+admirer of Lord Byron:--
+
+ 'Byron had one pre-eminent fault,--a fault which must be considered as
+ deeply criminal by everyone who does not, as I do, believe it to have
+ resulted from monomania. He had a morbid love of a bad reputation.
+ There was hardly an offence of which he would not, with perfect
+ indifference, accuse himself. An old schoolfellow who met him on the
+ Continent told me that he would continually write paragraphs against
+ himself in the foreign journals, and delight in their republication
+ by the English newspapers as in the success of a practical joke.
+ Whenever anybody has related anything discreditable of Byron, assuring
+ me that it must be true, for he heard it from himself, I always felt
+ that he could not have spoken upon worse authority; and that, in all
+ probability, the tale was a pure invention. If I could remember,
+ and were willing to repeat, the various misdoings which I have from
+ time to time heard him attribute to himself, I could fill a volume.
+ But I never believed them. I very soon became aware of this strange
+ idiosyncrasy: it puzzled me to account for it; but there it was, a
+ sort of diseased and distorted vanity. The same eccentric spirit
+ would induce him to report things which were false with regard to his
+ family, which anybody else would have concealed, though true. He told
+ me more than once that his father was insane, and killed himself. I
+ shall never forget the manner in which he first told me this. While
+ washing his hands, and singing a gay Neapolitan air, he stopped,
+ looked round at me, and said, "There always was madness in the
+ family." Then, after continuing his washing and his song, he added, as
+ if speaking of a matter of the slightest indifference, "My father cut
+ his throat." The contrast between the tenour of the subject and the
+ levity of the expression was fearfully painful: it was like a stanza
+ of "Don Juan." In this instance, I had no doubt that the fact was as
+ he related it; but in speaking of it, only a few years since, to an
+ old lady in whom I had perfect confidence, she assured me that it was
+ not so. Mr. Byron, who was her cousin, had been extremely wild, but
+ was quite sane, and had died very quietly in his bed. What Byron's
+ reason could have been for thus calumniating not only himself but
+ the blood which was flowing in his veins, who can divine? But, for
+ some reason or other, it seemed to be his determined purpose to keep
+ himself unknown to the great body of his fellow-creatures; to present
+ himself to their view in moral masquerade.'
+
+Certainly the character of Lord Byron here given by his friend is
+not the kind to make him a trustworthy witness in any case: on the
+contrary, it seems to show either a subtle delight in falsehood for
+falsehood's sake, or else the wary artifices of a man who, having a
+deadly secret to conceal, employs many turnings and windings to throw
+the world off the scent. What intriguer, having a crime to cover, could
+devise a more artful course than to send half a dozen absurd stories to
+the press, which should, after a while, be traced back to himself, till
+the public should gradually look on all it heard from him as the result
+of this eccentric humour?
+
+The easy, trifling air with which Lord Byron made to this friend a
+false statement in regard to his father would lead naturally to the
+inquiry, on what _other_ subjects, equally important to the good name
+of others, he might give false testimony with equal indifference.
+
+When Medwin's 'Conversations with Lord Byron' were first published,
+they contained a number of declarations of the noble lord affecting the
+honour and honesty of his friend and publisher Murray. These appear
+to have been made in the same way as those about his father, and with
+equal indifference. So serious were the charges, that Mr. Murray's
+friends felt that he ought, in justice to himself, to come forward and
+confront them with the facts as stated in Byron's letters to himself;
+and in vol. x., p. 143, of Murray's standard edition, accordingly
+these false statements are confronted with the letters of Lord Byron.
+The statements, as reported, are of a most material and vital nature,
+relating to Murray's financial honour and honesty, and to his general
+truthfulness and sincerity. In reply, Murray opposes to them the
+accounts of sums paid for different works, and letters from Byron
+exactly contradicting his own statements as to Murray's character.
+
+The subject, as we have seen, was discussed in 'The Noctes.' No doubt
+appears to be entertained that Byron made the statements to Medwin; and
+the theory of accounting for them is, that 'Byron was "bamming" him.'
+
+It seems never to have occurred to any of these credulous gentlemen,
+who laughed at others for being 'bammed,' that Byron might be doing the
+very same thing by themselves. How many of his so-called packages sent
+to Lady Byron were _real_ packages, and how many were mystifications?
+We find, in two places at least in his Memoir, letters to Lady Byron,
+written and shown to others, which, he says, were never sent by him.
+He told Lady Blessington that he was in the habit of writing to her
+_constantly_. Was this 'bamming'? Was he 'bamming,' also, when he told
+the world that Lady Byron suddenly deserted him, quite to his surprise,
+and that he never, to his dying day, could find out why?
+
+Lady Blessington relates, that, in one of his conversations with her,
+he entertained her by repeating epigrams and lampoons, in which many
+of his friends were treated with severity. She inquired of him, in
+case he should die, and such proofs of his friendship come before the
+public, what would be the feelings of these friends, who had supposed
+themselves to stand so high in his good graces. She says,
+
+ '"That," said Byron, "is precisely one of the ideas that most amuses
+ me. I often fancy the rage and humiliation of my quondam friends in
+ hearing the truth, at least from me, for the first time, and when I
+ am beyond the reach of their malice.... What grief," continued Byron,
+ laughing, "could resist the charges of ugliness, dulness, or any of
+ the thousand nameless defects, personal or mental, 'that flesh is heir
+ to,' when reprisal or recantation was impossible?... People are in
+ such daily habits of commenting on the defects of friends, that they
+ are unconscious of the unkindness of it.... Now, I write down as well
+ as speak my sentiments of those who think they have gulled me; and I
+ only wish, in case I die before them, that I might return to witness
+ the effects my posthumous opinions of them are likely to produce in
+ their minds. What good fun this would be!... You don't seem to value
+ this as you ought," said Byron with one of his sardonic smiles, seeing
+ I looked, as I really felt, surprised at his avowed insincerity. I
+ feel the same pleasure in anticipating the rage and mortification of
+ my _soi-disant_ friends at the discovery of my real sentiments of
+ them, that a miser may be supposed to feel while making a will that
+ will disappoint all the expectants that have been toadying him for
+ years. Then how amusing it will be to compare my posthumous with my
+ previously given opinions, the one throwing ridicule on the other!"'
+
+It is asserted, in a note to 'The Noctes,' that Byron, besides his
+Autobiography, prepared a voluminous dictionary of all his friends and
+acquaintances, in which brief notes of their persons and character
+were given, with his opinion of them. It was not considered that the
+publication of this would add to the noble lord's popularity; and it
+has never appeared.
+
+In Hunt's Life of Byron, there is similar testimony. Speaking of
+Byron's carelessness in exposing his friends' secrets, and showing or
+giving away their letters, he says:--
+
+ 'If his five hundred confidants, by a reticence as remarkable as his
+ laxity, had not kept his secrets better than he did himself, the
+ very devil might have been played with I don't know how many people.
+ But there was always this saving reflection to be made, that the man
+ who could be guilty of such extravagances for the sake of making
+ an impression might be guilty of exaggeration, or inventing what
+ astonished you; and indeed, though he was a speaker of the truth on
+ ordinary occasions,--that is to say, he did not tell you he had seen
+ a dozen horses when he had seen only two,--yet, as he professed not
+ to value the truth when in the way of his advantage (and there was
+ nothing he thought more to his advantage than making you stare at
+ him), the persons who were liable to suffer from his inconsistency had
+ all the right in the world to the benefit of this consideration.'[44]
+
+[Footnote 44: Hunt's Byron, p. 77. Philadelphia, 1828.]
+
+With a person of such mental and moral habits as to truth, the inquiry
+always must be, _Where_ does mystification end, and truth begin?
+
+If a man is careless about his father's reputation for sanity, and
+reports him a crazy suicide; if he gaily accuses his publisher and
+good friend of double-dealing, shuffling, and dishonesty; if he tells
+stories about Mrs. Clermont,[45] to which his sister offers a public
+refutation,--is it to be supposed that he will always tell the truth
+about his wife, when the world is pressing him hard, and every instinct
+of self-defence is on the alert?
+
+[Footnote 45: From the Temple Bar article, October 1869. 'Mrs. Leigh,
+Lord Byron's sister, had other thoughts of Mrs. Clermont, and wrote
+to her offering public testimony to her tenderness and forbearance
+under circumstances which must have been trying to any friend of Lady
+Byron.'--_Campbell, in the New Monthly Magazine_, 1830, p. 380.]
+
+And then the ingenuity that could write and publish false documents
+about himself, that they might re-appear in London papers,--to what
+other accounts might it not be turned? Might it not create documents,
+invent statements, about his wife as well as himself?
+
+The document so ostentatiously given to M. G. Lewis 'for circulation
+among friends in England' was a specimen of what the Noctes Club would
+call 'bamming.'
+
+If Byron wanted a legal investigation, why did he not take it in the
+first place, instead of signing the separation? If he wanted to cancel
+it, as he said in this document, why did he not go to London, and enter
+a suit for the restitution of conjugal rights, or a suit in chancery to
+get possession of his daughter? That this was in his mind, passages in
+Medwin's 'Conversations' show. He told Lady Blessington also that he
+might claim his daughter in chancery at any time.
+
+Why did he not do it? Either of these two steps would have brought on
+that public investigation he so longed for. Can it be possible that all
+the friends who passed this private document from hand to hand never
+suspected that they were being 'bammed' by it?
+
+But it has been universally assumed, that, though Byron was thus
+remarkably given to mystification, yet _all_ his statements in regard
+to this story are to be accepted, simply because he makes them. _Why_
+must we accept them, any more than his statements as to Murray or his
+own father?
+
+So we constantly find Lord Byron's incidental statements coming in
+collision with those of others: for example, in his account of his
+marriage, he tells Medwin that Lady Byron's maid was put between his
+bride and himself, on the same seat, in the wedding-journey. The lady's
+maid herself, Mrs. Mimms, says she was sent before them to Halnaby, and
+was there to receive them when they alighted.
+
+He said of Lady Byron's mother, 'She always detested me, and had not
+the decency to conceal it in her own house. Dining with her one day, I
+broke a tooth, and was in great pain; which I could not help showing.
+"It will do you good," said Lady Noel; "I am glad of it!"'
+
+Lady Byron says, speaking of her mother, 'She always treated him with
+an affectionate consideration and indulgence, which extended to every
+little peculiarity of his feelings. Never did an irritating word escape
+her.'
+
+Lord Byron states that the correspondence between him and Lady Byron,
+after his refusal, was first opened by her. Lady Byron's friends deny
+the statement, and assert that the direct contrary is the fact.
+
+Thus we see that Lord Byron's statements are directly opposed to
+those of his family in relation to his father; directly against
+Murray's accounts, and his own admission to Murray; directly against
+the statement of the lady's maid as to her position in the journey;
+directly against Mrs. Leigh's as to Mrs. Clermont, and against Lady
+Byron as to her mother.
+
+We can see, also, that these misstatements were so fully perceived by
+the men of his times, that Medwin's 'Conversations' were simply laughed
+at as an amusing instance of how far a man might be made the victim of
+a mystification. Christopher North thus sentences the book:--
+
+ 'I don't mean to call Medwin a liar.... The captain _lies_, sir, but
+ it is under a thousand mistakes. Whether Byron bammed him, or he, by
+ virtue of his own egregious stupidity, was the sole and sufficient
+ bammifier of himself, I know not; neither greatly do I care. This much
+ is certain, ... that the book throughout is full of things that were
+ not, and most resplendently deficient _quoad_ the things that were.'
+
+Yet it is on Medwin's 'Conversations' alone that many of the magazine
+assertions in regard to Lady Byron are founded.
+
+It is on that authority that Lady Byron is accused of breaking open
+her husband's writing-desk in his absence, and sending the letters
+she found there to the husband of a lady compromised by them; and
+likewise that Lord Byron is declared to have paid back his wife's
+ten-thousand-pound wedding portion, and doubled it. Moore makes no such
+statements; and his remarks about Lord Byron's use of his wife's money
+are unmistakable evidence to the contrary. Moore, although Byron's
+ardent partisan, was too well informed to make assertions with regard
+to him, which, at that time, it would have been perfectly easy to
+refute.
+
+All these facts go to show that Lord Byron's character for accuracy
+or veracity was not such as to entitle him to ordinary confidence as a
+witness, especially in a case where he had the strongest motives for
+misstatement.
+
+And if we consider that the celebrated Autobiography was the finished,
+careful work of such a practised 'mystifier,' who can wonder that it
+presented a web of such intermingled truth and lies that there was no
+such thing as disentangling it, and pointing out where falsehood ended
+and truth began?
+
+But in regard to Lady Byron, what has been the universal impression
+of the world? It has been alleged against her that she was a precise,
+straight-forward woman, so accustomed to plain, literal dealings, that
+she could not understand the various mystifications of her husband; and
+from that cause arose her unhappiness. Byron speaks, in 'The Sketch,'
+of her _peculiar_ truthfulness; and even in the 'Clytemnestra' poem,
+when accusing her of lying, he speaks of her as departing from
+
+  'The _early_ truth that was her proper praise.'
+
+Lady Byron's careful accuracy as to dates, to time, place, and
+circumstances, will probably be vouched for by all the very large
+number of persons whom the management of her extended property and
+her works of benevolence brought to act as co-operators or agents
+with her. She was not a person in the habit of making exaggerated or
+ill-considered statements. Her published statement of 1830 is clear,
+exact, accurate, and perfectly intelligible. The dates are carefully
+ascertained and stated, the expressions are moderate, and all the
+assertions firm and perfectly definite.
+
+It therefore seems remarkable that the whole reasoning on this Byron
+matter has generally been conducted by assuming all Lord Byron's
+statements to be true, and requiring all Lady Byron's statements to be
+sustained by other evidence.
+
+If Lord Byron asserts that his wife deserted him, the assertion is
+accepted without proof; but, if Lady Byron asserts that he ordered
+her to leave, that requires proof. Lady Byron asserts that she
+took counsel, on this order of Lord Byron, with his family friends
+and physician, under the idea that it originated in insanity. The
+'Blackwood' asks, '_What_ family friends?' says it doesn't know of any;
+and asks proof.
+
+If Lord Byron asserts that he always longed for a public investigation
+of the charges against him, the 'Quarterly' and 'Blackwood' quote
+the saying with ingenuous confidence. They are obliged to admit
+that he refused to stand that public test; that he signed the deed
+of separation rather than meet it. They know, also, that he could
+have at any time instituted suits against Lady Byron that would have
+brought the whole matter into court, and that he did not? Why did he
+not? The 'Quarterly' simply intimates that such suits would have been
+unpleasant. Why? On account of personal delicacy? The man that wrote
+'Don Juan', and furnished the details of his wedding-night, held
+back from clearing his name by delicacy! It is astonishing to what
+extent this controversy has consisted in simply repeating Lord Byron's
+assertions over and over again, and calling the result proof.
+
+Now, we propose a different course. As Lady Byron is not stated by
+her warm admirers to have had _any_ monomania for speaking untruths
+on any subject, we rank her value as a witness at a higher rate than
+Lord Byron's. She never accused her parents of madness or suicide,
+merely to make a sensation; never 'bammed' an acquaintance by false
+statements concerning the commercial honour of anyone with whom she
+was in business relations; never wrote and sent to the press as a
+clever jest false statements about herself; and never, in any other
+ingenious way, tampered with truth. We therefore hold it to be a mere
+dictate of reason and common sense, that, in all cases where her
+statements conflict with her husband's, hers are to be taken as the
+more trustworthy.
+
+The 'London Quarterly,' in a late article, distinctly repudiates Lady
+Byron's statements as sources of evidence, and throughout quotes
+statements of Lord Byron as if they had the force of self-evident
+propositions. We consider such a course contrary to common sense as
+well as common good manners.
+
+The state of the case is just this: If Lord Byron did not make false
+statements on this subject it was certainly an exception to his usual
+course. He certainly did make such on a great variety of other
+subjects. By his own showing, he had a peculiar pleasure in falsifying
+language, and in misleading and betraying even his friends.
+
+But, if Lady Byron gave false witness upon this subject, it was an
+exception to the whole course of her life.
+
+The habits of her mind, the government of her conduct, her life-long
+reputation, all were those of a literal, exact truthfulness.
+
+The accusation of her being untruthful was first brought forward by
+her husband in the 'Clytemnestra' poem, in the autumn of 1816; but it
+never was publicly circulated till after his death, and it was first
+formally made the basis of a published attack on Lady Byron in the
+July 'Blackwood' of 1869. Up to that time, we look in vain through
+current literature for any indications that the world regarded Lady
+Byron otherwise than as a cold, careful, prudent woman, who made no
+assertions, and had no confidants. When she spoke in 1830, it is
+perfectly evident that Christopher North and his circle believed what
+she said, though reproving her for saying it at all.
+
+The 'Quarterly' goes on to heap up a number of vague assertions,--that
+Lady Byron, about the time of her separation, made a confidant of a
+young officer; that she told the clergyman of Ham of some trials with
+Lord Ockham; and that she told stories of different things at different
+times.
+
+All this is not proof: it is mere assertion, and assertion made to
+produce prejudice. It is like raising a whirlwind of sand to blind
+the eyes that are looking for landmarks. It is quite probable Lady
+Byron told different stories about Lord Byron at various times. No
+woman could have a greater variety of stories to tell; and no woman
+ever was so persecuted and pursued and harassed, both by public
+literature and private friendship, to say _something_. She had plenty
+of causes for a separation, without the fatal and final one. In her
+conversations with Lady Anne Barnard, for example, she gives reasons
+enough for a separation, though none of them are the chief one. It is
+not _different_ stories, but _contradictory_ stories, that must be
+relied on to disprove the credibility of a witness. The 'Quarterly'
+has certainly told a great number of different stories,--stories which
+may prove as irreconcilable with each other as any attributed to Lady
+Byron; but its denial of all weight to her testimony is simply begging
+the whole question under consideration.
+
+A man gives testimony about the causes of a railroad accident, being
+the only eye-witness.
+
+The opposing counsel begs, whatever else you do, you will not admit
+that man's testimony. You ask, 'Why? Has he ever been accused of want
+of veracity on other subjects?'--'No: he has stood high as a man of
+probity and honour for years.'--'Why, then, throw out his testimony?'
+
+'Because he lies in this instance,' says the adversary: 'his testimony
+does not agree with this and that.'--'Pardon me, that is the very point
+in question,' say you: 'we expect to prove that it does agree with this
+and that.'
+
+Because certain letters of Lady Byron's do not agree with the
+'Quarterly's' theory of the facts of the separation, it at once assumes
+that she is an untruthful witness, and proposes to throw out her
+evidence altogether.
+
+We propose, on the contrary, to regard Lady Byron's evidence with all
+the attention due to the statement of a high-minded conscientious
+person, never in any other case accused of violation of truth;
+we also propose to show it to be in strict agreement with all
+well-authenticated facts and documents; and we propose to treat
+Lord Byron's evidence as that of a man of great subtlety, versed in
+mystification and delighting in it, and who, on many other subjects,
+not only deceived, but gloried in deception; and then we propose to
+show that it contradicts well-established facts and received documents.
+
+One thing more we have to say concerning the laws of evidence in regard
+to documents presented in this investigation.
+
+This is not a London West-End affair, but a grave historical inquiry,
+in which the whole English-speaking world are interested to know the
+truth.
+
+As it is now too late to have the securities of a legal trial,
+certainly the rules of historical evidence should be strictly
+observed. All important documents should be presented in an entire
+state, with a plain and open account of their history,--who had them,
+where they were found, and how preserved.
+
+There have been most excellent, credible, and authentic documents
+produced in this case; and, as a specimen of them, we shall mention
+Lord Lindsay's letter, and the journal and letter it authenticates.
+Lord Lindsay at once comes forward, gives his name boldly, gives the
+history of the papers he produces, shows how they came to be in his
+hands, why never produced before, and why now. We feel confidence at
+once.
+
+But in regard to the important series of letters presented as Lady
+Byron's, this obviously proper course has not been pursued. Though
+assumed to be of the most critical importance, no such distinct history
+of them was given in the first instance. The want of such evidence
+being noticed by other papers, the 'Quarterly' appears hurt that the
+high character of the magazine has not been a sufficient guarantee;
+and still deals in vague statements that the letters have been freely
+circulated, and that two noblemen of the highest character would vouch
+for them if necessary.
+
+In our view, _it is necessary_. These noblemen should imitate Lord
+Lindsay's example,--give a fair account of these letters, under
+their own names; and then, we would add, it is needful for complete
+satisfaction to have the letters _entire_, and not in fragments.
+
+The 'Quarterly' gave these letters with the evident implication that
+they are entirely destructive to Lady Byron's character as a witness.
+Now, has that magazine much reason to be hurt at even an insinuation on
+its own character when making such deadly assaults on that of another?
+The individuals who bring forth documents that they suppose to be
+deadly to the character of a noble person, always in her generation
+held to be eminent for virtue, certainly should not murmur at being
+called upon to substantiate these documents in the manner usually
+expected in historical investigations.
+
+We have shown that these letters do not contradict, but that they
+perfectly confirm the facts, and agree with the dates in Lady Byron's
+published statements of 1830; and this is our reason for deeming them
+authentic.
+
+These considerations with regard to the manner of conducting the
+inquiry seem so obviously proper, that we cannot but believe that they
+will command a serious attention.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE DIRECT ARGUMENT TO PROVE THE CRIME.
+
+
+We shall now proceed to state the argument against Lord Byron.
+
+1st, There is direct evidence that Lord Byron was guilty of some
+unusual immorality.
+
+The evidence is not, as the 'Blackwood' says, that Lushington yielded
+assent to the _ex parte_ statement of a client; nor, as the 'Quarterly'
+intimates, that he was affected by the charms of an attractive young
+woman.
+
+The first evidence of it is the fact that Lushington and Romilly
+_offered to take the case into court, and make there a public
+exhibition of the proofs_ on which their convictions were founded.
+
+2nd, It is very strong evidence of this fact, that Lord Byron, while
+loudly declaring that he wished to know with what he was charged,
+_declined_ this open investigation, and, rather than meet it, signed a
+paper which he had before refused to sign.
+
+3rd, It is also strong evidence of this fact, that although secretly
+declaring to all his intimate friends that he still wished open
+investigation in a court of justice, and affirming his belief that his
+character was being ruined for want of it, he never afterwards took
+the means to get it. Instead of writing a private handbill, he might
+have come to England and entered a suit; and he did not do it.
+
+That Lord Byron was conscious of a great crime is further made probable
+by the peculiar malice he seemed to bear to his wife's legal counsel.
+
+If there had been nothing to fear in that legal investigation wherewith
+they threatened him, why did he not only flee from it, but regard
+with a peculiar bitterness those who advised and proposed it? To an
+innocent man falsely accused, the certainties of law are a blessing
+and a refuge. Female charms cannot mislead in a court of justice; and
+the atrocities of rumour are there sifted, and deprived of power. A
+trial is not a threat to an innocent man: it is an invitation, an
+opportunity. Why, then, did he hate Sir Samuel Romilly, so that he
+exulted like a fiend over his tragical death? The letter in which he
+pours forth this malignity was so brutal, that Moore was obliged, by
+the general outcry of society, to suppress it. Is this the language of
+an innocent man who has been offered a fair trial under his country's
+laws? or of a guilty man, to whom the very idea of public trial means
+public exposure?
+
+4th, It is probable that the crime was the one now alleged, because
+that was the most important crime charged against him by rumour at the
+period. This appears by the following extract of a letter from Shelley,
+furnished by the 'Quarterly,' dated Bath, Sept. 29, 1816:--
+
+ 'I saw Kinnaird, and had a long talk with him. He informed me that
+ Lady Byron was now in perfect health; that she was living with your
+ sister. I felt much pleasure from this intelligence. I consider the
+ latter part of it as affording a decisive contradiction to the only
+ important calumny that ever was advanced against you. On this ground,
+ at least, it will become the world hereafter to be silent.'
+
+It appears evident here that the charge of improper intimacy with his
+sister was, in the mind of Shelley, the only important one that had yet
+been made against Lord Byron.
+
+It is fairly inferable, from Lord Byron's own statements, that his
+family friends believed this charge. Lady Byron speaks, in her
+statement, of 'nearest relatives' and family friends who were cognizant
+of Lord Byron's strange conduct at the time of the separation; and
+Lord Byron, in the letter to Bowles, before quoted, says that every
+one of his relations, except his sister, fell from him in this crisis
+like leaves from a tree in autumn. There was, therefore, not only
+this report, but such appearances in support of it as convinced those
+nearest to the scene, and best apprised of the facts; so that they
+fell from him entirely, notwithstanding the strong influence of family
+feeling. The Guiccioli book also mentions this same allegation as
+having arisen from peculiarities in Lord Byron's manner of treating his
+sister:---
+
+ 'This deep, fraternal affection assumed at times, under the influence
+ of his powerful genius, and under exceptional circumstances, an
+ almost too passionate expression, which opened a fresh field to his
+ enemies.'[46]
+
+[Footnote 46: 'My Recollections,' p. 238.]
+
+It appears, then, that there was nothing in the character of Lord
+Byron and of his sister, as they appeared before their generation,
+that prevented such a report from arising: on the contrary, there was
+something in their relations that made it seem probable. And it appears
+that his own family friends were so affected by it, that they, with
+one accord, deserted him. The 'Quarterly' presents the fact that Lady
+Byron went to visit Mrs. Leigh at this time, as triumphant proof that
+_she_ did not then believe it. Can the 'Quarterly' show just what Lady
+Byron's state of mind was, or what her motives were, in making that
+visit?
+
+The 'Quarterly' seems to assume, that no woman, without gross
+hypocrisy, can stand by a sister proven to have been guilty. We can
+appeal on this subject to all women. We fearlessly ask any wife,
+'Supposing your husband and sister were involved together in an
+infamous crime, and that you were the mother of a young daughter whose
+life would be tainted by a knowledge of that crime, what would be
+your wish? Would you wish to proclaim it forthwith? or would you wish
+quietly to separate from your husband, and to cover the crime from the
+eye of man?'
+
+It has been proved that Lady Byron did not reveal this even to her
+nearest relatives. It is proved that she sealed the mouths of her
+counsel, and even of servants, so effectually, that they remain sealed
+even to this day. This is evidence that she did not wish the thing
+known. It is proved also, that, in spite of her secrecy with her
+parents and friends, the rumour got out, and was spoken of by Shelley
+as the _only_ important one.
+
+Now, let us see how this note, cited by the 'Quarterly,' confirms one
+of Lady Byron's own statements. She says to Lady Anne Barnard,--
+
+ 'I trust you understand my wishes, which never were to injure Lord
+ Byron in any way; for, _though he would not suffer me to remain his
+ wife, he cannot prevent me from continuing his friend; and it was from
+ considering myself as such that I silenced the accusations by which my
+ own conduct might have been more fully justified_.'
+
+How did Lady Byron _silence accusations_? First, by keeping silence
+to her nearest relatives; second, by shutting the mouths of servants;
+third, by imposing silence on her friends,--as Lady Anne Barnard;
+fourth, by silencing her legal counsel; fifth, and most entirely, by
+treating Mrs. Leigh, before the world, with unaltered kindness. In the
+midst of the rumours, Lady Byron went to visit her; and Shelley says
+that the movement was effectual. Can the 'Quarterly' prove that, at
+this time, Mrs. Leigh had not confessed all, and thrown herself on Lady
+Byron's mercy?
+
+It is not necessary to suppose great horror and indignation on the
+part of Lady Byron. She may have regarded her sister as the victim
+of a most singularly powerful tempter. Lord Byron, as she knew, had
+tried to corrupt her own morals and faith. He had obtained a power
+over some women, even in the highest circles in England, which had
+led them to forego the usual decorums of their sex, and had given rise
+to great scandals. He was a being of wonderful personal attractions.
+He had not only strong poetical, but also strong logical power. He was
+daring in speculation, and vigorous in sophistical argument; beautiful,
+dazzling, and possessed of magnetic power of fascination. His sister
+had been kind and considerate to Lady Byron when Lord Byron was brutal
+and cruel. She had been overcome by him, as a weaker nature sometimes
+sinks under the force of a stronger one; and Lady Byron may really have
+considered her to be more sinned against than sinning.
+
+Lord Byron, if we look at it rightly, did not corrupt Mrs. Leigh
+any more than he did the whole British public. They rebelled at the
+immorality of his conduct and the obscenity of his writings; and he
+resolved that they should accept both. And he made them do it. At
+first, they execrated 'Don Juan.' Murray was afraid to publish it.
+Women were determined not to read it. In 1819, Dr. William Maginn of
+the Noctes wrote a song against it in the following virtuous strain:
+
+  'Be "Juan," then, unseen, unknown;
+    It must, or we shall rue it.
+  We may have virtue of our own:
+    Ah! why should we undo it?
+  The treasured faith of days long past
+    We still would prize o'er any,
+  And grieve to hear the ribald jeer
+    Of scamps like Don Giovanni.'
+
+Lord Byron determined to conquer the virtuous scruples of the Noctes
+Club; and so we find this same Dr. William Maginn, who in 1819 wrote
+so valiantly, in 1822 declaring that he would rather have written a
+page of 'Don Juan' than a ton of 'Childe Harold.' All English morals
+were, in like manner, formally surrendered to Lord Byron. Moore details
+his adulteries in Venice with unabashed particularity: artists send
+for pictures of his principal mistresses; the literary world call for
+biographical sketches of their points; Moore compares his wife and his
+last mistress in a neatly-turned sentence; and yet the professor of
+morals in Edinburgh University recommends the biography as _pure_, and
+having no mud in it. The mistress is lionized in London, and in 1869 is
+introduced to the world of letters by 'Blackwood,' and bid, 'without a
+blush, to say she loved'--
+
+This much being done to all England, it is quite possible that a woman
+like Lady Byron, standing silently aside and surveying the course of
+things, may have thought that Mrs. Leigh was no more seduced than all
+the rest of the world, and have said as we feel disposed to say of that
+generation, and of a good many in this, 'Let him that is without sin
+among you cast the first stone.'
+
+The peculiar bitterness of remorse expressed in his works by Lord
+Byron is a further evidence that he had committed an unusual crime.
+We are aware that evidence cannot be drawn in this manner from an
+author's works merely, if unsupported by any external probability.
+For example, the subject most frequently and powerfully treated by
+Hawthorne is the influence of a secret, unconfessed crime on the soul:
+nevertheless, as Hawthorne is well known to have always lived a pure
+and regular life, nobody has ever suspected him of any greater sin
+than a vigorous imagination. But here is a man believed guilty of an
+uncommon immorality by the two best lawyers in England, and threatened
+with an open exposure, which he does not dare to meet. The crime is
+named in society; his own relations fall away from him on account of
+it; it is only set at rest by the heroic conduct of his wife. Now, this
+man is stated by many of his friends to have had all the appearance of
+a man secretly labouring under the consciousness of crime. Moore speaks
+of this propensity in the following language:--
+
+ 'I have known him more than once, as we sat together after dinner,
+ and he was a little under the influence of wine, to fall seriously
+ into this dark, self-accusing mood, and throw out hints of his past
+ life with an air of gloom and mystery designed evidently to awaken
+ curiosity and interest.'
+
+Moore says that it was his own custom to dispel these appearances by
+ridicule, to which his friend was keenly alive. And he goes on to say,--
+
+ 'It has sometimes occurred to me, that the occult causes of his lady's
+ separation from him, round which herself and her legal advisers have
+ thrown such formidable mystery, may have been nothing more than some
+ imposture of this kind, some dimly-hinted confession of undefined
+ horror, which, though intended by the relater to mystify and surprise,
+ the hearer so little understood as to take in sober seriousness.'[47]
+
+[Footnote 47: Vol. vi. p. 212.]
+
+All we have to say is, that Lord Byron's conduct in this respect
+is exactly what might have been expected if he had a crime on his
+conscience.
+
+The energy of remorse and despair expressed in 'Manfred' were so
+appalling and so vividly _personal_, that the belief was universal on
+the Continent that the experience was wrought out of some actual crime.
+Goethe expressed this idea, and had heard a murder imputed to Byron as
+the cause.
+
+The allusion to the crime and consequences of incest is so plain in
+'Manfred,' that it is astonishing that any one can pretend, as Galt
+does, that it had any other application.
+
+The hero speaks of the love between himself and the imaginary being
+whose spirit haunts him as having been the _deadliest sin_, and one
+that has, perhaps, caused her eternal destruction.
+
+  'What is she now? A sufferer for my sins;
+  A thing I dare not think upon.'
+
+He speaks of her blood as haunting him, and as being
+
+            '_My_ blood,--the pure, warm stream
+  That ran in the veins of _my_ fathers, and in _ours_
+  When we were in our youth, and had one heart,
+  And loved each other as we should not love.'
+
+This work was conceived in the commotion of mind immediately following
+his separation. The scenery of it was sketched in a journal sent to his
+sister at the time.
+
+In letter 377, defending the originality of the conception, and showing
+that it did not arise from reading 'Faust,' he says,--
+
+ 'It was the Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else, more than
+ Faustus, that made me write "Manfred."'
+
+In letter 288, speaking of the various accounts given by critics of the
+origin of the story, he says,--
+
+ 'The conjecturer is out, and knows nothing of the matter. I had a
+ better origin than he could devise or divine for the soul of him.'
+
+In letter 299, he says:--
+
+ 'As to the germs of "Manfred," they may be found in the journal I sent
+ to Mrs. Leigh, part of which you saw.'
+
+It may be said, plausibly, that Lord Byron, if conscious of this crime,
+would not have expressed it in his poetry. But his nature was such
+that he could not help it. Whatever he wrote that had any real power
+was generally wrought out of self; and, when in a tumult of emotion,
+he could not help giving glimpses of the cause. It appears that he
+did know that he had been accused of incest, and that Shelley thought
+_that_ accusation the only really important one; and yet, sensitive as
+he was to blame and reprobation, he ran upon this very subject most
+likely to re-awaken scandal.
+
+But Lord Byron's strategy was always of the bold kind. It was the
+plan of the fugitive, who, instead of running away, stations himself
+so near to danger, that nobody would ever think of looking for him
+there. He published passionate verses to his sister on this principle.
+He imitated the security of an innocent man in every thing but the
+unconscious energy of the agony which seized him when he gave vent to
+his nature in poetry. The boldness of his strategy is evident through
+all his life. He began by charging his wife with the very cruelty and
+deception which he was himself practising. He had spread a net for her
+feet, and he accused her of spreading a net for his. He had placed
+her in a position where she could not speak, and then leisurely shot
+arrows at her; and he represented her as having done the same by him.
+When he attacked her in 'Don Juan,' and strove to take from her the
+very protection[48] of womanly sacredness by putting her name into the
+mouth of every ribald, he did a bold thing, and he knew it. He meant to
+do a bold thing. There was a general outcry against it; and he fought
+it down, and gained his point. By sheer boldness and perseverance,
+he turned the public _from_ his wife, and _to_ himself, in the face
+of their very groans and protests. His 'Manfred' and his 'Cain' were
+parts of the same game. But the involuntary cry of remorse and despair
+pierced even through his own artifices, in a manner that produced a
+conviction of reality.
+
+[Footnote 48: The reader is here referred to the remarks of 'Blackwood'
+on 'Don Juan' in Part III.]
+
+His evident fear and hatred of his wife were other symptoms of crime.
+There was no apparent occasion for him to hate her. He admitted that
+she had been bright, amiable, good, agreeable; that her marriage had
+been a very uncomfortable one; and he said to Madame de Staël, that
+he did not doubt she thought him deranged. Why, then, did he hate her
+for wanting to live peaceably by herself? Why did he so fear her, that
+not one year of his life passed without his concocting and circulating
+some public or private accusation against her? She, by his own showing,
+published none against him. It is remarkable, that, in all his zeal to
+represent himself injured, he nowhere quotes a single remark from Lady
+Byron, nor a story coming either directly or indirectly from her or her
+family. He is in a fever in Venice, not from what she has spoken, but
+because she has sealed the lips of her counsel, and because she and her
+family do not speak: so that he professes himself utterly ignorant what
+form her allegations against him may take. He had heard from Shelley
+that his wife silenced the most important calumny by going to make Mrs.
+Leigh a visit; and yet he is afraid of her,--so afraid, that he tells
+Moore he expects she will attack him after death, and charges him to
+defend his grave.
+
+Now, if Lord Byron knew that his wife had a deadly secret that she
+could tell, all this conduct is explicable: it is in the ordinary
+course of human nature. Men always distrust those who hold facts
+by which they can be ruined. They fear them; they are antagonistic
+to them; they cannot trust them. The feeling of Falkland to Caleb
+Williams, as portrayed in Godwin's masterly sketch, is perfectly
+natural, and it is exactly illustrative of what Byron felt for his
+wife. He hated her for having his secret; and, so far as a human being
+could do it, he tried to destroy her character before the world, that
+she might not have the power to testify against him. If we admit this
+solution, Byron's conduct is at least that of a man who is acting as
+men ordinarily would act under such circumstances: if we do not, he
+is acting like a fiend. Let us look at admitted facts. He married his
+wife without love, in a gloomy, melancholy, morose state of mind. The
+servants testify to strange, unaccountable treatment of her immediately
+after marriage; such that her confidential maid advises her return to
+her parents. In Lady Byron's letter to Mrs. Leigh, she reminds Lord
+Byron that he always expressed a desire and determination to free
+himself from the marriage. Lord Byron himself admits to Madame de
+Staël that his behaviour was such, that his wife must have thought him
+insane. Now we are asked to believe, that simply because, under these
+circumstances, Lady Byron wished to live separate from her husband, he
+hated and feared her so that he could never let her alone afterwards;
+that he charged her with malice, slander, deceit, and deadly intentions
+against himself, merely out of spite, because she preferred not to live
+with him. This last view of the case certainly makes Lord Byron more
+unaccountably wicked than the other.
+
+The first supposition shows him to us as a man in an agony of
+self-preservation; the second as a fiend, delighting in gratuitous
+deceit and cruelty.
+
+Again: a presumption of this crime appears in Lord Byron's admission,
+in a letter to Moore, that he had an illegitimate child born before he
+left England, and still living at the time.
+
+In letter 307, to Mr. Moore, under date Venice, Feb. 2, 1818, Byron
+says, speaking of Moore's loss of a child,--
+
+ 'I know how to feel with you, because I am quite wrapped up in my own
+ children. Besides my little legitimate, I have made unto myself an
+ illegitimate since [since Ada's birth] _to say nothing of one before_;
+ and I look forward to one of these as the pillar of my old age,
+ supposing that I ever reach, as I hope I never shall, that desolating
+ period.'
+
+The illegitimate child that he had made to himself since Ada's birth
+was Allegra, born about nine or ten months after the separation. The
+other illegitimate alluded to was born before, and, as the reader sees,
+was spoken of as still living.
+
+Moore appears to be puzzled to know who this child can be, and
+conjectures that it may possibly be the child referred to in an early
+poem, written, while a schoolboy of nineteen, at Harrow.
+
+On turning back to the note referred to, we find two things: first,
+that the child there mentioned was not claimed by Lord Byron as his
+own, but that he asked his mother to care for it as belonging to a
+schoolmate now dead; second, that the infant died shortly after, and,
+consequently, could not be the child mentioned in this letter.
+
+Now, besides this fact, that Lord Byron admitted a living illegitimate
+child born before Ada, we place this other fact, that there was a
+child in England which was believed to be his by those who had every
+opportunity of knowing.
+
+On this subject we shall cite a passage from a letter recently received
+by us from England, and written by a person who appears well informed
+on the subject of his letter:--
+
+ 'The fact is, the incest was first committed, and the child of it born
+ _before_, shortly before, the Byron marriage. The child (a daughter)
+ must not be confounded with the natural daughter of Lord Byron, born
+ about a year after his separation.
+
+ 'The history, more or less, of that child of incest, is known to many;
+ for in Lady Byron's attempts to watch over her, and rescue her from
+ ruin, she was compelled to employ various agents at different times.'
+
+This letter contains a full recognition, by an intelligent person in
+England, of a child corresponding well with Lord Byron's declaration of
+an illegitimate, born before he left England.
+
+Up to this point, we have, then, the circumstantial evidence against
+Lord Byron as follows:--
+
+A good and amiable woman, who had married him from love, determined to
+separate from him.
+
+Two of the greatest lawyers of England confirmed her in this decision,
+and threatened Lord Byron, that, unless he consented to this, they
+would expose the evidence against him in a suit for divorce. He fled
+from this exposure, and never afterwards sought public investigation.
+
+He was angry with and malicious towards the counsel who supported his
+wife; he was angry at and afraid of a wife who did nothing to injure
+him, and he made it a special object to defame and degrade her. He gave
+such evidence of remorse and fear in his writings as to lead eminent
+literary men to believe he had committed a great crime. The public
+rumour of his day specified what the crime was. His relations, by his
+own showing, joined against him. The report was silenced by his wife's
+efforts only. Lord Byron subsequently declares the existence of an
+illegitimate child, born before he left England. Corresponding to this,
+there is the history, known in England, of a child believed to be his,
+in whom his wife took an interest.
+
+All these presumptions exist independently of any direct testimony from
+Lady Byron. They are to be admitted as true, whether she says a word
+one way or the other.
+
+From this background of proof, I come forward, and testify to an
+interview with Lady Byron, in which she gave me specific information
+of the facts in the case. That I report the facts just as I received
+them from her, not altered or misremembered, is shown by the testimony
+of my sister, to whom I related them at the time. It cannot, then, be
+denied that I had this interview, and that this communication was made.
+I therefore testify that Lady Byron, for a proper purpose, and at a
+proper time, stated to me the following things:--
+
+1. That the crime which separated her from Lord Byron was incest. 2.
+That she first discovered it by improper actions towards his sister,
+which, he _meant_ to make her understand, indicated the guilty
+relation. 3. That he admitted it, reasoned on it, defended it, tried to
+make her an accomplice, and, failing in that, hated her and expelled
+her. 4. That he threatened her that he would make it his life's object
+to destroy her character. 5. That for a period she was led to regard
+this conduct as insanity, and to consider him only as a diseased
+person. 6. That she had subsequent proof that the facts were really as
+she suspected; that there had been a child born of the crime, whose
+history she knew; that Mrs. Leigh had repented.
+
+The purpose for which this was stated to me was to ask, Was it her duty
+to make the truth fully known during her lifetime?
+
+Here, then, is a man believed guilty of an unusual crime by two
+lawyers, the best in England, who have seen the evidence,--a man who
+dares not meet legal investigation. The crime is named in society, and
+deemed so far probable to the men of his generation as to be spoken
+of by Shelley as the only important allegation against him. He acts
+through life exactly like a man struggling with remorse, and afraid
+of detection; he has all the restlessness and hatred and fear that a
+man has who feels that there is evidence which might destroy him. He
+admits an illegitimate child besides Allegra. A child believed to have
+been his is known to many in England. Added to all this, his widow,
+now advanced in years, and standing on the borders of eternity, being,
+as appears by her writings and conversation, of perfectly sound mind
+at the time, testifies to me the facts before named, which exactly
+correspond to probabilities.
+
+I publish the statement; and the solicitors who hold Lady Byron's
+private papers do not deny the truth of the story. They try to cast
+discredit on me for speaking; but they do not say that I have spoken
+falsely, or that the story is not true. The lawyer who knew Lady
+Byron's story in 1816 does not now deny that this is the true one.
+Several persons in England testify that, at various times, and for
+various purposes, the same story has been told to them. Moreover, it
+appears from my last letter addressed to Lady Byron on this subject,
+that I recommended her to leave _all necessary papers_ in the hands
+of some discreet persons, who, after _both_ had passed away, should
+see that justice was done. The solicitors admit that Lady Byron _has_
+left sealed papers of great importance in the hands of trustees, with
+discretionary power. I have been informed very directly that the nature
+of these documents was such as to lead to the suppression of Lady
+Byron's life and writings. This is all exactly as it would be, if the
+story related by Lady Byron were the true one.
+
+The evidence under this point of view is so strong, that a great effort
+has been made to throw out Lady Byron's testimony.
+
+This attempt has been made on two grounds. 1st, That she was under a
+mental hallucination. This theory has been most ably refuted by the
+very first authority in England upon the subject. He says,--
+
+ 'No person practically acquainted with the true characteristics of
+ insanity would affirm, that, had this idea of "incest" been an insane
+ hallucination, Lady Byron could, from the lengthened period which
+ intervened between her unhappy marriage and death, have refrained
+ from exhibiting it, not only to legal advisers and trustees (assuming
+ that she revealed to them the fact), but to others, exacting no
+ pledge of secrecy from them as to her mental impressions. Lunatics
+ do for a time, and for some special purpose, most cunningly conceal
+ their delusions; but they have not the capacity to struggle for
+ thirty-six years, as Lady Byron must have done, with so frightful an
+ hallucination, without the insane state of mind becoming obvious to
+ those with whom they are daily associating. Neither is it consistent
+ with experience to suppose, that, if Lady Byron had been a monomaniac,
+ her state of disordered understanding would have been restricted to
+ one hallucination. Her diseased brain, affecting the normal action of
+ thought, would, in all probability, have manifested other symptoms
+ besides those referred to of aberration of intellect.
+
+ 'During the last thirty years, I have not met with a case of insanity
+ (assuming the hypothesis of hallucination) at all parallel with that
+ of Lady Byron. In my experience, it is unique. I never saw a patient
+ with such a delusion.'
+
+We refer our readers to a careful study of Dr. Forbes Winslow's
+consideration of this subject given in Part III. Anyone who has been
+familiar with the delicacy and acuteness of Dr. Winslow, as shown in
+his work on obscure diseases of the brain and nerves, must feel that
+his positive assertion on this ground is the best possible evidence.
+We here gratefully acknowledge our obligations to Dr. Winslow for
+the corrected proof of his valuable letter, which he has done us the
+honour to send for this work. We shall consider that his argument,
+in connection with what the reader may observe of Lady Byron's own
+writings, closes that issue of the case completely.
+
+The other alternative is, that Lady Byron deliberately committed false
+witness. This was the ground assumed by the 'Blackwood,' when in July,
+1869, it took upon itself the responsibility of re-opening the Byron
+controversy. It is also the ground assumed by 'The London Quarterly' of
+to-day.
+
+Both say, in so many words, that no crime was imputed to Lord Byron;
+that the representations made to Lushington in the beginning were false
+ones; and that the story told to Lady Byron's confidential friends in
+later days was also false.
+
+Let us examine this theory. In the first place, it requires us to
+believe in the existence of a moral monster of whom Madame Brinvilliers
+is cited as the type. The 'Blackwood,' let it be remembered, opens
+the controversy with the statement that Lady Byron was a Madame
+Brinvilliers. The 'Quarterly' does not shrink from the same assumption.
+
+Let us consider the probability of this question.
+
+If Lady Byron were such a woman, and wished to ruin her husband's
+reputation in order to save her own, and, being perfectly unscrupulous,
+had circulated against him a story of unnatural crime which had no
+proofs, how came two of the first lawyers of England to assume the
+responsibility of offering to present her case in open court? How
+came her husband, if he knew himself guiltless, to shrink from that
+public investigation which must have demonstrated his innocence? Most
+astonishing of all, when he fled from trial, and the report got abroad
+against him in England, and was believed even by his own relations,
+why did not his wife avail herself of the moment to complete her
+victory? If at that moment she had publicly broken with Mrs. Leigh,
+she might have confirmed every rumour. Did she do it? and why not?
+According to the 'Blackwood,' we have here a woman who has made up a
+frightful story to ruin her husband's reputation, yet who takes every
+pains afterwards to prevent its being ruined. She fails to do the very
+thing she undertakes; and for years after, rather than injure him, she
+loses public sympathy, and, by sealing the lips of her legal counsel,
+deprives herself of the advantage of their testimony.
+
+Moreover, if a desire for revenge could have been excited in her,
+it would have been provoked by the first publication of the fourth
+canto of 'Childe Harold,' when she felt that Byron was attacking her
+before the world. Yet we have Lady Anne Barnard's testimony, that,
+at this time, she was so far from wishing to injure him, that all her
+communications were guarded by cautious secrecy. At this time, also,
+she had a strong party in England, to whom she could have appealed.
+Again: when 'Don Juan' was first printed, it excited a violent
+re-action against Lord Byron. Had his wife chosen _then_ to accuse
+him, and display the evidence she had shown to her counsel, there is
+little doubt that all the world would have stood with her; but she did
+not. After his death, when she spoke at last, there seems little doubt
+from the strength of Dr. Lushington's language, that Lady Byron had a
+very strong case, and that, had she been willing, her counsel could
+have told much more than he did. She might _then_ have told her whole
+story, and been believed. Her word was believed by Christopher North,
+and accepted as proof that Byron had been a great criminal. Had revenge
+been her motive, she could have spoken the ONE WORD more that
+North called for.
+
+The 'Quarterly' asks why she waited till everybody concerned was dead.
+There is an obvious answer. Because, while there was anybody living
+to whom the testimony would have been utterly destructive, there were
+the best reasons for withholding it. When all were gone from earth,
+and she herself was in constant expectation of passing away, there
+_was_ a reason, and a proper one, why she should speak. By nature and
+principle truthful, she had had the opportunity of silently watching
+the operation of a permitted lie upon a whole generation. She had been
+placed in a position in which it was necessary, by silence, to allow
+the spread and propagation through society of a radical falsehood. Lord
+Byron's life, fame, and genius had all struck their roots into this
+lie, been nourished by it, and had derived thence a poisonous power.
+
+In reading this history, it will be remarked that he pleaded his
+personal misfortunes in his marriage as excuses for every offence
+against morality, and that the literary world of England accepted
+the plea, and tolerated and justified the crimes. Never before, in
+England, had adultery been spoken of in so respectful a manner, and
+an adulteress openly praised and _fêted_, and obscene language and
+licentious images publicly tolerated; and all on the plea of a man's
+private misfortunes.
+
+There was, therefore, great force in the suggestion made to Lady
+Byron, that she owed a testimony in this case to truth and justice,
+irrespective of any personal considerations. There is no more real
+reason for allowing the spread of a hurtful falsehood that affects
+ourselves than for allowing one that affects our neighbour. This
+falsehood had corrupted the literature and morals of both England and
+America, and led to the public toleration, by respectable authorities,
+of forms of vice at first indignantly rejected. The question was,
+Was this falsehood to go on corrupting literature as long as history
+lasted? Had the world no right to true history? Had she who possessed
+the truth no responsibility to the world? Was not a final silence a
+confirmation of a lie with all its consequences?
+
+This testimony of Lady Byron, so far from being thrown out altogether,
+as the 'Quarterly' proposes, has a peculiar and specific value from the
+great forbearance and reticence which characterised the greater part of
+her life.
+
+The testimony of a person who has shown in every action perfect
+friendliness to another comes with the more weight on that account.
+Testimony extorted by conscience from a parent against a child, or a
+wife against a husband, where all the other actions of the life prove
+the existence of kind feeling, is held to be the strongest form of
+evidence.
+
+The fact that Lady Byron, under the severest temptations and the
+bitterest insults and injuries, withheld every word by which Lord
+Byron could be criminated, so long as he and his sister were living,
+is strong evidence, that, when she did speak, it was not under the
+influence of ill-will, but of pure conscientious convictions; and the
+fullest weight ought, therefore, to be given to her testimony.
+
+We are asked now why she ever spoke at all. The fact that her story
+is known to several persons in England is brought up as if it were a
+crime. To this we answer, Lady Byron had an undoubted moral right to
+have exposed the whole story in a public court in 1816, and thus cut
+herself loose from her husband by a divorce. For the sake of saving
+her husband and sister from destruction, she waived this right to
+self-justification, and stood for years a silent sufferer under calumny
+and misrepresentation. She desired nothing but to retire from the
+whole subject; to be permitted to enjoy with her child the peace and
+seclusion that belong to her sex. Her husband made her, through his
+life and after his death, a subject of such constant discussion, that
+she must either abandon the current literature of her day, or run the
+risk of reading more or less about herself in almost every magazine
+of her time. Conversations with Lord Byron, notes of interviews with
+Lord Byron, journals of time spent with Lord Byron, were constantly
+spread before the public. Leigh Hunt, Galt, Medwin, Trelawney, Lady
+Blessington, Dr. Kennedy, and Thomas Moore, all poured forth their
+memorials; and in all she figured prominently. All these had their
+tribes of reviewers and critics, who also discussed her. The profound
+mystery of her silence seemed constantly to provoke inquiry. People
+could not forgive her for not speaking. Her privacy, retirement,
+and silence were set down as coldness, haughtiness, and contempt
+of human sympathy. She was constantly challenged to say something:
+as, for example, in the 'Noctes' of November 1825, six months after
+Byron's death, Christopher North says, speaking of the burning of the
+Autobiography,--
+
+ 'I think, since the Memoir was burned by these people, these people
+ are bound to put us in possession of the best evidence they still
+ have the power of producing, in order that we may come to a just
+ conclusion as to a subject upon which, by their act, at least, as much
+ as by any other people's act, we are compelled to consider it our duty
+ to make up our deliberate opinion,--deliberate and decisive. Woe be
+ to those who provoke this curiosity, and will not allay it! Woe be to
+ them! say I. Woe to them! says the world.'
+
+When Lady Byron published her statement, which certainly seemed called
+for by this language, Christopher North blamed her for doing it, and
+then again said that she ought to go on and tell the whole story. If
+she was thus adjured to speak, blamed for speaking, and adjured to
+speak further, all in one breath, by public prints, there is reason to
+think that there could not have come less solicitation from private
+sources,--from friends who had access to her at all hours, whom she
+loved, by whom she was beloved, and to whom her refusal to explain
+might seem a breach of friendship. Yet there is no evidence on record,
+that we have seen, that she ever had other confidant than her legal
+counsel, till after all the actors in the events were in their graves,
+and the daughter, for whose sake largely the secret was guarded, had
+followed them.
+
+Now, does anyone claim, that, because a woman has sacrificed for twenty
+years all cravings for human sympathy, and all possibility of perfectly
+free and unconstrained intercourse with her friends, that she is
+obliged to go on bearing this same lonely burden to the end of her days?
+
+Let anyone imagine the frightful constraint and solitude implied in
+this sentence. Let anyone, too, think of its painful complications in
+life. The roots of a falsehood are far-reaching. Conduct that can only
+be explained by criminating another must often seem unreasonable and
+unaccountable; and the most truthful person, who feels bound to keep
+silence regarding a radical lie of another, must often be placed in
+positions most trying to conscientiousness. The great merit of 'Caleb
+Williams' as a novel consists in its philosophical analysis of the
+utter helplessness of an innocent person who agrees to keep the secret
+of a guilty one. One sees there how that necessity of silence produces
+all the effect of falsehood on his part, and deprives him of the
+confidence and sympathy of those with whom he would take refuge.
+
+For years, this unnatural life was forced on Lady Byron, involving her
+as in a network, even in her dearest family relations.
+
+That, when all the parties were dead, Lady Byron should allow herself
+the sympathy of a circle of intimate friends, is something so perfectly
+proper and natural, that we cannot but wonder that her conduct in this
+respect has ever been called in question. If it was her right to have
+had a public _exposé_ in 1816, it was certainly her right to show to
+her own intimate circle the secret of her life when all the principal
+actors were passed from earth.
+
+The 'Quarterly' speaks as if, by thus waiting, she deprived Lord Byron
+of the testimony of living witnesses. But there were as many witnesses
+and partisans dead on her side as on his. Lady Milbanke and Sir Ralph,
+Sir Samuel Romilly and Lady Anne Barnard were as much dead as Hobhouse,
+Moore, and others of Byron's partisans.
+
+The 'Quarterly' speaks of Lady Byron as 'running round, and repeating
+her story to people mostly below her own rank in life.'
+
+To those who know the personal dignity of Lady Byron's manners,
+represented and dwelt on by her husband in his conversations with Lady
+Blessington, this coarse and vulgar attack only proves the poverty of a
+cause which can defend itself by no better weapons.
+
+Lord Byron speaks of his wife as 'highly cultivated;' as having 'a
+degree of self-control I never saw equalled.'
+
+ 'I am certain,' he says, 'that Lady Byron's first idea is what is due
+ to herself: I mean that it is the undeviating rule of her conduct....
+ Now, my besetting sin is a want of that self-respect which she
+ has in excess.... But, though I accuse Lady Byron of an excess of
+ self-respect, I must, in candour, admit, that, if any person ever had
+ excuse for an extraordinary portion of it, she has; as, in all her
+ thoughts, words, and actions, she is the most decorous woman that ever
+ existed.'
+
+This is the kind of woman who has lately been accused in the public
+prints as a babbler of secrets and a gossip in regard to her private
+difficulties with children, grandchildren, and servants. It is a fair
+specimen of the justice that has generally been meted out to Lady Byron.
+
+In 1836, she was accused of having made a confidant of Campbell, on
+the strength of having written him a note _declining_ to give him any
+information, or answer any questions. In July, 1869, she was denounced
+by 'Blackwood' as a Madame Brinvilliers for keeping such perfect
+silence on the matter of her husband's character; and in the last
+'Quarterly' she is spoken of as a gossip 'running round, and repeating
+her story to people below her in rank.'
+
+While we are upon this subject, we have a suggestion to make. John
+Stuart Mill says that utter self-abnegation has been preached to women
+as a peculiarly feminine virtue. It is true; but there is a moral limit
+to the value of self-abnegation.
+
+It is a fair question for the moralist, whether it is right and proper
+wholly to ignore one's personal claims to justice. The teachings of
+the Saviour give us warrant for submitting to personal injuries; but
+both the Saviour and St. Paul manifested bravery in denying false
+accusations, and asserting innocence.
+
+Lady Byron was falsely accused of having ruined _the_ man of his
+generation, and caused all his vices and crimes, and all their evil
+effects on society. She submitted to the accusation for a certain
+number of years for reasons which commended themselves to her
+conscience; but when all the personal considerations were removed, and
+she was about passing from life, it was right, it was just, it was
+strictly in accordance with the philosophical and ethical character
+of her mind, and with her habit of considering all things in their
+widest relations to the good of mankind, that she should give serious
+attention and consideration to the last duty which she might owe to
+abstract truth and justice in her generation.
+
+In her letter on the religious state of England, we find her advocating
+an absolute frankness in all religious parties. She would have all
+openly confess those doubts, which, from the best of motives, are
+usually suppressed; and believed, that, as a result of such perfect
+truthfulness, a wider love would prevail among Christians. This shows
+the strength of her conviction of the power and the importance of
+absolute truth; and shows, therefore, that her doubts and conscientious
+inquiries respecting her duty on this subject are exactly what might
+have been expected from a person of her character and principles.
+
+Having thus shown that Lady Byron's testimony is the testimony of a
+woman of strong and sound mind, that it was not given from malice nor
+ill-will, that it was given at a proper time and in a proper manner,
+and for a purpose in accordance with the most elevated moral views, and
+that it is coincident with all the established facts of this history,
+and furnishes a perfect solution of every mystery of the case, we think
+we shall carry the reader with us in saying that it is to be received
+as absolute truth.
+
+This conviction we arrive at while as yet we are deprived of the
+statement prepared by Lady Byron, and the proof by which she expected
+to sustain it; both which, as we understand, are now in the hands of
+her trustees.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+PHYSIOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.
+
+
+The credibility of the accusation of the unnatural crime charged to
+Lord Byron is greater than if charged to most men. He was born of
+parents both of whom were remarkable for perfectly ungoverned passions.
+There appears to be historical evidence that he was speaking literal
+truth when he says to Medwin of his father,--
+
+ 'He would have made a bad hero for Hannah More. He ran out three
+ fortunes, and married or ran away with three women.... He seemed born
+ for his own ruin and that of the other sex. He began by seducing
+ Lady Carmarthen, and spent her four thousand pounds; and, not
+ content with one adventure of this kind, afterwards eloped with Miss
+ Gordon.'--_Medwin's Conversations_, p. 31.
+
+Lady Carmarthen here spoken of was the mother of Mrs. Leigh. Miss
+Gordon became Lord Byron's mother.
+
+By his own account, and that of Moore, she was a passionate,
+ungoverned, though affectionate woman. Lord Byron says to Medwin,--
+
+ 'I lost my father when I was only six years of age. My mother, when
+ she was in a passion with me (and I gave her cause enough), used to
+ say, "O you little dog! you are a Byron all over, you are as bad as
+ your father!"'--_Ibid._, p. 31.
+
+By all the accounts of his childhood and early youth, it is made
+apparent that ancestral causes had sent him into the world with a most
+perilous and exceptional sensitiveness of brain and nervous system,
+which it would have required the most judicious course of education to
+direct safely and happily.
+
+Lord Byron often speaks as if he deemed himself subject to tendencies
+which might terminate in insanity. The idea is so often mentioned
+and dwelt upon in his letters, journals, and conversations, that we
+cannot but ascribe it to some very peculiar experience, and not to mere
+affectation.
+
+But, in the history of his early childhood and youth, we see no
+evidence of any original malformation of nature. We see only evidence
+of one of those organisations, full of hope and full of peril,
+which adverse influences might easily drive to insanity, but wise
+physiological training and judicious moral culture might have guided
+to the most splendid results. But of these he had neither. He was
+alternately the pet and victim of his mother's tumultuous nature,
+and equally injured both by her love and her anger. A Scotch maid of
+religious character gave him early serious impressions of religion, and
+thus added the element of an awakened conscience to the conflicting
+ones of his character.
+
+Education, in the proper sense of the word, did not exist in England in
+those days. Physiological considerations of the influence of the body
+on the soul, of the power of brain and nerve over moral development,
+had then not even entered the general thought of society. The school
+and college education literally taught him nothing but the ancient
+classics, of whose power in exciting and developing the animal passions
+Byron often speaks.
+
+The morality of the times is strikingly exemplified even in its
+literary criticism.
+
+For example: One of Byron's poems, written while a schoolboy at Harrow,
+is addressed to 'My Son.' Mr. Moore, and the annotator of the standard
+edition of Byron's poems, gravely give the public their speculations on
+the point, whether Lord Byron first became a father while a schoolboy
+at Harrow; and go into particulars in relation to a certain infant, the
+claim to which lay between Lord Byron and another schoolfellow. It is
+not the nature of the event itself, so much as the cool, unembarrassed
+manner in which it is discussed, that gives the impression of the
+state of public morals. There is no intimation of anything unusual, or
+discreditable to the school, in the event, and no apparent suspicion
+that it will be regarded as a serious imputation on Lord Byron's
+character.
+
+Modern physiological developments would lead any person versed in
+the study of the reciprocal influence of physical and moral laws to
+anticipate the most serious danger to such an organisation as Lord
+Byron's, from a precocious development of the passions. Alcoholic and
+narcotic stimulants, in the case of such a person, would be regarded as
+little less than suicidal, and an early course of combined drinking
+and licentiousness as tending directly to establish those unsound
+conditions which lead towards moral insanity. Yet not only Lord Byron's
+testimony, but every probability from the licence of society, goes to
+show that this was exactly what did take place.
+
+Neither restrained by education, nor warned by any correct
+physiological knowledge, nor held in check by any public sentiment, he
+drifted directly upon the fatal rock.
+
+Here we give Mr. Moore full credit for all his abatements in regard
+to Lord Byron's excesses in his early days. Moore makes the point
+very strongly that he was not, _de facto_, even so bad as many of his
+associates; and we agree with him. Byron's physical organisation was
+originally as fine and sensitive as that of the most delicate woman.
+He possessed the faculty of moral ideality in a high degree; and
+he had not, in the earlier part of his life, an attraction towards
+mere brutal vice. His physical sensitiveness was so remarkable that
+he says of himself, 'A dose of salts has the effect of a temporary
+inebriation, like light champagne, upon me.' Yet this exceptionally
+delicately-organised boy and youth was in a circle where not to conform
+to the coarse drinking-customs of his day was to incur censure and
+ridicule. That he early acquired the power of bearing large quantities
+of liquor is manifested by the record in his Journal, that, on the day
+when he read the severe 'Edinburgh' article upon his schoolboy poems,
+he drank three bottles of claret at a sitting.
+
+Yet Byron was so far superior to his times, that some vague impulses to
+physiological prudence seem to have suggested themselves to him, and
+been acted upon with great vigour. He never could have lived so long
+as he did, under the exhaustive process of every kind of excess, if he
+had not re-enforced his physical nature by an assiduous care of his
+muscular system. He took boxing-lessons, and distinguished himself in
+all athletic exercises.
+
+He also had periods in which he seemed to try vaguely to retrieve
+himself from dissipation, and to acquire self-mastery by what he called
+temperance.
+
+But, ignorant and excessive in all his movements, his very efforts
+at temperance were intemperate. From violent excesses in eating
+and drinking, he would pass to no less unnatural periods of utter
+abstinence. Thus the very conservative power which Nature has of
+adapting herself to any _settled_ course was lost. The extreme
+sensitiveness produced by long periods of utter abstinence made the
+succeeding debauch more maddening and fatal. He was like a fine musical
+instrument, whose strings were every day alternating between extreme
+tension and perfect laxity. We have in his Journal many passages, of
+which the following is a specimen:--
+
+ 'I have dined regularly to-day, for the first time since Sunday last;
+ this being Sabbath too,--all the rest, tea and dry biscuits, six _per
+ diem_. I wish to God I had not dined, now! It kills me with heaviness,
+ stupor, and horrible dreams; and yet it was but a pint of bucellas,
+ and fish. Meat I never touch, nor much vegetable diet. I wish I were
+ in the country, to take exercise, instead of being obliged to _cool_
+ by abstinence, in lieu of it. I should not so much mind a little
+ accession of flesh: my bones can well bear it. But the worst is, the
+ Devil always came with it, till I starved him out; and I will _not_
+ be the slave of _any_ appetite. If I do err, it shall be my heart, at
+ least, that heralds the way. O my head! how it aches! The horrors of
+ digestion! I wonder how Bonaparte's dinner agrees with him.'--_Moore's
+ Life_, vol. ii. p. 264.
+
+From all the contemporary history and literature of the times,
+therefore, we have reason to believe that Lord Byron spoke the exact
+truth when he said to Medwin,--
+
+ 'My own master at an age when I most required a guide, left to the
+ dominion of my passions when they were the strongest, with a fortune
+ anticipated before I came into possession of it, and a constitution
+ impaired by early excesses, I commenced my travels, in 1809,
+ with a joyless indifference to the world and all that was before
+ me.'--_Medwin's Conversations_, p. 42.
+
+Utter prostration of the whole physical man from intemperate excess,
+the deadness to temptation which comes from utter exhaustion, was his
+condition, according to himself and Moore, when he first left England,
+at twenty-one years of age.
+
+In considering his subsequent history, we are to take into account
+that it was upon the brain and nerve-power, thus exhausted by early
+excess, that the draughts of sudden and rapid literary composition
+began to be made. There was something unnatural and unhealthy in the
+rapidity, clearness, and vigour with which his various works followed
+each other. Subsequently to the first two cantos of 'Childe Harold,'
+'The Bride of Abydos,' 'The Corsair,' 'The Giaour,' 'Lara,' 'Parisina,'
+and 'The Siege of Corinth,' all followed close upon each other, in a
+space of less than three years, and those the three most critical years
+of his life. 'The Bride of Abydos' came out in the autumn of 1813,
+and was written in a week; and 'The Corsair' was composed in thirteen
+days. A few months more than a year before his marriage, and the brief
+space of his married life, was the period in which all this literary
+labour was performed, while yet he was running the wild career of
+intrigue and fashionable folly. He speaks of 'Lara' as being tossed
+off in the intervals between masquerades and balls, &c. It is with the
+physical results of such unnatural efforts that we have now chiefly
+to do. Every physiologist would say that the demands of such poems on
+a healthy brain, in that given space, must have been exhausting; but
+when we consider that they were cheques drawn on a bank broken by early
+extravagance, and that the subject was prodigally spending vital forces
+in every other direction at the same time, one can scarcely estimate
+the physiological madness of such a course as Lord Byron's.
+
+It is evident from his Journal, and Moore's account, that any amount
+of physical force which was for the time restored by his first foreign
+travel was recklessly spent in this period, when he threw himself with
+a mad recklessness into London society in the time just preceding
+his marriage. The revelations made in Moore's Memoir of this period
+are sad enough: those to Medwin are so appalling as to the state of
+contemporary society in England, as to require, at least, the benefit
+of the doubt for which Lord Byron's habitual carelessness of truth gave
+scope. His adventures with ladies of the highest rank in England are
+there paraded with a freedom of detail that respect for womanhood must
+lead every woman to question. The only thing that is unquestionable
+is, that Lord Byron made these assertions to Medwin, not as remorseful
+confessions, but as relations of his _bonnes fortunes_, and that Medwin
+published them in the very face of the society to which they related.
+
+When Lord Byron says, 'I have seen a great deal of Italian society, and
+swum in a gondola; but nothing could equal the profligacy of high life
+in England ... when I knew it,' he makes certainly strong assertions,
+if we remember what Mr. Moore reveals of the harem kept in Venice.
+
+But when Lord Byron intimates that three married women in his own
+rank in life, who had once held illicit relations with him, made
+wedding-visits to his wife at one time, we must hope that he drew on
+his active imagination, as he often did, in his statements in regard to
+women.
+
+When he relates at large his amour with Lord Melbourne's wife, and
+represents her as pursuing him with an insane passion, to which he with
+difficulty responded; and when he says that she tracked a rival lady
+to his lodgings, and came into them herself, disguised as a carman--one
+_hopes_ that he exaggerates. And what are we to make of passages like
+this?--
+
+ 'There was a lady at that time, double my own age, the mother of
+ several children who were perfect angels, with whom I formed a
+ _liaison_ that continued without interruption for eight months. She
+ told me she was never in love till she was thirty, and I thought
+ myself so with her when she was forty. I never felt a stronger
+ passion, which she returned with equal ardour....
+
+ 'Strange as it may seem, she gained, as all women do, an influence
+ over me so strong that I had great difficulty in breaking with her.'
+
+Unfortunately, these statements, though probably exaggerated, are, for
+substance, borne out in the history of the times. With every possible
+abatement for exaggeration in these statements, there remains still
+undoubted evidence from other sources that Lord Byron exercised a most
+peculiar and fatal power over the moral sense of the women with whom he
+was brought in relation; and that love for him, in many women, became
+a sort of insanity, depriving them of the just use of their faculties.
+All this makes his fatal history both possible and probable.
+
+Even the article in 'Blackwood,' written in 1825 for the express
+purpose of vindicating his character, admits that his name had been
+coupled with those of three, four, or more women of rank, whom it
+speaks of as 'licentious, unprincipled, characterless women.'
+
+That such a course, in connection with alternate extremes of excess
+and abstinence in eating and drinking, and the immense draughts on
+the brain-power of rapid and brilliant composition, should have ended
+in that abnormal state in which cravings for unnatural vice give
+indications of approaching brain-disease, seems only too probable.
+
+This symptom of exhausted vitality becomes often a frequent type in
+periods of very corrupt society. The dregs of the old Greek and Roman
+civilisation were foul with it; and the apostle speaks of the turning
+of the use of the natural into that which is against nature, as the
+last step in abandonment.
+
+The very literature of such periods marks their want of physical and
+moral soundness. Having lost all sense of what is simple and natural
+and pure, the mind delights to dwell on horrible ideas, which give a
+shuddering sense of guilt and crime. All the writings of this fatal
+period of Lord Byron's life are more or less intense histories of
+unrepentant guilt and remorse or of unnatural crime. A recent writer
+in 'Temple Bar' brings to light the fact, that 'The Bride of Abydos,'
+the first of the brilliant and rapid series of poems which began in
+the period immediately preceding his marriage, was, in its first
+composition, an intense story of love between a brother and sister in
+a Turkish harem; that Lord Byron declared, in a letter to Galt, that
+it was drawn from _real life_; that, in compliance with the prejudices
+of the age, he altered the relationship to that of cousins before
+publication.
+
+This same writer goes on to show, by a series of extracts from Lord
+Byron's published letters and journals, that his mind about this
+time was in a fearfully unnatural state, and suffering singular and
+inexplicable agonies of remorse; that, though he was accustomed
+fearlessly to confide to his friends immoralities which would be looked
+upon as damning, there was now a secret to which he could not help
+alluding in his letters, but which he told Moore he could not tell now,
+but 'some day or other when we are _veterans_.' He speaks of his heart
+as eating itself out; of a mysterious _person_, whom he says, 'God
+knows I love too well, and the Devil probably too.' He wrote a song,
+and sent it to Moore, addressed to a partner in some awful guilt, whose
+very name he dares not mention, because
+
+ 'There is grief in the sound, there is guilt in the fame.'
+
+He speaks of struggles of remorse, of efforts at repentance, and
+returns to guilt, with a sort of horror very different from the
+well-pleased air with which he relates to Medwin his common intrigues
+and adulteries. He speaks of himself generally as oppressed by a
+frightful, unnatural gloom and horror, and, when occasionally happy,
+'not in a way that _can_ or _ought_ to last.'
+
+'The Giaour,' 'The Corsair,' 'Lara,' 'Parisina,' 'The Siege of
+Corinth,' and 'Manfred,' all written or conceived about this period
+of his life, give one picture of a desperate, despairing, unrepentant
+soul, whom suffering maddens, but cannot reclaim.
+
+In all these he paints only the one woman, of concentrated,
+unconsidering passion, ready to sacrifice heaven and defy hell for a
+guilty man, beloved in spite of religion or reason. In this unnatural
+literature, the stimulus of crime is represented as intensifying love.
+Medora, Gulnare, the Page in 'Lara,' Parisina, and the lost sister
+of Manfred, love the more intensely because the object of the love
+is a criminal, out-lawed by God and man. The next step beyond this
+is--_madness_.
+
+The work of Dr. Forbes Winslow on 'Obscure Diseases of the Brain and
+Nerves'[49] contains a passage so very descriptive of the case of
+Lord Byron, that it might seem to have been written for it. The sixth
+chapter of his work, on 'Anomalous and Masked Affections of the Mind,'
+contains, in our view, the only clue that can unravel the sad tragedy
+of Byron's life. He says, p. 87:--
+
+[Footnote 49: The article in question is worth a careful reading. Its
+industry and accuracy in amassing evidence are worthy attention.]
+
+ 'These forms of unrecognised mental disorder are not always
+ accompanied by any well-marked disturbance of the bodily health
+ requiring medical attention, or any obvious departure from a normal
+ state of thought and conduct such as to justify legal interference;
+ neither do these affections always incapacitate the party from
+ engaging in the ordinary business of life.... The change may have
+ progressed insidiously and stealthily, having slowly and almost
+ imperceptibly induced important molecular modifications in the
+ delicate vesicular neurine of the brain, ultimately resulting in some
+ aberration of the ideas, alteration of the affections, or perversion
+ of the propensities or instincts....
+
+ 'Mental disorder of a dangerous character has been known for years
+ to be stealthily advancing, without exciting the slightest notion of
+ its presence, until some sad and terrible catastrophe, homicide, or
+ suicide, has painfully awakened attention to its existence. Persons
+ suffering from latent insanity often affect singularity of dress,
+ gait, conversation, and phraseology. The most trifling circumstances
+ stimulate their excitability. They are martyrs to ungovernable
+ paroxysms of passion, are inflamed to a state of demoniacal fury
+ by the most insignificant of causes, and occasionally lose all
+ sense of delicacy of feeling, sentiment, refinement of manners and
+ conversation. Such manifestations of undetected mental disorder may be
+ seen associated with intellectual and moral qualities of the highest
+ order.'
+
+In another place, Dr. Winslow again adverts to this latter symptom,
+which was strikingly marked in the case of Lord Byron:--
+
+ 'All delicacy and decency of thought are occasionally banished from
+ the mind, so effectually does the principle of thought in these
+ attacks succumb to the animal instincts and passions....
+
+ 'Such cases will commonly be found associated with organic
+ predisposition to insanity or cerebral disease.... Modifications of
+ the malady are seen allied with genius. The biographies of Cowper,
+ Burns, Byron, Johnson, Pope, and Haydon establish that the most
+ exalted intellectual conditions do not escape unscathed.
+
+ 'In early childhood, this form of mental disturbance may, in many
+ cases, be detected. To its existence is often to be traced the
+ _motiveless_ crimes of the young.'
+
+No one can compare this passage of Dr. Forbes Winslow with the
+incidents we have already cited as occurring in that fatal period
+before the separation of Lord and Lady Byron, and not feel that the
+hapless young wife was indeed struggling with those inflexible natural
+laws, which, at some stages of retribution, involve in their awful
+sweep the guilty with the innocent. She longed to save; but he was gone
+past redemption. Alcoholic stimulants and licentious excesses, without
+doubt, had produced those unseen changes in the brain, of which Dr.
+Forbes Winslow speaks; and the results were terrible in proportion to
+the peculiar fineness and delicacy of the organism deranged.
+
+Alas! the history of Lady Byron is the history of too many women in
+every rank of life who are called, in agonies of perplexity and fear,
+to watch that gradual process by which physical excesses change the
+organism of the brain, till slow, creeping, moral insanity comes on.
+The woman who is the helpless victim of cruelties which only unnatural
+states of the brain could invent, who is heart-sick to-day and dreads
+to-morrow,--looks in hopeless horror on the fatal process by which a
+lover and a protector changes under her eyes, from day to day, to a
+brute and a fiend.
+
+Lady Byron's married life--alas! it is lived over in many a cottage and
+tenement-house, with no understanding on either side of the cause of
+the woful misery.
+
+Dr. Winslow truly says, 'The science of these brain-affections is yet
+in its infancy in England.' At that time, it had not even begun to be.
+Madness was a fixed point; and the inquiries into it had no nicety.
+Its treatment, if established, had no redeeming power. Insanity simply
+locked a man up as a dangerous being; and the very suggestion of it,
+therefore, was resented as an injury.
+
+A most peculiar and affecting feature of that form of brain disease
+which hurries its victim, as by an overpowering mania, into crime, is,
+that often the moral faculties and the affections remain to a degree
+unimpaired, and protest with all their strength against the outrage.
+Hence come conflicts and agonies of remorse proportioned to the
+strength of the moral nature. Byron, more than any other one writer,
+may be called the poet of remorse. His passionate pictures of this
+feeling seem to give new power to the English language:--
+
+  'There is a war, a chaos of the mind,
+  When all its elements convulsed--combined,
+  Lie dark and jarring with perturbèd force,
+  And gnashing with impenitent remorse,
+  That juggling fiend, who never spake before,
+  But cries, "I warned thee!" when the deed is o'er.'
+
+It was this remorse that formed the only redeeming feature of the case.
+Its eloquence, its agonies, won from all hearts the interest that we
+give to a powerful nature in a state of danger and ruin; and it may
+be hoped that this feeling, which tempers the stern justice of human
+judgments, may prove only a faint image of the wider charity of Him
+whose thoughts are as far above ours as the heaven is above the earth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+HOW COULD SHE LOVE HIM?
+
+
+It has seemed, to some, wholly inconsistent, that Lady Byron, if this
+story were true, could retain any kindly feeling for Lord Byron, or
+any tenderness for his memory; that the profession implied a certain
+hypocrisy: but, in this sad review, we may see how the woman who once
+had loved him, might, in spite of every wrong he had heaped upon her,
+still have looked on this awful wreck and ruin chiefly with pity. While
+she stood afar, and refused to justify or join in the polluted idolatry
+which defended his vices, there is evidence in her writings that her
+mind often went back mournfully, as a mother's would, to the early days
+when he might have been saved.
+
+One of her letters in Robinson's Memoirs, in regard to his religious
+opinions, shows with what intense earnestness she dwelt upon the
+unhappy influences of his childhood and youth, and those early
+theologies which led him to regard himself as one of the reprobate. She
+says,--
+
+ 'Not merely from casual expressions, but from the whole tenor of Lord
+ Byron's feelings, I could not but conclude that he was a believer
+ in the inspiration of the Bible, and had the gloomiest Calvinistic
+ tenets. To that unhappy view of the relation of the creature to the
+ Creator I have always ascribed the misery of his life.
+
+ 'It is enough for me to know that he who thinks his transgression
+ beyond forgiveness ... has righteousness beyond that of the
+ self-satisfied sinner. It is impossible for me to doubt, that, could
+ he once have been assured of pardon, his living faith in moral duty,
+ and love of virtue ("I love the virtues that I cannot claim"), would
+ have conquered every temptation. Judge, then, how I must hate the
+ creed that made him see God as an Avenger, and not as a Father! My own
+ impressions were just the reverse, but could have but little weight;
+ and it was in vain to seek to turn his thoughts from that fixed idea
+ with which he connected his personal peculiarity as a stamp. Instead
+ of being made happier by any apparent good, he felt convinced that
+ every blessing would be turned into a curse to him.... "The worst of
+ it is, I do believe," he said. _I_, like all connected with him, was
+ broken against the rock of predestination. I may be pardoned for my
+ frequent reference to the sentiment (expressed by him), that I was
+ only sent to show him the happiness he was forbidden to enjoy.'
+
+In this letter we have the heart, not of the wife, but of the
+mother,--the love that searches everywhere for extenuations of the
+guilt it is forced to confess.
+
+That Lady Byron was not alone in ascribing such results to the
+doctrines of Calvinism, in certain cases, appears from the language of
+the Thirty-nine Articles, which says:--
+
+ 'As the godly consideration of predestination, and our election in
+ Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly
+ persons, and such as feel in themselves the workings of the spirit of
+ Christ; ... so, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the spirit of
+ Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's
+ predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the Devil doth
+ thrust them either into desperation, or into recklessness of most
+ unclean living,--no less perilous than desperation.'
+
+Lord Byron's life is an exact commentary on these words, which passed
+under the revision of Calvin himself.
+
+The whole tone of this letter shows not only that Lady Byron never lost
+her deep interest in her husband, but that it was by this experience
+that all her religious ideas were modified. There is another of
+these letters in which she thus speaks of her husband's writings and
+character:--
+
+ 'The author of the article on "Goethe" appears to me to have the
+ mind which could dispel the illusion about _another_ poet, without
+ depreciating his claims ... to the truest inspiration.
+
+ 'Who has sought to distinguish between the holy and the unholy in that
+ spirit? to prove, by the very degradation of the one, how high the
+ other was. A character is never done justice to by extenuating its
+ faults: so I do not agree to _nisi bonum_. It is kinder to read the
+ blotted page.'
+
+These letters show that Lady Byron's idea was that, even were the
+whole mournful truth about Lord Byron fully told, there was still a
+foundation left for pity and mercy. She seems to have remembered,
+that if his sins were peculiar, so also were his temptations; and to
+have schooled herself for years to gather up, and set in order in her
+memory, all that yet remained precious in this great ruin. Probably no
+English writer that ever has made the attempt could have done this more
+perfectly. Though Lady Byron was not a poet _par excellence_, yet she
+belonged to an order of souls fully equal to Lord Byron. Hers was more
+the analytical mind of the philosopher than the creative mind of the
+poet; and it was, for that reason, the one mind in our day capable of
+estimating him fully both with justice and mercy. No person in England
+had a more intense sensibility to genius, in its loftier acceptation,
+than Lady Byron; and none more completely sympathised with what was
+pure and exalted in her husband's writings.
+
+There is this peculiarity in Lord Byron, that the pure and the impure
+in his poetry often run side by side without mixing,--as one may see
+at Geneva the muddy stream of the Arve and the blue waters of the
+Rhone flowing together unmingled. What, for example, can be nobler,
+and in a higher and tenderer moral strain than his lines on the dying
+gladiator, in 'Childe Harold'? What is more like the vigour of the old
+Hebrew Scriptures than his thunderstorm in the Alps? What can more
+perfectly express moral ideality of the highest kind than the exquisite
+descriptions of Aurora Raby,--pure and high in thought and language,
+occurring, as they do, in a work full of the most utter vileness?
+
+Lady Byron's hopes for her husband fastened themselves on all the noble
+fragments yet remaining in that shattered temple of his mind which lay
+blackened and thunder-riven; and she looked forward to a sphere beyond
+this earth, where infinite mercy should bring all again to symmetry and
+order. If the strict theologian must regret this as an undue latitude
+of charity, let it at least he remembered that it was a charity which
+sprang from a Christian virtue, and which she extended to every human
+being, however lost, however low. In her view, the mercy which took
+_him_ was mercy that could restore all.
+
+In my recollections of the interview with Lady Byron, when this whole
+history was presented, I can remember that it was with a softened and
+saddened feeling that I contemplated the story, as one looks on some
+awful, inexplicable ruin.
+
+The last letter which I addressed to Lady Byron upon this subject will
+show that such was the impression of the whole interview. It was in
+reply to the one written on the death of my son:--
+
+  'Jan. 30, 1858.
+
+ 'MY DEAR FRIEND,--I _did_ long to hear from you at a time
+ when few knew how to speak, because I knew that _you_ had known
+ everything that sorrow can teach,--you, whose whole life has been a
+ crucifixion, a long ordeal.
+
+ 'But I believe that the Lamb, who stands for ever "in the midst of the
+ throne, as it had been slain," has everywhere His followers,--those
+ who seem sent into the world, as He was, to suffer for the redemption
+ of others; and, like Him, they must look to the joy set before
+ them,--of redeeming others.
+
+ 'I often think that God called you to this beautiful and terrible
+ ministry when He suffered you to link your destiny with one so
+ strangely gifted and so fearfully tempted. Perhaps the reward that is
+ to meet you when you enter within the veil where you must so soon pass
+ will be to see _that_ spirit, once chained and defiled, set free and
+ purified; and to know that to you it has been given, by your life of
+ love and faith, to accomplish this glorious change.
+
+ 'I think increasingly on the subject on which you conversed with me
+ once,--the future state of retribution. It is evident to me that the
+ spirit of Christianity has produced in the human spirit a tenderness
+ of love which wholly revolts from the old doctrine on this subject;
+ and I observe, that, the more Christ-like anyone becomes, the more
+ difficult it seems for them to accept it as hitherto presented. And
+ yet, on the contrary, it was _Christ_ who said, "Fear Him that is
+ able to destroy both soul and body in hell;" and the most appalling
+ language is that of Christ himself.
+
+ 'Certain ideas, once prevalent, certainly must be thrown off. An
+ endless _infliction_ for past sins was once the doctrine: _that_ we
+ now generally reject. The doctrine now generally taught is, that an
+ eternal persistence in evil necessitates everlasting suffering, since
+ evil induces misery by the eternal nature of things; and this, I fear,
+ is inferable from the analogies of Nature, and confirmed by the whole
+ implication of the Bible.
+
+ 'What attention have you given to this subject? and is there any fair
+ way of disposing of the current of assertion, and the still deeper
+ _under_-current of implication, on this subject, without admitting
+ one which loosens all faith in revelation, and throws us on pure
+ naturalism? But of one thing I always feel sure: probation does not
+ end with this present life; and the number of the saved may therefore
+ be infinitely greater than the world's history leads us to suppose.
+
+ 'I think the Bible implies a great crisis, a struggle, an agony, in
+ which God and Christ and all the good are engaged in redeeming from
+ sin; and we are not to suppose that the little portion that is done
+ for souls as they pass between the two doors of birth and death is all.
+
+ 'The Bible is certainly silent there. The primitive Church believed in
+ the mercies of an intermediate state; and it was only the abuse of it
+ by Romanism that drove the Church into its present position, which,
+ I think, is wholly indefensible, and wholly irreconcilable with the
+ spirit of Christ. For if it were the case, that probation in all cases
+ begins and ends here, God's example would surely be one that could not
+ be followed, and He would seem to be far less persevering than even
+ human beings in efforts to save.
+
+ 'Nothing is plainer than that it would be wrong to give up any mind to
+ eternal sin till every possible thing had been done for its recovery;
+ and that is so clearly _not_ the case here, that I can see that, with
+ thoughtful minds, this belief would cut the very roots of religious
+ faith in God: for there is a difference between facts that we do not
+ understand, and facts which we _do_ understand, and perceive to be
+ wholly irreconcilable with a certain character professed by God.
+
+ 'If God says He is love, and certain ways of explaining Scripture
+ make Him _less_ loving and patient than man, then we make Scripture
+ contradict itself. Now, as no passage of Scripture limits probation to
+ this life, and as one passage in Peter certainly unequivocally asserts
+ that Christ preached to the spirits in prison while His body lay in
+ the grave, I am clear upon this point.
+
+ 'But it is also clear, that if there be those who persist in refusing
+ God's love, who choose to dash themselves for ever against the
+ inflexible laws of the universe, such souls must for ever suffer.
+
+ 'There may be souls who hate purity because it reveals their vileness;
+ who refuse God's love, and prefer eternal conflict with it. For such
+ there can be no peace. Even in this life, we see those whom the purest
+ self-devoting love only inflames to madness; and we have only to
+ suppose an eternal persistence in this to suppose eternal misery.
+
+ 'But on this subject we can only leave all reverently in the hands
+ of that Being whose almighty power is "declared chiefly in showing
+ mercy."'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+In leaving this subject, I have an appeal to make to the men, and more
+especially to the women, who have been my readers.
+
+In justice to Lady Byron, it must be remembered that this publication
+of her story is not her act, but mine. I trust you have already
+conceded, that, in so severe and peculiar a trial, she had a right to
+be understood fully by her immediate circle of friends, and to seek
+of them counsel in view of the moral questions to which such very
+exceptional circumstances must have given rise. Her communication to me
+was not an address to the public: it was a statement of the case for
+advice. True, by leaving the whole, unguarded by pledge or promise, it
+left discretionary power with me to use it if needful.
+
+You, my sisters, are to judge whether the accusation laid against Lady
+Byron by the 'Blackwood,' in 1869, was not of so barbarous a nature as
+to justify my producing the truth I held in my hands in reply.
+
+The 'Blackwood' claimed a right to re-open the subject because it was
+_not_ a private but a public matter. It claimed that Lord Byron's
+unfortunate marriage might have changed not only his own destiny, but
+that of all England. It suggested, that, but for this, instead of
+wearing out his life in vice, and corrupting society by impure poetry,
+he might, at this day, have been leading the counsels of the State, and
+helping the onward movements of the world. Then it directly charged
+Lady Byron with meanly forsaking her husband in a time of worldly
+misfortune; with fabricating a destructive accusation of crime against
+him, and confirming this accusation by years of persistent silence more
+guilty than open assertion.
+
+It has been alleged, that, even admitting that Lady Byron's story were
+true, it never ought to have been told.
+
+Is it true, then, that a woman has not the same right to individual
+justice that a man has? If the cases were reversed, would it have been
+thought just that Lord Byron should go down in history loaded with
+accusations of crime because he could be only vindicated by exposing
+the crime of his wife?
+
+It has been said that the crime charged on Lady Byron was comparatively
+unimportant, and the one against Lord Byron was deadly.
+
+But the 'Blackwood,' in opening the controversy, called Lady Byron by
+the name of an unnatural female criminal, whose singular atrocities
+alone entitle her to infamous notoriety; and the crime charged upon her
+was sufficient to warrant the comparison.
+
+Both crimes are foul, unnatural, horrible; and there is no middle
+ground between the admission of the one or the other.
+
+You must either conclude that a woman, all whose other works, words,
+and deeds were generous, just, and gentle, committed this one monstrous
+exceptional crime, without a motive, and against all the analogies of
+her character, and all the analogies of her treatment of others; or you
+must suppose that a man known by all testimony to have been boundlessly
+licentious, who took the very course which, by every physiological law,
+would have led to unnatural results, did, at last, commit an unnatural
+crime.
+
+The question, whether I did right, when Lady Byron was thus held up as
+an abandoned criminal by the 'Blackwood,' to interpose my knowledge
+of the real truth in her defence, is a serious one; but it is one for
+which I must account to God alone, and in which, without any contempt
+of the opinions of my fellow-creatures, I must say, that it is a small
+thing to be judged of man's judgment.
+
+I had in the case a responsibility very different from that of many
+others. I had been consulted in relation to the publication of this
+story by Lady Byron, at a time when she had it in her power to have
+exhibited it with all its proofs, and commanded an instant conviction.
+I have reason to think that my advice had some weight in suppressing
+that disclosure. I gave that advice under the impression that the Byron
+controversy was a thing for ever passed, and never likely to return.
+
+It had never occurred to me, that, nine years after Lady Byron's death,
+a standard English periodical would declare itself free to re-open this
+controversy, when all the generation who were her witnesses had passed
+from earth; and that it would re-open it in the most savage form of
+accusation, and with the indorsement and commendation of a hook of the
+vilest slanders, edited by Lord Byron's mistress.
+
+Let the reader mark the retributions of justice. The accusations of the
+'Blackwood,' in 1869, were simply an intensified form of those first
+concocted by Lord Byron in his 'Clytemnestra' poem of 1816. He forged
+that weapon, and bequeathed it to his party. The 'Blackwood' took it
+up, gave it a sharper edge, and drove it to the heart of Lady Byron's
+fame. The result has been the disclosure of this history. It is,
+then, Lord Byron himself, who, by his network of wiles, his ceaseless
+persecutions of his wife, his efforts to extend his partisanship beyond
+the grave, has brought on this tumultuous exposure. He, and he alone,
+is the cause of this revelation.
+
+And now I have one word to say to those in England who, with all the
+facts and documents in their hands which could at once have cleared
+Lady Byron's fame, allowed the barbarous assault of the 'Blackwood'
+to go over the civilised world without a reply. I speak to those who,
+knowing that I am speaking the truth, stand silent; to those who have
+now the ability to produce the facts and documents by which this cause
+might be instantly settled, and who do not produce them.
+
+I do not judge them; but I remind them that a day is coming when they
+and I must stand side by side at the great judgment-seat,--I to give an
+account for my speaking, they for their silence.
+
+In that day, all earthly considerations will have vanished like morning
+mists, and truth or falsehood, justice or injustice, will be the only
+realities.
+
+In that day, God, who will judge the secrets of all men, will judge
+between this man and this woman. Then, if never before, the full truth
+shall be told both of the depraved and dissolute man who made it his
+life's object to defame the innocent, and the silent, the self-denying
+woman who made it her life's object to give space for repentance to the
+guilty.
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+MISCELLANEOUS DOCUMENTS.
+
+THE TRUE STORY OF LADY BYRON'S LIFE,
+
+AS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 'THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.'
+
+
+The reading world of America has lately been presented with a book
+which is said to sell rapidly, and which appears to meet with universal
+favour.
+
+The subject of the book may be thus briefly stated: The mistress of
+Lord Byron comes before the world for the sake of vindicating his fame
+from slanders and aspersions cast on him by his wife. The story of the
+mistress _versus_ wife may be summed up as follows:--
+
+Lord Byron, the hero of the story, is represented as a human being
+endowed with every natural charm, gift, and grace, who, by the one
+false step of an unsuitable marriage, wrecked his whole life. A
+narrow-minded, cold-hearted precisian, without sufficient intellect to
+comprehend his genius, or heart to feel for his temptations, formed
+with him one of those mere worldly marriages common in high life; and,
+finding that she could not reduce him to the mathematical proprieties
+and conventional rules of her own mode of life, suddenly, and without
+warning, abandoned him in the most cruel and inexplicable manner.
+
+It is alleged that she parted from him in apparent affection and
+good-humour, wrote him a playful, confiding letter upon the way, but,
+after reaching her father's house, suddenly, and without explanation,
+announced to him that she would never see him again; that this sudden
+abandonment drew down upon him a perfect storm of scandalous stories,
+which his wife never contradicted; that she never in any way or shape
+stated what the exact reasons for her departure had been, and thus
+silently gave scope to all the malice of thousands of enemies. The
+sensitive victim was actually driven from England, his home broken up,
+and be doomed to be a lonely wanderer on foreign shores.
+
+In Italy, under bluer skies, and among a gentler people, with more
+tolerant modes of judgment, the authoress intimates that he found
+peace and consolation. A lovely young Italian countess falls in love
+with him, and, breaking her family ties for his sake, devotes herself
+to him; and, in blissful retirement with her, he finds at last that
+domestic life for which he was so fitted.
+
+Soothed, calmed, and refreshed, he writes 'Don Juan,' which the world
+is at this late hour informed was a poem with a high moral purpose,
+designed to be a practical illustration of the doctrine of total
+depravity among young gentlemen in high life.
+
+Under the elevating influence of love, he rises at last to higher
+realms of moral excellence, and resolves to devote the rest of his life
+to some noble and heroic purpose; becomes the saviour of Greece; and
+dies untimely, leaving a nation to mourn his loss.
+
+The authoress dwells with a peculiar bitterness on Lady Byron's entire
+_silence_ during all these years, as the most aggravated form of
+persecution and injury. She informs the world that Lord Byron wrote his
+Autobiography with the purpose of giving a fair statement of the exact
+truth in the whole matter; and that Lady Byron bought up the manuscript
+of the publisher, and insisted on its being destroyed, unread; thus
+inflexibly depriving her husband of his last chance of a hearing before
+the tribunal of the public.
+
+As a result of this silent persistent cruelty on the part of a cold,
+correct, narrow-minded woman, the character of Lord Byron has been
+misunderstood, and his name transmitted to after-ages clouded with
+aspersions and accusations which it is the object of this book to
+remove.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such is the story of Lord Byron's mistress,--a story which is going
+the length of this American continent, and rousing up new sympathy
+with the poet, and doing its best to bring the youth of America once
+more under the power of that brilliant, seductive genius, from which
+it was hoped they had escaped. Already we are seeing it revamped in
+magazine-articles, which take up the slanders of the paramour and
+enlarge on them, and wax eloquent in denunciation of the marble-hearted
+insensible wife.
+
+All this while, it does not appear to occur to the thousands of
+unreflecting readers that they are listening merely to the story of
+Lord Byron's mistress, and of Lord Byron; and that, even by their own
+showing, their heaviest accusation against Lady Byron is that _she has
+not spoken at all_. Her story has never been told.
+
+For many years after the rupture between Lord Byron and his wife, that
+poet's personality, fate, and happiness had an interest for the whole
+civilized world, which, we will venture to say, was unparalleled. It
+is within the writer's recollection, how, in the obscure mountain-town
+where she spent her early days, Lord Byron's separation from his wife
+was, for a season, the all-engrossing topic.
+
+She remembers hearing her father recount at the breakfast-table the
+facts as they were given in the public papers, together with his own
+suppositions and theories of the causes.
+
+Lord Byron's 'Fare thee well,' addressed to Lady Byron, was set to
+music, and sung with tears by young school-girls, even in this distant
+America.
+
+Madame de Staël said of this appeal, that she was sure it would have
+drawn her at once to his heart and his arms; _she_ could have forgiven
+everything: and so said all the young ladies all over the world, not
+only in England but in France and Germany, wherever Byron's poetry
+appeared in translation.
+
+Lady Byron's obdurate cold-heartedness in refusing even to listen to
+his prayers, or to have any intercourse with him which might lead to
+reconciliation, was the one point conceded on all sides.
+
+The stricter moralists defended her; but gentler hearts throughout all
+the world regarded her as a marble-hearted monster of correctness and
+morality, a personification of the law unmitigated by the gospel.
+
+Literature in its highest walks busied itself with Lady Byron. Hogg,
+in the character of the Ettrick Shepherd, devotes several eloquent
+passages to expatiating on the conjugal fidelity of a poor Highland
+shepherd's wife, who, by patience and prayer and forgiveness, succeeds
+in reclaiming her drunken husband, and making a good man of him; and
+then points his moral by contrasting with this touching picture the
+cold-hearted pharisaical correctness of Lady Byron.
+
+Moore, in his 'Life of Lord Byron,' when beginning the recital of the
+series of disgraceful amours which formed the staple of his life in
+Venice, has this passage:--
+
+'Highly censurable in point of morality and decorum as was his course
+of life while under the roof of Madame ----, it was (with pain I am
+forced to confess) venial in comparison with the strange, headlong
+career of licence to which, when weaned from that connection, he so
+unrestrainedly, and, it may be added, defyingly abandoned himself. Of
+the state of his mind on leaving England, I have already endeavoured
+to convey some idea; and among the feelings that went to make up that
+self-centred spirit of resistance which he then opposed to his fate was
+an indignant scorn for his own countrymen for the wrongs he thought
+they had done him. For a time, _the kindly sentiments which he still
+harboured toward Lady Byron, and a sort of vague hope, perhaps, that
+all would yet come right again_, kept his mind in a mood somewhat
+more softened and docile, as well as sufficiently under the influence
+of English opinions to prevent his breaking out into open rebellion
+against it, as he unluckily did afterward.
+
+'_By the failure of the attempted mediation with Lady Byron_, his
+last link with home was severed: while, notwithstanding the quiet and
+unobtrusive life which he led at Geneva, there was as yet, he found,
+no cessation of the slanderous warfare against his character; the same
+busy and misrepresenting spirit which had tracked his every step at
+home, having, with no less malicious watchfulness, dogged him into
+exile.'
+
+We should like to know what the misrepresentations and slanders
+must have been, when this sort of thing is admitted in Mr. Moore's
+_justification_. It seems to us rather wonderful how anybody, unless it
+were a person like the Countess Guiccioli, could misrepresent a life
+such as even Byron's friend admits he was leading.
+
+During all these years, when he was setting at defiance every principle
+of morality and decorum, the interest of the female mind all over
+Europe in the conversion of this brilliant prodigal son was unceasing,
+and reflects the greatest credit upon the faith of the sex.
+
+Madame de Staël commenced the first effort at evangelization
+immediately after he left England, and found her catechumen in a most
+edifying state of humility. He was, metaphorically, on his knees in
+penitence, and confessed himself a miserable sinner in the loveliest
+manner possible. Such sweetness and humility took all hearts. His
+conversations with Madame de Staël were printed, and circulated all
+over the world; making it to appear that only the inflexibility of Lady
+Byron stood in the way of his entire conversion.
+
+Lady Blessington, among many others, took him in hand five or six years
+afterwards, and was greatly delighted with his docility, and edified by
+his frank and free confessions of his miserable offences. Nothing now
+seemed wanting to bring the wanderer home to the fold but a kind word
+from Lady Byron. But, when the fair countess offered to mediate, the
+poet only shook his head in tragic despair; 'he had so many times tried
+in vain; Lady Byron's course had been from the first that of obdurate
+silence.'
+
+Any one who would wish to see a specimen of the skill of the
+honourable poet in mystification will do well to read a letter to Lady
+Byron, which Lord Byron, on parting from Lady Blessington, enclosed for
+her to read just before he went to Greece. He says,--
+
+'The letter which I enclose _I was prevented from sending by my despair
+of its doing any good_. I was perfectly sincere when I wrote it, and
+am so still. But it is difficult for me to withstand the thousand
+provocations on that subject which both friends and foes have for seven
+years been throwing in the way of a man whose feelings were once quick,
+and whose temper was never patient.'
+
+ 'TO LADY BYRON, CARE OF THE HON. MRS. LEIGH, LONDON
+
+  'PISA, _Nov._ 17, 1821.
+
+ 'I have to acknowledge the receipt of "Ada's hair," which is very
+ soft and pretty, and nearly as dark already as mine was at twelve
+ years old, if I may judge from what I recollect of some in Augusta's
+ possession, taken at that age. But it didn't curl--perhaps from its
+ being let grow.
+
+ 'I also thank you for the inscription of the date and name; and I will
+ tell you why: I believe that they are the only two or three words
+ of your handwriting in my possession. For your letters I returned;
+ and except the two words, or rather the one word, "Household,"
+ written twice in an old account book, I have no other. I burnt your
+ last note, for two reasons: firstly, it was written in a style not
+ very agreeable; and, secondly, I wished to take your word without
+ documents, which are the worldly resources of suspicious people.
+
+ 'I suppose that this note will reach you somewhere about Ada's
+ birthday--the 10th of December, I believe. She will then be six:
+ so that, in about twelve more, I shall have some chance of meeting
+ her; perhaps sooner, if I am obliged to go to England by business
+ or otherwise. Recollect, however, one thing, either in distance or
+ nearness--every day which keeps us asunder should, after so long a
+ period, rather soften our mutual feelings; which must always have one
+ rallying point as long as our child exists, which, I presume, we both
+ hope will be long after either of her parents.
+
+ 'The time which has elapsed since the separation has been considerably
+ more than the whole brief period of our union, and the not much longer
+ one of our prior acquaintance. We both made a bitter mistake; but
+ now it is over, and irrevocably so. For at thirty-three on my part,
+ and few years less on yours, though it is no very extended period of
+ life, still it is one when the habits and thought are generally so
+ formed as to admit of no modification; and, as we could not agree when
+ younger, we should with difficulty do so now.
+
+ 'I say all this, because I own to you, that notwithstanding
+ everything, I considered our reunion as not impossible for more than
+ a year after the separation; but then I gave up the hope entirely
+ and for ever. But this very impossibility of reunion seems to me
+ at least a reason why, on all the few points of discussion which
+ can arise between us, we should preserve the courtesies of life,
+ and as much of its kindness as people who are never to meet may
+ preserve,--perhaps more easily than nearer connections. For my own
+ part, I am violent, but not malignant; for only fresh provocations can
+ awaken my resentments. To you, who are colder and more concentrated,
+ I would just hint, that you may sometimes mistake the depth of a cold
+ anger for dignity, and a worse feeling for duty. I assure you that
+ I bear you _now_ (whatever I may have done) no resentment whatever.
+ Remember, that, _if you have injured me_ in aught, this forgiveness
+ is something; and that, if I have _injured you_, it is something more
+ still, if it be true, as the moralists say, that the most offending
+ are the least forgiving.
+
+ 'Whether the offence has been solely on my side, or reciprocal, or on
+ yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect upon any but two things; viz.,
+ that you are the mother of my child, and that we shall never meet
+ again. I think, if you also consider the two corresponding points with
+ reference to myself, it will be better for all three.
+
+  'Yours ever,
+
+  'NOEL BYRON.'
+
+
+The artless Thomas Moore introduces this letter in the 'Life,' with the
+remark,--
+
+'There are few, I should think, of my readers, who will not agree with
+me in pronouncing, that, if the author of the following letter had not
+_right_ on his side, he had at least most of those good feelings which
+are found in general to accompany it.'
+
+The reader is requested to take notice of the important admission, that
+_the letter was never sent to Lady Byron at all_. It was, in fact,
+never _intended_ for her, but was a nice little dramatic performance,
+composed simply with the view of acting on the sympathies of Lady
+Blessington and Byron's numerous female admirers; and the reader will
+agree with us, we think, that, in this point of view, it was very
+neatly done, and deserves immortality as a work of high art. For six
+years he had been plunged into every kind of vice and excess, pleading
+his shattered domestic joys, and his wife's obdurate heart, as the
+apology and the impelling cause; filling the air with his shrieks
+and complaints concerning the slander which pursued him, while he
+filled letters to his confidential correspondents with records of new
+mistresses. During all these years, the silence of Lady Byron was
+unbroken; though Lord Byron not only drew in private on the sympathies
+of his female admirers, but employed his talents and position as an
+author in holding her up to contempt and ridicule before thousands
+of readers. We shall quote at length his side of the story, which he
+published in the First Canto of 'Don Juan,' that the reader may see
+how much reason he had for assuming the injured tone which he did in
+the letter to Lady Byron quoted above. That letter never was sent to
+her; and the unmanly and indecent caricature of her, and the indelicate
+exposure of the whole story on his own side, which we are about to
+quote, were the only communications that could have reached her
+solitude.
+
+In the following verses, Lady Byron is represented as Donna Inez, and
+Lord Byron as Don José; but the incidents and allusions were so very
+pointed, that nobody for a moment doubted whose history the poet was
+narrating.
+
+  'His mother was a learned lady, famed
+    For every branch of every science known
+  In every Christian language ever named,
+    With virtues equalled by her wit alone:
+  She made the cleverest people quite ashamed;
+    And even the good with inward envy groaned,
+  Finding themselves so very much exceeded
+  In their own way by all the things that she did.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Save that her duty both to man and God
+  Required this conduct; which seemed very odd.
+
+  She kept a journal where his faults were noted,
+    And opened certain trunks of books and letters,
+  (All which might, if occasion served, be quoted);
+    And then she had all Seville for abettors,
+  Besides her good old grandmother (who doted):
+    The hearers of her case become repeaters,
+  Then advocates, inquisitors, and judges,--
+  Some for amusement, others for old grudges.
+
+  And then this best and meekest woman bore
+    With such serenity her husband's woes!
+  Just as the Spartan ladies did of yore,
+    Who saw their spouses killed, and nobly chose
+  Never to say a word about them more.
+    Calmly she heard each calumny that rose,
+  And saw _his_ agonies with such sublimity,
+  That all the world exclaimed, "What magnanimity!"'
+
+This is the longest and most elaborate version of his own story
+that Byron ever published; but he busied himself with many others,
+projecting at one time a Spanish romance, in which the same story is
+related in the same transparent manner: but this he was dissuaded
+from printing. The booksellers, however, made a good speculation in
+publishing what they called his domestic poems; that is, poems bearing
+more or less relation to this subject.
+
+Every person with whom he became acquainted with any degree of intimacy
+was made familiar with his side of the story. Moore's Biography is
+from first to last, in its representations, founded upon Byron's
+communicativeness, and Lady Byron's silence; and the world at last
+settled down to believing that the account so often repeated, and never
+contradicted, must be substantially a true one.
+
+The true history of Lord and Lady Byron has long been perfectly
+understood in many circles in England; but the facts were of a nature
+that could not be made public. While there was a young daughter living
+whose future might be prejudiced by its recital, and while there were
+other persons on whom the disclosure of the real truth would have been
+crushing as an avalanche, Lady Byron's only course was the perfect
+silence in which she took refuge, and those sublime works of charity
+and mercy to which she consecrated her blighted early life.
+
+But the time is now come when the truth may be told. All the actors
+in the scene have disappeared from the stage of mortal existence, and
+passed, let us have faith to hope, into a world where they would desire
+to expiate their faults by a late publication of the truth.
+
+No person in England, we think, would as yet take the responsibility of
+relating the true history which is to clear Lady Byron's memory; but,
+by a singular concurrence of circumstances, all the facts of the case,
+in the most undeniable and authentic form, were at one time placed in
+the hands of the writer of this sketch, with authority to make such
+use of them as she should judge best. Had this melancholy history been
+allowed to sleep, no public use would have been made of them; but the
+appearance of a popular attack on the character of Lady Byron calls for
+a vindication, and the true story of her married life will therefore
+now be related.
+
+Lord Byron has described in one of his letters the impression left
+upon his mind by a young person whom he met one evening in society,
+and who attracted his attention by the simplicity of her dress, and a
+certain air of singular purity and calmness with which she surveyed the
+scene around her.
+
+On inquiry, he was told that this young person was Miss Milbanke, an
+only child, and one of the largest heiresses in England.
+
+Lord Byron was fond of idealising his experiences in poetry; and the
+friends of Lady Byron had no difficulty in recognising the portrait of
+Lady Byron, as she appeared at this time of her life, in his exquisite
+description of Aurora Raby:--
+
+                                    'There was
+  Indeed a certain fair and fairy one,
+    Of the best class, and better than her class,--
+  Aurora Raby, a young star who shone
+    O'er life, too sweet an image for such glass;
+  A lovely being scarcely formed or moulded;
+  A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Early in years, and yet more infantine
+    In figure, she had something of sublime
+  In eyes which sadly shone as seraphs' shine;
+    All youth, but with an aspect beyond time;
+  Radiant and grave, as pitying man's decline;
+    Mournful, but mournful of another's crime,
+  She looked as if she sat by Eden's door,
+  And grieved for those who could return no more.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew,
+    As seeking not to know it; silent, lone,
+  As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew,
+    And kept her heart serene within its zone.
+  There was awe in the homage which she drew;
+    Her spirit seemed as seated on a throne,
+  Apart from the surrounding world, and strong
+  In its own strength,--most strange in one so young!'
+
+Some idea of the course which their acquaintance took, and of the
+manner in which he was piqued into thinking of her, is given in a
+stanza or two:--
+
+  'The dashing and proud air of Adeline
+    Imposed not upon her: she saw her blaze
+  Much as she would have seen a glowworm shine;
+    Then turned unto the stars for loftier rays.
+  Juan was something she could not divine,
+    Being no sibyl in the new world's ways;
+  Yet she was nothing dazzled by the meteor,
+  Because she did not pin her faith on feature.
+
+  His fame too (for he had that kind of fame
+    Which sometimes plays the deuce with womankind,--
+  A heterogeneous mass of glorious blame,
+    Half virtues and whole vices being combined;
+  Faults which attract because they are not tame;
+    Follies tricked out so brightly that they blind),--
+  These seals upon her wax made no impression,
+  Such was her coldness or her self-possession.
+
+  Aurora sat with that indifference
+    Which piques a _preux_ chevalier,--as it ought.
+  Of all offences, that's the worst offence
+    Which seems to hint you are not worth a thought.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  To his gay nothings, nothing was replied,
+    Or something which was nothing, as urbanity
+  Required. Aurora scarcely looked aside,
+    Nor even smiled enough for any vanity.
+  The Devil was in the girl! Could it be pride,
+    Or modesty, or absence, or inanity?
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Juan was drawn thus into some attentions,
+    Slight but select, and just enough to express,
+  To females of perspicuous comprehensions,
+    That he would rather make them more than less.
+  Aurora at the last (so history mentions,
+    Though probably much less a fact than guess)
+  So far relaxed her thoughts from their sweet prison
+  As once or twice to smile, if not to listen.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  But Juan had a sort of winning way,
+    A proud humility, if such there be,
+  Which showed such deference to what females say,
+    As if each charming word were a decree.
+  His tact, too, tempered him from grave to gay,
+    And taught him when to be reserved or free.
+  He had the art of drawing people out,
+  Without their seeing what he was about.
+
+  Aurora, who in her indifference,
+    Confounded him in common with the crowd
+  Of flatterers, though she deemed he had more sense
+    Than whispering foplings or than witlings loud,
+  Commenced (from such slight things will great commence)
+    To feel that flattery which attracts the proud,
+  Rather by deference than compliment,
+  And wins even by a delicate dissent.
+
+  And then he had good looks: that point was carried
+    _Nem. con._ amongst the women.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Now, though we know of old that looks deceive,
+  And always have done, somehow these good looks,
+  Make more impression than the best of books.
+
+  Aurora, who looked more on books than faces,
+    Was very young, although so very sage:
+  Admiring more Minerva than the Graces,
+    Especially upon a printed page.
+  But Virtue's self, with all her tightest laces,
+    Has not the natural stays of strict old age;
+  And Socrates, that model of all duty,
+  Owned to a penchant, though discreet for beauty.'
+
+The presence of this high-minded, thoughtful, unworldly woman is
+described through two cantos of the wild, rattling 'Don Juan,' in a
+manner that shows how deeply the poet was capable of being affected by
+such an appeal to his higher nature.
+
+For instance, when Don Juan sits silent and thoughtful amid a circle of
+persons who are talking scandal, the poet says,--
+
+  ''Tis true, he saw Aurora look as though
+    She approved his silence: she perhaps mistook
+  Its motive for that charity we owe,
+    But seldom pay, the absent.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  He gained esteem where it was worth the most;
+    And certainly Aurora had renewed
+  In him some feelings he had lately lost
+    Or hardened,--feelings which, perhaps ideal,
+  Are so divine that I must deem them real:--
+
+  The love of higher things and better days;
+    The unbounded hope and heavenly ignorance
+  Of what is called the world and the world's ways;
+    The moments when we gather from a glance
+
+  More joy than from all future pride or praise,
+    Which kindled manhood, but can ne'er entrance
+  The heart in an existence of its own
+    Of which another's bosom is the zone.
+
+  And full of sentiments sublime as billows
+    Heaving between this world and worlds beyond,
+  Don Juan, when the midnight hour of pillows
+    Arrived, retired to his.'...
+
+In all these descriptions of a spiritual unworldly nature acting on
+the spiritual and unworldly part of his own nature, every one who ever
+knew Lady Byron intimately must have recognised the model from which
+he drew, and the experience from which he spoke, even though nothing
+was further from his mind than to pay this tribute to the woman he had
+injured, and though before these lines, which showed how truly he knew
+her real character, had come one stanza of ribald, vulgar caricature,
+designed as a slight to her:--
+
+  'There was Miss Millpond, smooth as summer's sea
+    That usual paragon, an only daughter,
+  Who seemed the cream of equanimity
+    'Till skimmed; and then there was some milk and water;
+  With a slight shade of blue, too, it might be,
+    Beneath the surface: but what did it matter?
+  Love's riotous; but marriage should have quiet,
+  And, being consumptive, live on a milk diet.'
+
+The result of Byron's intimacy with Miss Milbanke and the enkindling
+of his nobler feelings was an offer of marriage, which she, though
+at the time deeply interested in him, declined with many expressions
+of friendship and interest. In fact, she already loved him, but had
+that doubt of her power to be to him all that a wife should be which
+would be likely to arise in a mind so sensitively constituted and so
+unworldly. They, however, continued a correspondence as friends; on her
+part, the interest continually increased; on his, the transient rise of
+better feelings was choked and overgrown by the thorns of base unworthy
+passions.
+
+From the height at which he might have been happy as the husband of a
+noble woman, he fell into the depths of a secret adulterous intrigue
+with a blood relation, so near in consanguinity, that discovery must
+have been utter ruin and expulsion from civilised society.
+
+From henceforth, this damning guilty secret became the ruling force in
+his life; holding him with a morbid fascination, yet filling him with
+remorse and anguish, and insane dread of detection. Two years after his
+refusal by Miss Milbanke, his various friends, seeing that for some
+cause he was wretched, pressed marriage upon him.
+
+Marriage has often been represented as the proper goal and terminus
+of a wild and dissipated career; and it has been supposed to be the
+appointed mission of good women to receive wandering prodigals, with
+all the rags and disgraces of their old life upon them, and put rings
+on their hands, and shoes on their feet, and introduce them, clothed
+and in their right minds, to an honourable career in society.
+
+Marriage was, therefore, universally recommended to Lord Byron by his
+numerous friends and well-wishers; and so he determined to marry, and,
+in an hour of reckless desperation, sat down and wrote proposals to two
+ladies. One was declined: the other, which was accepted, was to Miss
+Milbanke. The world knows well that he had the gift of expression, and
+will not be surprised that he wrote a very beautiful letter, and that
+the woman who had already learned to love him fell at once into the
+snare.
+
+Her answer was a frank, outspoken avowal of her love for him, giving
+herself to him heart and hand. The good in Lord Byron was not so
+utterly obliterated that he could receive such a letter without
+emotion, or practise such unfairness on a loving, trusting heart
+without pangs of remorse. He had sent the letter in mere recklessness;
+he had not seriously expected to be accepted; and the discovery of the
+treasure of affection which he had secured was like a vision of lost
+heaven to a soul in hell.
+
+But, nevertheless, in his letters written about the engagement,
+there are sufficient evidences that his self-love was flattered at
+the preference accorded him by so superior a woman, and one who had
+been so much sought. He mentions with an air of complacency that
+she has employed the last two years in refusing five or six of his
+acquaintance; that he had no idea she loved him, admitting that it was
+an old attachment on his part. He dwells on her virtues with a sort
+of pride of ownership. There is a sort of childish levity about the
+frankness of these letters, very characteristic of the man who skimmed
+over the deepest abysses with the lightest jests. Before the world, and
+to his intimates, he was acting the part of the successful _fiancé_,
+conscious all the while of the deadly secret that lay cold at the
+bottom of his heart.
+
+When he went to visit Miss Milbanke's parents as her accepted lover
+she was struck with his manner and appearance: she saw him moody and
+gloomy, evidently wrestling with dark and desperate thoughts, and
+anything but what a happy and accepted lover should be. She sought an
+interview with him alone, and told him that she had observed that he
+was not happy in the engagement; and magnanimously added, that, if on
+review, he found he had been mistaken in the nature of his feelings,
+she would immediately release him, and they should remain only friends.
+
+Overcome with the conflict of his feelings, Lord Byron fainted away.
+Miss Milbanke was convinced that his heart must really be deeply
+involved in an attachment with reference to which he showed such
+strength of emotion, and she spoke no more of a dissolution of the
+engagement.
+
+There is no reason to doubt that Byron was, as he relates in his
+'Dream,' profoundly agonized and agitated when he stood before God's
+altar with the trusting young creature whom he was leading to a fate so
+awfully tragic; yet it was not the memory of Mary Chaworth, but another
+guiltier and more damning memory, that overshadowed that hour.
+
+The moment the carriage-doors were shut upon the bridegroom and the
+bride, the paroxysm of remorse and despair--unrepentant remorse and
+angry despair--broke forth upon her gentle head:--
+
+'You might have saved me from this, madam! You had all in your own
+power when I offered myself to you first. Then you might have made
+me what you pleased; but now you will find that you have married a
+_devil_!'
+
+In Miss Martineau's Sketches, recently published, is an account of the
+termination of this wedding-journey, which brought them to one of Lady
+Byron's ancestral country seats, where they were to spend the honeymoon.
+
+Miss Martineau says,--
+
+'At the altar she did not know that she was a sacrifice; but before
+sunset of that winter day she knew it, if a judgment may be formed from
+her face, and attitude of despair, when she alighted from the carriage
+on the afternoon of her marriage-day. It was not the traces of tears
+which won the sympathy of the old butler who stood at the open door.
+The bridegroom jumped out of the carriage and walked away. The bride
+alighted, and came up the steps alone, with a countenance and frame
+agonized and listless with evident horror and despair. The old servant
+longed to offer his arm to the young, lonely creature, as an assurance
+of sympathy and protection. From this shock she certainly rallied,
+and soon. The pecuniary difficulties of her new home were exactly
+what a devoted spirit like hers was fitted to encounter. Her husband
+bore testimony, after the catastrophe, that a brighter being, a more
+sympathising and agreeable companion, never blessed any man's home.
+When he afterwards called her cold and mathematical, and over-pious,
+and so forth, it was when public opinion had gone against him, and
+when he had discovered that her fidelity and mercy, her silence and
+magnanimity, might be relied on, so that he was at full liberty to make
+his part good, as far as she was concerned.
+
+'Silent she was even to her own parents, whose feelings she
+magnanimously spared. She did not act rashly in leaving him, though she
+had been most rash in marrying him.'
+
+Not all at once did the full knowledge of the dreadful reality into
+which she had entered come upon the young wife. She knew vaguely, from
+the wild avowals of the first hours of their marriage, that there was
+a dreadful secret of guilt; that Byron's soul was torn with agonies of
+remorse, and that he had no love to give to her in return for a love
+which was ready to do and dare all for him. Yet bravely she addressed
+herself to the task of soothing and pleasing and calming the man whom
+she had taken 'for better or for worse.'
+
+Young and gifted; with a peculiar air of refined and spiritual beauty;
+graceful in every movement; possessed of exquisite taste; a perfect
+companion to his mind in all the higher walks of literary culture; and
+with that infinite pliability to all his varying, capricious moods
+which true love alone can give; bearing in her hand a princely fortune,
+which, with a woman's uncalculating generosity, was thrown at his
+feet,--there is no wonder that she might feel for a while as if she
+could enter the lists with the very Devil himself, and fight with a
+woman's weapons for the heart of her husband.
+
+There are indications scattered through the letters of Lord Byron,
+which, though brief indeed, showed that his young wife was making every
+effort to accommodate herself to him, and to give him a cheerful home.
+One of the poems that he sends to his publisher about this time, he
+speaks of as being copied by her. He had always the highest regard for
+her literary judgments and opinions; and this little incident shows
+that she was already associating herself in a wifely fashion with his
+aims as an author.
+
+The poem copied by her, however, has a sad meaning, which she
+afterwards learned to understand only too well:--
+
+  'There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away
+  When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay:
+  'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone that fades so fast;
+  But the tender bloom of heart is gone e'er youth itself be past.
+  Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness
+  Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt, or ocean of excess:
+  The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain
+  The shore to which their shivered sail shall never stretch again.'
+
+Only a few days before she left him for ever, Lord Byron sent Murray
+manuscripts, in Lady Byron's handwriting, of the 'Siege of Corinth,'
+and 'Parisina,' and wrote,--
+
+
+'I am very glad that the handwriting was a favourable omen of the
+_morale_ of the piece: but you must not trust to that; for my copyist
+would write out anything I desired, in all the ignorance of innocence.'
+
+There were lucid intervals in which Lord Byron felt the charm of his
+wife's mind, and the strength of her powers. 'Bell, you could be a poet
+too, if you only thought so,' he would say. There were summer-hours in
+her stormy life, the memory of which never left her, when Byron was as
+gentle and tender as he was beautiful; when he seemed to be possessed
+by a good angel: and then for a little time all the ideal possibilities
+of his nature stood revealed.
+
+The most dreadful men to live with are those who thus alternate between
+angel and devil. The buds of hope and love called out by a day or two
+of sunshine are frozen again and again, till the tree is killed.
+
+But there came an hour of revelation,--an hour when, in a manner
+which left no kind of room for doubt, Lady Byron saw the full depth
+of the abyss of infamy which her marriage was expected to cover, and
+understood that she was expected to be the cloak and the accomplice of
+this infamy.
+
+Many women would have been utterly crushed by such a disclosure; some
+would have fled from him immediately, and exposed and denounced the
+crime. Lady Byron did neither. When all the hope of womanhood died out
+of her heart, there arose within her, stronger, purer, and brighter,
+that immortal kind of love such as God feels for the sinner,--the love
+of which Jesus spoke, and which holds the one wanderer of more account
+than the ninety and nine that went not astray. She would neither leave
+her husband nor betray him, nor yet would she for one moment justify
+his sin; and hence came two years of convulsive struggle, in which
+sometimes, for a while, the good angel seemed to gain ground, and then
+the evil one returned with sevenfold vehemence.
+
+Lord Byron argued his case with himself and with her with all the
+sophistries of his powerful mind. He repudiated Christianity as
+authority; asserted the right of every human being to follow out what
+he called 'the impulses of nature.' Subsequently he introduced into one
+of his dramas the reasoning by which he justified himself in incest.
+
+In the drama of 'Cain,' Adah, the sister and the wife of Cain, thus
+addresses him:--
+
+                        'Cain, walk not with this spirit.
+  Bear with what we have borne, and love me: I
+  Love thee.
+
+  _Lucifer._ More than thy mother and thy sire?
+
+  _Adah._ I do. Is that a sin, too?
+
+  _Lucifer._                       No, not yet:
+  It one day will be in your children.
+
+  _Adah._                               What!
+  Must not my daughter love her brother Enoch?
+
+  _Lucifer._ Not as thou lovest Cain.
+
+  _Adah._                            O my God!
+  Shall they not love, and bring forth things that love
+  Out of their love? Have they not drawn their milk
+  Out of this bosom? Was not he, their father,
+  Born of the same sole womb, in the same hour
+  With me? Did we not love each other, and,
+  In multiplying our being, multiply
+  Things which will love each other as we love
+  Them? And as I love thee, my Cain, go not
+  Forth with this spirit: he is not of ours.
+
+  _Lucifer._ The sin I speak of is not of my making
+  And cannot be a sin in you, whate'er
+  It seems in those who will replace ye in
+  Mortality.
+
+  _Adah._ What is the sin which is not
+  Sin in itself? Can circumstance make sin
+  Of virtue? If it doth, we are the slaves
+  Of'--
+
+Lady Byron, though slight and almost infantine in her bodily presence,
+had the soul, not only of an angelic woman, but of a strong reasoning
+man. It was the writer's lot to know her at a period when she formed
+the personal acquaintance of many of the very first minds of England;
+but, among all with whom this experience brought her in connection,
+there was none who impressed her so strongly as Lady Byron. There was
+an almost supernatural power of moral divination, a grasp of the very
+highest and most comprehensive things, that made her lightest opinions
+singularly impressive. No doubt, this result was wrought out in a great
+degree from the anguish and conflict of these two years, when, with no
+one to help or counsel her but Almighty God, she wrestled and struggled
+with fiends of darkness for the redemption of her husband's soul.
+
+She followed him through all his sophistical reasonings with a keener
+reason. She besought and implored, in the name of his better nature,
+and by all the glorious things that he was capable of being and doing;
+and she had just power enough to convulse and shake and agonise, but
+not power enough to subdue.
+
+One of the first of living writers, in the novel of 'Romola,' has
+given, in her masterly sketch of the character of Tito, the whole
+history of the conflict of a woman like Lady Byron with a nature like
+that of her husband. She has described a being full of fascinations
+and sweetnesses, full of generosities and of good-natured impulses; a
+nature that could not bear to give pain, or to see it in others, but
+entirely destitute of any firm moral principle; she shows how such a
+being, merely by yielding step by step to the impulses of passion,
+and disregarding the claims of truth and right, becomes involved in a
+fatality of evil, in which deceit, crime, and cruelty are a necessity,
+forcing him to persist in the basest ingratitude to the father who has
+done all for him, and hard-hearted treachery to the high-minded wife
+who has given herself to him wholly.
+
+There are few scenes in literature more fearfully tragic than the one
+between Romola and Tito, when he finally discovers that she knows him
+fully, and can be deceived by him no more. Some such hour always must
+come for strong decided natures irrevocably pledged--one to the service
+of good, and the other to the slavery of evil. The demoniac cried out,
+'What have I to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to
+torment me before the time?' The presence of all-pitying purity and
+love was a torture to the soul possessed by the demon of evil.
+
+These two years in which Lady Byron was with all her soul struggling to
+bring her husband back to his better self were a series of passionate
+convulsions.
+
+During this time, such was the disordered and desperate state of his
+worldly affairs, that there were ten executions for debt levied on
+their family establishment; and it was Lady Byron's fortune each time
+which settled the account.
+
+Toward the last, she and her husband saw less and less of each other;
+and he came more and more decidedly under evil influences, and seemed
+to acquire a sort of hatred of her.
+
+Lady Byron once said significantly to a friend who spoke of some
+causeless dislike in another, 'My dear, I have known people to be hated
+for no other reason than because they impersonated conscience.'
+
+The biographers of Lord Byron, and all his apologists, are careful to
+narrate how sweet and amiable and obliging he was to everybody who
+approached him; and the saying of Fletcher, his man-servant, that
+'_anybody_ could do anything with my Lord, except my Lady,' has often
+been quoted.
+
+The reason of all this will now be evident. 'My Lady' was the only one,
+fully understanding the deep and dreadful secrets of his life, who had
+the courage resolutely and persistently and inflexibly to plant herself
+in his way, and insist upon it, that, if he went to destruction, it
+should be in spite of her best efforts.
+
+He had tried his strength with her fully. The first attempt had been
+to make her an accomplice by sophistry; by destroying her faith in
+Christianity, and confusing her sense of right and wrong, to bring her
+into the ranks of those convenient women who regard the marriage-tie
+only as a friendly alliance to cover licence on both sides.
+
+When her husband described to her the Continental latitude (the
+good-humoured marriage, in which complaisant couples mutually agreed
+to form the cloak for each other's infidelities), and gave her to
+understand that in this way alone she could have a peaceful and
+friendly life with him, she answered him simply, 'I am too truly your
+friend to do this.'
+
+When Lord Byron found that he had to do with one who would not yield,
+who knew him fully, who could not be blinded and could not be deceived,
+he determined to rid himself of her altogether.
+
+It was when the state of affairs between herself and her husband seemed
+darkest and most hopeless, that the only child of this union was
+born. Lord Byron's treatment of his wife during the sensitive period
+that preceded the birth of this child, and during her confinement,
+was marked by paroxysms of unmanly brutality, for which the only
+possible charity on her part was the supposition of insanity. Moore
+sheds a significant light on this period, by telling us that, about
+this time, Byron was often drunk, day after day, with Sheridan. There
+had been insanity in the family; and this was the plea which Lady
+Byron's love put in for him. She regarded him as, if not insane, at
+least so nearly approaching the boundaries of insanity as to be a
+subject of forbearance and tender pity; and she loved him with that
+love resembling a mother's, which good wives often feel when they have
+lost all faith in their husband's principles, and all hopes of their
+affections. Still, she was in heart and soul his best friend; true to
+him with a truth which he himself could not shake.
+
+In the verses addressed to his daughter, Lord Byron speaks of her as
+
+  'The child of love, though born in bitterness,
+  And nurtured in convulsion.'
+
+A day or two after the birth of this child, Lord Byron came suddenly
+into Lady Byron's room, and told her that her mother was dead. It was
+an utter falsehood; but it was only one of the many nameless injuries
+and cruelties by which he expressed his hatred of her. A short time
+after her confinement, she was informed by him, in a note, that, as
+soon as she was able to travel, she must go; that he could not and
+would not longer have her about him; and, when her child was only five
+weeks old, he carried this threat of expulsion into effect.
+
+Here we will insert briefly Lady Byron's own account (the only one she
+ever gave to the public) of this separation. The circumstances under
+which this brief story was written are affecting.
+
+Lord Byron was dead. The whole account between him and her was closed
+for ever in this world. Moore's life had been prepared, containing
+simply and solely Lord Byron's own version of their story. Moore
+sent this version to Lady Byron, and requested to know if she had
+any remarks to make upon it. In reply, she sent a brief statement to
+him,--the first and only one that had come from her during all the
+years of the separation, and which appears to have mainly for its
+object the exculpation of her father and mother from the charge, made
+by the poet, of being the instigators of the separation.
+
+In this letter, she says, with regard to their separation,--
+
+'The facts are, I left London for Kirkby Mallory, the residence of my
+father and mother, on the 15th of January, 1816. LORD BYRON HAD
+SIGNIFIED TO ME IN WRITING, JAN. 6, HIS ABSOLUTE DESIRE THAT I SHOULD
+LEAVE LONDON ON THE EARLIEST DAY THAT I COULD CONVENIENTLY FIX. It
+was not safe for me to undertake the fatigue of a journey sooner than
+the 15th. Previously to my departure, it had been strongly impressed
+upon my mind that Lord Byron was under the influence of insanity.
+This opinion was derived, in a great measure, from the communications
+made me by his nearest relatives and personal attendant, who had more
+opportunity than myself for observing him during the latter part of my
+stay in town. It was even represented to me that he was in danger of
+destroying himself.
+
+'_With the concurrence of his family_, I had consulted Dr. Baillie as a
+friend (Jan. 8) respecting the supposed malady. On acquainting him with
+the state of the case, and with Lord Byron's desire that I should leave
+London, Dr. Baillie thought that my absence might be advisable as an
+experiment, assuming the fact of mental derangement; for Dr. Baillie,
+not having had access to Lord Byron, could not pronounce a positive
+opinion on that point. He enjoined that, in correspondence with Lord
+Byron, I should avoid all but light and soothing topics. Under these
+impressions, I left London, determined to follow the advice given by
+Dr. Baillie. Whatever might have been the conduct of Lord Byron toward
+me from the time of my marriage, yet, supposing him to be in a state of
+mental alienation, it was not for _me_, nor for any person of common
+humanity, to manifest at that moment a sense of injury.'
+
+Nothing more than this letter from Lady Byron is necessary to
+substantiate the fact, that she did not _leave_ her husband, but _was
+driven_ from him,--driven from him that he might give himself up to
+the guilty infatuation that was consuming him, without being tortured
+by her imploring face, and by the silent power of her presence and her
+prayers.
+
+For a long time before this, she had seen little of him. On the day
+of her departure, she passed by the door of his room, and stopped to
+caress his favourite spaniel, which was lying there; and she confessed
+to a friend the weakness of feeling a willingness even to be something
+as humble as that poor little creature, might she only be allowed to
+remain and watch over him. She went into the room where he and the
+partner of his sins were sitting together, and said, 'Byron, I come to
+say good-bye,' offering, at the same time, her hand.
+
+Lord Byron put his hands behind him, retreated to the mantel-piece,
+and, looking on the two that stood there, with a sarcastic smile said,
+'When shall we three meet again?' Lady Byron answered, 'In heaven, I
+trust.' And those were her last words to him on earth.
+
+Now, if the reader wishes to understand the real talents of Lord Byron
+for deception and dissimulation, let him read, with this story in his
+mind, the 'Fare thee well,' which he addressed to Lady Byron through
+the printer:--
+
+  'Fare thee well; and if for ever,
+    Still for ever fare thee well!
+  Even though unforgiving, never
+    'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.
+
+  Would that breast were bared before thee
+    Where thy head so oft hath lain,
+  While that placid sleep came o'er thee
+    Thou canst never know again!
+
+  Though my many faults defaced me,
+    Could no other arm be found
+  Than the one which once embraced me
+    To inflict a careless wound?'
+
+The re-action of society against him at the time of the separation from
+his wife was something which he had not expected, and for which, it
+appears, he was entirely unprepared. It broke up the guilty intrigue
+and drove him from England. He had not courage to meet or endure it.
+The world, to be sure, was very far from suspecting what the truth was:
+but the tide was setting against him with such vehemence as to make
+him tremble every hour lest the whole should be known; and henceforth,
+it became a warfare of desperation to make his story good, no matter at
+whose expense.
+
+He had tact enough to perceive at first that the assumption of the
+pathetic and the magnanimous, and general confessions of faults,
+accompanied with admissions of his wife's goodness, would be the best
+policy in his case. In this mood, he thus writes to Moore:--
+
+'The fault was not in my choice (unless in choosing at all); for I do
+not believe (and I must say it in the very dregs of all this bitter
+business) that there ever was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder,
+or a more amiable, agreeable being than Lady Byron. I never had, nor
+can have, any reproach to make her while with me. Where there is blame,
+it belongs to myself.'
+
+As there must be somewhere a scapegoat to bear the sin of the affair,
+Lord Byron wrote a poem called 'A Sketch,' in which he lays the blame
+of stirring up strife on a friend and former governess of Lady Byron's;
+but in this sketch he introduces the following just eulogy on Lady
+Byron:--
+
+    'Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind
+  Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind,
+  Deceit infect not, near contagion soil,
+  Indulgence weaken, nor example spoil,
+  Nor mastered science tempt her to look down
+  On humbler talents with a pitying frown,
+  Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain,
+  Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain,
+  Nor fortune change, pride raise, nor passion bow,
+  Nor virtue teach austerity,--till now;
+  Serenely purest of her sex that live,
+  But wanting one sweet weakness,--to forgive;
+  Too shocked at faults her soul can never know,
+  She deemed that all could be like her below:
+  Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue's friend;
+  For Virtue pardons those she would amend.'
+
+In leaving England, Lord Byron first went to Switzerland, where he
+conceived and in part wrote out the tragedy of 'Manfred.' Moore speaks
+of his domestic misfortunes, and the sufferings which he underwent at
+this time, as having influence in stimulating his genius, so that he
+was enabled to write with a greater power.
+
+Anybody who reads the tragedy of 'Manfred' with this story in his mind
+will see that it is true.
+
+The hero is represented as a gloomy misanthrope, dwelling with
+impenitent remorse on the memory of an incestuous passion which has
+been the destruction of his sister for this life and the life to come,
+but which, to the very last gasp, he despairingly refuses to repent of,
+even while he sees the fiends of darkness rising to take possession
+of his departing soul. That Byron knew his own guilt well, and judged
+himself severely, may be gathered from passages in this poem, which are
+as powerful as human language can be made; for instance this part of
+the 'incantation,' which Moore says was written at this time:--
+
+  'Though thy slumber may be deep,
+  Yet thy spirit shall not sleep:
+  There are shades which will not vanish;
+  There are thoughts thou canst not banish.
+  By a power to thee unknown,
+  Thou canst never be alone:
+  Thou art wrapt as with a shroud;
+  Thou art gathered in a cloud;
+  And for ever shalt thou dwell
+  In the spirit of this spell.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  From thy false tears I did distil
+  An essence which had strength to kill;
+  From thy own heart I then did wring
+  The black blood in its blackest spring;
+  From thy own smile I snatched the snake,
+  For there it coiled as in a brake;
+  From thy own lips I drew the charm
+  Which gave all these their chiefest harm
+  In proving every poison known,
+  I found the strongest was thine own.
+
+  By thy cold breast and serpent smile,
+  By thy unfathomed gulfs of guile,
+  By that most seeming virtuous eye,
+  By thy shut soul's hypocrisy,
+  By the perfection of thine art
+  Which passed for human thine own heart,
+  By thy delight in other's pain,
+  And by thy brotherhood of Cain,
+  I call upon thee, and compel
+  Thyself to be thy proper hell!'
+
+Again: he represents Manfred as saying to the old abbot, who seeks to
+bring him to repentance,--
+
+  Old man, there is no power in holy men,
+  Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form
+  Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast,
+  Nor agony, nor greater than all these,
+  The innate tortures of that deep despair,
+  Which is remorse without the fear of hell,
+  But, all in all sufficient to itself,
+  Would make a hell of heaven, can exorcise
+  From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense
+  Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge
+  Upon itself: there is no future pang
+  Can deal that justice on the self-condemned
+  He deals on his own soul.'
+
+And when the abbot tells him,
+
+                             'All this is well;
+  For this will pass away, and be succeeded
+  By an auspicious hope, which shall look up
+  With calm assurance to that blessed place
+  Which all who seek may win, whatever be
+  Their earthly errors,'
+
+He answers,
+
+  'It is too late.'
+
+Then the old abbot soliloquises:--
+
+  'This should have been a noble creature: he
+  Hath all the energy which would have made
+  A goodly frame of glorious elements,
+  Had they been wisely mingled; as it is,
+  It is an awful chaos,--light and darkness,
+  And mind and dust, and passions and pure thoughts,
+  Mixed, and contending without end or order.'
+
+The world can easily see, in Moore's Biography, what, after this, was
+the course of Lord Byron's life; how he went from shame to shame, and
+dishonour to dishonour, and used the fortune which his wife brought him
+in the manner described in those private letters which his biographer
+was left to print. Moore, indeed, says Byron had made the resolution
+not to touch his lady's fortune; but adds, that it required more
+self-command than he possessed to carry out so honourable a purpose.
+
+Lady Byron made but one condition with him. She had him in her power;
+and she exacted that the unhappy partner of his sins should not follow
+him out of England, and that the ruinous intrigue should be given
+up. Her inflexibility on this point kept up that enmity which was
+constantly expressing itself in some publication or other, and which
+drew her and her private relations with him before the public.
+
+The story of what Lady Byron did with the portion of her fortune which
+was reserved to her is a record of noble and skilfully administered
+charities. Pitiful and wise and strong, there was no form of human
+suffering or sorrow that did not find with her refuge and help. She
+gave not only systematically, but also impulsively.
+
+Miss Martineau claims for her the honour of having first invented
+practical schools, in which the children of the poor were turned
+into agriculturists, artizans, seamstresses, and good wives for poor
+men. While she managed with admirable skill and economy permanent
+institutions of this sort, she was always ready to relieve suffering
+in any form. The fugitive slaves William and Ellen Crafts, escaping to
+England, were fostered by her protecting care.
+
+In many cases where there was distress or anxiety from poverty among
+those too self-respecting to make their sufferings known, the delicate
+hand of Lady Byron ministered to the want with a consideration which
+spared the most refined feelings.
+
+As a mother, her course was embarrassed by peculiar trials. The
+daughter inherited from the father not only brilliant talents, but a
+restlessness and morbid sensibility which might be too surely traced
+to the storms and agitations of the period in which she was born. It
+was necessary to bring her up in ignorance of the true history of
+her mother's life; and the consequence was that she could not fully
+understand that mother.
+
+During her early girlhood, her career was a source of more anxiety than
+of comfort. She married a man of fashion, ran a brilliant course as a
+gay woman of fashion, and died early of a lingering and painful disease.
+
+In the silence and shaded retirement of the sick-room, the daughter
+came wholly back to her mother's arms and heart; and it was on that
+mother's bosom that she leaned as she went down into the dark valley.
+It was that mother who placed her weak and dying hand in that of her
+Almighty Saviour.
+
+To the children left by her daughter, she ministered with the
+faithfulness of a guardian angel; and it is owing to her influence that
+those who yet remain are among the best and noblest of mankind.
+
+The person whose relations with Byron had been so disastrous, also, in
+the latter years of her life, felt Lady Byron's loving and ennobling
+influences, and, in her last sickness and dying hours, looked to her
+for consolation and help.
+
+There was an unfortunate child of sin, born with the curse upon
+her, over whose wayward nature Lady Byron watched with a mother's
+tenderness. She was the one who could have patience when the patience
+of every one else failed; and though her task was a difficult one, from
+the strange abnormal propensities to evil in the object of her cares,
+yet Lady Byron never faltered, and never gave over, till death took
+the responsibility from her hands.
+
+During all this trial, strange to say, her belief that the good in Lord
+Byron would finally conquer was unshaken.
+
+To a friend who said to her, 'Oh! how could you love him?' she answered
+briefly, 'My dear, there was the angel in him.' It is in us all.
+
+It was in this angel that she had faith. It was for the deliverance
+of this angel from degradation and shame and sin that she unceasingly
+prayed. She read every work that Byron wrote--read it with a deeper
+knowledge than any human being but herself could possess. The ribaldry
+and the obscenity and the insults with which he strove to make her
+ridiculous in the world fell at her pitying feet unheeded.
+
+When he broke away from all this unworthy life to devote himself to a
+manly enterprise for the redemption of Greece, she thought that she saw
+the beginning of an answer to her prayers. Even although one of his
+latest acts concerning her was to repeat to Lady Blessington the false
+accusation which made Lady Byron the author of all his errors, she
+still had hopes from the one step taken in the right direction.
+
+In the midst of these hopes came the news of his sudden death. On his
+death-bed, it is well-known that he called his confidential English
+servant to him, and said to him, 'Go to my sister; tell her--Go to Lady
+Byron,--you will see her,--and say'--
+
+Here followed twenty minutes of indistinct mutterings, in which the
+names of his wife, daughter, and sister, frequently occurred. He then
+said, 'Now I have told you all.'
+
+'My lord,' replied Fletcher, 'I have not understood a word your
+lordship has been saying.'
+
+'Not understand me!' exclaimed Lord Byron with a look of the utmost
+distress: 'what a pity! Then it is too late,--all is over!' He
+afterwards, says Moore, tried to utter a few words, of which none were
+intelligible except 'My sister--my child.'
+
+When Fletcher returned to London, Lady Byron sent for him, and walked
+the room in convulsive struggles to repress her tears and sobs, while
+she over and over again strove to elicit something from him which
+should enlighten her upon what that last message had been; but in vain:
+the gates of eternity were shut in her face, and not a word had passed
+to tell her if he had repented.
+
+For all that, Lady Byron never doubted his salvation. Ever before her,
+during the few remaining years of her widowhood, was the image of her
+husband, purified and ennobled, with the shadows of earth for ever
+dissipated, the stains of sin for ever removed; 'the angel in him,' as
+she expressed it, 'made perfect, according to its divine ideal.'
+
+Never has more divine strength of faith and love existed in woman.
+Out of the depths of her own loving and merciful nature, she gained
+such views of the divine love and mercy as made all hopes possible.
+There was no soul of whose future Lady Byron despaired,--such was her
+boundless faith in the redeeming power of love.
+
+After Byron's death, the life of this delicate creature--so frail in
+body that she seemed always hovering on the brink of the eternal world,
+yet so strong in spirit, and so unceasing in her various ministries of
+mercy--was a miracle of mingled weakness and strength.
+
+To talk with her seemed to the writer of this sketch the nearest
+possible approach to talking with one of the spirits of the just made
+perfect.
+
+She was gentle, artless; approachable as a little child; with ready,
+outflowing sympathy for the cares and sorrows and interests of all who
+approached her; with a _naïve_ and gentle playfulness, that adorned,
+without hiding, the breadth and strength of her mind; and, above all,
+with a clear, divining, moral discrimination; never mistaking wrong
+for right in the slightest shade, yet with a mercifulness that made
+allowance for every weakness, and pitied every sin.
+
+There was so much of Christ in her, that to have seen her seemed to be
+to have drawn near to heaven. She was one of those few whom absence
+cannot estrange from friends; whose mere presence in this world seems
+always a help to every generous thought, a strength to every good
+purpose, a comfort in every sorrow.
+
+Living so near the confines of the spiritual world, she seemed already
+to see into it: hence the words of comfort which she addressed to a
+friend who had lost a son:--
+
+'Dear friend, remember, as long as our loved ones are in _God's_ world,
+they are in _ours_.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It has been thought by some friends who have read the proof-sheets
+of the foregoing that the author should give more specifically her
+authority for these statements.
+
+The circumstances which led the writer to England at a certain time
+originated a friendship and correspondence with Lady Byron, which was
+always regarded as one of the greatest acquisitions of that visit.
+
+On the occasion of a second visit to England, in 1856, the writer
+received a note from Lady Byron, indicating that she wished to have
+some private, confidential conversation upon important subjects,
+and inviting her, for that purpose, to spend a day with her at her
+country-seat near London.
+
+The writer went and spent a day with Lady Byron alone; and the object
+of the invitation was explained to her. Lady Byron was in such a state
+of health, that her physicians had warned her that she had very little
+time to live. She was engaged in those duties and retrospections which
+every thoughtful person finds necessary, when coming deliberately, and
+with open eyes, to the boundaries of this mortal life.
+
+At that time, there was a cheap edition of Byron's works in
+contemplation, intended to bring his writings into circulation among
+the masses; and the pathos arising from the story of his domestic
+misfortunes was one great means relied on for giving it currency.
+
+Under these circumstances, some of Lady Byron's friends had proposed
+the question to her, _whether she had not a responsibility to society
+for the truth_; whether _she did right_ to allow these writings to gain
+influence over the popular mind by giving a silent consent to what she
+knew to be utter falsehoods.
+
+Lady Byron's whole life had been passed in the most heroic
+self-abnegation and self-sacrifice: and she had now to consider whether
+one more act of self-denial was not required of her before leaving this
+world; namely, to declare the absolute truth, no matter at what expense
+to her own feelings.
+
+For this reason, it was her desire to recount the whole history to a
+person of another country, and entirely out of the sphere of personal
+and local feelings which might be supposed to influence those in the
+country and station in life where the events really happened, in order
+that she might be helped by such a person's views in making up an
+opinion as to her own duty.
+
+The interview had almost the solemnity of a death-bed avowal. Lady
+Byron stated the facts which have been embodied in this article, and
+gave to the writer a paper containing a brief memorandum of the whole,
+with the dates affixed.
+
+We have already spoken of that singular sense of the reality of the
+spiritual world which seemed to encompass Lady Byron during the last
+part of her life, and which made her words and actions seem more like
+those of a blessed being detached from earth than of an ordinary
+mortal. All her modes of looking at things, all her motives of action,
+all her involuntary exhibitions of emotion, were so high above any
+common level, and so entirely regulated by the most unworldly causes,
+that it would seem difficult to make the ordinary world understand
+exactly how the thing seemed to lie before her mind. What impressed
+the writer more strongly than anything else was Lady Byron's perfect
+conviction that her husband was now a redeemed spirit; that he looked
+back with pain and shame and regret on all that was unworthy in his
+past life; and that, if he could speak or could act in the case, he
+would desire to prevent the further circulation of base falsehoods,
+and of seductive poetry, which had been made the vehicle of morbid and
+unworthy passions.
+
+Lady Byron's experience had led her to apply the powers of her strong
+philosophical mind to the study of mental pathology: and she had become
+satisfied that the solution of the painful problem which first occurred
+to her as a young wife, was, after all, the true one; namely, that
+Lord Byron had been one of those unfortunately constituted persons in
+whom the balance of nature is so critically hung, that it is always in
+danger of dipping towards insanity; and that, in certain periods of his
+life, he was so far under the influence of mental disorder as not to be
+fully responsible for his actions.
+
+She went over with a brief and clear analysis the history of his
+whole life as she had thought it out during the lonely musings of her
+widowhood. She dwelt on the ancestral causes that gave him a nature
+of exceptional and dangerous susceptibility. She went through the
+mismanagements of his childhood, the history of his school-days, the
+influence of the ordinary school-course of classical reading on such
+a mind as his. She sketched boldly and clearly the internal life of
+the young men of the time, as she, with her purer eyes, had looked
+through it; and showed how habits, which, with less susceptible fibre,
+and coarser strength of nature, were tolerable for his companions,
+were deadly to him, unhinging his nervous system, and intensifying the
+dangers of ancestral proclivities. Lady Byron expressed the feeling
+too, that the Calvinistic theology, as heard in Scotland, had proved
+in his case, as it often does in certain minds, a subtle poison. He
+never could either disbelieve or become reconciled to it; and the sore
+problems it proposes embittered his spirit against Christianity.
+
+'The worst of it is, I _do believe_,' he would often say with violence,
+when he had been employing all his powers of reason, wit, and ridicule
+upon these subjects.
+
+Through all this sorrowful history was to be seen, not the care of a
+slandered woman to make her story good, but the pathetic anxiety of
+a mother, who treasures every particle of hope, every intimation of
+good, in the son whom she cannot cease to love. With indescribable
+resignation, she dwelt on those last hours, those words addressed to
+her, never to be understood till repeated in eternity.
+
+But all this she looked upon as for ever past; believing, that, with
+the dropping of the earthly life, these morbid impulses and influences
+ceased, and that higher nature which he often so beautifully expressed
+in his poems became the triumphant one.
+
+While speaking on this subject, her pale ethereal face became luminous
+with a heavenly radiance; there was something so sublime in her belief
+in the victory of love over evil, that faith with her seemed to have
+become sight. She seemed so clearly to perceive the divine ideal of
+the man she had loved, and for whose salvation she had been called to
+suffer and labour and pray, that all memories of his past unworthiness
+fell away, and were lost.
+
+Her love was never the doting fondness of weak women; it was the
+appreciative and discriminating love by which a higher nature
+recognised god-like capabilities under all the dust and defilement
+of misuse and passion: and she never doubted that the love which in
+her was so strong, that no injury or insult could shake it, was yet
+stronger in the God who made her capable of such a devotion, and that
+in him it was accompanied by power to subdue all things to itself.
+
+The writer was so impressed and excited by the whole scene and recital,
+that she begged for two or three days to deliberate before forming any
+opinion. She took the memorandum with her, returned to London, and gave
+a day or two to the consideration of the subject. The decision which
+she made was chiefly influenced by her reverence and affection for Lady
+Byron. She seemed so frail, she had suffered so much, she stood at
+such a height above the comprehension of the coarse and common world,
+that the author had a feeling that it would almost be like violating a
+shrine to ask her to come forth from the sanctuary of a silence where
+she had so long abode, and plead her cause. She wrote to Lady Byron,
+that while this act of justice did seem to be called for, and to be in
+some respects most desirable, yet, as it would involve so much that was
+painful to her, the writer considered that Lady Byron would be entirely
+justifiable in leaving the truth to be disclosed after her death; and
+recommended that all the facts necessary should be put in the hands of
+some person, to be so published.
+
+Years passed on. Lady Byron lingered four years after this interview to
+the wonder of her physicians and all her friends.
+
+After Lady Byron's death, the writer looked anxiously, hoping to see a
+Memoir of the person whom she considered the most remarkable woman that
+England has produced in the century. No such Memoir has appeared on the
+part of her friends; and the mistress of Lord Byron has the ear of the
+public, and is sowing far and wide unworthy slanders, which are eagerly
+gathered up and read by an undiscriminating community.
+
+There may be family reasons in England which prevent Lady Byron's
+friends from speaking. But Lady Byron has an American name and an
+American existence; and reverence for pure womanhood is, we think, a
+national characteristic of the American; and, so far as this country
+is concerned, we feel that the public should have this refutation of
+the slanders of the Countess Guiccioli's book.
+
+
+LORD LINDSAY'S LETTER TO THE LONDON 'TIMES.'
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF 'THE TIMES.'
+
+Sir,--I have waited in expectation of a categorical denial of the
+horrible charge brought by Mrs. Beecher Stowe against Lord Byron and
+his sister on the alleged authority of the late Lady Byron. Such denial
+has been only indirectly given by the letter of Messrs. Wharton and
+Fords in your impression of yesterday. That letter is sufficient to
+prove that Lady Byron never contemplated the use made of her name, and
+that her descendants and representatives disclaim any countenance of
+Mrs. B. Stowe's article; but it does not specifically meet Mrs. Stowe's
+allegation, that Lady Byron, in conversing with her thirteen years ago,
+affirmed the charge now before us. It remains open, therefore, to a
+scandal-loving world, to credit the calumny through the advantage of
+this flaw, involuntary, I believe, in the answer produced against it.
+My object in addressing you is to supply that deficiency by proving
+that what is now stated on Lady Byron's supposed authority is at
+variance, in all respects, with what she stated immediately after the
+separation, when everything was fresh in her memory in relation to
+the time during which, according to Mrs. B. Stowe, she believed that
+Byron and his sister were living together in guilt. I publish this
+evidence with reluctance, but in obedience to that higher obligation
+of justice to the voiceless and defenceless dead which bids me break
+through a reserve that otherwise I should have held sacred. The Lady
+Byron of 1818 would, I am certain, have sanctioned my doing so, had
+she foreseen the present unparalleled occasion, and the bar that the
+conditions of her will present (as I infer from Messrs. Wharton and
+Fords' letter) against any fuller communication. Calumnies such as the
+present sink deep and with rapidity into the public mind, and are not
+easily eradicated. The fame of one of our greatest poets, and that
+of the kindest and truest and most constant friend that Byron ever
+had, is at stake; and it will not do to wait for revelations from the
+fountain-head, which are not promised, and possibly may never reach us.
+
+The late Lady Anne Barnard, who died in 1825, a contemporary and friend
+of Burke, Windham, Dundas, and a host of the wise and good of that
+generation, and remembered in letters as the authoress of 'Auld Robin
+Gray,' had known the late Lady Byron from infancy, and took a warm
+interest in her; holding Lord Byron in corresponding repugnance, not
+to say prejudice, in consequence of what she believed to be his harsh
+and cruel treatment of her young friend. I transcribe the following
+passages, and a letter from Lady Byron herself (written in 1818) from
+_ricordi_, or private family memoirs, in Lady Anne's autograph, now
+before me. I include the letter, because, although treating only in
+general terms of the matter and causes of the separation, it affords
+collateral evidence bearing strictly upon the point of the credibility
+of the charge now in question:--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'The separation of Lord and Lady Byron astonished the world, which
+believed him a reformed man as to his habits, and a becalmed man as to
+his remorses. He had written nothing that appeared after his marriage
+till the famous "Fare thee well," which had the power of compelling
+those to pity the writer who were not well aware that he was not the
+unhappy person he affected to be. Lady Byron's misery was whispered
+soon after her marriage and his ill usage, but no word transpired,
+no sign escaped, from her. She gave birth, shortly, to a daughter;
+and when she went, as soon as she was recovered, on a visit to her
+father's, taking her little Ada with her, no one knew that it was to
+return to her lord no more. At that period, a severe fit of illness had
+confined me to bed for two months. I heard of Lady Byron's distress;
+of the pains he took to give a harsh impression of her character
+to the world. I wrote to her, and entreated her to come and let me
+see and hear her, if she conceived my sympathy or counsel could be
+any comfort to her. She came; but what a tale was unfolded by this
+interesting young creature, who had so fondly hoped to have made a
+young man of genius and romance (as she supposed) happy! They had not
+been an hour in the carriage which conveyed them from the church, when,
+breaking into a malignant sneer, "Oh! what a dupe you have been to your
+imagination! How is it possible a woman of your sense could form the
+wild hope of reforming _me_? Many are the tears you will have to shed
+ere that plan is accomplished. It is enough for me that you are my wife
+for me to hate you! If you were the wife of any other man, I own you
+might have charms," &c. I who listened was astonished. "How could you
+go on after this," said I, "my dear? Why did you not return to your
+father's?" "Because I had not a conception he was in earnest; because I
+reckoned it a bad jest, and told him so,--that my opinions of him were
+very different from his of himself, otherwise he would not find me by
+his side. He laughed it over when he saw me appear hurt: and I forgot
+what had passed, till forced to remember it. I believe he was pleased
+with me, too, for a little while. I suppose it had escaped his memory
+that I was his wife." But she described the happiness they enjoyed to
+have been unequal and perturbed. Her situation, in a short time, might
+have entitled her to some tenderness; but she made no claim on him for
+any. He sometimes reproached her for the motives that had induced her
+to marry him: all was "vanity, the vanity of Miss Milbanke carrying the
+point of reforming Lord Byron! He always knew _her_ inducements; her
+pride shut her eyes to _his_: _he_ wished to build up his character
+and his fortunes; both were somewhat deranged: she had a high name,
+and would have a fortune worth his attention,--let her look to that
+for his motives!"--"O Byron, Byron!" she said, "how you desolate me!"
+He would then accuse himself of being mad, and throw himself on the
+ground in a frenzy, which she believed was affected to conceal the
+coldness and malignity of his heart,--an affectation which at that
+time never failed to meet with the tenderest commiseration. I could
+find by some implications, not followed up by me, lest she might have
+condemned herself afterwards for her involuntary disclosures, that he
+soon attempted to corrupt her principles, both with respect to her own
+conduct and her latitude for his. She saw the precipice on which she
+stood, and kept his sister with her as much as possible. He returned
+in the evenings from the haunts of vice, where he made her understand
+he had been, with manners so profligate! "O the wretch!" said I. "And
+had he no moments of remorse?" "Sometimes he appeared to have them.
+One night, coming home from one of his lawless parties, he saw me so
+indignantly collected, and bearing all with such a determined calmness,
+that a rush of remorse seemed to come over him. He called himself a
+monster, though his sister was present, and threw himself in agony at
+my feet. I could not--no--I could not forgive him such injuries. He
+had lost me for ever! Astonished at the return of virtue, my tears, I
+believe, flowed over his face, and I said, 'Byron, all is forgotten:
+never, never shall you hear of it more!' He started up, and, folding
+his arms while he looked at me, burst into laughter. 'What do you
+mean?' said I. 'Only a philosophical experiment; that's all,' said
+he. 'I wished to ascertain the value of your resolutions.'" I need
+not say more of this prince of duplicity, except that varied were his
+methods of rendering her wretched, even to the last. When her lovely
+little child was born, and it was laid beside its mother on the bed,
+and he was informed he might see his daughter, after gazing at it with
+an exulting smile, this was the ejaculation that broke from him: "Oh,
+what an implement of torture have I acquired in you!" Such he rendered
+it by his eyes and manner, keeping her in a perpetual alarm for its
+safety when in his presence. All this reads madder than I believe he
+was: but she had not then made up her mind to disbelieve his pretended
+insanity, and conceived it best to intrust her secret with the
+excellent Dr. Baillie; telling him all that seemed to regard the state
+of her husband's mind, and letting his advice regulate her conduct.
+Baillie doubted of his derangement; but, as he did not reckon his own
+opinion infallible, he wished her to take precautions as if her husband
+were so. He recommended her going to the country, but to give him no
+suspicion of her intentions of remaining there, and, for a short time,
+to show no coldness in her letters, till she could better ascertain his
+state. She went, regretting, as she told me, to wear any semblance but
+the truth. A short time disclosed the story to the world. He acted the
+part of a man driven to despair by her inflexible resentment and by the
+arts of a governess (once a servant in the family) who hated him. "I
+will give you," proceeds Lady Anne, "a few paragraphs transcribed from
+one of Lady Byron's own letters to me. It is sorrowful to think, that,
+in a very little time, this young and amiable creature, wise, patient,
+and feeling, will have her character mistaken by every one who reads
+Byron's works. To rescue her from this, I preserved her letters; and,
+when she afterwards expressed a fear that any thing of her writings
+should ever fall into hands to injure him (I suppose she meant by
+publication), I safely assured her that it never should. But here this
+letter shall be placed, a sacred record in her favour, unknown to
+herself":--
+
+ '"I am a very incompetent judge of the impression which the last canto
+ of 'Childe Harold' may produce on the minds of indifferent readers.
+ It contains the usual trace of a conscience restlessly awake; though
+ his object has been too long to aggravate its burden, as if it could
+ thus be oppressed into eternal stupor. I will hope, as you do, that it
+ survives for his ultimate good. It was the acuteness of his remorse,
+ impenitent in its character, which so long seemed to demand from my
+ compassion to spare every resemblance of reproach, every look of
+ grief, which might have said to his conscience, 'You have made me
+ wretched.' I am decidedly of opinion that he is responsible. He has
+ wished to be thought partially deranged, or on the brink of it, to
+ perplex observers, and prevent them from tracing effects to their
+ real causes through all the intricacies of his conduct. I was, as
+ I told you, at one time the dupe of his acted insanity, and clung
+ to the former delusions in regard to the motives that concerned me
+ personally, till the whole system was laid bare. He is the absolute
+ monarch of words, and uses them, as Bonaparte did lives, for conquest,
+ without more regard to their intrinsic value; considering them only
+ as ciphers, which must derive all their import from the situation in
+ which he places them, and the ends to which he adapts them with such
+ consummate skill. Why, then, you will say, does he not employ them to
+ give a better colour to his own character? Because he is too good an
+ actor to over-act, or to assume a moral garb which it would be easy
+ to strip off. In regard to his poetry, egotism is the vital principle
+ of his imagination, which it is difficult for him to kindle on any
+ subject with which his own character and interests are not identified:
+ but by the introduction of fictitious incidents, by change of scene
+ or time, he has enveloped his poetical disclosures in a system
+ impenetrable except to a very few; and his constant desire of creating
+ a sensation makes him not averse to be the object of wonder and
+ curiosity, even though accompanied by some dark and vague suspicions.
+ Nothing has contributed more to the misunderstanding of his real
+ character than the lonely grandeur in which he shrouds it, and his
+ affectation of being above mankind, when he exists almost in their
+ voice. The romance of his sentiments is another feature of this mask
+ of state. I know no one more habitually destitute of that enthusiasm
+ he so beautifully expresses, and to which he can work up his fancy
+ chiefly by contagion. I had heard he was the best of brothers, the
+ most generous of friends; and I thought such feelings only required to
+ be warmed and cherished into more diffusive benevolence. Though these
+ opinions are eradicated, and could never return but with the decay
+ of my memory, you will not wonder if there are still moments when
+ the association of feelings which arose from them soften and sadden
+ my thoughts. But I have not thanked you, dearest Lady Anne, for your
+ kindness in regard to a principal object,--that of rectifying false
+ impressions. I trust you understand my wishes, which never were to
+ injure Lord Byron in any way: for, though he would not suffer me to
+ remain his wife, he cannot prevent me from continuing his friend; and
+ it was from considering myself as such that I silenced the accusations
+ by which my own conduct might have been more fully justified. It is
+ not necessary to speak ill of his heart in general: it is sufficient
+ that to me it was hard and impenetrable; that my own must have been
+ broken before his could have been touched. I would rather represent
+ this as _my_ misfortune than as _his_ guilt; but surely that
+ misfortune is not to be made my crime! Such are my feelings: you will
+ judge how to act. His allusions to me in 'Childe Harold' are cruel
+ and cold, but with such a semblance as to make _me_ appear so, and to
+ attract all sympathy to himself. It is said in this poem that hatred
+ of him will be taught as a lesson to his child. I might appeal to all
+ who have ever heard me speak of him, and still more to my own heart,
+ to witness that there has been no moment when I have remembered injury
+ otherwise than affectionately and sorrowfully. It is not my duty to
+ give way to hopeless and wholly unrequited affection; but, so long
+ as I live, my chief struggle will probably be not to remember him
+ too kindly. I do not seek the sympathy of the world; but I wish to be
+ known by those whoso opinion is valuable, and whose kindness is dear
+ to me. Among such, my dear Lady Anne, you will ever be remembered by
+ your truly affectionate,
+
+  '"A. BYRON."'
+
+It is the province of your readers, and of the world at large, to
+judge between the two testimonies now before them,--Lady Byron's in
+1816 and 1818, and that put forward in 1869 by Mrs. B. Stowe, as
+communicated by Lady Byron thirteen years ago. In the face of the
+evidence now given, positive, negative, and circumstantial, there
+can be but two alternatives in the case: either Mrs. B. Stowe must
+have entirely misunderstood Lady Byron, and been thus led into error
+and misstatement, or we must conclude that, under the pressure of a
+lifelong and secret sorrow, Lady Byron's mind had become clouded with
+an hallucination in respect of the particular point in question.
+
+Tho reader will admire the noble but severe character displayed
+in Lady Byron's letter; but those who keep in view what her first
+impressions were, as above recorded, may probably place a more lenient
+interpretation than hers upon some of the incidents alleged to Byron's
+discredit. I shall conclude with some remarks upon his character,
+written shortly after his death by a wise, virtuous, and charitable
+judge, the late Sir Walter Scott, likewise in a letter to Lady Anne
+Barnard:--
+
+'Fletcher's account of poor Byron is extremely interesting. I
+had always a strong attachment to that unfortunate though most
+richly-gifted man, because I thought I saw that his virtues (and he had
+many) were his own; and his eccentricities the result of an irritable
+temperament, which sometimes approached nearly to mental disease. Those
+who are gifted with strong nerves, a regular temper, and habitual
+self-command, are not, perhaps, aware how much of what they may think
+virtue they owe to constitution; and such are but too severe judges of
+men like Byron, whose mind, like a day of alternate storm and sunshine,
+is all dark shades and stray gleams of light, instead of the twilight
+gray which illuminates happier though less distinguished mortals. I
+always thought, that, when a moral proposition was placed plainly
+before Lord Byron, his mind yielded a pleased and willing assent to
+it; but, if there was any side view given in the way of raillery or
+otherwise, he was willing enough to evade conviction.... It augurs
+ill for the cause of Greece that this master-spirit should have been
+withdrawn from their assistance just as he was obtaining a complete
+ascendency over their counsels. I have seen several letters from the
+Ionian Islands, all of which unite in speaking in the highest praise of
+the wisdom and temperance of his counsels, and the ascendency he was
+obtaining over the turbulent and ferocious chiefs of the insurgents. I
+have some verses written by him on his last birthday: they breathe a
+spirit of affection towards his wife, and a desire of dying in battle,
+which seems like an anticipation of his approaching fate.'
+
+  I remain, sir, your obedient servant,
+
+  LINDSAY,
+
+  DUNECHT, Sept. 3.
+
+
+DR. FORBES WINSLOW'S LETTER TO THE LONDON 'TIMES.'
+
+TO THE EDITOR.
+
+SIR,--Your paper of the 4th of September, containing an able
+and deeply interesting 'Vindication of Lord Byron,' has followed me
+to this place. With the general details of the 'True Story' (as it is
+termed) of Lady Byron's separation from her husband, as recorded in
+'Macmillan's Magazine,' I have no desire or intention to grapple. It
+is only with the hypothesis of insanity, as suggested by the clever
+writer of the 'Vindication' to account for Lady Byron's sad revelations
+to Mrs. Beecher Stowe, with which I propose to deal. I do not believe
+that the mooted theory of mental aberration can, in this case, be for a
+moment maintained. If Lady Byron's statement of facts to Mrs. B. Stowe
+is to be viewed as the creation of a distempered fancy, a delusion or
+hallucination of an insane mind, what part of the narrative are we to
+draw the boundary-line between fact and delusion, sanity and insanity?
+Where are we to fix the _point d'appui_ of the lunacy? Again: is the
+alleged 'hallucination' to be considered as strictly confined to the
+idea that Lord Byron had committed the frightful sin of incest? or is
+the whole of the 'True Story' of her married life, as reproduced with
+such terrible minuteness by Mrs. Beecher Stowe, to be viewed as the
+delusion of a disordered fancy? If Lady Byron was the subject of an
+'hallucination' with regard to her husband, I think it not unreasonable
+to conclude that the mental alienation existed on the day of her
+marriage. If this proposition be accepted, the natural inference will
+be, that the details of the conversation which Lady Byron represents to
+have occurred between herself and Lord Byron as soon as they entered
+the carriage never took place. Lord Byron is said to have remarked
+to Lady Byron, 'You might have prevented this (or words to this
+effect): you will now find that you have married a devil.' Is this
+alleged conversation to be viewed as _fact_, or _fiction_? evidence of
+_sanity_, or _insanity_? Is the revelation which Lord Byron is said to
+have made to his wife of his 'incestuous passion' another delusion,
+having no foundation except in his wife's disordered imagination? Are
+his alleged attempts to justify to Lady Byron's mind the _morale_ of
+the plea of 'Continental latitude--the good-humoured marriage, in which
+complaisant couples mutually agree to form the cloak for each other's
+infidelities,'--another morbid perversion of her imagination? Did this
+conversation ever take place? It will be difficult to separate one
+part of the 'True Story' from another, and maintain that this portion
+indicates insanity, and that portion represents sanity. If we accept
+the hypothesis of hallucination, we are bound to view the whole of Lady
+Byron's conversations with Mrs. B. Stowe, and the written statement
+laid before her, as the wild and incoherent representations of a
+lunatic. On the day when Lady Byron parted from her husband, did she
+enter his private room, and find him with the 'object of his guilty
+passion?' and did he say, as they parted, 'When shall we three meet
+again?' Is this to be considered as an actual occurrence, or as another
+form of hallucination? It is quite inconsistent with the theory of Lady
+Byron's insanity to imagine that her delusion was restricted to the
+idea of his having committed 'incest.' In common fairness, we are bound
+to view the aggregate mental phenomena which she exhibited from the
+day of the marriage to their final separation and her death. No person
+practically acquainted with the true characteristics of insanity would
+affirm, that, had this idea of 'incest' been an insane hallucination,
+Lady Byron could, from the lengthened period which intervened between
+her unhappy marriage and death, have refrained from exhibiting her
+mental alienation, not only to her legal advisers and trustees, but to
+others, exacting no pledge of secrecy from them as to her disordered
+impressions. Lunatics do for a time, and for some special purpose, most
+cunningly conceal their delusions; but they have not the capacity to
+struggle for thirty-six years with a frightful hallucination, similar
+to the one Lady Byron is alleged to have had, without the insane state
+of mind becoming obvious to those with whom they are daily associating.
+Neither is it consistent with experience to suppose that, if Lady Byron
+had been a monomaniac, her state of disordered understanding would have
+been restricted to one hallucination. Her diseased brain, affecting the
+normal action of thought, would, in all probability, have manifested
+other symptoms besides those referred to of aberration of intellect.
+
+During the last thirty years, I have not met with a case of insanity
+(assuming the hypothesis of hallucination) at all parallel with that
+of Lady Byron's. In my experience, it is unique. I never saw a patient
+with such a delusion. If it should be established, by the statements of
+those who are the depositors of the secret (and they are now bound, in
+vindication of Lord Byron's memory, to deny, if they have the power of
+doing so, this most frightful accusation), that the idea of incest did
+unhappily cross Lady Byron's mind prior to her finally leaving him, it
+no doubt arose from a most inaccurate knowledge of facts and perfectly
+unjustifiable data, and was not, in the right psychological acceptation
+of the phrase, an insane hallucination.
+
+  Sir, I remain your obedient servant,
+
+  FORBES WINSLOW, M.D.
+
+ZARINGERHOF, FREIBURG-EN-BREISGAU, Sept. 8, 1869.
+
+
+EXTRACT FROM LORD BYRON'S EXPUNGED LETTER.
+
+TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+  'BOLOGNA, June 7, 1819.
+
+... 'Before I left Venice, I had returned to you your late, and Mr.
+Hobhouse's sheets of "Juan." Don't wait for further answers from
+me, but address yours to Venice as usual. I know nothing of my own
+movements. I may return there in a few days, or not for some time:
+all this depends on circumstances. I left Mr. Hoppner very well. My
+daughter Allegra is well too, and is growing pretty: her hair is
+growing darker, and her eyes are blue. Her temper and her ways, Mr.
+Hoppner says, are like mine, as well as her features: she will make, in
+that case, a manageable young lady.
+
+'I have never seen anything of Ada, the little Electra of my Mycenæ....
+But there will come a day of reckoning, even if I should not live
+to see it. I have at least seen ---- shivered, who was one of my
+assassins. When that man was doing his worst to uproot my whole
+family,--tree, branch, and blossoms; when, after taking my retainer,
+he went over to them; when he was bringing desolation on my hearth,
+and destruction on my household gods,--did he think that, in less
+than three years, a natural event, a severe domestic, but an expected
+and common calamity, would lay his carcass in a cross-road, or stamp
+his name in a verdict of lunacy? Did he (who in his sexagenary ...)
+reflect or consider what my feelings must have been when wife and child
+and sister, and name and fame and country, were to be my sacrifice on
+his legal altar?--and this at a moment when my health was declining,
+my fortune embarrassed, and my mind had been shaken by many kinds of
+disappointment? while I was yet young, and might have reformed what
+might be wrong in my conduct, and retrieved what was perplexing in
+my affairs? But he is in his grave, and--What a long letter I have
+scribbled!'...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In order that the reader may measure the change of moral tone with
+regard to Lord Byron, wrought by the constant efforts of himself and
+his party, we give the two following extracts from 'Blackwood.'
+
+The first is 'Blackwood' in 1819, just after the publication of 'Don
+Juan': the second is 'Blackwood' in 1825.
+
+'In the composition of this work, there is, unquestionably, a more
+thorough and intense infusion of genius and vice, power and profligacy,
+than in any poem which had ever before been written in the English,
+or, indeed, in any other modern language. Had the wickedness been less
+inextricably mingled with the beauty and the grace and the strength of
+a most inimitable and incomprehensible Muse, our task would have been
+easy. 'Don Juan' is by far the most admirable specimen of the mixture
+of ease, strength, gaiety, and seriousness, extant in the whole body
+of English poetry: the author has devoted his powers to the worst of
+purposes and passions; and it increases his guilt and our sorrow that
+he has devoted them entire.
+
+'The moral strain of the whole poem is pitched in the lowest key. Love,
+honour, patriotism, religion, are mentioned only to be scoffed at, as
+if their sole resting-place were, or ought to be, in the bosoms of
+fools. It appears, in short, as if this miserable man, having exhausted
+every species of sensual gratification, having drained the cup of sin
+even to its bitterest dregs, were resolved to show us that he is no
+longer a human being, even in his frailties, but a cool, unconcerned
+fiend, laughing with a detestable glee over the whole of the better and
+worse elements of which human life is composed; treating well-nigh with
+equal derision the most pure of virtues, and the most odious of vices;
+dead alike to the beauty of the one, and the deformity of the other;
+a mere heartless despiser of that frail but noble humanity, whose
+type was never exhibited in a shape of more deplorable degradation
+than in his own contemptuously distinct delineation of himself. To
+confess to his Maker, and weep over in secret agonies the wildest and
+most fantastic transgressions of heart and mind, is the part of a
+conscious sinner, in whom sin has not become the sole principle of life
+and action; but to lay bare to the eye of man and of _woman_ all the
+hidden convulsions of a wicked spirit, and to do all this without one
+symptom of contrition, remorse, or hesitation, with a calm, careless
+ferociousness of contented and satisfied depravity,--this was an insult
+which no man of genius had ever before dared to put upon his Creator
+or his species. Impiously railing against his God, madly and meanly
+disloyal to his sovereign and his country, and brutally outraging all
+the best feelings of female honor, affection, and confidence, how small
+a part of chivalry is that which remains to the descendant of the
+Byrons!--a gloomy visor and a deadly weapon!
+
+'Those who are acquainted (as who is not?) with the main incidents in
+the private life of Lord Byron, and who have not seen this production,
+will scarcely believe that malignity should have carried him so far as
+to make him commence a filthy and impious poem with an elaborate satire
+on the character and manners of his wife, from whom, even by his own
+confession, he has been separated only in consequence of his own cruel
+and heartless misconduct. It is in vain for Lord Byron to attempt in
+any way to justify his own behaviour in that affair; and, now that he
+has so openly and audaciously invited inquiry and reproach, we do not
+see any good reason why he should not be plainly told so by the general
+voice of his countrymen. It would not be an easy matter to persuade
+any man who has any knowledge of the nature of woman, that a female
+such as Lord Byron has himself described his wife to be would rashly or
+hastily or lightly separate herself from the love with which she had
+once been inspired for such a man as he is or was. Had he not heaped
+insult upon insult, and scorn upon scorn, had he not forced the iron
+of his contempt into her very soul, there is no woman of delicacy and
+virtue, as he _admitted_ Lady Byron to be, who would not have hoped all
+things, and suffered all things, from one, her love of whom must have
+been inwoven with so many exalting elements of delicious pride, and
+more delicious humility. To offend the love of such a woman was wrong,
+but it might be forgiven; to desert her was unmanly, but he might have
+returned, and wiped for ever from her eyes the tears of her desertion:
+but to injure and to desert, and then to turn back and wound her
+widowed privacy with unhallowed strains of cold-blooded mockery, was
+brutally, fiendishly, inexpiably mean. For impurities there might be
+some possibility of pardon, were they supposed to spring only from the
+reckless buoyancy of young blood and fiery passions; for impiety there
+might at least be pity, were it visible that the misery of the impious
+soul equalled its darkness: but for offences such as this, which cannot
+proceed either from the madness of sudden impulse or the bewildered
+agonies of doubt, but which speak the wilful and determined spite of
+an unrepenting, unsoftened, smiling, sarcastic, joyous sinner, there
+can be neither pity nor pardon. Our knowledge that it is committed
+by one of the most powerful intellects our island ever has produced
+lends intensity a thousand-fold to the bitterness of our indignation.
+Every high thought that was ever kindled in our breasts by the Muse of
+Byron, every pure and lofty feeling that ever responded from within
+us to the sweep of his majestic inspirations, every remembered moment
+of admiration and enthusiasm, is up in arms against him. We look back
+with a mixture of wrath and scorn to the delight with which we suffered
+ourselves to be filled by one, who, all the while he was furnishing
+us with delight, must, we cannot doubt it, have been mocking us with
+a cruel mockery; less cruel only, because less peculiar, than that
+with which he has now turned him from the lurking-place of his selfish
+and polluted exile to pour the pitiful chalice of his contumely on
+the surrendered devotion of a virgin bosom, and the holy hopes of the
+mother of his child. It is indeed a sad and a humiliating thing to
+know, that in the same year, there proceeded from the same pen two
+productions in all things so different as the fourth canto of "Childe
+Harold" and his loathsome "Don Juan."
+
+'We have mentioned one, and, all will admit, the worst instance of the
+private malignity which has been embodied in so many passages of "Don
+Juan;" and we are quite sure the lofty-minded and virtuous _men_ whom
+Lord Byron has debased himself by insulting will close the volume which
+contains their own injuries, with no feelings save those of pity for
+him that has inflicted them, and for her who partakes so largely in the
+same injuries.'--_August, 1819._
+
+
+'BLACKWOOD,'--_iterum_.
+
+'We shall, like all others who say anything about Lord Byron, begin,
+_sans apologie_, with his personal character. This is the great object
+of attack, the constant theme of open vituperation to one set, and the
+established mark for all the petty but deadly artillery of sneers,
+shrugs, groans, to another. Two widely different matters, however,
+are generally, we might say universally, mixed up here,--the personal
+character of the man, as proved by his course of life; and his personal
+character, as revealed in or guessed from his books. Nothing can be
+more unfair than the style in which this mixture is made use of. Is
+there a noble sentiment, a lofty thought, a sublime conception, in
+the book? "Ah, yes!" is the answer, "But what of that? It is only
+the _roué_ Byron that speaks!" Is a kind, a generous action of the
+man mentioned? "Yes, yes!" comments the sage; "but only remember the
+atrocities of 'Don Juan:' depend on it, this, if it be true, must have
+been a mere freak of caprice, or perhaps a bit of vile hypocrisy."
+Salvation is thus shut out at either entrance: the poet damns the man,
+and the man the poet.
+
+'Nobody will suspect us of being so absurd as to suppose that it is
+possible for people to draw no inferences as to the character of an
+author from his book, or to shut entirely out of view, in judging of
+a book, that which they may happen to _know_ about the man who writes
+it. The cant of the day supposes such things to be practicable; but
+they are not. But what we complain of and scorn is the extent to which
+they are carried in the case of this particular individual, as compared
+with others; the impudence with which things are at once assumed to be
+facts in regard to _his_ private history; and the absolute unfairness
+of never arguing from _his_ writings to _him, but for evil_.
+
+'Take the man, in the first place, as unconnected, in so far as we
+can thus consider him, with his works; and ask, What, after all, are
+the bad things we know of him? Was he dishonest or dishonourable?
+had he ever _done_ anything to forfeit, or even endanger, his rank
+as a gentleman? Most assuredly, no such accusations have ever been
+maintained against Lord Byron the private nobleman, although something
+of the sort may have been insinuated against the author. "But he was
+such a profligate in his morals, that his name cannot be mentioned with
+anything like tolerance." Was he so, indeed? We should like extremely
+to have the catechising of the individual _man_ who says so. That
+he indulged in sensual vices, to some extent, is certain, and to be
+regretted and condemned. But was he worse, as to such matters, than
+the enormous majority of those who join in the cry of horror upon this
+occasion? We most assuredly believe exactly the reverse; and we rest
+our belief upon very plain and intelligible grounds. First, we hold it
+impossible that the majority of mankind, or that anything beyond a very
+small minority, are or can be entitled to talk of sensual profligacy as
+having formed a part of the life and character of the man, who, dying
+at six and thirty, bequeathed a collection of works such as Byron's to
+the world. Secondly, we hold it impossible, that laying the extent of
+his intellectual labours out of the question, and looking only to the
+nature of the intellect which generated, and delighted in generating,
+such beautiful and noble conceptions as are to be found in almost all
+Lord Byron's works,--we hold it impossible that very many men can be
+at once capable of comprehending these conceptions, and entitled to
+consider sensual profligacy as having formed the principal, or even
+a principal, trait in Lord Byron's character. Thirdly, and lastly,
+we have never been able to hear any one fact established which could
+prove Lord Byron to deserve anything like the degree or even kind
+of odium which has, in regard to matters of this class, been heaped
+upon his name. We have no story of base unmanly seduction, or false
+and villainous intrigue, against him,--none whatever. It seems to us
+quite clear, that, if he had been at all what is called in society
+an unprincipled sensualist, there must have been many such stories,
+authentic and authenticated. But there are none such,--absolutely none.
+His name has been coupled with the names of three, four, or more women
+of some rank: but what kind of women? Every one of them, in the first
+place, about as old as himself in years, and therefore a great deal
+older in character; every one of them utterly battered in reputation
+long before he came into contact with them,--licentious, unprincipled,
+characterless women. What father has ever reproached him with the ruin
+of his daughter? What husband has denounced him as the destroyer of his
+peace?
+
+'Let us not be mistaken. We are not defending the offences of which
+Lord Byron unquestionably was guilty; neither are we finding fault
+with those, who, after looking honestly within and around themselves,
+condemn those offences, no matter how severely: but we are speaking
+of society in general as it now exists; and we say that there is vile
+hypocrisy in the tone in which Lord Byron is talked of _there_. We
+say, that, although all offences against purity of life are miserable
+things, and condemnable things, the degrees of guilt attached to
+different offences of this class are as widely different as are the
+degrees of guilt between an assault and a murder; and we confess our
+belief, that no man of Byron's station or age could have run much risk
+in gaining a very bad name in society, had a course of life similar
+(in so far as we know any thing of that) to Lord Byron's been the only
+thing chargeable against him.
+
+'The last poem he wrote was produced upon his birthday, not many weeks
+before he died. We consider it as one of the finest and most touching
+effusions of his noble genius. We think he who reads it, and can ever
+after bring himself to regard even the worst transgressions that have
+been charged against Lord Byron with any feelings but those of humble
+sorrow and manly pity, is not deserving of the name of man. The deep
+and passionate struggles with the inferior elements of his nature (and
+ours) which it records; the lofty thirsting after purity; the heroic
+devotion of a soul half weary of life, because unable to believe in
+its own powers to live up to what it so intensely felt to be, and so
+reverentially honoured as, the right; the whole picture of this mighty
+spirit, often darkened, but never sunk,--often erring, but never
+ceasing to see and to worship the beauty of virtue; the repentance of
+it; the anguish; the aspiration, almost stilled in despair,--the whole
+of this is such a whole, that we are sure no man can read these solemn
+verses too often; and we recommend them for repetition, as the best and
+most conclusive of all possible answers whenever the name of Byron is
+insulted by those who permit themselves to forget nothing, either in
+his life or in his writings, but the good.'--[1825.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following letters of Lady Byron's are reprinted from the Memoirs of
+H. C. Robinson. They are given that the reader may form some judgment
+of the strength and activity of her mind, and the elevated class of
+subjects upon which it habitually dwelt.
+
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+  'DEC. 31, 1853.
+
+'DEAR MR. CRABB ROBINSON,--I have an inclination, if I were
+not afraid of trespassing on your time (but you can put my letter by
+for any leisure moment), to enter upon the history of a character which
+I think less appreciated than it ought to be. Men, I observe, do not
+understand men in certain points, without a woman's interpretation.
+Those points, of course, relate to feelings.
+
+'Here is a man taken by most of those who come in his way either for
+Dry-as-Dust, Matter-of-fact, or for a "vain visionary." There are,
+doubtless, some defective or excessive characteristics which give rise
+to those impressions.
+
+'My acquaintance was made, oddly enough, with him twenty-seven years
+ago. A pauper said to me of him, "He's the _poor man's_ doctor." Such
+a recommendation seemed to me a good one: and I also knew that his
+organizing head had formed the first district society in England (for
+Mrs. Fry told me she could not have effected it without his aid); yet
+he has always ignored his own share of it. I felt in him at once the
+curious combination of the Christian and the cynic,--of reverence for
+_man_, and contempt of _men_. It was then an internal war, but one in
+which it was evident to me that the holier cause would be victorious,
+because there was deep belief, and, as far as I could learn, a
+blameless and benevolent life. He appeared only to want sunshine. It
+was a plant which could not be brought to perfection in darkness. He
+had begun life by the most painful conflict between filial duty and
+conscience,--a large provision in the church secured for him by his
+father; but he could not _sign_. There was discredit, as you know,
+attached to such scruples.
+
+'He was also, when I first knew him, under other circumstances of
+a nature to depress him, and to make him feel that he was unjustly
+treated. The gradual removal of these called forth his better nature
+in thankfulness to God. Still the old misanthropic modes of expressing
+himself obtruded themselves at times. This passed in '48 between him
+and Robertson. Robertson said to me, "I want to know something about
+ragged schools." I replied, "You had better ask Dr. King: he knows
+more about them."--"I?" said Dr. King. "I take care to know nothing of
+ragged schools, lest they should make _me_ ragged." Robertson did not
+see through it. Perhaps I had been taught to understand such suicidal
+speeches by my cousin, Lord Melbourne.
+
+'The example of Christ, imperfectly as it may be understood by him, has
+been ever before his eyes: he woke to the thought of following it, and
+he went to rest consoled or rebuked by it. After nearly thirty years
+of intimacy, I may, without presumption, form that opinion. There is
+something pathetic to me in seeing any one _so_ unknown. Even the other
+medical friends of Robertson, when I knew that Dr. King felt a woman's
+tenderness, said on one occasion to him, "But we know that you, Dr.
+King, are _above all feeling_."
+
+'If I have made the character more consistent to you by putting in
+these bits of mosaic, my pen will not have been ill employed, nor
+unpleasingly to you.
+
+  'Yours truly,
+  'A. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+  'BRIGHTON, Nov. 15, 1854.
+
+'The thoughts of all this public and private suffering have taken
+the life out of my pen when I tried to write on matters which would
+otherwise have been most interesting to me: _these_ seemed the shadows,
+_that_ the stern reality. It is good, however, to be drawn out of
+scenes in which one is absorbed most unprofitably, and to have one's
+natural interests revived by such a letter as I have to thank you for,
+as well as its predecessor. You touch upon the very points which do
+interest me the most, habitually. The change of form, and enlargement
+of design, in "The Prospective" _had_ led me to express to one of the
+promoters of that object my desire to contribute. The religious crisis
+is instant; but the man for it? The next best thing, if, as I believe,
+he is not to be found _in England_, is an association of such men as
+are to edit the new periodical. An address delivered by Freeman Clarke
+at Boston, last May, makes me think him better fitted for a leader than
+any other of the religious "Free-thinkers." I wish I could send you
+my one copy; but you do not _need_, it, and others do. His object is
+the same as that of the "Alliance Universelle:" only he is still more
+free from "partialism" (his own word) in his aspirations and practical
+suggestions with respect to an ultimate "Christian synthesis." He
+so far adopts Comte's theory as to speak of religion itself under
+three successive aspects, historically,--1. Thesis; 2. Antithesis;
+3. Synthesis. I made his acquaintance in England; and he inspired
+confidence at once by his brave independence (_incomptis capillis_) and
+self-_un_consciousness. J. J. Tayler's address of last month follows in
+the same path,--all in favour of the "irenics," instead of polemics.
+
+'The answer which you gave me so fully and distinctly to the questions
+I proposed for your consideration was of value in turning to my view
+certain aspects of the case which I had not before observed. I had
+begun a second attack on your patience, when all was forgotten in the
+news of the day.'
+
+
+Lady Byron to H. C. R.
+
+  'BRIGHTON, Dec. 25, 1854.
+
+'With J. J. Tayler, though almost a stranger to him, I have a peculiar
+reason for sympathising. A book of his was a treasure to my daughter on
+her death-bed.[50]
+
+[Footnote 50: Probably 'The Christian Aspects of Faith and Duty.'
+Mr. Tayler has also written 'A Retrospect of the Religious Life of
+England.']
+
+'I must confess to intolerance of opinion as to these two
+points,--_eternal_ evil in any form, and (involved in it) _eternal_
+suffering. To believe in these would take away my God, who is
+all-loving. With a God with whom omnipotence and omniscience were all,
+evil might be eternal; but why do I say to you what has been better
+said elsewhere?'
+
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+  'BRIGHTON, Jan. 31, 1855.
+
+... 'The great difficulty in respect to "The Review"[51] seems to be
+to settle a basis, inclusive and exclusive; in short, a _boundary
+question_. From what you said, I think you agreed with me, that
+a latitudinarian Christianity ought to be the character of the
+periodical; but the depth of the roots should correspond with the width
+of the branches of that tree of knowledge. Of some of those minds one
+might say, "They have no root;" and then, the richer the foliage, the
+more danger that the trunk will fall. "Grounded in Christ" has to me
+a most practical significance and value. I, too, have anxiety about
+a friend (Miss Carpenter) whose life is of public importance: she,
+more than any of the English reformers, unless Nash and Wright, has
+found the art of drawing out the good of human nature, and proving its
+existence. She makes these discoveries by the light of love. I hope
+she may recover, from to-day's report. The object of a Reformatory
+in Leicester has just been secured at a county meeting.... Now the
+desideratum is well-qualified masters and mistresses. If you hear
+of such by chance, pray let me know. The regular schoolmaster is an
+extinguisher. Heart, and familiarity with the class to be educated,
+are all important. At home and abroad, the evidence is conclusive on
+that point; for I have for many years attended to such experiments
+in various parts of Europe. "The Irish Quarterly" has taken up the
+subject with rather more zeal than judgment. I had hoped that a sound
+and temperate exposition of the facts might form an article in the
+"Might-have-been Review."'
+
+[Footnote 51: 'The National Review.']
+
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+  'BRIGHTON, Feb. 12, 1855.
+
+'I have at last earned the pleasure of writing to you by having settled
+troublesome matters of little moment, except locally; and I gladly take
+a wider range by sympathizing in your interests. There is, besides, no
+responsibility--for me at least--in canvassing the merits of Russell
+or Palmerston, but much in deciding whether the "village politician"
+Jackson or Thompson shall be leader in the school or public-house.
+
+'Has not the nation been brought to a conviction that the _system_
+should be broken up? and is Lord Palmerston, who has used it so long
+and so cleverly, likely to promote that object?
+
+'But, whatever obstacles there may be in state affairs, that general
+persuasion must modify other departments of action and knowledge.
+"Unroasted coffee" will no longer be accepted under the official
+seal,--another reason for a new literary combination for distinct
+special objects, a review in which every separate article should be
+_convergent_. If, instead of the problem to make a circle pass through
+three given points, it were required to find the centre from which to
+describe a circle through any three articles in the "Edinburgh" or
+"Westminster Review," who would accomplish it? Much force is lost for
+want of this one-mindedness amongst the contributors. It would not
+exclude variety or freedom in the unlimited discussion of means towards
+the ends unequivocally recognized. If St. Paul had edited a review, he
+might have admitted Peter as well as Luke or Barnabas....
+
+'Ross gave us an excellent sermon, yesterday, on "Hallowing the Name."
+Though far from commonplace, it might have been delivered in any church.
+
+'We have had Fanny Kemble here last week. I only heard her "Romeo
+and Juliet,"--not less instructive, as her readings always are, than
+exciting; for in her glass Shakspeare is a philosopher. I know her, and
+honour her, for her truthfulness amidst all trials.'
+
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+  'BRIGHTON, March 5, 1855.
+
+'I recollect only those passages of Dr. Kennedy's book which bear
+upon the opinions of Lord Byron. Strange as it may seem, Dr. Kennedy
+is most faithful where you doubt his being so. Not merely from casual
+expressions, but from the whole tenor of Lord Byron's feelings, I could
+not but conclude he was a believer in the inspiration of the Bible,
+and had the gloomiest Calvinistic tenets. To that unhappy view of the
+relation of the creature to the Creator, I have always ascribed the
+misery of his life.... It is enough for me to remember, that he who
+thinks his transgressions beyond _forgiveness_ (and such was his own
+deepest feeling) _has_ righteousness beyond that of the self-satisfied
+sinner, or, perhaps, of the half-awakened. It was impossible for me to
+doubt, that, could he have been at once assured of pardon, his living
+faith in a moral duty, and love of virtue ("I love the virtues which
+I cannot claim"), would have conquered every temptation. Judge, then,
+how I must hate the creed which made him see God as an Avenger, not a
+Father! My own impressions were just the reverse, but could have little
+weight; and it was in vain to seek to turn his thoughts for long from
+that _idée fixe_ with which he connected his physical peculiarity as
+a stamp. Instead of being made happier by any apparent good, he felt
+convinced that every blessing would be "turned into a curse" to him.
+Who, possessed by such ideas, could lead a life of love and service to
+God or man? They must, in a measure, realize themselves. "The worst
+of it is, I _do_ believe," he said. I, like all connected with him,
+was broken against the rock of predestination. I may be pardoned for
+referring to his frequent expression of the sentiment that I was only
+sent to show him the happiness he was forbidden to enjoy. You will now
+better understand why "The Deformed Transformed" is too painful to me
+for discussion. Since writing the above, I have read Dr. Granville's
+letter on the Emperor of Russia, some passages of which seem applicable
+to the prepossession I have described. I will not mix up less serious
+matters with these, which forty years have not made less than present
+still to me.'
+
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+  '_Brighton_, April 8, 1855.
+
+... 'The book which has interested me most, lately, is that on
+"Mosaism," translated by Miss Goldsmid, and which I read, as you
+will believe, without any Christian (unchristian?) prejudice. The
+missionaries of the Unity were always, from my childhood, regarded by
+me as in that sense _the_ people; and I believe they were true to that
+mission, though blind, intellectually, in demanding the crucifixion.
+The present aspect of Jewish opinions, as shown in that book, is
+all but Christian. The author is under the error of taking, as the
+representatives of Christianity, the Mystics, Ascetics, and Quietists;
+and therefore he does not know how near he is to the true spirit of the
+gospel. If you should happen to see Miss Goldsmid, pray tell her what
+a great service I think she has rendered to us _soi-disant_ Christians
+in translating a book which must make us sensible of the little we have
+done, and the much we have to do, to justify our preference of the
+later to the earlier dispensation.'...
+
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+  'BRIGHTON, April 11, 1855.
+
+'You appear to have more definite information respecting "The Review"
+than I have obtained.... It was also said that "The Review" would, in
+fact, be "The Prospective" amplified,--not satisfactory to me, because
+I have always thought that periodical too Unitarian, in the sense of
+separating itself from other Christian churches, if not by a high wall,
+at least by a wire-gauze fence. Now, separation is to me _the_
+[Greek: ha/iresis]. The revelation through Nature never separates: it
+is the revelation through the Book which separates. Whewell and Brewster
+would have been one, had they not, I think, equally dimmed their lamps
+of science when reading their Bibles. As long as we think a truth
+_better_ for being shut up in a text, we are not of the wide-world
+religion, which is to include all in one fold: for that text will not
+be accepted by the followers of other books, or students of the same;
+and separation will ensue. The Christian Scripture should be dear to
+us, not as the charter of a few, but of mankind; and to fashion it into
+cages is to deny its ultimate objects. These thoughts hot, like the
+roll at breakfast, where your letter was so welcome an addition.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THREE DOMESTIC POEMS BY LORD BYRON.
+
+
+FARE THEE WELL.
+
+  Fare thee well! and if for ever,
+    Still for ever fare thee well!
+  Even though unforgiving, never
+    'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.
+
+  Would that breast were bared before thee
+    Where thy head so oft hath lain,
+  While that placid sleep came o'er thee
+    Which thou ne'er canst know again!
+
+  Would that breast, by thee glanced over,
+    Every inmost thought could show!
+  Then thou wouldst at last discover
+    'Twas not well to spurn it so.
+
+  Though the world for this commend thee,
+    Though it smile upon the blow,
+  Even its praises must offend thee,
+    Founded on another's woe.
+
+  Though my many faults defaced me,
+    Could no other arm be found,
+  Than the one which once embraced me,
+    To inflict a cureless wound?
+
+  Yet, oh! yet, thyself deceive not
+    Love may sink by slow decay;
+  But, by sudden wrench, believe not
+    Hearts can thus be torn away:
+
+  Still thine own its life retaineth;
+    Still must mine, though bleeding, beat
+  And the undying thought which paineth
+    Is--that we no more may meet.
+
+  These are words of deeper sorrow
+    Than the wail above the dead:
+  Both shall live, but every morrow
+    Wake us from a widowed bed.
+
+  And when thou wouldst solace gather,
+    When our child's first accents flow,
+  Wilt thou teach her to say 'Father,'
+    Though his care she must forego?
+
+  When her little hand shall press thee,
+    When her lip to thine is pressed,
+  Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee
+    Think of him thy love had blessed.
+
+  Should her lineaments resemble
+    Those thou never more mayst see,
+  Then thy heart will softly tremble
+    With a pulse yet true to me.
+
+  All my faults, perchance, thou knowest;
+    All my madness none can know:
+  All my hopes, where'er thou goest,
+    Wither; yet with thee they go.
+
+  Every feeling hath been shaken:
+    Pride, which not a world could bow,
+  Bows to thee, by thee forsaken;
+    Even my soul forsakes me now.
+
+  But 'tis done: all words are idle;
+    Words from me are vainer still;
+  But the thoughts we cannot bridle
+    Force their way without the will.
+
+  Fare thee well!--thus disunited,
+    Torn from every nearer tie,
+  Seared in heart, and lone and blighted,
+    More than this I scarce can die.
+
+
+A SKETCH.
+
+  Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred;
+  Promoted thence to deck her mistress' head;
+  Next--for some gracious service unexpress'd,
+  And from its wages only to be guessed--
+  Raised from the toilette to the table, where
+  Her wondering betters wait behind her chair,
+  With eye unmoved, and forehead unabashed,
+  She dines from off the plate she lately washed.
+  Quick with the tale, and ready with the lie,
+  The genial confidante and general spy,
+  Who could, ye gods! her next employment guess?--
+  An only infant's earliest governess!
+  She taught the child to read, and taught so well,
+  That she herself, by teaching, learned to spell.
+  An adept next in penmanship she grows,
+  As many a nameless slander deftly shows:
+  What she had made the pupil of her art,
+  None know; but that high soul secured the heart,
+  And panted for the truth it could not hear,
+  With longing breast and undeluded ear.
+  Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind,
+  Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind,
+  Deceit infect not, near contagion soil,
+  Indulgence weaken, nor example spoil,
+  Nor mastered science tempt her to look down
+  On humbler talents with a pitying frown,
+  Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain,
+  Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain,
+  Nor fortune change, pride raise, nor passion bow,
+  Nor virtue teach austerity, till now.
+  Serenely purest of her sex that live;
+  But wanting one sweet weakness,--to forgive;
+  Too shocked at faults her soul can never know,
+  She deems that all could be like her below:
+  Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue's friend;
+  For Virtue pardons those she would amend.
+    But to the theme, now laid aside too long,--
+  The baleful burthen of this honest song.
+  Though all her former functions are no more,
+  She rules the circle which she served before.
+  If mothers--none know why--before her quake;
+  If daughters dread her for the mothers' sake;
+  If early habits--those false links, which bind
+  At times the loftiest to the meanest mind--
+  Have given her power too deeply to instil
+  The angry essence of her deadly will;
+  If like a snake she steal within your walls
+  Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;
+  If like a viper to the heart she wind,
+  And leave the venom there she did not find,--
+  What marvel that this hag of hatred works
+  Eternal evil latent as she lurks,
+  To make a Pandemonium where she dwells,
+  And reign the Hecate of domestic hells?
+  Skilled by a touch to deepen scandal's tints
+  With all the kind mendacity of hints,
+  While mingling truth with falsehood, sneers with smiles,
+  A thread of candour with a web of wiles;
+  A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming.
+  To hide her bloodless heart's soul-hardened scheming
+  A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal,
+  And, without feeling, mock at all who feel;
+  With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown;
+  A cheek of parchment, and an eye of stone.
+  Mark how the channels of her yellow blood
+  Ooze to her skin, and stagnate there to mud!
+  Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,
+  Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale,
+  (For drawn from reptiles only may we trace
+  Congenial colours in that soul or face,)--
+  Look on her features! and behold her mind
+  As in a mirror of itself defined.
+  Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged;
+  There is no trait which might not be enlarged:
+  Yet true to 'Nature's journeymen,' who made
+  This monster when their mistress left off trade,
+  This female dog-star of her little sky,
+  Where all beneath her influence droop or die.
+
+    O wretch without a tear, without a thought,
+  Save joy above the ruin thou hast wrought!
+  The time shall come, nor long remote, when thou
+  Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now,--
+  Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain,
+  And turn thee howling in unpitied pain.
+  May the strong curse of crushed affections light
+  Back on thy bosom with reflected blight,
+  And make thee, in thy leprosy of mind,
+  As loathsome to thyself as to mankind,
+  Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate
+  Black as thy will for others would create;
+  Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,
+  And thy soul welter in its hideous crust!
+  Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,
+  The widowed couch of fire, that thou hast spread
+  Then, when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with prayer,
+  Look on thine earthly victims, and despair!
+  Down to the dust! and, as thou rott'st away,
+  Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.
+  But for the love I bore, and still must bear,
+  To her thy malice from all ties would tear,
+  Thy name, thy human name, to every eye
+  The climax of all scorn, should hang on high,
+  Exalted o'er thy less abhorred compeers,
+  And festering in the infamy of years.
+
+
+LINES
+
+ON HEARING THAT LADY BYRON WAS ILL.
+
+  And thou wert sad, yet I was not with thee!
+    And thou wert sick, and yet I was not near!
+  Methought that joy and health alone could be
+    Where I was _not_, and pain and sorrow here.
+  And is it thus? It is as I foretold,
+    And shall be more so; for the mind recoils
+  Upon itself, and the wrecked heart lies cold,
+    While heaviness collects the shattered spoils.
+  It is not in the storm nor in the strife
+    We feel benumbed, and wish to be no more,
+    But in the after-silence on the shore,
+  When all is lost except a little life.
+  I am too well avenged! But 'twas my right:
+    Whate'er my sins might be, _thou_ wert not sent
+  To be the Nemesis who should requite;
+    Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument.
+  Mercy is for the merciful!--if thou
+  Hast been of such, 'twill be accorded now.
+  Thy nights are banished from the realms of sleep!
+    Yes! they may flatter thee; but thou shalt feel
+    A hollow agony which will not heal;
+  For thou art pillowed on a curse too deep:
+  Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap
+    The bitter harvest in a woe as real!
+  I have had many foes, but none like thee;
+    For 'gainst the rest myself I could defend,
+    And be avenged, or turn them into friend;
+  But thou in safe implacability
+  Hadst nought to dread, in thy own weakness shielded
+  And in my love, which hath but too much yielded,
+    And spared, for thy sake, some I should not spare.
+  And thus upon the world,--trust in thy truth,
+  And the wild fame of my ungoverned youth,
+    On things that were not and on things that are,--
+  Even upon such a basis hast thou built
+  A monument, whose cement hath been guilt;
+  The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord,
+  And hewed down, with an unsuspected sword,
+  Fame, peace, and hope, and all the better life,
+    Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart,
+  Might still have risen from out the grave of strife,
+    And found a nobler duty than to part.
+  But of thy virtues didst thou make a vice,
+    Trafficking with them in a purpose cold,
+    For present anger and for future gold,
+  And buying others' grief at any price.
+  And thus, once entered into crooked ways,
+  The early truth, which was thy proper praise,
+  Did not still walk beside thee, but at times,
+  And with a breast unknowing its own crimes,
+  Deceit, averments incompatible,
+  Equivocations, and the thoughts which dwell
+    In Janus-spirits; the significant eye
+  Which learns to lie with silence; the pretext
+  Of prudence, with advantages annexed;
+  The acquiescence in all things which tend,
+  No matter how, to the desired end,--
+    All found a place in thy philosophy.
+  The means were worthy, and the end is won
+  I would not do by thee as thou hast done.
+
+
+_Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London._
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Lady Byron Vindicated, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Lady Byron Vindicated, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lady Byron Vindicated
+       A History of The Byron Controversy
+
+Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+Release Date: January 29, 2014 [EBook #44791]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY BYRON VINDICATED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[Pg i]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>THE<br /><br />
+
+BYRON CONTROVERSY.</h1>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[Pg ii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center space-above">LONDON: PRINTED BY<br />
+SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE<br />
+AND PARLIAMENT STREET
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2 class="space-above">
+LADY BYRON VINDICATED.</h2>
+
+<p class="ph4  space-above">A History</p>
+<p class="ph4">OF</p>
+<p class="ph2">THE BYRON CONTROVERSY</p>
+
+<p class="ph4">FROM ITS BEGINNING IN 1816 TO THE PRESENT TIME.</p>
+
+<p class="ph4">BY</p>
+<p class="ph2">HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.<br /><br /></p>
+
+
+<p class="center">LONDON:<br />
+SAMPSON LOW, SON, AND MARSTON<br />
+CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET.<br />
+1870.<br /><br />
+
+(<i>All rights reserved.</i>)</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a><br /><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="NOTE" id="NOTE">NOTE</a><br /><br />
+
+<small>BY</small><br /><br />
+
+THE PUBLISHERS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The subject of this volume is of such painful notoriety
+that any apology from the Publishers may seem
+unnecessary upon issuing the Author's reply to the
+counter statements which her narrative in <i>Macmillan's
+Magazine</i> has called forth. Nevertheless they consider
+it right to state that their strong regard for the
+Author, respect for her motives, and assurance of her
+truthfulness, would, even in the absence of all other considerations,
+be sufficient to induce them to place their
+imprint on the title-page.</p>
+
+<p>The publication has been undertaken by them at the
+Author's request, 'as her friends,' and as the publishers
+of her former works, and from a feeling that whatever
+difference of opinion may be entertained respecting the
+Author's judiciousness in publishing 'The True Story,'
+she is entitled to defend it, having been treated with
+grave injustice, and often with much maliciousness,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>
+by her critics and opponents, and been charged with
+motives from which no person living is more free. An
+intense love of justice and hatred of oppression, with an
+utter disregard of her own interests, characterise Mrs.
+<span class="smcap">Stowe's</span> conduct and writings, as all who know her
+well will testify; and the Publishers can unhesitatingly
+affirm their belief that neither fear for loss
+of her literary fame, nor hope of gain, has for one
+moment influenced her in the course she has taken.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="author"><span class="smcap">London</span>: <i>January 1870</i>.</p></div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS.</a></h2>
+
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS">
+<tr><td align="center"><b>PART I</b>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">CHAPTER I.</td><td align="right">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">CHAPTER II.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Attack on Lady Byron</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">CHAPTER III.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Résumé of the Conspiracy</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_50">50</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">CHAPTER IV.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Results after Lord Byron's Death</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">CHAPTER V.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Attack on Lady Byron's Grave</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_102">102</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><b>PART II</b>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">CHAPTER I.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Lady Byron as I knew Her</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">CHAPTER II.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span><span class="smcap">Lady Byron's Story as told Me</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">CHAPTER III.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Chronological Summary of Events</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">CHAPTER IV.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Character of the Two Witnesses compared</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">CHAPTER V.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Direct Argument to prove the Crime</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">CHAPTER VI.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Physiological Argument</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">CHAPTER VII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">How could She love Him?</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_262">262</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">CHAPTER VIII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Conclusion</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_269">269</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><b>PART III</b>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center"><b>MISCELLANEOUS DOCUMENTS</b>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The True Story of Lady Byron's Life (as originally published in 'The Atlantic Monthly')</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Lord Lindsay's Letter to 'The London Times'</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_304">304</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Dr. Forbes Winslow's Letter to 'The London Times'</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_310">310</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Extract from Lord Byron's Expunged Letter to Murray</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_312">312</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Extracts from 'Blackwood's Magazine'</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_315">315</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Letters of Lady Byron to H. C. Robinson</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_318">318</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Domestic Poems by Lord Byron</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_323">323</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I">PART I.</a></h2>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a></h2>
+
+<p class="ph4">INTRODUCTION.</p>
+
+
+<p>The interval since my publication of 'The True Story of Lady Byron's
+Life' has been one of stormy discussion and of much invective.</p>
+
+<p>I have not thought it necessary to disturb my spirit and confuse my
+sense of right by even an attempt at reading the many abusive articles
+that both here and in England have followed that disclosure. Friends
+have undertaken the task for me, giving me from time to time the
+substance of anything really worthy of attention which came to view in
+the tumult.</p>
+
+<p>It appeared to me essential that this first excitement should in a
+measure spend itself before there would be a possibility of speaking
+to any purpose. Now, when all would seem to have spoken who can speak,
+and, it is to be hoped, have said the utmost they can say, there seems
+a propriety in listening calmly, if that be possible, to what I have to
+say in reply.</p>
+
+<p>And, first, why have I made this disclosure at all?</p>
+
+<p><i>To this I answer briefly, Because I considered it my duty to make it.</i></p>
+
+<p>I made it in defence of a beloved, revered friend,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> whose memory stood
+forth in the eyes of the civilised world charged with most repulsive
+crimes, of which I <i>certainly</i> knew her innocent.</p>
+
+<p>I claim, and shall prove, that Lady Byron's reputation has been the
+victim of a concerted attack, begun by her husband during her lifetime,
+and coming to its climax over her grave. I claim, and shall prove, that
+it was not I who stirred up this controversy in this year 1869. I shall
+show <i>who did do it</i>, and who is responsible for bringing on me that
+hard duty of making these disclosures, which it appears to me ought to
+have been made by others.</p>
+
+<p>I claim that these facts were given to me unguarded by any promise or
+seal of secrecy, expressed or implied; that they were lodged with me
+as one sister rests her story with another for sympathy, for counsel,
+for defence. <i>Never</i> did I suppose the day would come that I should
+be subjected to so cruel an anguish as this use of them has been to
+me. Never did I suppose that,&mdash;when those kind hands, that had shed
+nothing but blessings, were lying in the helplessness of death,&mdash;when
+that gentle heart, so sorely tried and to the last so full of love, was
+lying cold in the tomb,&mdash;a countryman in England could be found to cast
+the foulest slanders on her grave, and not one in all England to raise
+an effective voice in her defence.</p>
+
+<p>I admit the feebleness of my plea, in point of execution. It was
+written in a state of exhausted health, when no labour of the kind was
+safe for me,&mdash;when my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> hand had not strength to hold the pen, and I was
+forced to dictate to another.</p>
+
+<p>I have been told that I have no reason to congratulate myself on it as
+a literary effort. O my brothers and sisters! is there then nothing in
+the world to think of but literary efforts? I ask any man with a heart
+in his bosom, if he had been obliged to tell a story so cruel, because
+his mother's grave gave no rest from slander,&mdash;I ask any woman who had
+been forced to such a disclosure to free a dead sister's name from
+grossest insults, whether she would have thought of making this work of
+bitterness a literary success?</p>
+
+<p>Are the cries of the oppressed, the gasps of the dying, the last
+prayers of mothers,&mdash;are <i>any</i> words wrung like drops of blood from the
+human heart to be judged as literary efforts?</p>
+
+<p>My fellow-countrymen of America, men of the press, I have done you one
+act of justice,&mdash;of all your bitter articles, I have read not one.
+I shall never be troubled in the future time by the remembrance of
+any unkind word you have said of me, for at this moment I recollect
+not one. I had such faith in you, such pride in my countrymen, as
+men with whom, above all others, the cause of woman was safe and
+sacred, that I was at first astonished and incredulous at what I
+heard of the course of the American press, and was silent, not merely
+from the impossibility of being heard, but from grief and shame. But
+reflection convinces me that you were, in many cases, acting from a
+misunderstanding of facts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> and through misguided honourable feeling;
+and I still feel courage, therefore, to ask from you a fair hearing.
+Now, as I have done you this justice, will you also do me the justice
+to hear me seriously and candidly?</p>
+
+<p>What interest have you or I, my brother and my sister, in this short
+life of ours, to utter anything but the truth? Is not truth between man
+and man and between man and woman the foundation on which all things
+rest? Have you not, every individual of you, who must hereafter give
+an account yourself alone to God, an interest to know the exact truth
+in this matter, and a duty to perform as respects that truth? Hear me,
+then, while I tell you the position in which I stood, and what was my
+course in relation to it.</p>
+
+<p>A shameless attack on my friend's memory had appeared in the
+'Blackwood' of July 1869, branding Lady Byron as the vilest of
+criminals, and recommending the Guiccioli book to a Christian public
+as interesting from the very fact that it was the avowed production
+of Lord Byron's mistress. No efficient protest was made against
+this outrage in England, and Littell's 'Living Age' reprinted the
+'Blackwood' article, and the Harpers, the largest publishing house in
+America, perhaps in the world, re-published the book.</p>
+
+<p>Its statements&mdash;with those of the 'Blackwood,' 'Pall Mall Gazette,' and
+other English periodicals&mdash;were being propagated through all the young
+reading and writing world of America. I was meeting them advertised
+in dailies, and made up into articles in magazines, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> thus the
+generation of to-day, who had no means of judging Lady Byron but by
+these fables of her slanderers, were being foully deceived. The friends
+who knew her personally were a small select circle in England, whom
+death is every day reducing. They were few in number compared with the
+great world, and were <i>silent</i>. I saw these foul slanders crystallising
+into history uncontradicted by friends who knew her personally, who,
+firm in their own knowledge of her virtues and limited in view as
+aristocratic circles generally are, had no idea of the width of the
+world they were living in, and the exigency of the crisis. When time
+passed on and no voice was raised, I spoke. I gave at first a simple
+story, for I knew instinctively that whoever put the first steel point
+of truth into this dark cloud of slander must wait for the storm to
+spend itself. I must say the storm exceeded my expectations, and has
+raged loud and long. But now that there is a comparative stillness I
+shall proceed, first, to prove what I have just been asserting, and,
+second, to add to my true story such facts and incidents as I did not
+think proper at first to state.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a></h2>
+
+<p class="ph4">THE ATTACK ON LADY BYRON.</p>
+
+
+<p>In proving what I asserted in the first chapter, I make four points:
+1st. A concerted attack upon Lady Byron's reputation, begun by Lord
+Byron in self-defence. 2nd. That he transmitted his story to friends to
+be continued after his death. 3rd. That they did so continue it. 4th.
+That the accusations reached their climax over Lady Byron's grave in
+'Blackwood' of 1869, and the Guiccioli book, and that this re-opening
+of the controversy was my reason for speaking.</p>
+
+<p>And first I shall adduce my proofs that Lady Byron's reputation
+was, during the whole course of her husband's life, the subject of
+a concentrated, artfully planned attack, commencing at the time of
+the separation and continuing during his life. By various documents
+carefully prepared, and used publicly or secretly as suited the case,
+he made converts of many honest men, some of whom were writers and men
+of letters, who put their talents at his service during his lifetime in
+exciting sympathy for him, and who, by his own request, felt bound to
+continue their defence of him after he was dead.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In order to consider the force and significance of the documents I
+shall cite, we are to bring to our view just the issues Lord Byron had
+to meet, both at the time of the separation and for a long time after.</p>
+
+<p>In Byron's 'Memoirs,' Vol. IV. Letter 350, under date December 10,
+1819, nearly four years after the separation, he writes to Murray in
+a state of great excitement on account of an article in 'Blackwood,'
+in which his conduct towards his wife had been sternly and justly
+commented on, and which he supposed to have been written by Wilson, of
+the 'Noctes Ambrosianæ.' He says in this letter: 'I like and admire
+W&mdash;&mdash;n, and he should not have indulged himself in such outrageous
+license.... When he talks of Lady Byron's business he talks of what he
+knows nothing about; and you may tell him <i>no man can desire a public
+investigation of that affair more than I do</i>.'<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>He shortly after wrote and sent to Murray a pamphlet for publication,
+which was printed, but not generally circulated till some time
+afterwards. Though more than three years had elapsed since the
+separation, the current against him at this time was so strong in
+England that his friends thought it best, at first, to use this article
+of Lord Byron's discreetly with influential persons rather than to give
+it to the public.</p>
+
+<p>The writer in 'Blackwood' and the indignation of the English public,
+of which that writer was the voice, were now particularly stirred up
+by the appearance of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> first two cantos of 'Don Juan,' in which the
+indecent caricature of Lady Byron was placed in vicinity with other
+indecencies, the publication of which was justly considered an insult
+to a Christian community.</p>
+
+<p>It must here be mentioned, for the honour of Old England, that at
+first she did her duty quite respectably in regard to 'Don Juan.' One
+can still read, in Murray's standard edition of the poems, how every
+respectable press thundered reprobations, which it would be well enough
+to print and circulate as tracts for our days.</p>
+
+<p>Byron, it seems, had thought of returning to England, but he says, in
+the letter we have quoted, that he has changed his mind, and shall not
+go back, adding: 'I have finished the Third Canto of "Don Juan," but
+the things I have heard and read discourage all future publication.
+You may try the copy question, but you'll lose it; the cry is up, and
+the cant is up. I should have no objection to return the price of the
+copyright, and have written to Mr. Kinnaird on this subject.'</p>
+
+<p>One sentence quoted by Lord Byron from the 'Blackwood' article will
+show the modern readers what the respectable world of that day were
+thinking and saying of him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'It appears, in short, as if this miserable man, having exhausted
+<i>every species</i> of sensual gratification&mdash;having drained the cup of
+sin even to its bitterest dregs&mdash;were resolved to show us that he is
+no longer a human being even in his frailties, but a cool, unconcerned
+fiend, laughing with detestable glee over the whole of the better and
+worse elements of which human life is composed.'</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The defence which Lord Byron makes, in his reply to that paper, is of a
+man cornered and fighting for his life. He speaks thus of the state of
+feeling at the time of his separation from his wife:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and private
+rancour; my name, which had been a knightly or a noble one since my
+fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Norman, was
+tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered and muttered and murmured
+was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for
+me. I withdrew; but this was not enough. In other countries&mdash;in
+Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue depth of the
+lakes&mdash;I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight. I crossed
+the mountains, but it was the same; so I went a little farther, and
+settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who
+betakes him to the waters.</p>
+
+<p>'If I may judge by the statements of the few friends who gathered
+round me, the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all
+precedent, all parallel, even in those cases where political motives
+have sharpened slander and doubled enmity. I was advised not to go to
+the theatres lest I should be hissed, nor to my duty in parliament
+lest I should be insulted by the way; even on the day of my departure
+my most intimate friend told me afterwards that he was under the
+apprehension of violence from the people who might be assembled at the
+door of the carriage.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Now Lord Byron's charge against his wife was that <span class="smcap">SHE</span> was
+directly responsible for getting up and keeping up this persecution,
+which drove him from England,&mdash;that she did it in a deceitful,
+treacherous manner, which left him no chance of defending himself.</p>
+
+<p>He charged against her that, taking advantage of a time when his
+affairs were in confusion, and an execu<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>tion in the house, she left him
+suddenly, with treacherous professions of kindness, which were repeated
+by letters on the road, and that soon after her arrival at her home
+her parents sent him word that she would never return to him, and she
+confirmed the message; that when he asked the reason why, she refused
+to state any; and that when this step gave rise to a host of slanders
+against him she silently encouraged and confirmed the slanders. His
+claim was that he was denied from that time forth even the justice of
+any tangible accusation against himself which he might meet and refute.</p>
+
+<p>He observes, in the same article from which we have quoted:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'When one tells me that I cannot "in any way <i>justify</i> my own
+behaviour in that affair," I acquiesce, because no man can "<i>justify</i>"
+himself until he knows of what he is accused; and I have never
+had&mdash;and, God knows, my whole desire has ever been to obtain it&mdash;any
+specific charge, in a tangible shape, submitted to me by the
+adversary, nor by others, unless the atrocities of public rumour and
+the mysterious silence of the lady's legal advisers may be deemed
+such.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Lord Byron, his publishers, friends, and biographers, thus agree
+in representing his wife as the secret author and abettor of that
+persecution, which it is claimed broke up his life, and was the source
+of all his subsequent crimes and excesses.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron wrote a poem in September 1816, in Switzerland, just after
+the separation, in which he stated, in so many words, these accusations
+against his wife.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> Shortly after the poet's death Murray published
+this poem, together with the 'Fare thee well,' and the lines to his
+sister, under the title of 'Domestic Pieces,' in his standard edition
+of Byron's poetry. It is to be remarked, then, that this was for some
+time a private document, shown to confidential friends, and made use of
+judiciously, as readers or listeners to his story were able to bear it.
+Lady Byron then had a strong party in England. Sir Samuel Romilly and
+Dr. Lushington were her counsel. Lady Byron's parents were living, and
+the appearance in the public prints of such a piece as this would have
+brought down an aggravated storm of public indignation.</p>
+
+<p>For the general public such documents as the 'Fare thee well' were
+circulating in England, and he frankly confessed his wife's virtues and
+his own sins to Madame de Staël and others in Switzerland, declaring
+himself in the wrong, sensible of his errors, and longing to cast
+himself at the feet of that serene perfection,</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'Which wanted one sweet weakness&mdash;to forgive.'
+</p>
+
+<p>But a little later he drew for his private partisans this bitter
+poetical indictment against her, which, as we have said, was used
+discreetly during his life, and published after his death.</p>
+
+<p>Before we proceed to lay that poem before the reader we will refresh
+his memory with some particulars of the tragedy of Æschylus, which
+Lord Byron selected as the exact parallel and proper illustration of
+his wife's treat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>ment of himself. In his letters and journals he often
+alludes to her as Clytemnestra, and the allusion has run the round of
+a thousand American papers lately, and been read by a thousand good
+honest people, who had no very clear idea who Clytemnestra was, and
+what she did which was like the proceedings of Lady Byron. According
+to the tragedy, Clytemnestra secretly hates her husband Agamemnon,
+whom she professes to love, and wishes to put him out of the way that
+she may marry her lover, Ægistheus. When her husband returns from the
+Trojan war she receives him with pretended kindness, and officiously
+offers to serve him at the bath. Inducing him to put on a garment, of
+which she had adroitly sewed up the sleeves and neck so as to hamper
+the use of his arms, she gives the signal to a concealed band of
+assassins, who rush upon him and stab him. Clytemnestra is represented
+by Æschylus as grimly triumphing in her success, which leaves her free
+to marry an adulterous paramour.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I did it, too, in such a cunning wise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That he could neither 'scape nor ward off doom.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I staked around his steps an endless net,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As for the fishes.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the piece entitled 'Lines on hearing Lady Byron is ill,' Lord Byron
+charges on his wife a similar treachery and cruelty. The whole poem
+is in Murray's English edition, Vol. IV. p. 207. Of it we quote the
+following. The reader will bear in mind that it is addressed to Lady
+Byron on a sick-bed:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I am too well avenged, but 'twas my right;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whate'er my sins might be, <i>thou</i> wert not sent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be the Nemesis that should requite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mercy is for the merciful! If thou<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hast been of such, 't will be accorded now.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy nights are banished from the realms of sleep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For thou art pillowed on a curse too deep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yes! they may flatter thee, but thou shalt feel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A hollow agony that will not heal.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bitter harvest in a woe as real.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>I have had many foes, but none like thee</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For 'gainst the rest myself I could defend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And be avenged, or turn them into friend;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But thou, in safe implacability,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hast naught to dread,&mdash;in thy own weakness shielded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in my love, which hath but too much yielded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And spared, for thy sake, some I should not spare.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thus upon the world, trust in thy truth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the wild fame of my ungoverned youth,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On things that were not and on things that are,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even upon such a basis thou hast built<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A monument whose cement hath been guilt!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hewed down with an unsuspected sword<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fame, peace, and hope, and all that better life<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might yet have risen from the grave of strife<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And found a nobler duty than to part.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But of thy virtues thou didst make a vice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trafficking in them with a purpose cold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And buying others' woes at any price,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For present anger and for future gold;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thus, once entered into crooked ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The early truth, that was thy proper praise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did not still walk beside thee, but at times,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with a breast unknowing its own crimes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deceits, averments incompatible,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Equivocations, and the thoughts that dwell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>In Janus spirits, the significant eye</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>That learns to lie with silence</i><a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>, the pretext<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of prudence with advantages annexed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The acquiescence in all things that tend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No matter how, to the desired end,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All found a place in thy philosophy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The means were worthy and the end is won.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would not do to thee as thou hast done.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now, if this language means anything, it means, in plain terms, that,
+whereas, in her early days, Lady Byron was peculiarly characterised by
+truthfulness, she has in her recent dealings with him acted the part
+of a liar,&mdash;that she is not only a liar, but that she lies for cruel
+means and malignant purposes,&mdash;that she is a moral assassin, and her
+treatment of her husband has been like that of the most detestable
+murderess and adulteress of ancient history,&mdash;that she has learned to
+lie skilfully and artfully, that she equivocates, says incompatible
+things, and crosses her own tracks,&mdash;that she is double-faced, and
+has the art to lie even by silence, and that she has become wholly
+unscrupulous, and acquiesces in <i>any</i>thing, no matter what, that tends
+to the desired end, and that end the destruction of her husband. This
+is a brief summary of the story that Byron made it his life's business
+to spread through society, to propagate and make converts to during
+his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> life, and which has been in substance reasserted by 'Blackwood' in
+a recent article this year.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the reader will please to notice that this poem is dated in
+September 1816, and that on the 29th of March of that same year, he
+had thought proper to tell quite another story. At that time the deed
+of separation was not signed, and negotiations between Lady Byron,
+acting by legal counsel, and himself were still pending. At that time,
+therefore, he was standing in a community who knew all he had said
+in former days of his wife's character, who were in an aroused and
+excited state by the fact that so lovely and good and patient a woman
+had actually been forced for some unexplained cause to leave him. His
+policy at that time was to make large general confessions of sin,
+and to praise and compliment her, with a view of enlisting sympathy.
+Everybody feels for a handsome sinner, weeping on his knees, asking
+pardon for his offences against his wife in the public newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>The celebrated 'Fare thee well', as we are told, was written on the
+17th of March, and accidentally found its way into the newspapers at
+this time 'through the imprudence of a friend whom he allowed to take a
+copy.' These 'imprudent friends' have all along been such a marvellous
+convenience to Lord Byron.</p>
+
+<p>But the question met him on all sides, What is the matter? This wife
+you have declared the brightest, sweetest, most amiable of beings, and
+against whose behaviour as a wife you actually never had nor can<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> have
+a complaint to make,&mdash;why is she <i>now</i> all of a sudden so inflexibly
+set against you?</p>
+
+<p>This question required an answer, and he answered by writing another
+poem, which also <i>accidentally</i> found its way into the public prints.
+It is in his 'Domestic Pieces,' which the reader may refer to at the
+end of this volume, and is called 'A Sketch.'</p>
+
+<p>There was a most excellent, respectable, well-behaved Englishwoman, a
+Mrs. Clermont,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> who had been Lady Byron's governess in her youth,
+and was still, in mature life, revered as her confidential friend. It
+appears that this person had been with Lady Byron during a part of her
+married life, especially the bitter hours of her lonely child-bed, when
+a young wife so much needs a sympathetic friend. This Mrs. Clermont was
+the person selected by Lord Byron at this time to be the scapegoat to
+bear away the difficulties of the case into the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>We are informed in Moore's Life what a noble pride of rank Lord Byron
+possessed, and how when the headmaster of a school, against whom he had
+a pique, invited him to dinner, he declined, saying, 'To tell you the
+truth, Doctor, if you should come to Newstead, I shouldn't think of
+inviting <i>you</i> to dine with <i>me</i>, and so I don't care to dine with you
+here.' Different countries, it appears, have different standards as to
+good taste;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> Moore gives this as an amusing instance of a young lord's
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, his first attack against this 'lady,' as we Americans
+should call her, consists in gross statements concerning her having
+been born poor and in an inferior rank. He begins by stating that she
+was</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Promoted thence to deck her mistress' head;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Next&mdash;for some gracious service unexpressed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And from its wages only to be guessed&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Raised from the toilet to the table, where<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her wondering betters wait behind her chair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With eye unmoved and forehead unabashed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She dines from off the plate she lately washed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quick with the tale, and ready with the lie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The genial confidante and general spy,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who could, ye gods! her next employment guess,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An <i>only infant's earliest governess</i>!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What had she made the pupil of her art<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">None knows; <i>but that high soul secured the heart,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And panted for the truth it could not hear</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>With longing soul and undeluded ear</i>!'<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The poet here recognises as a singular trait in Lady Byron her peculiar
+love of truth,&mdash;a trait which must have struck everyone that had any
+knowledge of her through life. He goes on now to give what he certainly
+knew to be the real character of Lady Byron:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Deceit infect</i> not, nor contagion soil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Indulgence weaken, or example spoil,<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor mastered science tempt her to look down<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On humbler talent with a pitying frown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We are now informed that Mrs. Clermont, whom he afterwards says in his
+letters was a spy of Lady Byron's mother, set herself to make mischief
+between them. He says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'If early habits,&mdash;those strong links that bind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At times the loftiest to the meanest mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have given her power too deeply to instil<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The angry essence of her deadly will;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If like a snake she steal within your walls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If like a viper to the heart she wind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And leaves the venom there she did not find,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What marvel that this hag of hatred works<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eternal evil latent as she lurks.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The noble lord then proceeds to abuse this woman of inferior rank in
+the language of the upper circles. He thus describes her person and
+manner:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Skilled by a touch to deepen scandal's tints<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With all the kind mendacity of hints,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While mingling truth with falsehood, sneers with smiles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A thread of candour with a web of wiles;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hide her bloodless heart's soul-harden'd scheming;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And without feeling mock at all who feel;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A cheek of parchment and an eye of stone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mark how the channels of her yellow blood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ooze to her skin and stagnate there to mud,<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(For drawn from reptiles only may we trace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Congenial colours in that soul or face,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look on her features! and behold her mind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As in a mirror of itself defined:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no trait which might not be enlarged.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The poem thus ends:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'May the strong curse of crushed affections light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Back on thy bosom with reflected blight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And make thee in thy leprosy of mind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As loathsome to thyself as to mankind!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Black&mdash;as thy will for others would create;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thy soul welter in its hideous crust.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The widowed couch of fire, that thou hast spread<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with prayer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look on thy earthly victims&mdash;and despair!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down to the dust! and as thou rott'st away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>But for the love I bore and still must bear</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To her thy malice from all ties would tear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy name,&mdash;thy human name,&mdash;to every eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The climax of all scorn, should hang on high,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Exalted o'er thy less abhorred compeers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And festering in the infamy of years.'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">March 16, 1816.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Now, on the 29th of March 1816, this was Lord Byron's story. He states
+that his wife had a truthfulness even from early girlhood that the most
+artful and unscrupulous governess could not pollute,&mdash;that she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> always
+<i>panted</i> for truth,&mdash;that flattery could not fool nor baseness blind
+her,&mdash;that though she was a genius and master of science, she was yet
+gentle and tolerant, and one whom no envy could ruffle to retaliate
+pain.</p>
+
+<p>In September of the same year she is a monster of unscrupulous deceit
+and vindictive cruelty. Now, what had happened in the five months
+between the dates of these poems to produce such a change of opinion?
+Simply this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1st. The negotiation between him and his wife's lawyers had ended in
+his signing a deed of separation in preference to standing a suit for
+divorce.</p>
+
+<p>2nd. Madame de Staël, moved by his tears of anguish and professions of
+repentance, had offered to negotiate with Lady Byron on his behalf, and
+had failed.</p>
+
+<p>The failure of this application is the only apology given by Moore and
+Murray for this poem, which gentle Thomas Moore admits was not in quite
+as generous a strain as the 'Fare thee well'.</p>
+
+<p>But Lord Byron knew perfectly well, when he suffered that application
+to be made, that Lady Byron had been entirely convinced that her
+marriage relations with him could never be renewed, and that duty both
+to man and God required her to separate from him. The allowing the
+negotiation was, therefore, an artifice to place his wife before the
+public in the attitude of a hard-hearted, inflexible woman; her refusal
+was what he knew beforehand must inevitably be the result, and merely
+gave<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> him capital in the sympathy of his friends, by which they should
+be brought to tolerate and accept the bitter accusations of this poem.</p>
+
+<p>We have recently heard it asserted that this last-named piece of poetry
+was the sudden offspring of a fit of ill-temper, and was never intended
+to be published at all. There were certainly excellent reasons why
+his friends should have advised him not to publish it <i>at that time</i>.
+But that it was read with sympathy by the circle of his intimate
+friends, and believed by them, is evident from the frequency with which
+allusions to it occur in his confidential letters to them.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<p>About three months after, under date March 10, 1817, he writes to
+Moore: 'I suppose now I shall never be able to shake off my sables in
+public imagination, more particularly since my moral &mdash;&mdash; clove down my
+fame.' Again to Murray in 1819, three years after, he says: 'I never
+hear anything of Ada, the little Electra of Mycenæ.'</p>
+
+<p>Electra was the daughter of Clytemnestra, in the Greek poem, who lived
+to condemn her wicked mother, and to call on her brother to avenge the
+father. There was in this mention of Electra more than meets the ear.
+Many passages in Lord Byron's poetry show that he intended to make this
+daughter a future partisan against her mother, and explain the awful
+words he is stated in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> Lady Anne Barnard's diary to have used when
+first he looked on his little girl,&mdash;'What an instrument of torture I
+have gained in you!'</p>
+
+<p>In a letter to Lord Blessington, April 6, 1823, he says, speaking of
+Dr. Parr:<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'He did me the honour once to be a patron of mine, though a great
+friend of the <i>other branch of the house of Atreus</i>, and the Greek
+teacher, I believe, of my <i>moral</i> Clytemnestra. I say <i>moral</i> because
+it is true, and is so useful to the virtuous, that it enables them to
+do anything without the aid of an Ægistheus.'</p></div>
+
+<p>If Lord Byron wrote this poem merely in a momentary fit of spleen, why
+were there so many persons evidently quite familiar with his allusions
+to it? and why was it preserved in Murray's hands? and why published
+after his death? That Byron was in the habit of reposing documents in
+the hands of Murray, to be used as occasion offered, is evident from
+a part of a note written by him to Murray respecting some verses so
+intrusted: 'Pray let not these <i>versiculi</i> go forth with my name except
+<i>to the initiated</i>.'<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>Murray, in publishing this attack on his wife after Lord Byron's death,
+showed that he believed in it, and, so believing, deemed Lady Byron a
+woman whose widowed state deserved neither sympathy nor delicacy of
+treatment. At a time when every sentiment in the heart of the most
+deeply wronged woman would forbid her appearing to justify herself from
+such cruel slander<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> of a dead husband, an honest, kind-hearted, worthy
+Englishman actually thought it right and proper to give these lines
+to her eyes and the eyes of all the reading world. Nothing can show
+more plainly what this poem was written for, and how thoroughly it did
+its work! Considering Byron as a wronged man, Murray thought he was
+contributing his mite towards doing him justice. His editor prefaced
+the whole set of 'Domestic Pieces' with the following statements:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'They all refer to the unhappy separation, of which the precise causes
+are still a mystery, and which he declared to the last were never
+disclosed to himself. He admitted that pecuniary embarrassments,
+disordered health, and dislike to family restraints had aggravated his
+naturally violent temper, and driven him to excesses. He suspected
+that his mother-in-law had fomented the discord,&mdash;which Lady Byron
+denies,&mdash;and that more was due to the malignant offices of a female
+dependant, who is the subject of the bitterly satirical sketch.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>'To these general statements can only be added the still vaguer
+allegations of Lady Byron, that she conceived his conduct to be the
+result of insanity,&mdash;that, the physician pronouncing him responsible
+for his actions, she could submit to them no longer, and that
+Dr. Lushington, her legal adviser, agreed that a reconciliation
+was neither proper nor possible. <i>No weight can be attached to
+the opinions of an opposing counsel upon accusations made by one
+party behind the back of the other, who urgently demanded and was
+pertinaciously refused the least opportunity of denial or defence.</i> He
+rejected the proposal for an amicable separation, but <i>consented when
+threatened with a suit in Doctors' Commons</i>.'<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>Neither John Murray nor any of Byron's partisans<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> seem to have pondered
+the admission in these last words.</p>
+
+<p>Here, as appears, was a woman, driven to the last despair, standing
+with her child in her arms, asking from English laws protection for
+herself and child against her husband.</p>
+
+<p>She had appealed to the first counsel in England, and was acting under
+their direction.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the greatest lawyers in England have pronounced that there
+has been such a cause of offence on his part that a return to him is
+neither proper nor possible, and that no alternative remains to her but
+separation or divorce.</p>
+
+<p>He asks her to state her charges against him. She, making answer
+under advice of her counsel, says, 'That if he <i>insists</i> on the
+specifications, he must receive them in open court in a suit for
+divorce.'</p>
+
+<p>What, now, ought to have been the conduct of any brave, honest man,
+who believed that his wife was taking advantage of her reputation for
+virtue to turn every one against him, who saw that she had turned on
+her side even the lawyer he sought to retain on his;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span><a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> that she was
+an unscrupulous woman, who acquiesced in every and any thing to gain
+her ends, while he stood before the public, as he says, 'accused of
+every monstrous vice, by public rumour or private rancour'? When she,
+under advice of her lawyers, made the alternative legal <i>separation</i> or
+open investigation in court for divorce, what did he do?</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">He signed the act of separation and left England.</span></p>
+
+<p>Now, let any man who knows the legal mind of England,&mdash;let any lawyer
+who knows the character of Sir Samuel Romilly and Dr. Lushington, ask
+whether <i>they</i> were the men to take a case into court for a woman that
+had no <i>evidence</i> but her own statements and impressions? Were <i>they</i>
+men to go to trial without proofs? Did they not know that there were
+artful, hysterical women in the world, and would <i>they</i>, of all people,
+be the men to take a woman's story on her own side, and advise her in
+the last issue to bring it into open court, without legal proof of
+the strongest kind? Now, as long as Sir Samuel Romilly lived, this
+statement of Byron's&mdash;that he was condemned unheard, and had no chance
+of knowing whereof he <i>was accused&mdash;never appeared in public</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It, however, was most actively circulated <i>in private</i>. That Byron was
+in the habit of intrusting to different confidants articles of various
+kinds to be shown to different circles as they could bear them, we have
+already shown. We have recently come upon another instance of this
+kind. In the late eagerness to excul<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>pate Byron, a new document has
+turned up, of which Mr. Murray, it appears, had never heard when, after
+Byron's death, he published in the preface to his 'Domestic Pieces'
+the sentence: '<i>He rejected the proposal for an amicable separation,
+but consented when threatened with a suit in Doctors' Commons</i>.' It
+appears that, up to 1853, neither John Murray senior, nor the son who
+now fills his place, had taken any notice of this newly found document,
+which we are now informed 'was drawn up by Lord Byron in August 1817,
+while Mr. Hobhouse was staying with him at La Mira, near Venice,
+given to Mr. Matthew Gregory Lewis, <i>for circulation among friends in
+England</i>, found in Mr. Lewis's papers after his death, and <i>now</i> in the
+possession of Mr. Murray.' Here it is:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'It has been intimated to me that the persons understood to be the
+legal advisers of Lady Byron have declared "their lips to be sealed
+up" on the cause of the separation between her and myself. If their
+lips are sealed up, they are not sealed up by me, and the greatest
+favour <i>they</i> can confer upon me will be to open them. From the first
+hour in which I was apprised of the intentions of the Noel family to
+the last communication between Lady Byron and myself in the character
+of wife and husband (a period of some months), I called repeatedly and
+in vain for a statement of their or her charges, and it was chiefly
+in consequence of Lady Byron's claiming (in a letter still existing)
+a promise on my part to consent to a separation, if such was <i>really</i>
+her wish, that I consented at all; this claim, and the exasperating
+and inexpiable manner in which their object was pursued, which
+rendered it next to an impossibility that two persons so divided could
+ever be reunited, induced me reluctantly then, and repentantly still,
+to sign the deed, which I shall be happy&mdash;most happy&mdash;to cancel, and
+go before any tribunal which may discuss the business in the most
+public manner.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Hobhouse made this proposition on my part, viz. to abrogate
+all prior intentions&mdash;and go into court&mdash;the very day before the
+separation was signed, and it was declined by the other party, as
+also the publication of the correspondence during the previous
+discussion. Those propositions I beg here to repeat, and to call
+upon her and hers to say their worst, pledging myself to meet their
+allegations,&mdash;whatever they may be,&mdash;and only too happy to be informed
+at last of their real nature.</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">Byron.</span>'</p>
+
+<p class="author">'August 9, 1817.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>'P.S.&mdash;I have been, and am now, utterly ignorant of what description
+her allegations, charges, or whatever name they may have assumed,
+are; and am as little aware for what purpose they have been kept
+back,&mdash;unless it was to sanction the most infamous calumnies by
+silence.</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">Byron.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="p3">
+'<span class="smcap">La Mira</span>, near <span class="smcap">Venice</span>.'
+</p></div>
+
+<p>It appears the circulation of this document must have been <i>very
+private</i>, since Moore, not <i>over</i>-delicate towards Lady Byron, did not
+think fit to print it; since John Murray neglected it, and since it has
+come out at this late hour for the first time.</p>
+
+<p>If Lord Byron really desired Lady Byron and her legal counsel to
+understand the facts herein stated, and was willing at all hazards to
+bring on an open examination, why was this <i>privately</i> circulated?
+Why not issued as a card in the London papers? Is it likely that
+Mr. Matthew Gregory Lewis, and a chosen band of friends acting as a
+committee, requested an audience with Lady Byron, Sir Samuel Romilly,
+and Dr. Lushington, and formally presented this cartel of defiance?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We incline to think not. We incline to think that this small serpent,
+in company with many others of like kind, crawled secretly and
+privately around, and when it found a good chance, bit an honest
+Briton, whose blood was thenceforth poisoned by an undetected falsehood.</p>
+
+<p>The reader now may turn to the letters that Mr. Moore has thought fit
+to give us of this stay at La Mira, beginning with Letter 286, dated
+July 1, 1817,<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> where he says: 'I have been working up my impressions
+into a <i>Fourth</i> Canto of Childe Harold,' and also 'Mr. Lewis is in
+Venice. I am going up to stay a week with him there.'</p>
+
+<p>Next, under date La Mira, Venice, July 10,<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> he says, 'Monk Lewis is
+here; how pleasant!'</p>
+
+<p>Next, under date July 20, 1817, to Mr. Murray: 'I write to give you
+notice that I have <i>completed the fourth and ultimate canto of Childe
+Harold</i>.... It is yet to be copied and polished, and the notes are to
+come.'</p>
+
+<p>Under date of La Mira, August 7, 1817, he records that the new canto is
+one hundred and thirty stanzas in length, and talks about the price for
+it. He is now ready to launch it on the world; and, as now appears, on
+August 9, 1817, <i>two days after</i>, he wrote the document above cited,
+and put it into the hands of Mr. Lewis, as we are informed, 'for
+circulation among friends in England.'</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The reason of this may now be evident. Having prepared a suitable
+number of those whom he calls in his notes to Murray 'the initiated,'
+by private documents and statements, he is now prepared to publish his
+accusations against his wife, and the story of his wrongs, in a great
+immortal poem, which shall have a band of initiated interpreters, shall
+be read through the civilised world, and stand to accuse her after his
+death.</p>
+
+<p>In the Fourth Canto of 'Childe Harold,' with all his own overwhelming
+power of language, he sets forth his cause as against the silent woman
+who all this time had been making no party, and telling no story,
+and whom the world would therefore conclude to be silent because she
+had no answer to make. I remember well the time when this poetry, so
+resounding in its music, so mournful, so apparently generous, filled
+my heart with a vague anguish of sorrow for the sufferer, and of
+indignation at the cold insensibility that had maddened him. Thousands
+have felt the power of this great poem, which stands, and must stand to
+all time, a monument of what sacred and solemn powers God gave to this
+wicked man, and how vilely he abused this power as a weapon to slay the
+innocent.</p>
+
+<p>It is among the ruins of ancient Rome that his voice breaks forth in
+solemn imprecation:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'O Time, thou beautifier of the dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Adorner of the ruin, comforter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And only healer when the heart hath bled!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time, the corrector when our judgments err,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The test of truth, love,&mdash;sole philosopher,<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">For all besides are sophists,&mdash;from thy shrift<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That never loses, though it doth defer!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My hands and heart and eyes, and claim of thee a gift.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="r5"/>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'If thou hast ever seen me too elate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Good, and reserved my pride against the hate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which shall not whelm me, <i>let me not have worn</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>This iron in my soul in vain,&mdash;shall <span class="smcap">THEY</span> not mourn?</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thou who never yet of human wrong<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here where the ancients paid their worship long,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And round Orestes bid them howl and hiss<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>For that unnatural retribution,&mdash;just</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Had it but come from hands less near</i>,&mdash;in this<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy former realm I call thee from the dust.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dost thou not hear, my heart? awake thou shalt and must!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is not that I may not have incurred<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For my ancestral faults and mine, the wound<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherewith I bleed withal, and had it been conferred<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a just weapon it had flowed unbound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But now my blood shall not sink in the ground.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr class="r5"/>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'But in this page a record will I seek;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not in the air shall these my words disperse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though I be ashes,&mdash;a far hour shall wreak<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That curse shall be forgiveness. Have I not,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hear me, my Mother Earth! behold it, Heaven,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hopes sapped, name blighted, life's life lied away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And only not to desperation driven,<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Because not altogether of such clay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As rots into the soul of those whom I survey?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="r5"/>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have I not seen what human things could do,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the loud roar of foaming calumny,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the small whispers of the paltry few,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And subtler venom of the reptile crew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The Janus glance of whose significant eye,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Learning to lie with silence, would seem true,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy</i>?'<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The reader will please notice that the lines in italics are almost,
+word for word, a repetition of the lines in italics in the former poem
+on his wife, where he speaks of a <i>significant eye</i> that has <i>learned
+to lie in silence</i>, and were evidently meant to apply to Lady Byron and
+her small circle of confidential friends.</p>
+
+<p>Before this, in the Third Canto of 'Childe Harold,' he had claimed the
+sympathy of the world, as a loving father, deprived by a severe fate of
+the solace and society of his only child:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'My daughter,&mdash;with this name my song began,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My daughter,&mdash;with this name my song shall end,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I see thee not and hear thee not, but none<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can be so wrapped in thee; thou art the friend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To whom the shadows of far years extend.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="r5"/>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'To aid thy mind's developments, to watch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dawn of little joys, to sit and see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Almost thy very growth, to view thee catch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knowledge of objects,&mdash;wonders yet to thee,&mdash;<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This it should seem was not reserved for me.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet this was in my nature,&mdash;as it is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know not what there is, yet something like to this.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="r5"/>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'<i>Yet though dull hate as duty should be taught</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know that thou wilt love me; though my name<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should be shut out from thee as spell still fraught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With desolation and a broken claim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though the grave close between us,&mdash;'t were the same,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know that thou wilt love me, though to drain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My blood from out thy being were an aim<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And an attainment,&mdash;all will be in vain.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To all these charges against her, sent all over the world in verses
+as eloquent as the English language is capable of, the wife replied
+nothing.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Assailed by slander and the tongue of strife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her only answer was,&mdash;a blameless life.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She had a few friends, a very few, with whom she sought solace and
+sympathy. One letter from her, written at this time, preserved by
+accident, is the only authentic record of how the matter stood with her.</p>
+
+<p>We regret to say that the publication of this document was not brought
+forth to clear Lady Byron's name from her husband's slanders, but to
+shield him from the worst accusation against him, by showing that this
+crime was not included in the few private confidential revelations that
+friendship wrung from the young wife at this period.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Anne Barnard, authoress of 'Auld Robin Grey',<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> a friend whose
+age and experience made her a proper confidante, sent for the
+broken-hearted, perplexed wife, and offered her a woman's sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>To her Lady Byron wrote many letters, under seal of confidence, and
+Lady Anne says: 'I will give you a few paragraphs transcribed from
+one of Lady Byron's own letters to me. It is sorrowful to think that
+in a very little time this young and amiable creature, wise, patient,
+and feeling, will have her character mistaken by every one who reads
+Byron's works. To rescue her from this I preserved her letters, and
+when she afterwards expressed a fear that anything of her writing
+should ever fall into hands to injure him (I suppose she meant by
+publication), I safely assured her that it never should. But here this
+letter shall be placed, a sacred record in her favour, unknown to
+herself.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I am a very incompetent judge of the impression which the last Canto
+of "Childe Harold" may produce on the minds of indifferent readers.</p>
+
+<p>'It contains the usual trace of a conscience restlessly awake, though
+his object has been too long to aggravate its burden, as if it could
+thus be oppressed into eternal stupor. I will hope, as you do, that it
+survives for his ultimate good.</p>
+
+<p>'It was the acuteness of his remorse, impenitent in its character,
+which so long seemed to demand from my compassion to spare every
+semblance of reproach, every look of grief, which might have said to
+his conscience, "You have made me wretched."</p>
+
+<p>'I am decidedly of opinion that he is responsible. He has wished to
+be thought partially deranged, or on the brink of it, to perplex
+observers and <i>prevent them from tracing effects to their real causes</i>
+through all the intricacies of his conduct. I was, as I told you, at
+one time the dupe of his acted insanity, and clung to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> former
+delusions in regard to the motives that concerned me personally, till
+the whole system was laid bare.</p>
+
+<p>'He is the absolute monarch of words, and uses them, as Bonaparte did
+lives, for conquest, without more regard to their intrinsic value,
+considering them only as ciphers, which must derive all their import
+from the situation in which he places them, and the ends to which he
+adapts them, with such consummate skill.</p>
+
+
+<p>'Why, then, you will say, does he not employ them to give a better
+colour to his own character? Because he is too good an actor to
+over-act, or to assume a moral garb, which it would be easy to strip
+off.</p>
+
+<p>'In regard to his poetry, egotism is the vital principle of his
+imagination, which it is difficult for him to kindle on any subject
+with which his own character and interests are not identified; but by
+the introduction of fictitious incidents, by change of scene or time,
+<i>he has enveloped his poetical disclosures in a system impenetrable
+except to a very few</i>; and his constant desire of creating a sensation
+makes him not averse to be the object of wonder and curiosity, even
+though accompanied <i>by some dark and vague suspicions</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing has contributed more to the misunderstanding of his real
+character than the lonely grandeur in which he shrouds it, and his
+affectation of being above mankind, when he exists almost in their
+voice. The romance of his sentiments is another feature of this mask
+of state. I know no one more habitually destitute of that enthusiasm
+he so beautifully expresses, and to which he can work up his fancy
+chiefly by contagion.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>I had heard he was the best of brothers, the most generous of
+friends, and I thought such feelings only required to be warmed and
+cherished into more diffusive benevolence. Though these opinions are
+eradicated, and could never return but with the decay of my memory</i>,
+you will not wonder if there are still moments when the association of
+feelings which arose from them soften and sadden my thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>'But I have not thanked you, dearest Lady Anne, for your kindness in
+regard to a principal object,&mdash;that of rectifying false<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> impressions.
+I trust you understand my wishes, which never were to injure Lord
+Byron in any way; for, <i>though he would not suffer me to remain his
+wife, he cannot prevent me from continuing his friend; and it was from
+considering myself as such that I silenced the accusations by which my
+own conduct might have been more fully justified</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'It is not necessary to speak ill of his heart in general; it is
+sufficient that to me it was hard and impenetrable,&mdash;that my own must
+have been broken before his could have been touched. I would rather
+represent this as <i>my</i> misfortune than as <i>his</i> guilt; but, surely,
+that misfortune is not to be made my crime! Such are my feelings; you
+will judge how to act.</p>
+
+<p>'His allusions to me in "Childe Harold" are cruel and cold, but
+with such a semblance as to make <i>me</i> appear so, and to attract all
+sympathy to himself. It is said in this poem that hatred of him will
+be taught as a lesson to his child. I might appeal to all who have
+ever heard me speak of him, and still more to my own heart, to witness
+that there has been no moment when I have remembered injury otherwise
+than affectionately and sorrowfully.</p>
+
+<p>'It is not my duty to give way to hopeless and wholly unrequited
+affection; but, so long as I live, my chief struggle will probably
+be not to remember him too kindly. I do not seek the sympathy of the
+world, but I wish to be known by those whose opinion is valuable and
+whose kindness is dear to me. Among such, my dear Lady Anne, you will
+ever be remembered by your truly affectionate</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">A. Byron</span>.'
+</p></div>
+
+<p>On this letter I observe Lord Lindsay remarks that it shows a noble
+but rather severe character, and a recent author has remarked that it
+seemed to be written rather in a 'cold spirit of criticism.' It seems
+to strike these gentlemen as singular that Lady Byron did not enjoy the
+poem! But there are two remarkable sentences in this letter which have
+escaped the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> critics hitherto. Lord Byron, in this, the Third Canto
+of 'Childe Harold,' expresses in most affecting words an enthusiasm
+of love for his sister. So long as he lived he was her faithful
+correspondent; he sent her his journals; and, dying, he left her and
+her children everything he had in the world. This certainly seems like
+an affectionate brother; but in what words does Lady Byron speak of
+this affection?</p>
+
+<p>'I <i>had heard he was the best of brothers</i>, the most generous of
+friends. I thought these feelings only required to be warmed and
+cherished into more diffusive benevolence. <span class="smcap">These opinions are
+eradicated, and could never return but with the decay of memory.</span>'
+Let me ask those who give this letter as a proof that at this time no
+idea such as I have stated was in Lady Byron's mind, to account for
+these words. Let them please answer these questions: Why had Lady Byron
+ceased to think him a good brother? Why does she use so strong a word
+as that the opinion was eradicated, torn up by the roots, and could
+never grow again in her except by decay of memory?</p>
+
+<p>And yet this is a document Lord Lindsay vouches for as authentic, and
+which he brings forward <i>in defence</i> of Lord Byron.</p>
+
+<p>Again she says,'Though he <i>would not suffer me to remain his wife</i>, he
+cannot prevent me from continuing his friend.' Do these words not say
+that in some past time, in some decided manner, Lord Byron had declared
+to her his rejection of her as a wife? I shall yet have occasion to
+explain these words.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Again she says, 'I silenced accusations by which my conduct might have
+been more fully justified.'</p>
+
+<p>The people in England who are so very busy in searching out evidence
+against my true story have searched out and given to the world an
+important confirmation of this assertion of Lady Byron's.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that the confidential waiting-maid who went with Lady Byron
+on her wedding journey has been sought out and interrogated, and, as
+appears by description, is a venerable, respectable old person, quite
+in possession of all her senses in general, and of that sixth sense of
+propriety in particular, which appears not to be a common virtue in our
+days.</p>
+
+<p>As her testimony is important, we insert it just here, with a
+description of her person in full. The ardent investigators thus
+speak:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'Having gained admission, we were shown into a small but neatly
+furnished and scrupulously clean apartment, where sat the object
+of our visit. Mrs. Mimms is a venerable-looking old lady, of short
+stature, slight and active appearance, with a singularly bright and
+intelligent countenance. Although midway between eighty and ninety
+years of age, she is in full possession of her faculties, discourses
+freely and cheerfully, hears apparently as well as ever she did,
+and her sight is so good that, aided by a pair of spectacles, she
+reads the Chronicle every day with ease. Some idea of her competency
+to contribute valuable evidence to the subject which now so much
+engages public attention on three continents may be found from her
+own narrative of her personal relations with Lady Byron. Mrs. Mimms
+was born in the neighbourhood of Seaham, and knew Lady Byron from
+childhood. During the long period of ten years she was Miss Milbanke's
+lady's-maid, and in that capacity became the close confidante of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> her
+mistress. There were circumstances which rendered their relationship
+peculiarly intimate. Miss Milbanke had no sister or female friend
+to whom she was bound by the ties of more than a common affection;
+and her mother, whatever other excellent qualities she may have
+possessed, was too high-spirited and too hasty in temper to attract
+the sympathies of the young. Some months before Miss Milbanke was
+married to Lord Byron, Mrs. Mimms had quitted her service on the
+occasion of her own marriage with Mr. Mimms; but she continued to
+reside in the neighbourhood of Seaham, and remained on the most
+friendly terms with her former mistress. As the courtship proceeded,
+Miss Milbanke concealed nothing from her faithful attendant; and
+when the wedding-day was fixed, she begged Mrs. Mimms to return and
+fulfil the duties of lady's-maid, at least during the honeymoon. Mrs.
+Mimms at the time was nursing her first child, and it was no small
+sacrifice to quit her own home at such a moment, but she could not
+refuse her old mistress's request. Accordingly, she returned to Seaham
+Hall some days before the wedding, was present at the ceremony, and
+then preceded Lord and Lady Byron to Halnaby Hall, near Croft, in the
+North Riding of Yorkshire, one of Sir Ralph Milbanke's seats, where
+the newly married couple were to spend the honeymoon. Mrs. Mimms
+remained with Lord and Lady Byron during the three weeks they spent at
+Halnaby Hall, and then accompanied them to Seaham, where they spent
+the next six weeks. It was during the latter period that she finally
+quitted Lady Byron's service; but she remained in the most friendly
+communication with her ladyship till the death of the latter, and for
+some time was living in the neighbourhood of Lady Byron's residence
+in Leicestershire, where she had frequent opportunities of seeing her
+former mistress. It may be added that Lady Byron was not unmindful of
+the faithful services of her friend and attendant in the instructions
+to her executors contained in her will. Such was the position of Mrs.
+Mimms towards Lady Byron; and we think no one will question that
+it was of a nature to entitle all that Mrs. Mimms may say on the
+subject of the relations of Lord and Lady Byron to the most respectful
+consideration and credit.'</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Such is the chronicler's account of the faithful creature whom nothing
+but intense indignation and disgust at Mrs. Beecher Stowe would lead
+to speak on her mistress's affairs; but Mrs. Beecher Stowe feels none
+the less sincere respect for her, and is none the less obliged to her
+for having spoken. Much of Mrs. Mimms's testimony will be referred to
+in another place; we only extract one passage, to show that while Lord
+Byron spent his time in setting afloat slanders against his wife, she
+spent hers in sealing the mouths of witnesses against him.</p>
+
+<p>Of the period of the honeymoon Mrs. Mimms says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'The happiness of Lady Byron, however, was of brief duration; even
+during the short three weeks they spent at Halnaby, the irregularities
+of Lord Byron occasioned her the greatest distress, and she even
+contemplated returning to her father. Mrs. Mimms was her constant
+companion and confidante through this painful period, and she does not
+believe that her ladyship concealed a thought from her. <i>With laudable
+reticence, the old lady absolutely refuses to disclose the particulars
+of Lord Byron's misconduct at this time; she gave Lady Byron a solemn
+promise not to do so.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>'So serious did Mrs. Mimms consider the conduct of Lord Byron, that
+she recommended her mistress to confide all the circumstances to her
+father, Sir Ralph Milbanke, a calm, kind, and most excellent parent,
+and take his advice as to her future course. At one time Mrs. Mimms
+thinks Lady Byron had resolved to follow her counsel and impart her
+wrongs to Sir Ralph; but on arriving at Seaham Hall her ladyship
+strictly enjoined Mrs. Mimms to preserve absolute silence on the
+subject&mdash;a course which she followed herself;&mdash;so that when, six weeks
+later, she and Lord Byron left Seaham for London, not a word had
+escaped her to disturb her parents' tranquility as to their daughter's
+domestic happiness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> As might be expected, Mrs. Mimms bears the
+warmest testimony to the noble and lovable qualities of her departed
+mistress. She also declares that Lady Byron was by no means of a cold
+temperament, but that the affectionate impulses of her nature were
+checked by the unkind treatment she experienced from her husband.'</p></div>
+
+<p>We have already shown that Lord Byron had been, ever since his
+separation, engaged in a systematic attempt to reverse the judgment of
+the world against himself, by making converts of all his friends to a
+most odious view of his wife's character, and inspiring them with the
+zeal of propagandists to spread these views through society. We have
+seen how he prepared partisans to interpret the Fourth Canto of 'Childe
+Harold.'</p>
+
+<p>This plan of solemn and heroic accusation was the first public attack
+on his wife. Next we see him commencing a scurrilous attempt to turn
+her to ridicule in the First Canto of 'Don Juan.'</p>
+
+<p>It is to our point now to show how carefully and cautiously this Don
+Juan campaign was planned.</p>
+
+<p>Vol. IV. p. 138, we find Letter 325 to Mr. Murray:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="author">
+
+'<span class="smcap">Venice</span>: January 25, 1819.
+</p>
+
+<p>'You will do me the favour to <i>print privately, for private
+distribution, fifty copies of "Don Juan."</i> The list of the men to whom
+I wish it presented I will send hereafter.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The poem, as will be remembered, begins with the meanest and foulest
+attack on his wife that ever ribald wrote, and puts it in close
+neighbourhood with scenes which every pure man or woman must feel
+to be the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> beastly utterances of a man who had lost all sense of
+decency. Such a potion was too strong to be administered even in a
+time when great license was allowed, and men were not over-nice. But
+Byron chooses fifty armour-bearers of that class of men who would
+find indecent ribaldry about a wife a good joke, and talk about the
+'artistic merits' of things which we hope would make an honest boy
+blush.</p>
+
+<p>At this time he acknowledges that his vices had brought him to a state
+of great exhaustion, attended by such debility of the stomach that
+nothing remained on it; and adds, 'I was obliged to reform my way of
+life, which was conducting me from the yellow leaf to the ground with
+all deliberate speed.'<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> But as his health is a little better he
+employs it in making the way to death and hell elegantly easy for other
+young men, by breaking down the remaining scruples of a society not
+over-scrupulous.</p>
+
+<p>Society revolted, however, and fought stoutly against the nauseous
+dose. His sister wrote to him that she heard such things said of it
+that <i>she</i> never would read it; and the outcry against it on the part
+of all women of his acquaintance was such that for a time he was quite
+overborne; and the Countess Guiccioli finally extorted a promise from
+him to cease writing it. Nevertheless, there came a time when England
+accepted 'Don Juan,'&mdash;when Wilson, in the 'Noctes Ambrosianæ,' praised
+it as a classic, and took every oppor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>tunity to reprobate Lady Byron's
+conduct. When first it appeared the 'Blackwood' came out with that
+indignant denunciation of which we have spoken, and to which Byron
+replied in the extracts we have already quoted. He did something more
+than reply. He marked out Wilson as one of the strongest literary men
+of the day, and set his 'initiated' with their documents to work upon
+him.</p>
+
+<p>One of these documents to which he requested Wilson's attention was the
+private autobiography, written expressly to give his own story of all
+the facts of the marriage and separation.</p>
+
+<p>In the indignant letter he writes Murray on the 'Blackwood' article,
+Vol. IV., Letter 350&mdash;under date December 10, 1819&mdash;he says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I sent home for Moore, and for Moore only (who has my journal also),
+my memoir written up to 1816, and I gave him leave to show it to
+whom he pleased, <i>but not to publish</i> on any account. <i>You</i> may read
+it, and you may let Wilson read it if he likes&mdash;not for his public
+opinion, but his private, for I like the man, and care very little
+about the magazine. And I could wish Lady Byron herself to read
+it, that she may have it in her power to mark anything mistaken or
+misstated. As it will never appear till after my extinction, it would
+be but fair she should see it; that is to say, herself willing. Your
+"Blackwood" accuses me of treating women harshly; but I have been
+their martyr; my whole life has been sacrificed to them and by them.'</p></div>
+
+<p>It was a part of Byron's policy to place Lady Byron in positions before
+the world where she <i>could</i> not speak, and where her silence would be
+set down to her as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> haughty, stony indifference and obstinacy. Such was
+the pretended negotiation through Madame de Staël, and such now this
+apparently fair and generous offer to let Lady Byron see and mark this
+manuscript.</p>
+
+<p>The little Ada is now in her fifth year&mdash;a child of singular
+sensibility and remarkable mental powers&mdash;one of those exceptional
+children who are so perilous a charge for a mother.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband proposes this artful snare to her,&mdash;that she shall mark
+what is false in a statement which is all built on a damning lie, that
+she cannot refute over that daughter's head,&mdash;and which would perhaps
+be her ruin to discuss.</p>
+
+<p>Hence came an addition of two more documents, to be used 'privately
+among friends,'<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> and which 'Blackwood' uses after Lady Byron is
+safely out of the world to cast ignominy on her grave&mdash;the wife's
+letter, that of a mother standing at bay for her daughter, knowing that
+she is dealing with a desperate, powerful, unscrupulous enemy.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="author">
+
+'<span class="smcap">Kirkby Mallory</span>: March 10, 1820.
+</p>
+
+<p>'I received your letter of January 1, offering to my perusal a
+Memoir of part of your life. I decline to inspect it. I consider
+the publication or circulation of such a composition at any time as
+prejudicial to Ada's future happiness. For my own sake, I have no
+reason to shrink from publication; but, notwithstanding the injuries
+which I have suffered, I should lament some of the <i>consequences</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">A. Byron.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="p3">'To Lord Byron.'<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron, writing for the public, as is his custom, makes reply:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="author">
+
+'<span class="smcap">Ravenna</span>: April 3, 1820.
+</p>
+
+<p>'I received yesterday your answer, dated March 10. My offer was an
+honest one, and surely could only be construed as such even by the
+most malignant casuistry. I could answer you, but it is too late, and
+it is not worth while. To the mysterious menace of the last sentence,
+whatever its import may be&mdash;and I cannot pretend to unriddle it&mdash;I
+could hardly be very sensible even if I understood it, as, before it
+can take place, I shall be where "nothing can touch him further".... I
+advise you, however, to anticipate the period of your intention, for,
+be assured, no power of figures can avail beyond the present; and if
+it could, I would answer with the Florentine:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"Ed io, che posto son con loro in croce</span><br />
+<span class="i0">... e certo</span><br />
+<span class="i0">La fiera moglie, più ch' altro, mi nuoce<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a>."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">Byron.</span></p>
+
+<p class="p3">
+'To Lady Byron.'
+</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Two things are very evident in this correspondence: Lady Byron
+intimates that, if he publishes his story, some <i>consequences</i> must
+follow which she shall regret.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron receives this as a threat, and says he doesn't understand
+it. But directly after he says, 'Before IT can take place, I shall be,'
+&amp;c.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The intimation is quite clear. He <i>does</i> understand what the
+consequences alluded to are. They are evidently that Lady Byron will
+speak out and tell her story. He says she cannot do this till <i>after
+he is dead</i>, and then he shall not care. In allusion to her accuracy
+as to dates and figures, he says: 'Be assured no power of figures can
+avail beyond the present' (life); and then ironically <i>advises</i> her to
+<i>anticipate the period</i>,&mdash;i.e. to speak out while he is alive.</p>
+
+<p>In Vol. VI. Letter 518, which Lord Byron wrote to Lady Byron, but did
+not send, he says: 'I burned your last note for two reasons,&mdash;firstly,
+because it was written in a style not very agreeable; and, secondly,
+because I wished to take your word without documents, which are the
+resources of worldly and suspicious people.'</p>
+
+<p>It would appear from this that there <i>was</i> a last letter of Lady Byron
+to her husband, which he did not think proper to keep on hand, or show
+to the 'initiated' with his usual unreserve; that this letter contained
+some kind of <i>pledge</i> for which he preferred to take her word, <i>without
+documents</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Each reader can imagine for himself what that <i>pledge</i> might have been;
+but from the tenor of the three letters we should infer that it was a
+promise of silence for his lifetime, on <i>certain conditions</i>, and that
+the publication of the autobiography would violate those conditions,
+and make it her duty to speak out.</p>
+
+<p>This celebrated autobiography forms so conspicuous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> a figure in the
+whole history, that the reader must have a full idea of it, as given by
+Byron himself, in Vol. IV. Letter 344, to Murray:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I gave to Moore, who is gone to Rome, my life in MS.,&mdash;in
+seventy-eight folio sheets, brought down to 1816 ... also a journal
+kept in 1814. Neither are for publication during my life, but when I
+am cold you may do what you please. In the mean time, if you like to
+read them you may, and show them to anybody you like. I care not....'</p></div>
+
+<p>He tells him also:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'You will find in it a detailed account of my marriage and its
+consequences, as true as a party concerned can make such an account.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Of the extent to which this autobiography was circulated we have the
+following testimony of Shelton Mackenzie, in notes to 'The Noctes' of
+June 1824.</p>
+
+<p>In 'The Noctes' Odoherty says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'The fact is, the work had been copied for the private reading of a
+great lady in Florence.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The note says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'The great lady in Florence, for whose private reading Byron's
+autobiography was copied, was the Countess of Westmoreland.... Lady
+Blessington had the autobiography in her possession for weeks, and
+confessed to having copied every line of it. Moore remonstrated, and
+she committed her copy to the flames, but did not tell him that her
+sister, Mrs. Home Purvis, now Viscountess of Canterbury, had also made
+a copy!... From the quantity of copy I have seen,&mdash;and others were
+more in the way of falling in with it than myself,&mdash;I surmise that at
+least half a dozen copies were made, and of these <i>five</i> are now in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+existence. Some particular parts, such as the marriage and separation,
+were copied separately; but I think there cannot be less than five
+full copies yet to be found.'</p></div>
+
+<p>This was written <i>after the original autobiography was burned</i>.</p>
+
+<p>We may see the zeal and enthusiasm of the Byron party,&mdash;copying
+seventy-eight folio sheets, as of old Christians copied the Gospels.
+How widely, fully, and thoroughly, thus, by this secret process, was
+society saturated with Byron's own versions of the story that related
+to himself and wife! Against her there was only the complaint of an
+absolute silence. She put forth no statements, no documents; had no
+party, sealed the lips of her counsel, and even of her servants; yet
+she could not but have known, from time to time, how thoroughly and
+strongly this web of mingled truth and lies was being meshed around her
+steps.</p>
+
+<p>From the time that Byron first saw the importance of securing Wilson on
+his side, and wrote to have his partisans attend to him, we may date
+an entire revolution in the 'Blackwood.' It became Byron's warmest
+supporter,&mdash;is to this day the bitterest accuser of his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Why was this wonderful silence? It appears by Dr. Lushington's
+statements, that, when Lady Byron did speak, she had a story to tell
+that powerfully affected both him and Romilly,&mdash;a story supported by
+evidence on which they were willing to have gone to public trial.
+Supposing, now, she had imitated Lord Byron's example, and, avoiding
+public trial, had put her story<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> into private circulation; as he sent
+'Don Juan' to fifty confidential friends, suppose she had sent a
+written statement of her story to fifty judges as intelligent as the
+two that had heard it; or suppose she had confronted his autobiography
+with her own,&mdash;what would have been the result?</p>
+
+<p>The first result might have been Mrs. Leigh's utter ruin. The world may
+finally forgive the man of genius anything; but for a woman there is no
+mercy and no redemption.</p>
+
+<p>This ruin Lady Byron prevented by her utter silence and great
+self-command. Mrs. Leigh never lost position. Lady Byron never so
+varied in her manner towards her as to excite the suspicions even of
+her confidential old servant.</p>
+
+<p>To protect Mrs. Leigh effectually, it must have been necessary to
+continue to exclude even her own mother from the secret, as we are
+assured she did at first; for, had she told Lady Milbanke, it is
+not possible that so high-spirited a woman could have restrained
+herself from such outward expressions as would at least have awakened
+suspicion. There was no resource but this absolute silence.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Blessington, in her last conversation with Lord Byron, thus
+describes the life Lady Byron was leading. She speaks of her as
+'wearing away her youth in almost monastic seclusion, questioned by
+some, appreciated by few, seeking consolation alone in the discharge of
+her duties, and avoiding all external demonstrations of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> grief that
+her pale cheek and solitary existence alone were vouchers for.'<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p>The main object of all this silence may be imagined, if we remember
+that if Lord Byron had not died,&mdash;had he truly and deeply repented,
+and become a thoroughly good man, and returned to England to pursue a
+course worthy of his powers, there was on record neither word nor deed
+from his wife to stand in his way.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">His place was kept in society</span>, ready for him to return to
+whenever he came clothed and in his right mind. He might have had the
+heart and confidence of his daughter unshadowed by a suspicion. He
+might have won the reverence of the great and good in his own lands and
+all lands. That hope, which was the strong support, the prayer of the
+silent wife, it did not please God to fulfil.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron died a worn-out man at thirty-six. But the bitter seeds he
+had sown came up, after his death, in a harvest of thorns over his
+grave; and there were not wanting hands to use them as instruments of
+torture on the heart of his widow.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a></h2>
+
+<p class="ph4">RÉSUMÉ OF THE CONSPIRACY.</p>
+
+
+<p>We have traced the conspiracy of Lord Byron against his wife up to its
+latest device. That the reader's mind may be clear on the points of the
+process, we shall now briefly recapitulate the documents in the order
+of time.</p>
+
+<p>I. March 17, 1816.&mdash;While negotiations for separation were
+pending,&mdash;'<i>Fare thee well, and if for ever</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>While writing these pages, we have received from England the testimony
+of one who has seen the original draught of that 'Fare thee well.' This
+original copy had evidently been subjected to the most careful and
+acute revision. Scarcely two lines that were not interlined, scarcely
+an adjective that was not exchanged for a better; showing that the
+noble lord was not so far overcome by grief as to have forgotten his
+reputation. (Found its way to the public prints through the imprudence
+of <i>a friend</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>II. March 29, 1816.&mdash;An attack on Lady Byron's old governess for having
+been born poor, for being homely, and for having unduly influenced his
+wife against him; promising that her grave should be a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> fiery bed,
+&amp;c.; also praising his wife's perfect and remarkable truthfulness and
+discernment, that made it impossible for flattery to fool, or baseness
+blind her; but ascribing all his woes to her being fooled and blinded
+by this same governess. (Found its way to the prints by the imprudence
+of <i>a friend</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>III. September 1816.&mdash;Lines on hearing that Lady Byron is ill. Calls
+her a Clytemnestra, who has secretly set assassins on her lord; says
+she is a mean, treacherous, deceitful liar, and has entirely departed
+from her early truth, and become the most unscrupulous and unprincipled
+of women. (Never printed till after Lord Byron's death, but circulated
+<i>privately</i> among the '<i>initiated</i>.')</p>
+
+<p>IV. Aug. 9, 1817.&mdash;Gives to M. G. Lewis a paper for circulation
+among friends in England, stating that what he most wants is <i>public
+investigation</i>, which has always been denied him; and daring Lady Byron
+and her counsel to come out publicly. (Found in M. G. Lewis's portfolio
+after his death; never heard of before, except among the 'initiated.')</p>
+
+<p>Having given M. G. Lewis's document time to work,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>January 1818.&mdash;Gives the Fourth Canto of 'Childe Harold'<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> to the
+public.</p>
+
+<p>Jan. 25, 1819.&mdash;Sends to Murray to print for private circulation among
+the 'initiated' the First Canto of 'Don Juan.'</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Is nobly and severely rebuked for this insult to his wife by the
+'Blackwood,' August 1819.</p>
+
+<p>October 1819.&mdash;Gives Moore the manuscript 'Autobiography,' with leave
+to show it to whom he pleases, and print it after his death.</p>
+
+<p>Oct. 29, 1819, Vol. IV. Letter 344.&mdash;Writes to Murray, that he may read
+all this 'Autobiography,' and show it to anybody he likes.</p>
+
+<p>Dec. 10, 1819.&mdash;Writes to Murray on this article in 'Blackwood'
+against 'Don Juan' and himself, which he supposes written by Wilson;
+sends a complimentary message to Wilson, and asks him to read his
+'Autobiography' sent by Moore. (Letter 350.)</p>
+
+<p>March 15, 1820.&mdash;Writes and dedicates to I. Disraeli, Esq., a
+vindication of himself in reply to the 'Blackwood' on 'Don Juan,'
+containing an indignant defence of his own conduct in relation to his
+wife, and maintaining that he never yet has had an opportunity of
+knowing whereof he has been accused; accusing Sir S. Romilly of taking
+his retainer, and then going over to the adverse party, &amp;c. (Printed
+for <i>private circulation</i>; to be found in the standard English edition
+of Murray, vol. ix. p. 57.)</p>
+
+<p>To this condensed account of Byron's strategy we must add the crowning
+stroke of policy which transmitted this warfare to his friends, to be
+continued after his death.</p>
+
+<p>During the last visit Moore made him in Italy, and just before Byron
+presented to him his 'Autobiography,'<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> the following scene occurred, as
+narrated by Moore (vol. iv. p. 221):&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'The chief subject of conversation, when alone, was his marriage, and
+the load of obloquy which it had brought upon him. He was most anxious
+to know <i>the worst</i> that had been alleged of his conduct; and, as this
+was our first opportunity of speaking together on the subject, I did
+not hesitate to put his candour most searchingly to the proof, not
+only by enumerating the various charges I had heard brought against
+him by others, but by specifying such portions of these charges as I
+had been inclined to think not incredible myself.</p>
+
+<p>'To all this he listened with patience, and answered with the most
+unhesitating frankness; laughing to scorn the tales of unmanly outrage
+related of him, but at the same time acknowledging that there had
+been in his conduct but too much to blame and regret, and stating one
+or two occasions during his domestic life when he had been irritated
+into letting the "breath of bitter words" escape him, ... which he now
+evidently remembered with a degree of remorse and pain which might
+well have entitled them to be forgotten by others.</p>
+
+<p>'It was, at the same time, manifest, that, whatever admissions he
+might be inclined to make respecting his own delinquencies, <i>the
+inordinate measure of the punishment dealt out to him had sunk deeply
+into his mind, and, with the usual effect of such injustice, drove him
+also to be unjust himself; so much so, indeed, as to impute to the
+quarter to which he now traced all his ill fate a feeling of fixed
+hostility to himself, which would not rest, he thought, even at his
+grave, but continue to persecute his memory as it was now embittering
+his life</i>. So strong was this impression upon him, that, during one of
+our few intervals of seriousness, he conjured me by our friendship,
+if, as he both felt and hoped, I should survive him, not to let
+unmerited censure settle upon his name.'</p></div>
+
+<p>In this same account, page 218, Moore testifies that</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'Lord Byron disliked his countrymen, but only because he knew that his
+morals were held in contempt by them. The English, themselves rigid
+observers of family duties, could not pardon him the neglect of his,
+nor his trampling on principles; therefore, neither did he like being
+presented to them, nor did they, especially when they had wives with
+them, like to cultivate his acquaintance. Still there was a strong
+desire in all of them to see him; and the women in particular, who did
+not dare to look at him but by stealth, said in an under-voice, "What
+a pity it is!" If, however, any of his compatriots of exalted rank and
+high reputation came forward to treat him with courtesy, he showed
+himself obviously flattered by it. It seemed that, to the wound which
+remained open in his ulcerated heart, such soothing attentions were as
+drops of healing balm, which comforted him.'</p></div>
+
+<p>When in society, we are further informed by a lady quoted by Mr.
+Moore, he was in the habit of speaking of his wife with much respect
+and affection, as an illustrious lady, distinguished for her qualities
+of heart and understanding; saying that all the fault of their
+cruel separation lay with himself. Mr. Moore seems at times to be
+somewhat puzzled by these contradictory statements of his idol, and
+speculates not a little on what could be Lord Byron's object in using
+such language in public; mentally comparing it, we suppose, with
+the free handling which he gave to the same subject in his private
+correspondence.</p>
+
+<p>The innocence with which Moore gives himself up to be manipulated by
+Lord Byron, the <i>naïveté</i> with which he shows all the process, let
+us a little into the secret of the marvellous powers of charming and
+blinding which this great actor possessed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron had the beauty, the wit, the genius, the dramatic talent,
+which have constituted the strength of some wonderfully fascinating
+women.</p>
+
+<p>There have been women able to lead their leashes of blinded adorers; to
+make them swear that black was white, or white black, at their word;
+to smile away their senses, or weep away their reason. No matter what
+these sirens may say, no matter what they may do, though caught in a
+thousand transparent lies, and doing a thousand deeds which would have
+ruined others, still men madly rave after them in life, and tear their
+hair over their graves. Such an enchanter in man's shape was Lord Byron.</p>
+
+<p>He led captive Moore and Murray by being beautiful, a genius, and a
+lord; calling them 'Dear Tom' and 'Dear Murray,' while they were only
+commoners. He first insulted Sir Walter Scott, and then witched his
+heart out of him by ingenuous confessions and poetical compliments; he
+took Wilson's heart by flattering messages and a beautifully-written
+letter; he corresponded familiarly with Hogg; and, before his death,
+had made fast friends, in one way or another, of the whole 'Noctes
+Ambrosianæ' Club.</p>
+
+<p>We thus have given the historical <i>résumé</i> of Lord Byron's attacks
+on his wife's reputation: we shall add, that they were based on
+philosophic principles, showing a deep knowledge of mankind. An
+analysis will show that they can be philosophically classified:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1st. Those which addressed the sympathetic nature<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> of man, representing
+her as cold, methodical, severe, strict, unforgiving.</p>
+
+<p>2nd. Those addressed to the faculty of association, connecting her with
+ludicrous and licentious images; taking from her the usual protection
+of womanly delicacy and sacredness.</p>
+
+<p>3rd. Those addressed to the moral faculties, accusing her as artful,
+treacherous, untruthful, malignant.</p>
+
+<p>All these various devices he held in his hand, shuffling and dealing
+them as a careful gamester his pack of cards according to the
+exigencies of the game. He played adroitly, skilfully, with blinding
+flatteries and seductive wiles, that made his victims willing dupes.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing can more clearly show the power and perfectness of his
+enchantments than the masterly way in which he turned back the moral
+force of the whole English nation, which had risen at first in its
+strength against him. The victory was complete.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a></h2>
+
+<p class="ph4">RESULTS AFTER LORD BYRON'S DEATH.</p>
+
+
+<p>At the time of Lord Byron's death, the English public had been so
+skilfully manipulated by the Byron propaganda, that the sympathy of
+the whole world was with him. A tide of emotion was now aroused in
+England by his early death&mdash;dying in the cause of Greece and liberty.
+There arose a general wail for him, as for a lost pleiad, not only
+in England, but over the whole world; a great rush of enthusiasm for
+his memory, to which the greatest literary men of England freely gave
+voice. By general consent, Lady Byron seems to have been looked upon as
+the only cold-hearted unsympathetic person in this general mourning.</p>
+
+<p>From that time the literary world of England apparently regarded Lady
+Byron as a woman to whom none of the decorums, nor courtesies of
+ordinary womanhood, nor even the consideration belonging to common
+humanity, were due.</p>
+
+<p>'She that is a widow indeed, and desolate,' has been regarded in all
+Christian countries as an object made sacred by the touch of God's
+afflicting hand, sacred in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> her very helplessness; and the old Hebrew
+Scriptures give to the Supreme Father no dearer title than 'the widow's
+God.' But, on Lord Byron's death, men not devoid of tenderness, men
+otherwise generous and of fine feeling, acquiesced in insults to his
+widow with an obtuseness that seems, on review, quite incredible.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron was not only a widow, but an orphan. She had no sister for
+confidante; no father and mother to whom to go in her sorrows&mdash;sorrows
+so much deeper and darker to her than they could be to any other human
+being. She had neither son nor brother to uphold and protect her. On
+all hands it was acknowledged that, so far, there was no fault to be
+found in her but her utter silence. Her life was confessed to be pure,
+useful, charitable; and yet, in this time of her sorrow, the writers
+of England issued article upon article not only devoid of delicacy,
+but apparently injurious and insulting towards her, with a blind
+unconsciousness which seems astonishing.</p>
+
+<p>One of the greatest literary powers of that time was the 'Blackwood:'
+the reigning monarch on that literary throne was Wilson, the
+lion-hearted, the brave, generous, tender poet, and, with some sad
+exceptions, the noble man. But Wilson had believed the story of Byron,
+and, by his very generosity and tenderness and pity, was betrayed into
+injustice.</p>
+
+<p>In 'The Noctes' of November 1824 there is a conversation of the Noctes
+Club, in which North says, 'Byron and I knew each other pretty well;
+and I suppose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> there's no harm in adding, that we appreciated each
+other pretty tolerably. Did you ever see his letter to me?'</p>
+
+<p>The footnote to this says, '<i>This letter, which was PRINTED in Byron's
+lifetime, was not published till</i> 1830, when it appeared in Moore's
+"Life of Byron." It is one of the most vigorous prose compositions in
+the language. Byron had the highest opinion of Wilson's genius and
+noble spirit.'</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, with our present ideas of propriety and good taste,
+we should reckon it an indecorum to make the private affairs of a
+pure and good woman, whose circumstances under any point of view were
+trying, and who evidently shunned publicity, the subject of public
+discussion in magazines which were read all over the world.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron, as they all knew, had on her hands a most delicate and
+onerous task, in bringing up an only daughter, necessarily inheriting
+peculiarities of genius and great sensitiveness; and the many
+mortifications and embarrassments which such intermeddling with her
+private matters must have given, certainly should have been considered
+by men with any pretensions to refinement or good feeling.</p>
+
+<p>But the literati of England allowed her no consideration, no rest, no
+privacy.</p>
+
+<p>In 'The Noctes' of November 1825 there is the record of a free
+conversation upon Lord and Lady Byron's affairs, interlarded with
+exhortations to push the bottle, and remarks on whisky-toddy. Medwin's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+'Conversations with Lord Byron' is discussed, which, we are told in a
+note, appeared a few months after the <i>noble</i> poet's death.</p>
+
+<p>There is a rather bold and free discussion of Lord Byron's
+character&mdash;his fondness for gin and water, on which stimulus he wrote
+'Don Juan;' and James Hogg says pleasantly to Mullion, 'O Mullion! it's
+a pity you and Byron could na ha' been acquaint. There would ha' been
+brave sparring to see who could say the wildest and the dreadfullest
+things; for he had neither fear of man or woman, and would ha' his joke
+or jeer, cost what it might.' And then follows a specimen of one of
+his jokes with an actress, that, in indecency, certainly justifies the
+assertion. From the other stories which follow, and the parenthesis
+that occurs frequently ('Mind your glass, James, a little more!'), it
+seems evident that the party are progressing in their peculiar kind of
+<i>civilisation</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is in this same circle and paper that Lady Byron's private affairs
+come up for discussion. The discussion is thus elegantly introduced:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Hogg.</i>&mdash;'Reach me the black bottle. I say, Christopher, what, after
+all, is your opinion o' Lord and Leddy Byron's quarrel? Do you
+yoursel' take part with him, or with her? I wad like to hear your real
+opinion.'</p>
+
+<p><i>North.</i>&mdash;'Oh, dear! Well, Hogg, since you will have it, I think
+Douglas Kinnard and Hobhouse are bound to tell us whether there be any
+truth, and how much, in this story about the <i>declaration</i>, signed by
+Sir Ralph' [Milbanke].</p></div>
+
+<p>The note here tells us that this refers to a statement<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> that appeared
+in 'Blackwood' immediately after Byron's death, to the effect that,
+previous to the formal separation from his wife, Byron required and
+obtained from Sir Ralph Milbanke, Lady Byron's father, a statement to
+the effect that Lady Byron had no charge of moral delinquency to bring
+against him.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<p>North continues:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'And I think Lady Byron's letter&mdash;the "Dearest Duck" one I
+mean&mdash;should really be forthcoming, if her ladyship's friends wish to
+stand fair before the public. At present we have nothing but loose
+talk of society to go upon; and certainly, <i>if the things that are
+said be true, there must be thorough explanation from some quarter,
+or the tide will continue, as it has assuredly begun, to flow in a
+direction very opposite to what we were for years accustomed</i>. Sir,
+they must <i>explain this business of the letter</i>. You have, of course,
+heard about the invitation it contained, the warm, affectionate
+invitation, to Kirkby Mallory'&mdash;&mdash;</p></div>
+
+<p>Hogg interposes,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I dinna like to be interruptin' ye, Mr. North; but I must inquire, Is
+the <i>jug</i> to stand still while ye're going on at that rate?'</p>
+
+<p><i>North.</i>&mdash;'There, Porker! These things are part and parcel of
+the chatter of every bookseller's shop; <i>à fortiori</i>, of every
+drawing-room in May Fair. <i>Can</i> the matter stop here? Can a great
+man's memory be permitted to incur damnation while these saving
+clauses are afloat anywhere uncontradicted?'</p></div>
+
+<p>And from this the conversation branches off into strong,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> emphatic
+praise of Byron's conduct in Greece during the last part of his life.</p>
+
+<p>The silent widow is thus delicately and considerately reminded in the
+'Blackwood' that she is the talk, not only over the whisky-jug of the
+Noctes, but in every drawing-room in London; and that she <i>must</i> speak
+out and explain matters, or the whole world will set against her.</p>
+
+<p>But she does not speak yet. The public persecution, therefore,
+proceeds. Medwin's book being insufficient, another biographer is to
+be selected. Now, the person in the Noctes Club who was held to have
+the most complete information of the Byron affairs, and was, on that
+account, first thought of by Murray to execute this very delicate task
+of writing a memoir which should include the most sacred domestic
+affairs of a noble lady and her orphan daughter, was <i>Maginn</i>. Maginn,
+the author of the pleasant joke, that 'man never reaches the apex of
+civilisation till he is too drunk to pronounce the word,' was the first
+person in whose hands the 'Autobiography,' Memoirs, and Journals of
+Lord Byron were placed with this view.</p>
+
+<p>The following note from Shelton Mackenzie, in the June number of 'The
+Noctes,' 1824, says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'At that time, had he been so minded, Maginn (Odoherty) could have got
+up a popular Life of Byron as well as most men in England. Immediately
+on the account of Byron's death being received in London, John Murray
+proposed that Maginn should bring out Memoirs, Journals, and Letters
+of Lord Byron, and,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> with this intent, placed in his hand every line
+that he (Murray) possessed in Byron's handwriting.... The strong
+desire of <i>Byron's family and executors</i> that the "Autobiography"
+should be burned, to which desire Murray foolishly yielded, made such
+an hiatus in the materials, that Murray and Maginn agreed it would not
+answer to bring out the work then. Eventually Moore executed it.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The character of the times in which this work was to be undertaken will
+appear from the following note of Mackenzie's to 'The Noctes' of August
+1824, which we copy, with the <i>author's own Italics</i>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'In the "Blackwood" of July 1824 was a poetical epistle by the
+renowned Timothy Tickler to the editor of the "John Bull" magazine,
+on an article in his first number. This article ... <i>professed</i> to
+be a portion of the veritable "Autobiography" of Byron which was
+burned, and was called "My Wedding Night." It appeared to relate
+in detail <i>everything</i> that occurred in the twenty-four hours
+immediately succeeding that in which Byron was married. It had plenty
+of coarseness, and some to spare. It went into particulars such as
+hitherto had been given only by Faublas; and it had, notwithstanding,
+many phrases and some facts which evidently did not belong to a mere
+fabricator. Some years after, I compared this "Wedding Night" with
+what I had all assurance of having been transcribed from the actual
+manuscripts of Byron, and was persuaded that the magazine-writer must
+have had the <i>actual</i> statement before him, or have had a perusal of
+it. The writer in "Blackwood" declared his conviction that it really
+was Byron's own writing.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The reader must remember that Lord Byron died April 1824; so that,
+according to this, his 'Autobiography' was made the means of this gross
+insult to his widow three months after his death.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If some powerful cause had not paralysed all feelings of gentlemanly
+honour, and of womanly delicacy, and of common humanity, towards Lady
+Byron, throughout the whole British nation, no editor would have dared
+to open a periodical with such an article; or, if he had, he would have
+been overwhelmed with a storm of popular indignation, which, like the
+fire upon Sodom, would have made a pillar of salt of him for a warning
+to all future generations.</p>
+
+<p>'Blackwood' reproves the 'John Bull' in a poetical epistle, recognising
+the article as coming from Byron, and says to the <i>author</i>,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'But that <i>you</i>, sir, a wit and a scholar like you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should not blush to produce what he blushed not to do,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take your compliment, youngster; this doubles, almost,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sorrow that rose when his honour was lost.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We may not wonder that the 'Autobiography' was burned, as Murray says
+in a recent account, by a committee of Byron's <i>friends</i>, including
+Hobhouse, his sister, and Murray himself.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the 'Blackwood' of July 1824 thus declares its conviction that
+this outrage on every sentiment of human decency came from Lord Byron,
+and that his honour was lost. Maginn does not undertake the memoir. No
+memoir at all is undertaken; till finally Moore is selected, as, like
+Demetrius of old, a well-skilled gilder and 'maker of silver shrines,'
+though <i>not</i> for Diana. To Moore is committed the task of doing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> his
+best for this battered image, in which even the worshippers recognise
+foul sulphurous cracks, but which they none the less stand ready to
+worship as a genuine article that 'fell down from Jupiter.'</p>
+
+<p>Moore was a man of no particular nicety as to moralities, but in that
+matter seems not very much below what this record shows his average
+associates to be. He is so far superior to Maginn, that his vice is
+rose-coloured and refined. He does not burst out with such heroic
+stanzas as Maginn's frank invitation to Jeremy Bentham:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Jeremy, throw your pen aside,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And come get drunk with me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And we'll go where Bacchus sits astride,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Perched high on barrels three.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Moore's vice is cautious, soft, seductive, slippery, and covered at
+times with a thin, tremulous veil of religious sentimentalism.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to Byron, he was an unscrupulous, committed partisan: he was
+as much bewitched by him as ever man has been by woman; and therefore
+to him, at last, the task of editing Byron's 'Memoirs' was given.</p>
+
+<p>This Byron, whom they all knew to be obscene beyond what even their
+most drunken tolerance could at first endure; this man, whose foul
+license <i>spoke out</i> what most men conceal from mere respect to the
+decent instincts of humanity; whose 'honour was lost,'&mdash;was submitted
+to this careful manipulator, to be turned out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> a perfected idol for a
+world longing for an idol, as the Israelites longed for the calf in
+Horeb.</p>
+
+<p>The image was to be invested with deceitful glories and shifting
+haloes,&mdash;admitted faults spoken of as peculiarities of sacred
+origin,&mdash;and the world given to understand that no common rule or
+measure could apply to such an undoubtedly divine production; and so
+the hearts of men were to be wrung with pity for his sorrows as the
+yearning pain of a god, and with anger at his injuries as sacrilege on
+the sacredness of genius, till they were ready to cast themselves at
+his feet, and adore.</p>
+
+<p>Then he was to be set up on a pedestal, like Nebuchadnezzar's image on
+the plains of Dura; and what time the world heard the sound of cornet,
+sackbut, and dulcimer, in his enchanting verse, they were to fall down
+and worship.</p>
+
+<p>For Lady Byron, Moore had simply the respect that a commoner has for
+a lady of rank, and a good deal of the feeling that seems to underlie
+all English literature,&mdash;that it is no matter what becomes of the woman
+when the man's story is to be told. But, with all his faults, Moore was
+not a cruel man; and we cannot conceive such outrageous cruelty and
+ungentlemanly indelicacy towards an unoffending woman, as he shows in
+these 'Memoirs,' without referring them to Lord Byron's own influence
+in making him an unscrupulous, committed partisan on his side.</p>
+
+<p>So little pity, so little sympathy, did he suppose Lady<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> Byron to be
+worthy of, that he laid before her, in the sight of all the world,
+selections from her husband's letters and journals, in which the
+privacies of her courtship and married life were jested upon with a
+vulgar levity; letters filled, from the time of the act of separation,
+with a constant succession of sarcasms, stabs, stings, epigrams, and
+vindictive allusions to herself, bringing her into direct and insulting
+comparison with his various mistresses, and implying their superiority
+over her. There, too, were gross attacks on her father and mother, as
+having been the instigators of the separation; and poor Lady Milbanke,
+in particular, is sometimes mentioned with epithets so offensive, that
+the editor prudently covers the terms with stars, as intending language
+too gross to be printed.</p>
+
+<p>The last mistress of Lord Byron is uniformly brought forward in
+terms of such respect and consideration, that one would suppose that
+the usual moral laws that regulate English family life had been
+specially repealed in his favour. Moore quotes with approval letters
+from Shelley, stating that Lord Byron's connection with La Guiccioli
+has been of inestimable benefit to him; and that he is now becoming
+what he should be, 'a virtuous man.' Moore goes on to speak of the
+connection as one, though somewhat reprehensible, yet as having all
+those advantages of marriage and settled domestic ties that Byron's
+affectionate spirit had long sighed for, but never before found; and in
+his last <i>résumé</i> of the poet's character, at the end of the volume, he
+brings the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> mistress into direct comparison with the wife in a single
+sentence: 'The woman to whom he gave the love of his maturer years
+idolises his name; and, <i>with a single unhappy exception</i>, scarce an
+instance is to be found of one brought ... into relations of amity with
+him who did not retain a kind regard for him in life, and a fondness
+for his memory.'</p>
+
+<p>Literature has never yet seen the instance of a person, of Lady Byron's
+rank in life, placed before the world in a position more humiliating to
+womanly dignity, or wounding to womanly delicacy.</p>
+
+<p>The direct implication is, that she has no feelings to be hurt, no
+heart to be broken, and is not worthy even of the consideration which
+in ordinary life is to be accorded to a widow who has received those
+awful tidings which generally must awaken many emotions, and call for
+some consideration, even in the most callous hearts.</p>
+
+<p>The woman who we are told walked the room, vainly striving to control
+the sobs that shook her frame, while she sought to draw from the
+servant that last message of her husband which she was never to hear,
+was not thought worthy even of the rights of common humanity.</p>
+
+<p>The first volume of the 'Memoir' came out in 1830. Then for the first
+time came one flash of lightning from the silent cloud; and she who
+had never spoken before spoke out. The libels on the memory of her
+dead parents drew from her what her own wrongs never did. During all
+this time, while her husband had been keep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>ing her effigy dangling
+before the public as a mark for solemn curses, and filthy lampoons,
+and <i>secretly</i>-circulated disclosures, that spared no sacredness
+and violated every decorum, she had not uttered a word. She had
+been subjected to nameless insults, discussed in the assemblies of
+drunkards, and challenged to speak for herself. Like the chaste lady
+in 'Comus,' whom the vile wizard had bound in the enchanted seat to
+be 'grinned at and chattered at' by all the filthy rabble of his
+dehumanised rout, she had remained pure, lofty, and undefiled; and the
+stains of mud and mire thrown upon her had fallen from her spotless
+garments.</p>
+
+<p>Now that she is dead, a recent writer in 'The London Quarterly' dares
+give voice to an insinuation which even Byron gave only a <i>suggestion</i>
+of when he called his wife Clytemnestra; and hints that she tried the
+power of youth and beauty to win to her the young solicitor Lushington,
+and a handsome young officer of high rank.</p>
+
+<p>At this time, <i>such</i> insinuations had not been thought of; and the only
+and chief allegation against Lady Byron had been a cruel severity of
+virtue.</p>
+
+<p>At all events, when Lady Byron spoke, the world listened with respect,
+and believed what she said.</p>
+
+<p>Here let us, too, read her statement, and give it the careful attention
+she solicits (Moore's 'Life of Byron,' vol. vi. p. 275):&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I have disregarded various publications in which facts within my
+own knowledge have been grossly misrepresented; but I am called upon
+to notice some of the erroneous statements proceeding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> from one who
+claims to be considered as Lord Byron's confidential and authorised
+friend. Domestic details ought not to be intruded on the public
+attention: if, however, they <i>are</i> so intruded, the persons affected
+by them have a right to refute injurious charges. Mr. Moore has
+promulgated his own impressions of private events in which I was most
+nearly concerned, as if he possessed a competent knowledge of the
+subject. Having survived Lord Byron, I feel increased reluctance to
+advert to any circumstances connected with the period of my marriage;
+nor is it now my intention to disclose them further than may be
+indispensably requisite for the end I have in view. Self-vindication
+is not the motive which actuates me to make this appeal, and the
+spirit of accusation is unmingled with it; but when the conduct of
+my parents is brought forward in a disgraceful light by the passages
+selected from Lord Byron's letters, and by the remarks of his
+biographer, I feel bound to justify their characters from imputations
+which I <i>know</i> to be false. The passages from Lord Byron's letters, to
+which I refer, are,&mdash;the aspersion on my mother's character (p. 648,
+l. 4):<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> "My child is very well and flourishing, I hear; but I must
+see also. I feel no disposition to resign it to the <i>contagion of its
+grandmother's society</i>." The assertion of her dishonourable conduct
+in employing a spy (p. 645, l. 7, &amp;c.): "A Mrs. C. (now a kind of
+housekeeper and <i>spy of Lady N.'s</i>), who, in her better days, was a
+washerwoman, is supposed to be&mdash;by the learned&mdash;very much the occult
+cause of our domestic discrepancies." The seeming exculpation of
+myself in the extract (p. 646), with the words immediately following
+it, "Her nearest relations are a&mdash;&mdash;;" where the blank clearly implies
+something too offensive for publication. These passages tend to throw
+suspicion on my parents, and give reason to ascribe the separation
+either to their direct agency, or to that of "officious spies"
+employed by them.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> From the following part of the narrative (p.
+642), it must also be inferred that an undue influence was exercised
+by them for the accomplishment of this purpose: "It was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> in a few
+weeks after the latter communication between us (Lord Byron and Mr.
+Moore) that Lady Byron adopted the determination of parting from him.
+She had left London at the latter end of January, on a visit to her
+father's house in Leicestershire; and Lord Byron was in a short time
+to follow her. They had parted in the utmost kindness,&mdash;she wrote
+him a letter, full of playfulness and affection, on the road; and,
+immediately on her arrival at Kirkby Mallory, her father wrote to
+acquaint Lord Byron that she would return to him no more."</p>
+
+<p>'In my observations upon this statement, I shall, as far as possible,
+avoid touching on any matters relating personally to Lord Byron
+and myself. The facts are,&mdash;I left London for Kirkby Mallory, the
+residence of my father and mother, on the 15th of January, 1816.
+Lord Byron had signified to me in writing (Jan. 6) his absolute
+desire that I should leave London on the earliest day that I could
+conveniently fix. It was not safe for me to undertake the fatigue of a
+journey sooner than the 15th. Previously to my departure, it had been
+strongly impressed on my mind that Lord Byron was under the influence
+of insanity. This opinion was derived in a great measure from the
+communications made to me by his nearest relatives and personal
+attendant, who had more opportunities than myself of observing him
+during the latter part of my stay in town. It was even represented to
+me that he was in danger of destroying himself. <i>With the concurrence
+of his family</i>, I had consulted Dr. Baillie, as a friend (Jan. 8),
+respecting this supposed malady. On acquainting him with the state of
+the case, and with Lord Byron's desire that I should leave London, Dr.
+Baillie thought that my absence might be advisable as an experiment,
+<i>assuming</i> the fact of mental derangement; for Dr. Baillie, not
+having had access to Lord Byron, could not pronounce a positive
+opinion on that point. He enjoined that, in correspondence with Lord
+Byron, I should avoid all but light and soothing topics. Under these
+impressions I left London, determined to follow the advice given by
+Dr. Baillie. Whatever might have been the nature of Lord Byron's
+conduct towards me from the time of my marriage, yet, supposing him
+to be in a state of mental alienation, it was not for <i>me</i>, nor for
+any person of common<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> humanity, to manifest at that moment a sense
+of injury. On the day of my departure, and again on my arrival at
+Kirkby (Jan. 16), I wrote to Lord Byron in a kind and cheerful tone,
+according to those medical directions.</p>
+
+<p>'The last letter was circulated, and employed as a pretext for the
+charge of my having been subsequently <i>influenced</i> to "desert"<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> my
+husband. It has been argued that I parted from Lord Byron in perfect
+harmony; that feelings incompatible with any deep sense of injury had
+dictated the letter which I addressed to him; and that my sentiments
+must have been changed by persuasion and interference when I was
+under the roof of my parents. These assertions and inferences are
+wholly destitute of foundation. When I arrived at Kirkby Mallory, my
+parents were unacquainted with the existence of any causes likely to
+destroy my prospects of happiness; and, when I communicated to them
+the opinion which had been formed concerning Lord Byron's state of
+mind, they were most anxious to promote his restoration by every means
+in their power. They assured those relations who were with him in
+London, that "they would devote their whole care and attention to the
+alleviation of his malady;" and hoped to make the best arrangements
+for his comfort if he could be induced to visit them.</p>
+
+<p>'With these intentions, my mother wrote on the 17th to Lord Byron,
+inviting him to Kirkby Mallory. She had always treated him with an
+affectionate consideration and indulgence, which extended to every
+little peculiarity of his feelings. Never did an irritating word
+escape her lips in her whole intercourse with him. The accounts given
+me after I left Lord Byron, by the persons in constant intercourse
+with him, added to those doubts which had before transiently occurred
+to my mind as to the reality of the alleged disease; and the reports
+of his medical attendant were far from establishing the existence of
+anything like lunacy. Under this uncertainty, I deemed it right to
+communicate to my parents, that, if I were to consider Lord Byron's
+past conduct as that of a person of sound mind, nothing could induce
+me to return to him. It therefore appeared expedient, both to them and
+myself, to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> consult the ablest advisers. For that object, and also
+to obtain still further information respecting the appearances which
+seemed to indicate mental derangement, my mother determined to go to
+London. She was empowered by me to take legal opinions on a written
+statement of mine, though I had then reasons for reserving a part
+of the case from the knowledge even of my father and mother. Being
+convinced by the result of these inquiries, and by the tenor of Lord
+Byron's proceedings, that the notion of insanity was an illusion, I no
+longer hesitated to authorise such measures as were necessary in order
+to secure me from being ever again placed in his power. Conformably
+with this resolution, my father wrote to him on the 2nd of February
+to propose an amicable separation. Lord Byron at first rejected this
+proposal; but when it was distinctly notified to him that, if he
+persisted in his refusal, recourse must be had to legal measures, he
+agreed to sign a deed of separation. Upon applying to Dr. Lushington,
+who was intimately acquainted with all the circumstances, to state in
+writing what he recollected upon this subject, I received from him the
+following letter, by which it will be manifest that my mother cannot
+have been actuated by any hostile or ungenerous motives towards Lord
+Byron:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'"<span class="smcap">My dear Lady Byron</span>,&mdash;I can rely upon the accuracy of
+my memory for the following statement. I was originally consulted
+by Lady Noel, on your behalf, whilst you were in the country. The
+circumstances detailed by her were such as justified a separation;
+but they were not of that aggravated description as to render such
+a measure indispensable. On Lady Noel's representation, I deemed a
+reconciliation with Lord Byron practicable, and felt most sincerely
+a wish to aid in effecting it. There was not on Lady Noel's part
+any exaggeration of the facts; nor, so far as I could perceive, any
+determination to prevent a return to Lord Byron: certainly none was
+expressed when I spoke of a reconciliation. When you came to town,
+in about a fortnight, or perhaps more, after my first interview with
+Lady Noel, I was for the first time informed by you of facts utterly
+unknown, as I have no doubt, to Sir Ralph and Lady Noel. On receiving
+this additional information, my opinion was entirely changed: I
+considered a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> reconciliation impossible. I declared my opinion, and
+added, that, if such an idea should be entertained, I could not,
+either professionally or otherwise, take any part towards effecting it.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'"Believe me, very faithfully yours,</p>
+
+<p class="author">'"<span class="smcap">Steph. Lushington</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="p3">
+'"Great George Street, Jan. 31, 1830."
+</p>
+
+<p>'I have only to observe, that, if the statements on which my legal
+advisers (the late Sir Samuel Romilly and Dr. Lushington) formed
+their opinions were false, the responsibility and the odium should
+rest with <i>me only</i>. I trust that the facts which I have here briefly
+recapitulated will absolve my father and mother from all accusations
+with regard to the part they took in the separation between Lord Byron
+and myself.</p>
+
+<p>'They neither originated, instigated, nor advised that separation;
+and they cannot be condemned for having afforded to their daughter
+the assistance and protection which she claimed. There is no other
+near relative to vindicate their memory from insult. I am therefore
+compelled to break the silence which I had hoped always to observe,
+and to solicit from the readers of Lord Byron's "Life" an impartial
+consideration of the testimony extorted from me.</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">A. I. Noel Byron.</span></p>
+<p class="p3">
+'Hanger Hill, Feb. 19, 1830.'
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The effect of this statement on the literary world may be best judged
+by the discussion of it by Christopher North (Wilson) in the succeeding
+May number of 'The Noctes,' where the bravest and most generous of
+literary men that then were&mdash;himself the husband of a gentle wife&mdash;thus
+gives sentence: the conversation is between North and the Shepherd:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>North.</i>&mdash;'God forbid I should wound the feelings of Lady Byron, of
+whose character, known to me but by the high estimation in which
+it is held by all who have enjoyed her friendship, I have always
+spoken with respect!... But may I, without harshness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> or indelicacy,
+say, here among ourselves, James, that, by marrying Byron, she took
+upon herself, with eyes wide open and conscience clearly convinced,
+duties very different from those of which, even in common cases, the
+presaging foresight shadows ... the light of the first nuptial moon?'</p>
+
+<p><i>Shepherd.</i>&mdash;'She did that, sir; by my troth, she did that.'</p>
+
+<p><i>North.</i>&mdash;'Miss Milbanke knew that he was reckoned a rake and a
+<i>roué</i>; and although his genius wiped off, by impassioned eloquence
+in love-letters that were felt to be irresistible, or hid the worst
+stain of, that reproach, still Miss Milbanke must have believed it a
+perilous thing to be the wife of Lord Byron.... But still, by joining
+her life to his in marriage, she pledged her troth and her faith and
+her love, under probabilities of severe, disturbing, perhaps fearful
+trials, in the future....</p>
+
+<p>'But I think Lady Byron ought not to have printed that Narrative.
+Death abrogates not the rights of a husband to his wife's silence
+when speech is fatal ... to his character as a man. Has she not
+flung suspicion over his bones interred, that they are the bones of
+a&mdash;monster?... If Byron's sins or crimes&mdash;for we are driven to use
+terrible terms&mdash;were unendurable and unforgivable as if against the
+Holy Ghost, ought the wheel, the rack, or the stake to have extorted
+that confession from his widow's breast.... But there was no such
+pain here, James: the declaration was voluntary, and it was calm.
+Self-collected, and gathering up all her faculties and feelings
+into unshrinking strength, she denounced before all the world&mdash;and
+throughout all space and all time&mdash;her husband, as excommunicated by
+his vices from woman's bosom.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>''Twas to vindicate the character of her parents that Lady Byron
+wrote,&mdash;a holy purpose and devout, nor do I doubt sincere. But filial
+affection and reverence, sacred as they are, may be blamelessly, nay,
+righteously, subordinate to conjugal duties, which die not with the
+dead, are extinguished not even by the sins of the dead, were they as
+foul as the grave's corruption.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Here is what John Stuart Mill calls the literature of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> slavery for
+woman, in length and breadth; and, that all women may understand the
+doctrine, the Shepherd now takes up his parable, and expounds the true
+position of the wife. We render his Scotch into English:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'Not a few such widows do I know, whom brutal, profligate, and savage
+husbands have brought to the brink of the grave,&mdash;as good, as bright,
+as innocent as, and far more forgiving than, Lady Byron. There
+they sit in their obscure, rarely-visited dwellings; for sympathy
+instructed by suffering knows well that the deepest and most hopeless
+misery is least given to complaint.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Then follows a pathetic picture of one such widow, trembling and
+fainting for hunger, obliged, on her way to the well for a can of
+water, her only drink, to sit down on a '<i>knowe</i>' and say a prayer.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'Yet she's decently, yea, tidily dressed, poor creature! in sair worn
+widow's clothes, a single suit for Saturday and Sunday; her hair,
+untimely gray, is neatly braided under her crape cap; and sometimes,
+when all is still and solitary in the fields, and all labour has
+disappeared into the house, you may see her stealing by herself, or
+leading one wee orphan by the hand, with another at her breast, to the
+kirkyard, where the love of her youth and the husband of her prime is
+buried.</p>
+
+<p>'Yet,' says the Shepherd, 'he was a brute, a ruffian, a monster. When
+drunk, how he raged and cursed and swore! Often did she dread that, in
+his fits of inhuman passion, he would have murdered the baby at her
+breast; for she had seen him dash their only little boy, a child of
+eight years old, on the floor, till the blood gushed from his ears;
+and then the madman threw himself down on the body, and howled for
+the gallows. Limmers haunted his door, and he theirs; and it was hers
+to lie, not sleep, in a cold, forsaken bed, once the bed of peace,
+affection, and perfect happiness. Often he struck her; and once when
+she was pregnant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> with that very orphan now smiling on her breast,
+reaching out his wee fingers to touch the flowers on his father's
+grave....</p>
+
+<p>'But she tries to smile among the neighbours, and speaks of her boy's
+likeness to its father; nor, when the conversation turns on bygone
+times, does she fear to let his name escape her white lips, "My
+Robert; the bairn's not ill-favoured, but he will never look like his
+father,"&mdash;and such sayings, uttered in a calm, sweet voice. Nay, I
+remember once how her pale countenance reddened with a sudden flush
+of pride, when a gossiping crone alluded to their wedding; and the
+widow's eye brightened through her tears to hear how the bridegroom,
+sitting that sabbath in his front seat beside his bonny bride, had
+not his equal for strength, stature, and all that is beauty in man,
+in all the congregation. That, I say, sir, whether right or wrong,
+<i>was&mdash;forgiveness</i>.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Here is a specimen of how even generous men had been so perverted by
+the enchantment of Lord Byron's genius, as to turn all the pathos and
+power of the strongest literature of that day against the persecuted,
+pure woman, and for the strong, wicked man. These 'Blackwood' writers
+knew, by Byron's own filthy, ghastly writings, which had gone sorely
+against their own moral stomachs, that he was foul to the bone. They
+could see, in Moore's 'Memoirs' right before them, how he had caught an
+innocent girl's heart by sending a love-letter, and offer of marriage,
+at the end of a long friendly correspondence,&mdash;a letter that had been
+written to <i>show</i> to his libertine set, and sent on the toss-up of a
+copper, because he cared nothing for it one way or the other.</p>
+
+<p>They admit that, having won this poor girl, he had been savage, brutal,
+drunken, cruel. They had read<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> the filthy taunts in 'Don Juan,' and the
+nameless abominations in the 'Autobiography.' They had admitted among
+themselves that his honour was lost; but still this abused, desecrated
+woman must <i>reverence</i> her brutal master's memory, and not speak, even
+to defend the grave of her own kind father and mother.</p>
+
+<p>That there was <i>no</i> lover of her youth, that the marriage-vow had been
+a hideous, shameless cheat, is on the face of Moore's account; yet
+the 'Blackwood' does not see it nor feel it, and brings up against
+Lady Byron this touching story of a poor widow, who really had had a
+true lover once,&mdash;a lover maddened, imbruted, lost, through that very
+drunkenness in which the Noctes Club were always glorying.</p>
+
+<p>It is because of such transgressors as Byron, such supporters as
+Moore and the Noctes Club, that there are so many helpless, cowering,
+broken-hearted, abject women, given over to the animal love which they
+share alike with the poor dog,&mdash;the dog, who, beaten, kicked, starved,
+and cuffed, still lies by his drunken master with great anxious eyes
+of love and sorrow, and with sweet, brute forgiveness nestles upon his
+bosom, as he lies in his filth in the snowy ditch, to keep the warmth
+of life in him. Great is the mystery of this fidelity in the poor,
+loving brute,&mdash;most mournful and most sacred!</p>
+
+<p>But, oh that a noble man should have no higher ideal of the love of a
+high-souled, heroic woman! Oh that men should teach women that they
+owe no higher duties, and are capable of no higher tenderness, than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+this loving, unquestioning animal fidelity! The dog is ever-loving,
+ever-forgiving, because God has given him no high range of moral
+faculties, no sense of justice, no consequent horror at impurity and
+vileness.</p>
+
+<p>Much of the beautiful patience and forgiveness of women is made
+possible to them by that utter <i>deadness to the sense of justice</i> which
+the laws, literature, and misunderstood religion of England have sought
+to induce in woman as a special grace and virtue.</p>
+
+<p>The lesson to woman in this pathetic piece of special pleading is,
+that man may sink himself below the brute, may wallow in filth like
+the swine, may turn his home into a hell, beat and torture his
+children, forsake the marriage-bed for foul rivals; yet all this does
+not dissolve the marriage-vow on her part, nor free his bounden serf
+from her obligation to honour his memory,&mdash;nay, to sacrifice to it
+the honour due to a kind father and mother, slandered in their silent
+graves.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the sympathy, and such the advice, that the best literature
+of England could give to a young widow, a peeress of England, whose
+husband, as they verily believed and admitted, might have done
+<i>worse</i> than all this; whose crimes might have been 'foul, monstrous,
+unforgivable as the sin against the Holy Ghost.' If these things be
+done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry? If the peeress
+<i>as a wife</i> has no rights, what is the state of the cotter's wife?</p>
+
+<p>But, in the same paper, North again blames Lady Byron for not
+having come out with the whole story<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> before the world at the time
+she separated from her husband. He says of the time when she first
+consulted counsel through her mother, keeping back one item,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'How weak, and worse than weak, at such a juncture, on which hung her
+whole fate, to ask legal advice on an imperfect document! Give the
+delicacy of a virtuous woman its due; but at such a crisis, when the
+question was whether her conscience was to be free from the oath of
+oaths, delicacy should have died, and nature was privileged to show
+unashamed&mdash;if such there were&mdash;the records of uttermost pollution.'</p>
+
+<p><i>Shepherd.</i>&mdash;'And what think ye, sir, that a' this pollution could hae
+been, that sae electrified Dr. Lushington?'</p>
+
+<p><i>North.</i>&mdash;'Bad&mdash;bad&mdash;bad, James. Nameless, it is horrible; named,
+it might leave Byron's memory yet within the range of pity and
+forgiveness; and, where they are, their sister affections will not be
+far; though, like weeping seraphs, standing aloof, and veiling their
+wings.'</p>
+
+<p><i>Shepherd.</i>&mdash;'She should indeed hae been silent&mdash;till the grave had
+closed on her sorrows as on his sins.'</p>
+
+<p><i>North.</i>&mdash;'<i>Even now she should speak</i>,&mdash;or some one else for her,&mdash;
+... and a few words will suffice. <i>Worse</i> the condition of the dead
+man's name cannot be&mdash;far, far better it might&mdash;I believe it would
+be&mdash;were <i>all</i> the truth somehow or other declared; and declared it
+must be, not for Byron's sake only, but for the sake of humanity
+itself; and then a mitigated sentence, or eternal silence.'</p></div>
+
+<p>We have another discussion of Lady Byron's duties in a further number
+of 'Blackwood.'</p>
+
+<p>The 'Memoir' being out, it was proposed that there should be a complete
+annotation of Byron's works gotten up, and adorned, for the further
+glorification of his memory, with portraits of the various women whom
+he had delighted to honour.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Murray applied to Lady Byron for her portrait, and was met with a cold,
+decided negative. After reading all the particulars of Byron's harem of
+mistresses, and Moore's comparisons between herself and La Guiccioli,
+one might <i>imagine</i> reasons why a lady, with proper self-respect,
+should object to appearing in this manner. One would suppose there
+might have been gentlemen who could well appreciate the <i>motive</i> of
+that refusal; but it was only considered a new evidence that she was
+indifferent to her conjugal duties, and wanting in that <i>respect</i> which
+Christopher North had told her she owed a husband's memory, though his
+crimes were foul as the rottenness of the grave.</p>
+
+<p>Never, since Queen Vashti refused to come at the command of a drunken
+husband to show herself to his drunken lords, was there a clearer case
+of disrespect to the marital dignity on the part of a wife. It was a
+plain act of insubordination, rebellion against law and order; and
+how shocking in Lady Byron, who ought to feel herself but too much
+flattered to be exhibited to the public as the head wife of a man of
+genius!</p>
+
+<p>Means were at once adopted to subdue her contumacy, of which one may
+read in a note to the 'Blackwood' (Noctes), September 1832. An artist
+was sent down to Ealing to take her picture by stealth as she sat in
+church. Two sittings were thus obtained without her knowledge. In the
+third one, the artist placed himself boldly before her, and sketched,
+so that she could not but observe him. We shall give the rest in
+Mackenzie's own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> words, as a remarkable specimen of the obtuseness,
+not to say indelicacy of feeling, which seemed to pervade the literary
+circles of England at the time:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'After prayers, Wright and his friend (the artist) were visited by
+an ambassador from her ladyship to inquire the meaning of what she
+had seen. The reply was, that Mr. Murray <i>must</i> have her portrait,
+and was compelled to take what she refused to give. The result was,
+Wright was requested to visit her, which he did; taking with him,
+not <i>the</i> sketch, which was very good, but another, in which there
+was a strong touch of caricature. Rather than allow <i>that</i> to appear
+as her likeness (a very natural and womanly feeling by the way), she
+consented to sit for the portrait to W. J. Newton, which was engraved,
+and is here alluded to.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The artless barbarism of this note is too good to be lost; but it
+is quite borne out by the conversation in the Noctes Club, which it
+illustrates.</p>
+
+<p>It would appear from this conversation that these Byron beauties
+appeared successively in pamphlet form; and the picture of Lady Byron
+is thus discussed:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><i>Mullion.</i>&mdash;'I don't know if you have seen the last brochure. It has a
+charming head of Lady Byron, who, it seems, sat on purpose: and that's
+very agreeable to hear of; for it shows her ladyship has got over any
+little soreness that Moore's "Life" occasioned, and is now willing
+to contribute anything in her power to the real monument of Byron's
+genius.'</p>
+
+<p><i>North.</i>&mdash;'I am delighted to hear of this: 'tis really very noble in
+the unfortunate lady. I never saw her. Is the face a striking one?'</p>
+
+<p><i>Mullion.</i>&mdash;'Eminently so,&mdash;a most calm, pensive, melancholy style of
+native beauty,&mdash;and a most touching contrast to the maids of Athens,
+Annesley, and all the rest of them. I'm sure<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> you'll have the proof
+Finden has sent you framed for the Boudoir at the Lodge.'</p>
+
+<p><i>North.</i>&mdash;'By all means. I mean to do that for all the Byron Beauties.'</p></div>
+
+<p>But it may be asked, Was there not a man in all England with delicacy
+enough to feel for Lady Byron, and chivalry enough to speak a bold word
+for her? Yes: there was one. Thomas Campbell the poet, when he read
+Lady Byron's statement, believed it, as did Christopher North; but it
+affected him differently. It appears he did not believe it a wife's
+duty to burn herself on her husband's funeral-pile, as did Christopher
+North; and held the singular idea, that a wife had <i>some</i> rights as a
+human being as well as a husband.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron's own statement appeared in pamphlet form in 1830: at
+least, such is the date at the foot of the document. Thomas Campbell,
+in 'The New Monthly Magazine,' shortly after, printed a spirited,
+gentlemanly defence of Lady Byron, and administered a pointed rebuke to
+Moore for the rudeness and indelicacy he had shown in selecting from
+Byron's letters the coarsest against herself, her parents, and her
+old governess Mrs. Clermont, and by the indecent comparisons he had
+instituted between Lady Byron and Lord Byron's last mistress.</p>
+
+<p>It is refreshing to hear, at last, from somebody who is not altogether
+on his knees at the feet of the popular idol, and who has some chivalry
+for woman, and some idea of common humanity. He says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I found my right to speak on this painful subject on its now
+<i>irrevocable publicity</i>, brought up afresh as it has been by Mr.
+Moore, to be the theme of discourse to millions, and, if I err not
+much, the cause of misconception to innumerable minds. I claim to
+speak of Lady Byron in the right of a man, and of a friend to the
+rights of woman, and to liberty, and to natural religion. I claim a
+right, more especially, as one of the many friends of Lady Byron,
+who, one and all, feel aggrieved by this production. It has virtually
+dragged her forward from the shade of retirement, where she had hid
+her sorrows, and compelled her to defend the heads of her friends and
+her parents from being crushed under the tombstone of Byron. Nay, in a
+general view, it has forced her to defend <i>herself</i>; though, with her
+true sense and her pure taste, she stands above all special pleading.
+To plenary explanation she <i>ought</i> not&mdash;she never <i>shall</i> be driven.
+Mr. Moore is too much a gentleman not to shudder at the thought of
+that; but if other Byronists, of a far different stamp, were to force
+the savage ordeal, it is her enemies, and not she, that would have to
+dread the burning plough-shares.</p>
+
+<p>'We, her friends, have no wish to prolong the discussion: but a few
+words we <i>must</i> add, even to her admirable statement; for hers is a
+cause not only dear to her friends, but having become, from Mr. Moore
+and her misfortunes, a publicly-agitated cause, it concerns morality,
+and the most sacred rights of the sex, that she should (and that,
+too, without more special explanations) be acquitted out and out, and
+honourably acquitted, in this business, of all share in the blame,
+which is one and indivisible. Mr. Moore, on further reflection, may
+see this; and his return to candour will surprise us less than his
+momentary deviation from its path.</p>
+
+<p>'For the tact of Mr. Moore's conduct in this affair, I have not to
+answer; but, if indelicacy be charged upon me, I scorn the charge.
+Neither will I submit to be called Lord Byron's accuser; because a
+word against him I wish not to say beyond what is painfully wrung
+from me by the necessity of owning or illustrating Lady Byron's
+unblamableness, and of repelling certain misconceptions respecting
+her, which are now walking the fashionable world, and which have been
+fostered (though Heaven knows where they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> were born) most delicately
+and warily by the Christian godfathership of Mr. Moore.</p>
+
+<p>'I write not at Lady Byron's bidding. I have never humiliated either
+her or myself by asking <i>if</i> I should write, or <i>what</i> I should write;
+that is to say, I never applied to her for information against Lord
+Byron, though I was justified, as one intending to criticise Mr.
+Moore, in inquiring into the truth of some of his statements. Neither
+will I suffer myself to be called her champion, if by that word be
+meant the advocate of her mere legal innocence; for that, I take it,
+nobody questions.</p>
+
+<p>'Still less is it from the sorry impulse of pity that I speak of
+this noble woman; for I look with wonder and even envy at the proud
+purity of her sense and conscience, that have carried her exquisite
+sensibilities in triumph through such poignant tribulations. But
+I am proud to be called her friend, the humble illustrator of her
+cause, and the advocate of those principles which make it to me more
+interesting than Lord Byron's. Lady Byron (if the subject must be
+discussed) belongs to sentiment and morality (at least as much as Lord
+Byron); nor is she to be suffered, when compelled to speak, to raise
+her voice as in a desert, with no friendly voice to respond to her.
+Lady Byron could not have outlived her sufferings if she had not wound
+up her fortitude to the high point of trusting mainly for consolation,
+not to the opinion of the world, but to her own inward peace; and,
+having said what ought to convince the world, I verily believe that
+she has less care about the fashionable opinion respecting her than
+any of her friends can have. But we, her friends, mix with the world;
+and we hear offensive absurdities about her, which we have a right to
+put down.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>'I proceed to deal more generally with Mr. Moore's book. You speak,
+Mr. Moore, against Lord Byron's censurers in a tone of indignation
+which is perfectly lawful towards calumnious traducers, but which will
+not terrify me, or any other man of courage who is no calumniator,
+from uttering his mind freely with regard to this part of your hero's
+conduct. I question your philosophy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> in assuming that all that is
+noble in Byron's poetry was inconsistent with the possibility of his
+being devoted to a pure and good woman; and I repudiate your morality
+for canting too complacently about "the lava of his imagination,"
+and the unsettled fever of his passions, being any excuses for his
+planting the <i>tic douloureux</i> of domestic suffering in a meek woman's
+bosom.</p>
+
+<p>'These are hard words, Mr. Moore; but you have brought them on
+yourself by your voluntary ignorance of facts known to me; for you
+might and ought to have known both sides of the question; and, if the
+subject was too delicate for you to consult Lady Byron's confidential
+friends, you ought to have had nothing to do with the subject. But you
+cannot have submitted your book even to Lord Byron's sister, otherwise
+she would have set you right about the imaginary spy, Mrs. Clermont.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Campbell now goes on to print, at his own peril, he says, and without
+time to ask leave, the following note from Lady Byron in reply to an
+application he made to her, when he was about to review Moore's book,
+for an 'estimate as to the correctness of Moore's statements.'</p>
+
+<p>The following is Lady Byron's reply:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Campbell</span>,&mdash;In taking up my pen to point out
+for your private information<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> those passages in Mr. Moore's
+representation of my part of the story which were open to
+contradiction, I find them of still greater extent than I had
+supposed; and to deny an assertion <i>here and there</i> would virtually
+admit the truth of the rest. If, on the contrary, I were to enter into
+a full exposure of the falsehood of the views taken by Mr. Moore, I
+must detail various matters, which, consistently with my principles
+and feelings, I cannot under the existing circumstances disclose. I
+may, perhaps, convince you better of the difficulty of the case by
+an example: It is not true that pecuniary embarrassments were the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+cause of the disturbed state of Lord Byron's mind, or formed the
+chief reason for the arrangements made by him at that time. But is it
+reasonable for me to expect that you or any one else should believe
+this, unless I show you what were the causes in question? and this I
+cannot do. 'I am, &amp;c.,</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">A. I. Noel Byron</span>.'</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Campbell then goes on to reprove Moore for his injustice to Mrs.
+Clermont, whom Lord Byron had denounced as a spy, but whose
+respectability and innocence were vouched for by Lord Byron's own
+family; and then he pointedly rebukes one false statement of great
+indelicacy and cruelty concerning Lady Byron's courtship, as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'It is a further mistake on Mr. Moore's part, and I can prove it to be
+so, if proof be necessary, to represent Lady Byron, in the course of
+their courtship, as one inviting her future husband to correspondence
+by letters after she had at first refused him. She never proposed a
+correspondence. On the contrary, he sent her a message after that
+first refusal, stating that he meant to go abroad, and to travel for
+some years in the East; that he should depart with a heart aching,
+but not angry; and that he only begged a verbal assurance that she
+had still some interest in his happiness. Could Miss Milbanke, as a
+well-bred woman, refuse a courteous answer to such a message? She sent
+him a verbal answer, which was merely kind and becoming, but which
+signified no encouragement that he should renew his offer of marriage.</p>
+
+<p>'After that message, he wrote to her a most interesting letter about
+himself,&mdash;about his views, personal, moral, and religious,&mdash;to which
+it would have been uncharitable not to have replied. The result was
+an insensibly increasing correspondence, which ended in her being
+devotedly attached to him. About that time, I occasionally saw Lord
+Byron; and though I knew less of him than Mr. Moore, yet I suspect I
+knew as much of him as Miss Milbanke then knew. At that time, he was
+so pleasing, that, if I had had a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> daughter with ample fortune and
+beauty, I should have trusted her in marriage with Lord Byron.</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Moore at that period evidently understood Lord Byron better than
+either his future bride or myself; but this speaks more for Moore's
+shrewdness than for Byron's ingenuousness of character.</p>
+
+<p>'It is more for Lord Byron's sake than for his widow's that I resort
+not to a more special examination of Mr. Moore's misconceptions. The
+subject would lead me insensibly into hateful disclosures against poor
+Lord Byron, who is more unfortunate in his rash defenders than in
+his reluctant accusers. Happily, his own candour turns our hostility
+from himself against his defenders. It was only in wayward and bitter
+remarks that he misrepresented Lady Byron. He would have defended
+himself irresistibly if Mr. Moore had left only his acknowledging
+passages. But Mr. Moore has produced a "Life" of him which reflects
+blame on Lady Byron so dexterously, that "more is meant than meets
+the ear." The almost universal impression produced by his book is,
+that Lady Byron must be a precise and a wan, unwarming spirit, a
+blue-stocking of chilblained learning, a piece of insensitive goodness.</p>
+
+<p>'Who that knows Lady Byron will not pronounce her to be everything the
+reverse? Will it be believed that this person, so unsuitably matched
+to her moody lord, has written verses that would do no discredit to
+Byron himself; that her sensitiveness is surpassed and bounded only by
+her good sense; and that she is</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"Blest with a temper, whose unclouded ray<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day"?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>'She brought to Lord Byron beauty, manners, fortune, meekness,
+romantic affection, and everything that ought to have made her to
+the most transcendent man of genius&mdash;<i>had he been what he should
+have been</i>&mdash;his pride and his idol. I speak not of Lady Byron in the
+commonplace manner of attesting character: I appeal to the gifted Mrs.
+Siddons and Joanna Baillie, to Lady Charlemont, and to other ornaments
+of their sex, whether I am exaggerating in the least when I say, that,
+in their whole lives, they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> have seen few beings so intellectual and
+well-tempered as Lady Byron.</p>
+
+<p>'I wish to be as ingenuous as possible in speaking of her. Her manner,
+I have no hesitation to say, is cool at the first interview, but is
+modestly, and not insolently, cool: she contracted it, I believe, from
+being exposed by her beauty and large fortune, in youth, to numbers
+of suitors, whom she could not have otherwise kept at a distance.
+But this manner could have had no influence with Lord Byron; for
+it vanishes on nearer acquaintance, and has no origin in coldness.
+All her friends like her frankness the better for being preceded by
+this reserve. This manner, however, though not the slightest apology
+for Lord Byron, has been inimical to Lady Byron in her misfortunes.
+It endears her to her friends; but it piques the indifferent. Most
+odiously unjust, therefore, is Mr. Moore's assertion, that she has had
+the advantage of Lord Byron in public opinion. She is, comparatively
+speaking, unknown to the world; for though she has many friends, that
+is, a friend in everyone who knows her, yet her pride and purity and
+misfortunes naturally contract the circle of her acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>'There is something exquisitely unjust in Mr. Moore comparing her
+chance of popularity with Lord Byron's, the poet who can command
+men of talents,&mdash;putting even Mr. Moore into the livery of his
+service,&mdash;and who has suborned the favour of almost all women by the
+beauty of his person and the voluptuousness of his verses. Lady Byron
+has nothing to oppose to these fascinations but the truth and justice
+of her cause.</p>
+
+<p>'You said, Mr. Moore, that Lady Byron was unsuitable to her lord: the
+word is cunningly insidious, and may mean as much or as little as may
+suit your convenience. But, if she was unsuitable, I remark that it
+tells all the worse against Lord Byron. I have not read it in your
+book (for I hate to wade through it); but they tell me that you have
+not only warily depreciated Lady Byron, but that you have described a
+lady that would have suited him. If this be true, "it is the unkindest
+cut of all,"&mdash;to hold up a florid description of a woman suitable to
+Lord Byron, as if in mockery over the forlorn flower of virtue that
+was drooping in the solitude of sorrow.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'But I trust there is no such passage in your book. Surely you must be
+conscious of your woman, with her "<i>virtue loose about her, who would
+have suited Lord Byron</i>," to be as imaginary a being as the woman
+without a head. A woman to suit Lord Byron! Poo, poo! I could paint to
+you the woman that could have <i>matched</i> him, if I had not bargained to
+say as little as possible against him.</p>
+
+<p>'If Lady Byron was not suitable to Lord Byron, so much the worse
+for his lordship; for let me tell you, Mr. Moore, that neither your
+poetry, nor Lord Byron's, nor all our poetry put together, ever
+delineated a more interesting being than the woman whom you have so
+coldly treated. This was not kicking the dead lion, but wounding
+the living lamb, who was already bleeding and shorn, even unto the
+quick. I know, that, collectively speaking, the world is in Lady
+Byron's favour; but it is coldly favourable, and you have not warmed
+its breath. Time, however, cures everything; and even your book,
+Mr. Moore, may be the means of Lady Byron's character being better
+appreciated.</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">Thomas Campbell.</span>'
+</p></div>
+
+<p>Here is what seems to be a gentlemanly, high-spirited, chivalric man,
+throwing down his glove in the lists for a pure woman.</p>
+
+<p>What was the consequence? Campbell was crowded back, thrust down,
+overwhelmed, his eyes filled with dust, his mouth with ashes.</p>
+
+<p>There was a general confusion and outcry, which reacted both on him
+and on Lady Byron. Her friends were angry with him for having caused
+this re-action upon her; and he found himself at once attacked by
+Lady Byron's enemies, and deserted by her friends. All the literary
+authorities of his day took up against him with energy. Christopher
+North, professor of moral<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> philosophy in the Edinburgh University,
+in a fatherly talk in 'The Noctes,' condemns Campbell, and justifies
+Moore, and heartily recommends his 'Biography,' as containing nothing
+materially objectionable on the score either of manners or morals. Thus
+we have it in 'The Noctes' of May 1830:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'Mr. Moore's biographical book I admired; and I said so to my little
+world, in two somewhat lengthy articles, which many approved, and
+some, I am sorry to know, condemned.'</p></div>
+
+<p>On the point in question between Moore and Campbell, North goes on
+to justify Moore altogether, only admitting that 'it would have been
+better had he not printed any coarse expression of Byron's about the
+old people;' and, finally, he closes by saying,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I do not think that, under the circumstances, Mr. Campbell himself,
+had he written Byron's "Life," could have spoken, with the sentiments
+he then held, in a better, more manly, and more gentlemanly spirit, in
+so far as regards Lady Byron, than Mr. Moore did: and I am sorry he
+has been deterred from "swimming" through Mr. Moore's work by the fear
+of "wading;" for the waters are clear and deep; nor is there any mud,
+either at the bottom or round the margin.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Of the conduct of Lady Byron's so-called friends on this occasion it is
+more difficult to speak.</p>
+
+<p>There has always been in England, as John Stuart Mill says, a class
+of women who glory in the utter self-abnegation of the wife to the
+husband, as the special crown of womanhood. Their patron saint is
+the Griselda of Chaucer, who, when her husband humiliates her, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+treats her as a brute, still accepts all with meek, unquestioning,
+uncomplaining devotion. He tears her from her children; he treats her
+with personal abuse; he repudiates her,&mdash;sends her out to nakedness
+and poverty; he installs another mistress in his house, and sends for
+the first to be her handmaid and his own: and all this the meek saint
+accepts in the words of Milton,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">'My guide and head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What thou hast said is just and right.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Accordingly, Miss Martineau tells us that when Campbell's defence came
+out, coupled with a note from Lady Byron,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'The first obvious remark was, that there was no real disclosure; and
+the whole affair had the appearance of a desire, on the part of Lady
+Byron, to exculpate herself, while yet no adequate information was
+given. Many, who had regarded her with favour till then, gave her up
+so far as to believe that feminine weakness had prevailed at last.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The saint had fallen from her pedestal! She had shown a human frailty!
+Quite evidently she is not a Griselda, but possessed with a shocking
+desire to exculpate herself and her friends.</p>
+
+<p>Is it, then, only to slandered <i>men</i> that the privilege belongs of
+desiring to exculpate themselves and their families and their friends
+from unjust censure?</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron had made it a life-long object to vilify and defame his
+wife. He had used for that one particular purpose every talent that
+he possessed. He had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> left it as a last charge to Moore to pursue
+the warfare after death, which Moore had done to some purpose; and
+Christopher North had informed Lady Byron that her private affairs
+were discussed, not only with the whisky-toddy of the Noctes Club,
+but in every drawing-room in May Fair; and declared that the 'Dear
+Duck' letter, and various other matters, must be explained, and urged
+somebody to speak; and then, when Campbell does speak with all the
+energy of a real gentleman, a general outcry and an indiscriminate
+<i>mêlée</i> is the result.</p>
+
+<p>The world, with its usual injustice, insisted on attributing Campbell's
+defence to Lady Byron.</p>
+
+<p>The reasons for this seemed to be, first, that Campbell states that he
+did <i>not</i> ask Lady Byron's leave, and that she did <i>not</i> authorise him
+to defend her; and, second, that, having asked some explanations from
+her, he prints a note in which she declines to give any.</p>
+
+<p>We know not how a lady could more gently yet firmly decline to make
+a gentleman her confidant than in this published note of Lady Byron;
+and yet, to this day, Campbell is spoken of by the world as having
+been Lady Byron's confidant at this time. This simply shows how very
+trustworthy are the general assertions about Lady Byron's confidants.</p>
+
+<p>The final result of the matter, so far as Campbell was concerned, is
+given in Miss Martineau's sketch, in the following paragraph:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p><div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'The whole transaction was one of poor Campbell's freaks. He excused
+himself by saying it was a mistake of his; that he did not know what
+he was about when he published the paper.'</p></div>
+
+<p>It is the saddest of all sad things to see a man, who has spoken from
+moral convictions, in advance of his day, and who has taken a stand for
+which he ought to honour himself, thus forced down and humiliated, made
+to doubt his own better nature and his own honourable feelings, by the
+voice of a wicked world.</p>
+
+<p>Campbell had no steadiness to stand by the truth he saw. His whole
+story is told incidentally in a note to 'The Noctes,' in which it is
+stated, that in an article in 'Blackwood,' January 1825, on Scotch
+poets, the palm was given to Hogg over Campbell; 'one ground being,
+that <i>he</i> could drink "eight and twenty tumblers of punch, while
+Campbell is hazy upon seven."'</p>
+
+<p>There is evidence in 'The Noctes,' that in due time Campbell was
+reconciled to Moore, and was always suitably ashamed of having tried to
+be any more generous or just than the men of his generation.</p>
+
+<p>And so it was settled as a law to Jacob, and an ordinance in Israel,
+that the Byron worship should proceed, and that all the earth should
+keep silence before him. 'Don Juan,' that, years before, had been
+printed by stealth, without Murray's name on the title-page, that had
+been denounced as a book which no woman should read, and had been given
+up as a desperate enterprise, now came forth in triumph, with banners
+flying and drums beating. Every great periodical in England that had
+fired moral volleys of artillery against it in its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> early days, now
+humbly marched in the glorious procession of admirers to salute this
+edifying work of genius.</p>
+
+<p>'Blackwood,' which in the beginning had been the most indignantly
+virtuous of the whole, now grovelled and ate dust as the serpent in
+the very abjectness of submission. Odoherty (Maginn) declares that he
+would rather have written a page of 'Don Juan' than a ton of 'Childe
+Harold.'<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> Timothy Tickler informs Christopher North that he means
+to tender Murray, as Emperor of the North, an interleaved copy<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> of
+'Don Juan,' with illustrations, as the <i>only</i> work of Byron's he cares
+much about; and Christopher North, professor of <i>moral</i> philosophy in
+Edinburgh, smiles approval! We are not, after this, surprised to see
+the assertion, by a recent much-aggrieved writer in 'The London Era,'
+that 'Lord Byron has been, more than any other man of the age, the
+<i>teacher</i> of the <i>youth</i> of England;' and that he has 'seen his works
+on the bookshelves of <i>bishops'</i> palaces, no less than on the tables of
+university undergraduates.'</p>
+
+<p>A note to 'The Noctes' of July 1822 informs us of another instance of
+Lord Byron's triumph over English morals:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'The mention of this' (Byron's going to Greece) reminds me, by the by,
+of what the Guiccioli said in her visit to London, where she was so
+lionised as having been the lady-love of Byron. She was rather fond
+of speaking on the subject, designating herself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> by some Venetian pet
+phrase, which she interpreted as meaning "Love-Wife."'</p></div>
+
+<p>What was Lady Byron to do in such a world? She retired to the
+deepest privacy, and devoted herself to works of charity, and the
+education of her only child,&mdash;that brilliant daughter, to whose eager,
+opening mind the whole course of current literature must bring so
+many trying questions in regard to the position of her father and
+mother,&mdash;questions that the mother might not answer. That the cruel
+inconsiderateness of the literary world added thorns to the intricacies
+of the path trodden by every mother who seeks to guide, restrain, and
+educate a strong, acute, and precociously intelligent child, must
+easily be seen.</p>
+
+<p>What remains to be said of Lady Byron's life shall be said in the words
+of Miss Martineau, published in 'The Atlantic Monthly:'&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'Her life, thenceforth, was one of unremitting bounty to society
+administered with as much skill and prudence as benevolence. She lived
+in retirement, changing her abode frequently; partly for the benefit
+of her child's education and the promotion of her benevolent schemes,
+and partly from a restlessness which was one of the few signs of
+injury received from the spoiling of associations with <i>home</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'She felt a satisfaction which her friends rejoiced in when her
+daughter married Lord King, at present the Earl of Lovelace, in 1835
+and when grief upon grief followed, in the appearance of mortal
+disease in her only child, her quiet patience stood her in good stead
+as before. She even found strength to appropriate the blessings of the
+occasion, and took comfort, as did her dying daughter, in the intimate
+friendship, which grew closer as the time of parting drew nigh.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Lady Lovelace died in 1852; and, for her few remaining years, Lady
+Byron was devoted to her grandchildren. But nearer calls never
+lessened her interest in remoter objects. Her mind was of the large
+and clear quality which could comprehend remote interests in their
+true proportions, and achieve each aim as perfectly as if it were the
+only one. Her agents used to say that it was impossible to mistake her
+directions; and thus her business was usually well done. There was no
+room, in her case, for the ordinary doubts, censures, and sneers about
+the misapplication of bounty.</p>
+
+<p>'Her taste did not lie in the "Charity-Ball" direction; her funds
+were not lavished in encouraging hypocrisy and improvidence among
+the idle and worthless; and the quality of her charity was, in fact,
+as admirable as its quantity. Her chief aim was the extension and
+improvement of popular education; but there was no kind of misery that
+she heard of that she did not palliate to the utmost, and no kind of
+solace that her quick imagination and sympathy could devise that she
+did not administer.</p>
+
+<p>'In her methods, she united consideration and frankness with singular
+success. For one instance among a thousand: A lady with whom she had
+had friendly relations some time before, and who became impoverished
+in a quiet way by hopeless sickness, preferred poverty with an easy
+conscience to a competency attended by some uncertainty about the
+perfect rectitude of the resource. Lady Byron wrote to an intermediate
+person exactly what she thought of the case. Whether the judgment
+of the sufferer was right or mistaken was nobody's business but her
+own: this was the first point. Next, a voluntary poverty could never
+be pitied by anybody: that was the second. But it was painful to
+others to think of the mortification to benevolent feelings which
+attends poverty; and there could be no objection to arresting that
+pain. Therefore she, Lady Byron, had lodged in a neighbouring bank
+the sum of one hundred pounds, to be used for benevolent purposes;
+and, in order to preclude all outside speculation, she had made the
+money payable to the order of the intermediate person, so that the
+sufferer's name need not appear at all.</p>
+
+<p>'Five and thirty years of unremitting secret bounty like this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> must
+make up a great amount of human happiness; but this was only one of
+a wide variety of methods of doing good. It was the unconcealable
+magnitude of her beneficence, and its wise quality, which made her a
+second time the theme of English conversation in all honest households
+within the four seas. Years ago, it was said far and wide that Lady
+Byron was doing more good than anybody else in England; and it was
+difficult to imagine how anybody could do more.</p>
+
+<p>'Lord Byron spent every shilling that the law allowed him out of
+her property while he lived, and left away from her every shilling
+that he could deprive her of by his will; yet she had, eventually, a
+large income at her command. In the management of it, she showed the
+same wise consideration that marked all her practical decisions. She
+resolved to spend her whole income, seeing how much the world needed
+help at the moment. Her care was for the existing generation, rather
+than for a future one, which would have its own friends. She usually
+declined trammelling herself with annual subscriptions to charities;
+preferring to keep her freedom from year to year, and to achieve
+definite objects by liberal bounty, rather than to extend partial help
+over a large surface which she could not herself superintend.</p>
+
+<p>'It was her first industrial school that awakened the admiration of
+the public, which had never ceased to take an interest in her, while
+sorely misjudging her character. We hear much now&mdash;and everybody hears
+it with pleasure&mdash;of the spread of education in "common things;" but
+long before Miss Coutts inherited her wealth, long before a name was
+found for such a method of training, Lady Byron had instituted the
+thing, and put it in the way of making its own name.</p>
+
+<p>'She was living at Ealing, in Middlesex, in 1834; and there she
+opened one of the first industrial schools in England, if not the
+very first. She sent out a master to Switzerland, to be instructed
+in De Fellenburgh's method. She took, on lease, five acres of land,
+and spent several hundred pounds in rendering the buildings upon it
+fit for the purposes of the school. A liberal education was afforded
+to the children of artisans and labourers during the half of the day
+when they were not employed in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> field or garden. The allotments
+were rented by the boys, who raised and sold produce, which afforded
+them a considerable yearly profit if they were good workmen. Those who
+worked in the field earned wages; their labour being paid by the hour,
+according to the capability of the young labourer. They kept their
+accounts of expenditure and receipts, and acquired good habits of
+business while learning the occupation of their lives. Some mechanical
+trades were taught, as well as the arts of agriculture.</p>
+
+<p>'Part of the wisdom of the management lay in making the pupils pay.
+Of one hundred pupils, half were boarders. They paid little more than
+half the expenses of their maintenance, and the day-scholars paid
+threepence per week. Of course, a large part of the expense was borne
+by Lady Byron, besides the payments she made for children who could
+not otherwise have entered the school. The establishment flourished
+steadily till 1852, when the owner of the land required it back for
+building purposes. During the eighteen years that the Ealing schools
+were in action, they did a world of good in the way of incitement
+and example. The poor-law commissioners pointed out their merits.
+Land-owners and other wealthy persons visited them, and went home and
+set up similar establishments. During those years, too, Lady Byron had
+herself been at work in various directions to the same purpose.</p>
+
+<p>'A more extensive industrial scheme was instituted on her
+Leicestershire property, and not far off she opened a girls' school
+and an infant school; and when a season of distress came, as such
+seasons are apt to befall the poor Leicestershire stocking-weavers,
+Lady Byron fed the children for months together, till they could
+resume their payments. These schools were opened in 1840. The next
+year, she built a schoolhouse on her Warwickshire property; and, five
+years later, she set up an iron schoolhouse on another Leicestershire
+estate.</p>
+
+<p>'By this time, her educational efforts were costing her several
+hundred pounds a year in the mere maintenance of existing
+establishments; but this is the smallest consideration in the case.
+She has sent out tribes of boys and girls into life fit to do their
+part there with skill and credit and comfort. Perhaps it is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> still
+more important consideration, that scores of teachers and trainers
+have been led into their vocation, and duly prepared for it, by what
+they saw and learned in her schools. As for the best and the worst of
+the Ealing boys, the best have, in a few cases, been received into the
+Battersea Training School, whence they could enter on their career as
+teachers to the greatest advantage; and the worst found their school
+a true reformatory, before reformatory schools were heard of. At
+Bristol, she bought a house for a reformatory for girls; and there her
+friend, Miss Carpenter, faithfully and energetically carries out her
+own and Lady Byron's aims, which were one and the same.</p>
+
+<p>'There would be no end if I were to catalogue the schemes of which
+these are a specimen. It is of more consequence to observe that her
+mind was never narrowed by her own acts, as the minds of benevolent
+people are so apt to be. To the last, her interest in great political
+movements, at home and abroad, was as vivid as ever. She watched every
+step won in philosophy, every discovery in science, every token of
+social change and progress in every shape. Her mind was as liberal
+as her heart and hand. No diversity of opinion troubled her: she
+was respectful to every sort of individuality, and indulgent to all
+constitutional peculiarities. It must have puzzled those who kept up
+the notion of her being "strait-laced" to see how indulgent she was
+even to Epicurean tendencies,&mdash;the remotest of all from her own.</p>
+
+<p>'But I must stop; for I do not wish my honest memorial to degenerate
+into panegyric. Among her latest known acts were her gifts to the
+Sicilian cause, and her manifestations on behalf of the antislavery
+cause in the United States. Her kindness to William and Ellen Craft
+must be well known there; and it is also related in the newspapers,
+that she bequeathed a legacy to a young American to assist him under
+any disadvantages he might suffer as an abolitionist.</p>
+
+<p>'All these deeds were done under a heavy burden of ill health. Before
+she had passed middle life, her lungs were believed to be irreparably
+injured by partial ossification. She was subject to attacks so
+serious, that each one, for many years, was expected to be the last.
+She arranged her affairs in correspondence with her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> liabilities: so
+that the same order would have been found, whether she died suddenly
+or after long warning.</p>
+
+<p>'She was to receive one more accession of outward greatness before she
+departed. She became Baroness Wentworth in November, 1856. This is one
+of the facts of her history; but it is the least interesting to us, as
+probably to her. We care more to know that her last days were bright
+in honour, and cheered by the attachment of old friends worthy to pay
+the duty she deserved. Above all, it is consoling to know that she who
+so long outlived her only child was blessed with the unremitting and
+tender care of her grand-daughter. She died on the 16th of May, 1860.</p>
+
+<p>'The portrait of Lady Byron as she was at the time of her marriage
+is probably remembered by some of my readers. It is very engaging.
+Her countenance afterwards became much worn; but its expression of
+thoughtfulness and composure was very interesting. Her handwriting
+accorded well with the character of her mind. It was clear, elegant,
+and womanly. Her manners differed with circumstances. Her shrinking
+sensitiveness might embarrass one visitor; while another would be
+charmed with her easy, significant, and vivacious conversation. It
+depended much on whom she talked with. The abiding certainty was, that
+she had strength for the hardest of human trials, and the composure
+which belongs to strength. For the rest, it is enough to point to her
+deeds, and to the mourning of her friends round the chasm which her
+departure has made in their life, and in the society in which it is
+spent. All that could be done in the way of personal love and honour
+was done while she lived: it only remains now to see that her name and
+fame are permitted to shine forth at last in their proper light.'</p></div>
+
+<p>We have simply to ask the reader whether a life like this was not the
+best, the noblest answer that a woman could make to a doubting world.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a></h2>
+
+<p class="ph4">THE ATTACK ON LADY BYRON'S GRAVE.</p>
+
+
+<p>We have now brought the review of the antagonism against Lady Byron
+down to the period of her death. During all this time, let the candid
+reader ask himself which of these two parties seems to be plotting
+against the other.</p>
+
+<p><i>Which</i> has been active, aggressive, unscrupulous? which has been
+silent, quiet, unoffending? Which of the two has laboured to make a
+party, and to make that party active, watchful, enthusiastic?</p>
+
+<p>Have we not proved that Lady Byron remained perfectly silent during
+Lord Byron's life, patiently looking out from her retirement to see
+the waves of popular sympathy, that once bore her up, day by day
+retreating, while his accusations against her were resounding in his
+poems over the whole earth? And after Lord Byron's death, when all
+the world with one consent began to give their memorials of him, and
+made it appear, by their various 'recollections of conversations,' how
+incessantly he had obtruded his own version of the separation upon
+every listener, did she manifest any similar eagerness?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron had seen the 'Blackwood' coming forward, on the first
+appearance of 'Don Juan,' to rebuke the cowardly lampoon in words
+eloquent with all the unperverted vigour of an honest Englishman. Under
+the power of the great conspirator, she had seen <i>that</i> 'Blackwood'
+become the very eager recipient and chief reporter of the stories
+against her, and the blind admirer of her adversary.</p>
+
+<p>All this time, she lost sympathy daily by being silent. The world
+will embrace those who court it; it will patronise those who seek its
+favour; it will make parties for those who seek to make parties: but
+for the often accused who do not speak, who make no confidants and no
+parties, the world soon loses sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>When at last she spoke, Christopher North says '<i>she astonished
+the world</i>.' Calm, clear, courageous, exact as to time, date, and
+circumstance, was that first testimony, backed by the equally clear
+testimony of Dr. Lushington.</p>
+
+<p>It showed that her secret had been kept even from her parents. In words
+precise, firm, and fearless, she says, 'If these statements on which
+Dr. Lushington and Sir Samuel Romilly formed their opinion were false,
+the responsibility and the odium should rest with me only.' Christopher
+North did not pretend to disbelieve this statement. He breathed not a
+doubt of Lady Byron's word. He spoke of the crime indicated, as one
+which might have been foul as the grave's corruption, unforgivable as
+the sin against the Holy Ghost. He rebuked the wife for bearing this
+testimony, even to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> save the memory of her dead father and mother, and,
+in the same breath, declared that she ought now to go farther, and
+speak fully the one awful word, and then&mdash;'a mitigated sentence, or
+eternal silence!'</p>
+
+<p>But Lady Byron took no counsel with the world, nor with the literary
+men of her age. One knight, with some small remnant of England's old
+chivalry, set lance in rest for her: she saw him beaten back unhorsed,
+rolled in the dust, and ingloriously vanquished, and perceived that
+henceforth nothing but injury could come to any one who attempted to
+speak for her.</p>
+
+<p>She turned from the judgments of man and the fond and natural hopes of
+human nature, to lose herself in sacred ministries to the downcast and
+suffering. What nobler record for woman could there be than that which
+Miss Martineau has given?</p>
+
+<p>Particularly to be noted in Lady Byron was her peculiar interest in
+reclaiming fallen women. Among her letters to Mrs. Prof. Follen, of
+Cambridge, was one addressed to a society of ladies who had undertaken
+this difficult work. It was full of heavenly wisdom and of a large and
+tolerant charity. Fénelon truly says, it is only perfection that can
+tolerate imperfection; and the very purity of Lady Byron's nature made
+her most forbearing and most tender towards the weak and the guilty.
+This letter, with all the rest of Lady Byron's, was returned to the
+hands of her executors after her death. Its publication would greatly
+assist the world in understanding the peculiarities of its writer's
+character.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron passed to a higher life in 1860.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> After her death, I
+looked for the publication of her Memoir and Letters as the event that
+should give her the same opportunity of being known and judged by her
+life and writings that had been so freely accorded to Lord Byron.</p>
+
+<p>She was, in her husband's estimation, a woman of genius. She was
+the friend of many of the first men and women of her times, and
+corresponded with them on topics of literature, morals, religion,
+and, above all, on the benevolent and philanthropic movements of the
+day, whose principles she had studied with acute observation, and in
+connection with which she had acquired a large experience.</p>
+
+<p>The knowledge of her, necessarily diffused by such a series of letters,
+would have created in America a comprehension of her character, of
+itself sufficient to wither a thousand slanders.</p>
+
+<p>Such a Memoir was contemplated. Lady Byron's letters to Mrs. Follen
+were asked for from Boston; and I was applied to by a person in
+England, who I have recently learned is one of the existing trustees
+of Lady Byron's papers, to furnish copies of her letters to me for the
+purpose of a Memoir. Before I had time to have copies made, another
+letter came, stating that the trustees had concluded that it was best
+not to publish any Memoir of Lady Byron at all.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This left the character of Lady Byron in our American world precisely
+where the slanders of her husband, the literature of the Noctes Club,
+and the unanimous verdict of May Fair as recorded by 'Blackwood,' had
+placed it.</p>
+
+<p>True, Lady Byron had nobly and quietly lived down these slanders in
+England by deeds that made her name revered as a saint among all those
+who valued saintliness.</p>
+
+<p>But in France and Italy, and in these United States, I have had
+abundant opportunity to know that Lady Byron stood judged and condemned
+on the testimony of her brilliant husband, and that the feeling against
+her had a vivacity and intensity not to be overcome by mere allusions
+to a virtuous life in distant England.</p>
+
+<p>This is strikingly shown by one fact. In the American edition of
+Moore's 'Life of Byron,' by Claxton, Remsen, and Haffelfinger,
+Philadelphia, 1869, which I have been consulting, Lady Byron's
+statement, which is found in the Appendix of Murray's standard edition,
+<i>is entirely omitted</i>. Every other paper is carefully preserved. This
+one incident showed how the tide of sympathy was setting in this New
+World. Of course, there is no stronger power than a virtuous life; but,
+for a virtuous life to bear testimony to the world, its details must be
+<i>told</i>, so that the world may know them.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose the memoirs of Clarkson and Wilberforce had been suppressed
+after their death, how soon might<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> the coming tide have wiped out the
+record of their bravery and philanthropy! Suppose the lives of Francis
+Xavier and Henry Martyn had never been written, and we had lost the
+remembrance of what holy men could do and dare in the divine enthusiasm
+of Christian faith! Suppose we had no Fénelon, no Book of Martyrs!</p>
+
+<p>Would there not be an outcry through all the literary and artistic
+world if a perfect statue were allowed to remain buried for ever
+because some painful individual history was connected with its burial
+and its recovery? But is not a noble life a greater treasure to mankind
+than any work of art?</p>
+
+<p>We have heard much mourning over the burned Autobiography of Lord
+Byron, and seen it treated of in a magazine as 'the lost chapter in
+history.' The lost chapter in history is <i>Lady</i> Byron's Autobiography
+in her life and letters; and the suppression of them is the root of
+this whole mischief.</p>
+
+<p>We do not in this intend to censure the parties who came to this
+decision.</p>
+
+<p>The descendants of Lady Byron revere her memory, as they have every
+reason to do. That it was <i>their</i> desire to have a Memoir of her
+published, I have been informed by an individual of the highest
+character in England, who obtained the information directly from Lady
+Byron's grandchildren.</p>
+
+<p>But the trustees in whose care the papers were placed drew back on
+examination of them, and declared, that, as Lady Byron's papers could
+not be fully published,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> they should regret anything that should call
+public attention once more to the discussion of her history.</p>
+
+<p>Reviewing this long history of the way in which the literary world
+had treated Lady Byron, we cannot wonder that her friends should have
+doubted whether there was left on earth any justice, or sense that
+anything is due to woman as a human being with human rights. Evidently
+this lesson had taken from them all faith in the moral sense of the
+world. Rather than re-awaken the discussion, so unsparing, so painful,
+and so indelicate, which had been carried on so many years around
+that loved form, now sanctified by death, they sacrificed the dear
+pleasure of the memorials, and the interests of mankind, who have an
+indefeasible right to all the help that can be got from the truth of
+history as to the living power of virtue, and the reality of that great
+victory that overcometh the world.</p>
+
+<p>There are thousands of poor victims suffering in sadness,
+discouragement, and poverty; heart-broken wives of brutal, drunken
+husbands; women enduring nameless wrongs and horrors which the delicacy
+of their sex forbids them to utter,&mdash;to whom the lovely letters lying
+hidden away under those seals might bring courage and hope from springs
+not of this world.</p>
+
+<p>But though the friends of Lady Byron, perhaps from despair of their
+kind, from weariness of the utter injustice done her, wished to cherish
+her name in silence, and to confine the story of her virtues to that
+circle who knew her too well to ask a proof, or utter a doubt, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+partisans of Lord Byron were embarrassed with no such scruple.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron had artfully contrived during his life to place his wife in
+such an antagonistic position with regard to himself, that his intimate
+friends were forced to believe that one of the two had deliberately
+and wantonly injured the other. The published statement of Lady Byron
+contradicted boldly and point-blank all the statement of her husband
+concerning the separation; so that, unless <i>she</i> was convicted as a
+false witness, <i>he</i> certainly was.</p>
+
+<p>The best evidence of this is Christopher North's own shocked,
+astonished statement, and the words of the Noctes Club.</p>
+
+<p>The noble life that Lady Byron lived after this hushed every voice,
+and silenced even the most desperate calumny, <i>while she was in the
+world</i>. In the face of Lady Byron as the world saw her, of what use was
+the talk of Clytemnestra, and the assertion that she had been a mean,
+deceitful conspirator against her husband's honour in life, and stabbed
+his memory after death?</p>
+
+<p>But when she was in her grave, when her voice and presence and good
+deeds no more spoke for her, and a new generation was growing up that
+knew her not, <i>then</i> was the time selected to revive the assault on her
+memory, and to say over her grave what none would ever have dared to
+say of her while living.</p>
+
+<p>During these last two years, I have been gradually<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> awakening to the
+evidence of a new crusade against the memory of Lady Byron, which
+respected no sanctity,&mdash;not even that last and most awful one of death.</p>
+
+<p>Nine years after her death, when it was fully understood that no
+story on her side or that of her friends was to be forthcoming, then
+her calumniators raked out from the ashes of her husband's sepulchre
+all his bitter charges, to state them over in even stronger and more
+indecent forms.</p>
+
+<p>There seems to be reason to think that the materials supplied by Lord
+Byron for such a campaign yet exist in society.</p>
+
+<p>To 'The Noctes' of November 1824, there is the following note <i>apropos</i>
+to a discussion of the Byron question:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'Byron's Memoirs, given by him to Moore, were burned, as everybody
+knows. But, before this, Moore had lent them to several persons. Mrs.
+Home Purvis, afterwards Viscountess of Canterbury, is <i>known</i> to have
+sat up all one night, in which, aided by her daughter, she had a
+copy made. I have the strongest reason for believing that one other
+person made a copy; for the description of the first twenty-four hours
+after the marriage ceremonial has been in my hands. <i>Not until after
+the death of Lady Byron, and Hobhouse</i>, who was the poet's literary
+executor, can the poet's Autobiography see the light; <i>but I am
+certain it will be published</i>.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Thus speaks Mackenzie in a note to a volume of 'The Noctes,' published
+in America in 1854. Lady Byron died in 1860.</p>
+
+<p>Nine years after Lady Byron's death, when it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> ascertained that her
+story was not to see the light, when there were no means of judging
+her character by her own writings, commenced a well-planned set of
+operations to turn the public attention once more to Lord Byron, and
+to represent him as an injured man, whose testimony had been unjustly
+suppressed.</p>
+
+<p>It was quite possible, supposing copies of the Autobiography to exist,
+that this might occasion a call from the generation of to-day, in
+answer to which the suppressed work might appear. This was a rather
+delicate operation to commence; but the instrument was not wanting.
+It was necessary that the subject should be first opened by some
+irresponsible party, whom more powerful parties might, as by accident,
+recognise and patronise, and on whose weakness they might build
+something stronger.</p>
+
+<p>Just such an instrument was to be found in Paris. The mistress of Lord
+Byron could easily be stirred up and flattered to come before the world
+with a book which should re-open the whole controversy; and she proved
+a facile tool. At first, the work appeared prudently in French, and was
+called 'Lord Byron jugé par les Témoins de sa Vie,' and was rather a
+failure. Then it was translated into English, and published by Bentley.</p>
+
+<p>The book was inartistic, and helplessly, childishly stupid as to any
+literary merits,&mdash;a mere mass of gossip and twaddle; but after all,
+when one remembers the taste of the thousands of circulating-library
+readers, it must not be considered the less likely to be widely read<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+on that account. It is only once in a century that a writer of real
+genius has the art to tell his story so as to take both the cultivated
+few and the average many. De Foe and John Bunyan are almost the only
+examples. But there is a certain class of reading that sells and
+spreads, and exerts a vast influence, which the upper circles of
+literature despise too much ever to fairly estimate its power.</p>
+
+<p>However, the Guiccioli book did not want for patrons in the high places
+of literature. The 'Blackwood'&mdash;the old classic magazine of England;
+the defender of conservatism and aristocracy; the paper of Lockhart,
+Wilson, Hogg, Walter Scott, and a host of departed grandeurs&mdash;was
+deputed to usher into the world this book, and to recommend it and its
+author to the Christian public of the nineteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>The following is the manner in which 'Blackwood' calls attention to
+it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'One of the most beautiful of the songs of Béranger is that addressed
+to his Lisette, in which he pictures her, in old age, narrating to a
+younger generation the loves of their youth; decking his portrait with
+flowers at each returning spring, and reciting the verses that had
+been inspired by her vanished charms:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Lorsque les yeux chercheront sous vos rides<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Les traits charmants qui m'auront inspiré,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Des doux récits les jeunes gens avides,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Diront: Quel fut cet ami tant pleuré?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">De mon amour peignez, s'il est possible,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">L'ardeur, l'ivresse, et même les soupçons,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et benne vieille, au coin d'un feu paisible<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">De votre ami répétez les chansons.<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"On vous dira: Savait-il être aimable?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et sans rougir vous direz: Je l'aimais.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">D'un trait méchant se montra-t-il capable?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Avec orgueil vous répondrez: Jamais!"'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>'This charming picture,' 'Blackwood' goes on to say, 'has been
+realised in the case of a poet greater than Béranger, and by a
+mistress more famous than Lisette. The Countess Guiccioli has at
+length given to the world her "Recollections of Lord Byron." The
+book first appeared in France under the title of "Lord Byron jugé
+par les Témoins de sa Vie," without the name of the countess. A
+more unfortunate designation could hardly have been selected. The
+"witnesses of his life" told us nothing but what had been told before
+over and over again; and the uniform and exaggerated tone of eulogy
+which pervaded the whole book was fatal to any claim on the part of
+the writer to be considered an impartial judge of the wonderfully
+mixed character of Byron.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>When, however, the book is regarded as the avowed production of
+the Countess Guiccioli, it derives value and interest from its very
+faults.</i><a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> There is something inexpressibly touching in the picture
+of the old lady calling up the phantoms of half a century ago; not
+faded and stricken by the hand of time, but brilliant and gorgeous as
+they were when Byron, in his manly prime of genius and beauty, first
+flashed upon her enraptured sight, and she gave her whole soul up to
+an absorbing passion, the embers of which still glow in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>'To her there has been no change, no decay. The god whom she
+worshipped with all the ardour of her Italian nature at seventeen is
+still the "Pythian of the age" to her at seventy. To try such a book
+by the ordinary canons of criticism would be as absurd as to arraign
+the authoress before a jury of British matrons, or to prefer a bill of
+indictment against the Sultan for bigamy to a Middlesex grand jury.'</p></div>
+
+<p>This, then, is the introduction which one of the oldest and most
+classical periodicals of Great Britain gives to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> a very stupid book,
+simply because it was written by Lord Byron's mistress. <i>That fact</i>, we
+are assured, lends grace even to its faults.</p>
+
+<p>Having brought the authoress upon the stage, the review now goes on to
+define her position, and assure the Christian world that</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'The Countess Guiccioli was the daughter of an impoverished noble. At
+the age of sixteen, she was taken from a convent, and sold as third
+wife to the Count Guiccioli, who was old, rich, and profligate. A
+fouler prostitution never profaned the name of marriage. A short time
+afterwards, she accidentally met Lord Byron. Outraged and rebellious
+nature vindicated itself in the deep and devoted passion with which
+he inspired her. With the full assent of husband, father, and
+brother, and in compliance with the usages of Italian society, he was
+shortly afterwards installed in the office, and invested with all the
+privileges, of her "Cavalier Servente."'</p></div>
+
+<p>It has been asserted that the Marquis de Boissy, the late husband of
+this Guiccioli lady, was in the habit of introducing her in fashionable
+circles as 'the Marquise de Boissy, my wife, formerly mistress to Lord
+Byron'! We do not give the story as a verity; yet, in the review of
+this whole history, we may be pardoned for thinking it quite possible.</p>
+
+<p>The mistress, being thus vouched for and presented as worthy of
+sympathy and attention by one of the oldest and most classic organs
+of English literature, may now proceed in her work of glorifying the
+popular idol, and casting abuse on the grave of the dead wife.</p>
+
+<p>Her attacks on Lady Byron are, to be sure, less skilful and adroit
+than those of Lord Byron. They want<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> his literary polish and tact; but
+what of that? 'Blackwood' assures us that even the faults of manner
+derive a peculiar grace from the fact that the narrator is Lord Byron's
+mistress; and so we suppose the literary world must find grace in
+things like this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'She has been called, after his words, the moral Clytemnestra of
+her husband. Such a surname is severe: but the repugnance we feel
+to condemning a woman cannot prevent our listening to the voice of
+justice, which tells us that the comparison is still in favour of
+the guilty one of antiquity; for <i>she</i>, driven to crime by fierce
+passion overpowering reason, at least only deprived her husband of
+physical life, and, in committing the deed, exposed herself to all its
+consequences; while Lady Byron left her husband at the very moment
+that she saw him struggling amid a thousand shoals in the stormy sea
+of embarrassments created by his marriage, and precisely when he more
+than ever required a friendly, tender, and indulgent hand to save him.</p>
+
+<p>'Besides, she shut herself up in silence a thousand times more cruel
+than Clytemnestra's poniard: <i>that</i> only killed the body; whereas
+Lady Byron's silence was destined to kill the soul,&mdash;and such a
+soul!&mdash;leaving the door open to calumny, and making it to be supposed
+that her silence was magnanimity destined to cover over frightful
+wrongs, perhaps even depravity. In vain did he, feeling his conscience
+at ease, implore some inquiry and examination. She refused; and the
+only favour she granted was to send him, one fine day, two persons to
+see whether he were not mad.</p>
+
+<p>'And, why, then, had she believed him mad? Because she, a methodical,
+inflexible woman, with that unbendingness which a profound moralist
+calls the worship rendered to pride by a feelingless soul,&mdash;because
+she could not understand the possibility of tastes and habits
+different to those of ordinary routine, or of her own starched life.
+Not to be hungry when she was; not to sleep at night, but to write
+while she was sleeping, and to sleep when she was up; in short, to
+gratify the requirements of material and intellectual life at hours
+different to hers,&mdash;all that was not merely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> annoying for her, but it
+must be <i>madness</i>; or, if not, it betokened depravity that she could
+neither submit to nor tolerate without perilling her own morality.</p>
+
+<p>'Such was the grand secret of the cruel silence which exposed Lord
+Byron to the most malignant interpretations, to all the calumny and
+revenge of his enemies.</p>
+
+<p>'She was, perhaps, the only woman in the world so strangely
+organised,&mdash;the only one, perhaps, capable of not feeling happy and
+proud at belonging to a man superior to the rest of humanity; and
+fatally was it decreed that this woman <i>alone</i> of her species should
+be Lord Byron's wife!'</p></div>
+
+<p>In a note is added,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'If an imaginary fear, and even an unreasonable jealousy, may be her
+excuse (just as one excuses a monomania), can one equally forgive her
+silence? Such a silence is morally what are physically the poisons
+which kill at once, and defy all remedies; thus insuring the culprit's
+safety. This silence it is which will ever be her crime; for by it she
+poisoned the life of her husband.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The book has several chapters devoted to Lord Byron's peculiar virtues;
+and under the one devoted to magnanimity and heroism, his <i>forgiving</i>
+disposition receives special attention. The climax of all is stated to
+be that he forgave Lady Byron. All the world knew that, since he had
+declared this fact in a very noisy and impassioned manner in the fourth
+canto of 'Childe Harold,' together with a statement of the wrongs which
+he forgave; but the Guiccioli thinks his virtue, at this period, has
+not been enough appreciated. In her view, it rose to the sublime. She
+says of Lady Byron,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'An absolute moral monstrosity, an anomaly in the history of types
+of female hideousness, had succeeded in showing itself in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> light
+of magnanimity. But false as was this high quality in Lady Byron, so
+did it shine out in him true and admirable. The position in which
+Lady Byron had placed him, and where she continued to keep him by
+her harshness, silence, and strange refusals, was one of those which
+cause such suffering, that the highest degree of self-control seldom
+suffices to quiet the promptings of human weakness, and to cause
+persons of even slight sensibility to preserve moderation. Yet, with
+his sensibility and the knowledge of his worth, how did he act? what
+did he say? I will not speak of his "farewell;" of the care he took
+to shield her from blame by throwing it on others, by taking much too
+large a share to himself.'</p></div>
+
+<p>With like vivacity and earnestness does the narrator now proceed to
+make an incarnate angel of her subject by the simple process of denying
+everything that he himself ever confessed,&mdash;everything that has ever
+been confessed in regard to him by his best friends. He has been in
+the world as an angel unawares from his cradle. His guardian did not
+properly appreciate him, and is consequently mentioned as that <i>wicked</i>
+Lord Carlisle. Thomas Moore is never to be sufficiently condemned
+for the facts told in his biography. Byron's own frank and lawless
+admissions of evil are set down to a peculiar inability he had for
+speaking the truth about himself,&mdash;sometimes about his near relations;
+all which does not in the least discourage the authoress from giving a
+separate chapter on 'Lord Byron's Love of Truth.'</p>
+
+<p>In the matter of his relations with women, she complacently repeats
+(what sounds rather oddly as coming from her) Lord Byron's own
+assurance, that he <i>never</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> seduced a woman; and also the equally
+convincing statement, that he had told <i>her</i> (the Guiccioli) that his
+married fidelity to his wife was perfect. She discusses Moore's account
+of the mistress in boy's clothes who used to share Byron's apartments
+in college, and ride with him to races, and whom he presented to
+<i>ladies</i> as his brother.</p>
+
+<p>She has her own view of this matter. The disguised boy was a lady
+of rank and fashion, who sought Lord Byron's chambers, as, we are
+informed, noble ladies everywhere, both in Italy and England, were
+constantly in the habit of doing; throwing themselves at his feet, and
+imploring permission to become his handmaids.</p>
+
+<p>In the authoress's own words, 'Feminine overtures still continued
+to be made to Lord Byron; but the fumes of incense never hid from
+his sight his <span class="smcap">IDEAL</span>.' We are told that in the case of
+these poor ladies, generally 'disenchantment took place on his side
+without a corresponding result on the other: <span class="smcap">THENCE</span> many
+heart-breakings.' Nevertheless, we are informed that there followed the
+indiscretions of these ladies 'none of those proceedings that the world
+readily forgives, but which his feelings as a man of honour would have
+condemned.'</p>
+
+<p>As to drunkenness, and all that, we are informed he was an anchorite.
+Pages are given to an account of the biscuits and soda-water that on
+this and that occasion were found to be the sole means of sustenance to
+this ethereal creature.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As to the story of using his wife's money, the lady gives, directly in
+the face of his own Letters and Journal, the same account given before
+by Medwin, and which caused such merriment when talked over in the
+Noctes Club,&mdash;that he had with her only a marriage portion of £10,000;
+and that, on the separation, he not only paid it back, but doubled
+it.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p>
+
+<p>So on the authoress goes, sowing right and left the most transparent
+absurdities and misstatements with what Carlyle well calls 'a composed
+stupidity, and a cheerful infinitude of ignorance.' Who <i>should</i> know,
+if not she, to be sure? Had not Byron told her all about it? and was
+not his family motto <i>Crede Byron</i>?</p>
+
+<p>The 'Blackwood,' having a dim suspicion that this confused style of
+attack and defence in reference to the two parties under consideration
+may not have great weight, itself proceeds to make the book an occasion
+for re-opening the controversy of Lord Byron with his wife.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the review is devoted to a powerful attack on Lady Byron's
+character,&mdash;the most fearful attack on the memory of a dead woman we
+have ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> seen made by living man. The author proceeds, like a lawyer,
+to gather up, arrange, and restate, in a most workmanlike manner, the
+confused accusations of the book.</p>
+
+<p>Anticipating the objection, that such a re-opening of the inquiry was
+a violation of the privacy due to womanhood and to the feelings of a
+surviving family, he says, that though marriage usually is a private
+matter which the world has no right to intermeddle with or discuss,
+yet&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'Lord Byron's was an exceptional case. It is not too much to say,
+that, had his marriage been a happy one, the course of events of the
+present century might have been materially changed; that the genius
+which poured itself forth in "Don Juan" and "Cain" might have flowed
+in far different channels; that the ardent love of freedom which sent
+him to perish at six and thirty at Missolonghi might have inspired
+a long career at home; and that we might at this moment have been
+appealing to the counsels of his experience and wisdom at an age
+not exceeding that which was attained by Wellington, Lyndhurst, and
+Brougham.</p>
+
+<p>'Whether the world would have been a gainer or a loser by the exchange
+is a question which every man must answer for himself, according to
+his own tastes and opinions; but the possibility of such a change in
+the course of events warrants us in treating what would otherwise be a
+strictly private matter as one of public interest.</p>
+
+<p>'More than half a century has elapsed, the actors have departed from
+the stage, the curtain has fallen; and whether it will ever again be
+raised so as to reveal the real facts of the drama, may, as we have
+already observed, be well doubted. But the time has arrived when we
+may fairly gather up the fragments of evidence, clear them as far as
+possible from the incrustations of passion, prejudice, and malice, and
+place them in such order, as, if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> possible, to enable us to arrive
+at some probable conjecture as to what the skeleton of the drama
+originally was.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Here the writer proceeds to put together all the facts of Lady Byron's
+case, just as an adverse lawyer would put them as against her, and
+for her husband. The plea is made vigorously and ably, and with an
+air of indignant severity, as of an honest advocate who is thoroughly
+convinced that he is pleading the cause of a wronged man who has been
+ruined in name, ship-wrecked in life, and driven to an early grave, by
+the arts of a bad woman,&mdash;a woman all the more horrible that her malice
+was disguised under the cloak of religion.</p>
+
+<p>Having made an able statement of facts, adroitly leaving out
+<span class="smcap">ONE</span>,<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> of which he could not have been ignorant had he
+studied the case carefully enough to know all the others, he proceeds
+to sum up against the criminal thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'We would deal tenderly with the memory of Lady Byron. Few women have
+been juster objects of compassion. It would seem as if Nature and
+Fortune had vied with each other which should be most lavish of her
+gifts, and yet that some malignant power had rendered all their bounty
+of no effect. Rank, beauty, wealth, and mental powers of no common
+order, were hers; yet they were of no avail to secure her happiness.
+The spoilt child of seclusion, restraint, and parental idolatry,
+a fate (alike evil for both) cast her into the arms of the spoilt
+child of genius, passion, and the world. What real or fancied wrongs
+she suffered,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> we may never know; but those which she inflicted are
+sufficiently apparent.</p>
+
+<p>'It is said that there are some poisons so subtle that they will
+destroy life, and yet leave no trace of their action. The murderer
+who uses them may escape the vengeance of the law; but he is not the
+less guilty. So the slanderer who makes no charge; who deals in hints
+and insinuations: who knows melancholy facts he would not willingly
+divulge,&mdash;things too painful to state; who forbears, expresses pity,
+sometimes even affection, for his victim, shrugs his shoulders, looks
+with</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"The significant eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which learns to lie with silence,&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is far more guilty than he who tells the bold falsehood which may be
+met and answered, and who braves the punishment which must follow upon
+detection.</p>
+
+<p>'Lady Byron has been called</p>
+
+<p>
+"The moral Clytemnestra of her lord."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The "moral Brinvilliers" would have been a truer designation.</p>
+
+<p>'The conclusion at which we arrive is, that there is no proof whatever
+that Lord Byron was guilty of any act that need have caused a
+separation, or prevented a re-union, and that the imputations upon him
+rest on the vaguest conjecture; that whatever real or fancied wrongs
+Lady Byron may have endured are shrouded in an impenetrable mist of
+her own creation,&mdash;a poisonous miasma in which she enveloped the
+character of her husband, raised by her breath, and which her breath
+only could have dispersed.</p>
+
+<p>
+"She dies and makes no sign. O God! forgive her."'<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>As we have been obliged to review accusations on Lady Byron founded
+on old Greek tragedy, so now we are forced to abridge a passage from
+a modern conversations-lexicon, that we may understand what sort of
+comparisons are deemed in good taste in a conservative<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> English review,
+when speaking of ladies of rank in their graves.</p>
+
+<p>Under the article 'Brinvilliers,' we find as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">Marguerite D'Aubrai, Marchioness of Brinvilliers.</span>&mdash;The
+singular atrocity of this woman gives her a sort of infamous claim to
+notice. She was horn in Paris in 1651; being daughter of D'Aubrai,
+lieutenant-civil of Paris, who married her to the Marquis of
+Brinvilliers. Although possessed of attractions to captivate lovers,
+she was for some time much attached to her husband, but at length
+became madly in love with a Gascon officer. Her father imprisoned
+the officer in the Bastille; and, while there, he learned the art of
+compounding subtle and most mortal poisons; and, when he was released,
+he taught it to the lady, who exercised it with such success, that,
+in one year, her father, sister, and two brothers became her victims.
+She professed the utmost tenderness for her victims, and nursed them
+assiduously. On her father she is said to have made eight attempts
+before she succeeded. She was <i>very religious</i>, and devoted to works
+of charity; and visited the hospitals a great deal, where it is said
+she tried her poisons on the sick.'</p></div>
+
+<p>People have made loud outcries lately, both in America and England,
+about violating the repose of the dead. We should like to know what
+they call this. Is this, then, what they mean by <i>respecting</i> the dead?</p>
+
+<p>Let any man imagine a leading review coming out with language equally
+brutal about his own mother, or any dear and revered friend.</p>
+
+<p>Men of America, men of England, what do you think of this?</p>
+
+<p>When Lady Byron was publicly branded with the names of the foulest
+ancient and foulest modern assassins, and Lord Byron's mistress was
+publicly taken by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> the hand, and encouraged to go on and prosper in her
+slanders, by one of the oldest and most influential British reviews,
+what was said and what was done in England?</p>
+
+<p>That is a question we should be glad to have answered. Nothing was done
+that ever reached us across the water.</p>
+
+<p>And why was nothing done? Is this language of a kind to be passed over
+in silence?</p>
+
+<p>Was it no offence to the house of Wentworth to attack the pure
+character of its late venerable head, and to brand her in her sacred
+grave with the name of one of the vilest of criminals?</p>
+
+<p>Might there not properly have been an indignant protest of family
+solicitors against this insult to the person and character of the
+Baroness Wentworth?</p>
+
+<p>If virtue went for nothing, benevolence for nothing, a long life of
+service to humanity for nothing, one would at least have thought, that,
+in aristocratic countries, rank might have had its rights to decent
+consideration, and its guardians to rebuke the violation of those
+rights.</p>
+
+<p>We Americans understand little of the advantages of rank; but we did
+understand that it secured certain decorums to people, both while
+living and when in their graves. From Lady Byron's whole history, in
+life and in death, it would appear that we were mistaken.</p>
+
+<p>What a life was hers! Was ever a woman more evidently desirous of
+the delicate and secluded privileges of womanhood, of the sacredness
+of individual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> privacy? Was ever a woman so rudely dragged forth,
+and exposed to the hardened, vulgar, and unfeeling gaze of mere
+curiosity?&mdash;her maiden secrets of love thrown open to be handled by
+<i>roués</i>; the sanctities of her marriage-chamber desecrated by leering
+satyrs; her parents and best friends traduced and slandered, till one
+indignant public protest was extorted from her, as by the rack,&mdash;a
+protest which seems yet to quiver in every word with the indignation of
+outraged womanly delicacy!</p>
+
+<p>Then followed coarse blame and coarser comment,&mdash;blame for speaking
+at all, and blame for not speaking more. One manly voice, raised for
+her in honourable protest, was silenced and overborne by the universal
+roar of ridicule and reprobation; and henceforth what refuge? Only this
+remained: 'Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the
+keeping of their souls to him as to a faithful Creator.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron turned to this refuge in silence, and filled up her life
+with a noble record of charities and humanities. So pure was she, so
+childlike, so artless, so loving, that those who knew her best, feel,
+to this day, that a memorial of her is like the relic of a saint. And
+could not all this preserve her grave from insult? O England, England!</p>
+
+<p>I speak in sorrow of heart to those who must have known, loved, and
+revered Lady Byron, and ask them, Of what were you thinking when you
+allowed a paper of so established literary rank as the 'Blackwood,' to
+pre<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>sent and earnestly recommend to our New World such a compendium of
+lies as the Guiccioli book?</p>
+
+<p>Is the great English-speaking community, whose waves toss from Maine
+to California, and whose literature is yet to come back in a thousand
+voices to you, a thing to be so despised?</p>
+
+<p>If, as the solicitors of the Wentworth family observe, you might be
+entitled to treat with silent contempt the slanders of a mistress
+against a wife, was it safe to treat with equal contempt the
+indorsement and recommendation of those slanders by one of your oldest
+and most powerful literary authorities?</p>
+
+<p>No European magazine has ever had the weight and circulation in America
+that the 'Blackwood' has held. In the days of my youth, when New
+England was a comparatively secluded section of the earth, the wit
+and genius of the 'Noctes Ambrosianæ' were in the mouths of men and
+maidens, even in our most quiet mountain-towns. There, years ago, we
+saw all Lady Byron's private affairs discussed, and felt the weight of
+Christopher North's decisions against her. Shelton Mackenzie, in his
+American edition, speaks of the American circulation of 'Blackwood'
+being greater than that in England.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> It was and is now reprinted
+monthly; and,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> besides that, 'Littell's Magazine' reproduces all its
+striking articles, and they come with the weight of long established
+position. From the very fact that it has long been considered the Tory
+organ, and the supporter of aristocratic orders, all its admissions
+against the character of individuals in the privileged classes have a
+double force.</p>
+
+<p>When 'Blackwood,' therefore, boldly denounces a lady of high rank as a
+modern Brinvilliers, and no sensation is produced, and no remonstrance
+follows, what can people in the New World suppose, but that Lady
+Byron's character was a point entirely given up; that her depravity was
+so well established and so fully conceded, that nothing was to be said,
+and that even the defenders of aristocracy were forced to admit it?</p>
+
+<p>I have been blamed for speaking on this subject without consulting Lady
+Byron's friends, trustees, and family. More than ten years had elapsed
+since I had had any intercourse with England, and I knew none of them.
+How was I to know that any of them were living? I was astonished to
+learn, for the first time, by the solicitors' letters, that there were
+trustees, who held in their hands all Lady Byron's carefully prepared
+proofs and documents, by which this falsehood might immediately have
+been refuted.</p>
+
+<p>If they had spoken, they might have saved all this confusion. Even
+if bound by restrictions for a certain period of time, they still
+might have called on a Christian public to frown down such a cruel
+and inde<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>cent attack on the character of a noble lady who had been a
+benefactress to so many in England. They might have stated that the
+means of wholly refuting the slanders of the 'Blackwood' were in their
+hands, and only delayed in coming forth from regard to the feelings
+of some in this generation. Then might they not have announced her
+Life and Letters, that the public might have the same opportunity as
+themselves for knowing and judging Lady Byron by her own writings?</p>
+
+<p>Had this been done, I had been most happy to have remained silent. I
+have been astonished that any one should have supposed this speaking
+on my part to be anything less than it is,&mdash;the severest act of
+self-sacrifice that one friend can perform for another, and the most
+solemn and difficult tribute to justice that a human being can be
+called upon to render.</p>
+
+<p>I have been informed that the course I have taken would be contrary to
+the wishes of my friend. I think otherwise. I know her strong sense
+of justice, and her reverence for truth. Nothing ever moved her to
+speak to the public but an attack upon the honour of the dead. In her
+statement, she says of her parents, 'There is no other near relative to
+vindicate their memory from insult: I am therefore compelled to break
+the silence I had hoped always to have observed.'</p>
+
+<p>If there was any near relative to vindicate Lady Byron's memory, I
+had no evidence of the fact; and I considered the utter silence to
+be strong evidence to the contrary. In all the storm of obloquy and
+rebuke<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> that has raged in consequence of my speaking, I have had two
+unspeakable sources of joy; first, that they could not touch <i>her</i>;
+and, second, that they could not blind the all-seeing God. It is worth
+being in darkness to see the stars.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that <i>I</i> have drawn on Lady Byron's name greater
+obloquy than ever before. I deny the charge. Nothing fouler has been
+asserted of her than the charges in the 'Blackwood,' because nothing
+fouler <i>could</i> be asserted. No satyr's hoof has ever crushed this pearl
+deeper in the mire than the hoof of the 'Blackwood,' but none of them
+have defiled it or trodden it so deep that God cannot find it in the
+day 'when he maketh up his jewels.'</p>
+
+<p>I have another word, as an American, to say about the contempt shown
+to our great people in thus suffering the materials of history to be
+falsified to subserve the temporary purposes of family feeling in
+England.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron belongs not properly either to the Byrons or the Wentworths.
+He is not one of their family jewels to be locked up in their cases.
+He belongs to the world for which he wrote, to which he appealed, and
+before which he dragged his reluctant, delicate wife to a publicity
+equal with his own: the world has, therefore, a right to judge him.</p>
+
+<p>We Americans have been made accessories, after the fact, to every
+insult and injury that Lord Byron and the literary men of his day have
+heaped upon Lady Byron. We have been betrayed into injustice<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> and a
+complicity with villany. After Lady Byron had nobly lived down slanders
+in England, and died full of years and honours, the 'Blackwood' takes
+occasion to re-open the controversy by recommending a book full of
+slanders to a rising generation who knew nothing of the past. What
+was the consequence in America? My attention was first called to the
+result, not by reading the 'Blackwood' article, but by finding in a
+popular monthly magazine two long articles,&mdash;the one an enthusiastic
+recommendation of the Guiccioli book, and the other a lamentation over
+the burning of the Autobiography as a lost chapter in history.</p>
+
+<p>Both articles represented Lady Byron as a cold, malignant, mean,
+persecuting woman, who had been her husband's ruin. They were so full
+of falsehoods and misstatements as to astonish me. Not long after, a
+literary friend wrote to me, '<i>Will</i> you, <i>can</i> you, reconcile it to
+your conscience to sit still and allow that mistress so to slander that
+wife,&mdash;you, perhaps, the only one knowing the real facts, and able to
+set them forth?'</p>
+
+<p>Upon this, I immediately began collecting and reading the various
+articles and the book, and perceived that the public of this generation
+were in a way of having false history created, uncontradicted, under
+their own eyes.</p>
+
+<p>I claim for my country, men and women, our right to <i>true</i> history.
+For years, the popular literature has held up publicly before our eyes
+the facts as to this man and this woman, and called on us to praise or
+condemn.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> Let us have <i>truth</i> when we are called on to judge. It is our
+<i>right</i>.</p>
+
+<p>There is no conceivable obligation on a human being greater than
+that of <i>absolute justice</i>. It is the deepest personal injury to an
+honourable mind to be made, through misrepresentation, an accomplice
+in injustice. When a noble name is accused, any person who possesses
+truth which might clear it, and withholds that truth, is guilty of a
+sin against human nature and the inalienable rights of justice. I claim
+that I have not only a right, but an obligation, to bring in my solemn
+testimony upon this subject.</p>
+
+<p>For years and years, the silence-policy has been tried; and what has it
+brought forth? As neither word nor deed could be proved against Lady
+Byron, her silence has been spoken of as a monstrous, unnatural crime,
+'a poisonous miasma,' in which she enveloped the name of her husband.</p>
+
+<p>Very well; since silence is the crime, I thought I would tell the world
+that Lady Byron had spoken.</p>
+
+<p>Christopher North, years ago, when he condemned her for speaking, said
+that she should speak further,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'She should speak, or some one for her. One word would suffice.'</p>
+
+<p>That one word has been spoken.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II">PART II.</a></h2>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<p class="ph4">LADY BYRON AS I KNEW HER.</p>
+
+
+<p>An editorial in 'The London Times' of Sept. 18 says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'The perplexing feature in this "True Story" is, that it is impossible
+to distinguish what part in it is the editress's, and what Lady
+Byron's own. We are given the <i>impression</i> made on Mrs. Stowe's mind
+by Lady Byron's statements; but it would have been more satisfactory
+if the statement itself had been reproduced as bare as possible, and
+been left to make its own impression on the public.'</p></div>
+
+<p>In reply to this, I will say, that in my article I gave a brief
+synopsis of the subject-matter of Lady Byron's communications;
+and I think it must be quite evident to the world that the <i>main
+fact</i> on which the story turns was one which could not possibly be
+misunderstood, and the remembrance of which no lapse of time could ever
+weaken.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron's communications were made to me in language clear, precise,
+terrible; and many of her phrases and sentences I could repeat at this
+day, word for word. But if I had reproduced them at first, as 'The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+Times' suggests, word for word, the public horror and incredulity would
+have been doubled. It was necessary that the brutality of the story
+should, in some degree, be veiled and softened.</p>
+
+<p>The publication, by Lord Lindsay, of Lady Anne Barnard's communication,
+makes it now possible to tell fully, and in Lady Byron's own words,
+certain incidents that yet remain untold. To me, who know the whole
+history, the revelations in Lady Anne's account, and the story related
+by Lady Byron, are like fragments of a dissected map: they fit
+together, piece by piece, and form one connected whole.</p>
+
+<p>In confirmation of the general facts of this interview, I have the
+testimony of a sister who accompanied me on this visit, and to whom,
+immediately after it, I recounted the story.</p>
+
+<p>Her testimony on the subject is as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">My dear Sister</span>,&mdash;I have a perfect recollection of going
+with you to visit Lady Byron at the time spoken of in your published
+article. We arrived at her house in the morning; and, after lunch,
+Lady Byron and yourself spent the whole time till evening alone
+together.</p>
+
+<p>'After we retired to our apartment that night, you related to me
+the story given in your published account, though with many more
+particulars than you have yet thought fit to give to the public.</p>
+
+<p>'You stated to me that Lady Byron was strongly impressed with the idea
+that it might be her duty to publish a statement during her lifetime,
+and also the reasons which induced her to think so. You appeared at
+that time quite disposed to think that justice required this step, and
+asked my opinion. We passed most of the night in conversation on the
+subject,&mdash;a conversation often<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> resumed, from time to time, during
+several weeks in which you were considering what opinion to give.</p>
+
+<p>'I was strongly of opinion that justice required the publication of
+the truth, but felt exceedingly averse to its being done by Lady Byron
+herself during her own lifetime, when she personally would be subject
+to the comments and misconceptions of motives which would certainly
+follow such a communication.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'Your sister,</p>
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">M. F. Perkins.</span>'
+</p></div>
+
+<p>I am now about to complete the account of my conversation with Lady
+Byron; but as the credibility of a history depends greatly on the
+character of its narrator, and as especial pains have been taken
+to destroy the belief in this story by representing it to be the
+wanderings of a broken-down mind in a state of dotage and mental
+hallucination, I shall preface the narrative with some account of
+Lady Byron as she was during the time of our mutual acquaintance and
+friendship.</p>
+
+<p>This account may, perhaps, be deemed superfluous in England, where so
+many knew her; but in America, where, from Maine to California, her
+character has been discussed and traduced, it is of importance to give
+interested thousands an opportunity of learning what kind of a woman
+Lady Byron was.</p>
+
+<p>Her character as given by Lord Byron in his Journal, after her first
+refusal of him, is this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'She is a very superior woman, and very little spoiled; which is
+strange in an heiress, a girl of twenty, a peeress that is to be in
+her own right, an only child, and a savante, who has always had her
+own way. She is a poetess, a mathematician, a metaphysician; yet,
+withal, very kind, generous, and gentle, with very little pre<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>tension.
+Any other head would be turned with half her acquisitions and a tenth
+of her advantages.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Such was Lady Byron at twenty. I formed her acquaintance in the year
+1853, during my first visit in England. I met her at a lunch-party in
+the house of one of her friends.</p>
+
+<p>The party had many notables; but, among them all, my attention was
+fixed principally on Lady Byron. She was at this time sixty-one years
+of age, but still had, to a remarkable degree, that personal attraction
+which is commonly considered to belong only to youth and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Her form was slight, giving an impression of fragility; her motions
+were both graceful and decided; her eyes bright, and full of interest
+and quick observation. Her silvery-white hair seemed to lend a grace
+to the transparent purity of her complexion, and her small hands
+had a pearly whiteness. I recollect she wore a plain widow's cap of
+a transparent material; and was dressed in some delicate shade of
+lavender, which harmonised well with her complexion.</p>
+
+<p>When I was introduced to her, I felt in a moment the words of her
+husband:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'There was awe in the homage that she drew;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her spirit seemed as seated on a throne.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Calm, self-poised, and thoughtful, she seemed to me rather to resemble
+an interested spectator of the world's affairs, than an actor involved
+in its trials; yet the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> sweetness of her smile, and a certain very
+delicate sense of humour in her remarks, made the way of acquaintance
+easy.</p>
+
+<p>Her first remarks were a little playful; but in a few moments we were
+speaking on what every one in those days was talking to me about,&mdash;the
+slavery question in America.</p>
+
+<p>It need not be remarked, that, when any one subject especially occupies
+the public mind, those known to be interested in it are compelled to
+listen to many weary platitudes. Lady Byron's remarks, however, caught
+my ear and arrested my attention by their peculiar incisive quality,
+their originality, and the evidence they gave that she was as well
+informed on all our matters as the best American statesman could be.
+I had no wearisome course to go over with her as to the difference
+between the General Government and State Governments, nor explanations
+of the United States Constitution; for she had the whole before her
+mind with a perfect clearness. Her morality upon the slavery question,
+too, impressed me as something far higher and deeper than the common
+sentimentalism of the day. Many of her words surprised me greatly, and
+gave me new material for thought.</p>
+
+<p>I found I was in company with a commanding mind, and hastened to
+gain instruction from her on another point where my interest had
+been aroused. I had recently been much excited by Kingsley's novels,
+'Alton Locke' and 'Yeast,' on the position of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> religious thought in
+England. From these works I had gathered, that under the apparent
+placid uniformity of the Established Church of England, and of 'good
+society' as founded on it, there was moving a secret current of
+speculative enquiry, doubt, and dissent; but I had met, as yet, with
+no person among my various acquaintances in England who seemed either
+aware of this fact, or able to guide my mind respecting it. The moment
+I mentioned the subject to Lady Byron, I received an answer which
+showed me that the whole ground was familiar to her, and that she was
+capable of giving me full information. She had studied with careful
+thoughtfulness all the social and religious tendencies of England
+during her generation. One of her remarks has often since occurred to
+me. Speaking of the Oxford movement, she said the time had come when
+the English Church could no longer remain as it was. It must either
+<i>restore the past, or create a future</i>. The Oxford movement attempted
+the former; and of the future she was beginning to speak, when our
+conversation was interrupted by the presentation of other parties.</p>
+
+<p>Subsequently, in reply to a note from her on some benevolent business,
+I alluded to that conversation, and expressed a wish that she would
+finish giving me her views of the religious state of England. A portion
+of the letter that she wrote me in reply I insert, as being very
+characteristic in many respects:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p><div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'Various causes have been assigned for the decaying state of the
+English Church; which seems the more strange, because the clergy have
+improved, morally and intellectually, in the last twenty years. Then
+why should their influence be diminished? I think it is owing to the
+diffusion of a spirit of free enquiry.</p>
+
+<p>'Doubts have arisen in the minds of many who are unhappily bound by
+subscription <i>not</i> to doubt; and, in consequence, they are habitually
+<i>pretending</i> either to believe or to disbelieve. The state of Denmark
+cannot but be rotten, when <i>to seem</i> is the first object of the
+witnesses of truth.</p>
+
+<p>'They may lead better lives, and bring forward abler arguments; but
+their efforts are paralysed by that unsoundness. I see the High
+Churchman professing to believe in the existence of a church, when the
+most palpable facts must show him that no <i>such</i> church exists; the
+"Low" Churchman professing to believe in exceptional interpositions
+which his philosophy secretly questions; the "Broad" Churchman
+professing as absolute an attachment to the Established Church as the
+narrowest could feel, while he is preaching such principles as will at
+last pull it down.</p>
+
+<p>'I ask you, my friend, whether there would not be more faith, as
+well as earnestness, if <i>all</i> would speak out. There would be more
+unanimity too, because they would all agree in a certain basis. Would
+not a wider love supersede the <i>creed-bound</i> charity of sects?</p>
+
+<p>'I am aware that I have touched on a point of difference between
+us, and I will not regret it; for I think the differences of mind
+are analogous to those differences of nature, which, in the most
+comprehensive survey, are the very elements of harmony.</p>
+
+<p>'I am not at all prone to put forth my own opinions; but the tone in
+which you have written to me claims an unusual degree of openness
+on my part. I look upon creeds of all kinds as chains,&mdash;far worse
+chains than those you would break,&mdash;as the causes of much hypocrisy
+and infidelity. I hold it to be a sin to <i>make</i> a child say, "<i>I
+believe</i>." Lead it to utter that belief spontaneously. I also consider
+the institution of an exclusive priesthood, though having been of
+service in some respects, as retarding the progress of Christianity at
+present. I desire to see a <i>lay</i> ministry.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I will not give you more of my heterodoxy at present: perhaps I need
+your pardon, connected as you are with the Church, for having said so
+much.</p>
+
+<p>'There are causes of decay known to be at work in my frame, which lead
+me to believe I may not have time to grow wiser; and I must therefore
+leave it to others to correct the conclusions I have now formed from
+my life's experience. I should feel happy to discuss them personally
+with you; for it would be <i>soul to soul</i>. In that confidence I am
+yours most truly,</p>
+
+<p class="author">'<span class="smcap">A. I. Noel Byron.</span>'</p></div>
+
+<p>It is not necessary to prove to the reader that this letter is not in
+the style of a broken-down old woman subject to mental hallucinations.
+It shows Lady Byron's habits of clear, searching analysis, her
+thoughtfulness, and, above all, that peculiar reverence for <i>truth</i> and
+sincerity which was a leading characteristic of her moral nature.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a>
+It also shows her views of the probable shortness of her stay on earth,
+derived from the opinion of physicians about her disease, which was a
+gradual ossification of the lungs. It has been asserted that pulmonary
+diseases, while they slowly and surely sap the physical life, often
+appear to give added vigour to the play of the moral and intellectual
+powers.</p>
+
+<p>I parted from Lady Byron, feeling richer in that I had found one more
+pearl of great price on the shore of life.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Three years after this, I visited England to obtain a copyright for the
+issue of my novel of 'Dred.'</p>
+
+<p>The hope of once more seeing Lady Byron was one of the brightest
+anticipations held out to me in this journey. I found London quite
+deserted; but, hearing that Lady Byron was still in town, I sent to
+her, saying in my note, that, in case she was not well enough to call,
+I would visit her. Her reply I give:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">My dear Friend</span>,&mdash;I <i>will</i> be indebted to you for our
+meeting, as I am barely able to leave my room. It is not a time for
+small personalities, if they could ever exist with <i>you</i>; and, dressed
+or undressed, I shall hope to see you after two o'clock.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'Yours very truly,</p>
+<p class="author">'<span class="smcap">A. I. Noel Byron.</span>'
+</p></div>
+
+<p>I found Lady Byron in her sick-room,&mdash;that place which she made so
+different from the chamber of ordinary invalids. Her sick-room seemed
+only a telegraphic station whence her vivid mind was flashing out all
+over the world.</p>
+
+<p>By her bedside stood a table covered with books, pamphlets, and files
+of letters, all arranged with exquisite order, and each expressing some
+of her varied interests. From that sick-bed she still directed, with
+systematic care, her various works of benevolence, and watched with
+intelligent attention the course of science, literature, and religion;
+and the versatility and activity of her mind, the flow of brilliant
+and penetrating thought on all the topics of the day, gave to the
+conversations of her retired room a peculiar charm. You forgot<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> that
+she was an invalid; for she rarely had a word of her own personalities,
+and the charm of her conversation carried you invariably from herself
+to the subjects of which she was thinking. All the new books, the
+literature of the hour, were lighted up by her keen, searching, yet
+always kindly criticism; and it was charming to get her fresh, genuine,
+clear-cut modes of expression, so different from the world-worn phrases
+of what is called good society. Her opinions were always perfectly
+clear and positive, and given with the freedom of one who has long
+stood in a position to judge the world and its ways from her own
+standpoint. But it was not merely in general literature and science
+that her heart lay; it was following always with eager interest the
+progress of humanity over the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>This was the period of the great battle for liberty in Kansas. The
+English papers were daily filled with the thrilling particulars of that
+desperate struggle, and Lady Byron entered with heart and soul into it.</p>
+
+<p>Her first letter to me, at this time, is on this subject. It was while
+'Dred' was going through the press.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="author">'<span class="smcap">Cambridge Terrace</span>, Aug. 15.</p>
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">My dear Mrs. Stowe</span>,&mdash;Messrs. Chambers liked the proposal to
+publish the Kansas Letters. The more the public know of these matters,
+the better prepared they will be for your book. The moment for its
+publication seems well chosen. There is always in England a floating
+fund of sympathy for what is above the everyday sordid cares of life;
+and these better feelings, so nobly invested for the last two years in
+Florence Nightingale's career,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> are just set free. To what will they
+next be attached? If you can lay hold of them, they may bring about
+a deeper abolition than any legislative one,&mdash;the abolition of the
+heart-heresy that man's worth comes, not from God, but from man.</p>
+
+<p>'I have been obliged to give up exertion again, but hope soon to be
+able to call and make the acquaintance of your daughters. In case you
+wish to consult H. Martineau's pamphlets, I send more copies. Do not
+think of answering: I have occupied too much of your time in reading.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'Yours affectionately,</p>
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">A. I. Noel Byron.</span>'
+</p></div>
+
+<p>As soon as a copy of 'Dred' was through the press, I sent it to
+her, saying that I had been reproved by some excellent people for
+representing too faithfully the profane language of some of the wicked
+characters. To this she sent the following reply:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'Your book, dear Mrs. Stowe, is of the little leaven kind, and must
+prove a great moral force; perhaps not manifestly so much as secretly.
+And yet I can hardly conceive so much power without immediate and
+sensible effects: only there will be a strong disposition to resist
+on the part of all hollow-hearted professors of religion, whose
+heathenisms you so unsparingly expose. They have a class feeling like
+others.</p>
+
+<p>'To the young, and to those who do not reflect much on what is offered
+to their belief, you will do great good by showing how spiritual food
+is often adulterated. The bread from heaven is in the same case as
+bakers' bread.</p>
+
+<p>'If there is truth in what I heard Lord Byron say, that works of
+fiction live only by the amount <i>of truth</i> which they contain, your
+story is sure of a long life. Of the few critiques I have seen, the
+best is in "The Examiner." I find an obtuseness as to the spirit and
+aim of the book, as if you had designed to make the best novel of the
+season, or to keep up the reputation of one. You are reproached, as
+Walter Scott was, with too much scrip<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>tural quotation; not, that I
+have heard, with phrases of an opposite character.</p>
+
+<p>'The effects of such reading till a late hour one evening appeared to
+influence me very singularly in a dream. The most horrible spectres
+presented themselves, and I woke in an agony of fear; but a faith
+still stronger arose, and I became courageous from trust in God, and
+felt calm. Did you do this? It is very insignificant among the many
+things you certainly will do unknown to yourself. I know more than
+ever before how to value communion with you. I have sent Robertson's
+Sermons for you; and, with kind regards to your family, am</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'Yours affectionately,</p>
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">A. I. Noel Byron.</span>'
+</p></div>
+
+
+<p>I was struck in this note with the mention of Lord Byron, and, the next
+time I saw her, alluded to it, and remarked upon the peculiar qualities
+of his mind as shown in some of his more serious conversations with Dr.
+Kennedy.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed pleased to continue the subject, and went on to say many
+things of his singular character and genius, more penetrating and more
+appreciative than is often met with among critics.</p>
+
+<p>I told her that I had been from childhood powerfully influenced by
+him; and began to tell her how much, as a child, I had been affected
+by the news of his death,&mdash;giving up all my plays, and going off to
+a lonely hillside, where I spent the afternoon thinking of him. She
+interrupted me before I had quite finished, with a quick, impulsive
+movement. 'I know all that,' she said: 'I heard it all from Mrs. &mdash;&mdash;;
+and it was one of the things that made me wish to <i>know</i> you. I think<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+<i>you</i> could understand him.' We talked for some time of him then; she,
+with her pale face slightly flushed, speaking, as any other great
+man's widow might, only of what was purest and best in his works, and
+what were his undeniable virtues and good traits, especially in early
+life. She told me many pleasant little speeches made by him to herself;
+and, though there was running through all this a shade of melancholy,
+one could never have conjectured that there were under all any deeper
+recollections than the circumstances of an ordinary separation might
+bring.</p>
+
+<p>Not many days after, with the unselfishness which was so marked a
+trait with her, she chose a day when she could be out of her room,
+and invited our family party, consisting of my husband, sister, and
+children, to lunch with her.</p>
+
+<p>What showed itself especially in this interview was her tenderness
+for all young people. She had often enquired after mine; asked about
+their characters, habits, and tastes; and on this occasion she found an
+opportunity to talk with each one separately, and to make them all feel
+at ease, so that they were able to talk with her. She seemed interested
+to point out to them what they should see and study in London; and
+the charm of her conversation left on their minds an impression that
+subsequent years have never effaced. I record this incident, because it
+shows how little Lady Byron assumed the privileges or had the character
+of an invalid absorbed in herself, and likely to brood over her own
+woes and wrongs.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Here was a family of strangers stranded in a dull season in London, and
+there was no manner of obligation upon her to exert herself to show
+them attention. Her state of health would have been an all-sufficient
+reason why she should not do it; and her doing it was simply a specimen
+of that unselfish care for others, even down to the least detail, of
+which her life was full.</p>
+
+<p>A little while after, at her request, I went, with my husband and son,
+to pass an evening at her house.</p>
+
+<p>There were a few persons present whom she thought I should be
+interested to know,&mdash;a Miss Goldsmid, daughter of Baron Goldsmid, and
+Lord Ockham, her grandson, eldest son and heir of the Earl of Lovelace,
+to whom she introduced my son.</p>
+
+<p>I had heard much of the eccentricities of this young nobleman, and
+was exceedingly struck with his personal appearance. His bodily frame
+was of the order of the Farnese Hercules,&mdash;a wonderful development of
+physical and muscular strength. His hands were those of a blacksmith.
+He was broadly and squarely made, with a finely-shaped head, and dark
+eyes of surpassing brilliancy. I have seldom seen a more interesting
+combination than his whole appearance presented.</p>
+
+<p>When all were engaged in talking, Lady Byron came and sat down by
+me, and glancing across to Lord Ockham and my son, who were talking
+together, she looked at me, and smiled. I immediately expressed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> my
+admiration of his fine eyes and the intellectual expression of his
+countenance, and my wonder at the uncommon muscular development of his
+frame.</p>
+
+<p>She said that <i>that</i> of itself would account for many of Ockham's
+eccentricities. He had a body that required a more vigorous animal life
+than his station gave scope for, and this had often led him to seek
+it in what the world calls low society; that he had been to sea as a
+sailor, and was now working as a mechanic on the iron work of 'The
+Great Eastern.' He had laid aside his title, and went in daily with the
+other workmen, requesting them to call him simply Ockham.</p>
+
+<p>I said that there was something to my mind very fine about this, even
+though it might show some want of proper balance.</p>
+
+<p>She said he had noble traits, and that she felt assured he would
+yet accomplish something worthy of himself. 'The great difficulty
+with our nobility is apt to be, that they do not <i>understand</i> the
+working-classes, so as to feel for them properly; and Ockham is now
+going through an experience which may yet fit him to do great good when
+he comes to the peerage. I am trying to influence him to do good among
+the workmen, and to interest himself in schools for their children. I
+think,' she added, 'I have great influence over Ockham,&mdash;the greater,
+perhaps, that I never make any claim to authority.'</p>
+
+<p>This conversation is very characteristic of Lady Byron as showing her
+benevolent analysis of character, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> the peculiar hopefulness she
+always had in regard to the future of every one brought in connection
+with her. Her moral hopefulness was something very singular; and in
+this respect she was so different from the rest of the world, that it
+would be difficult to make her understood. Her tolerance of wrong-doing
+would have seemed to many quite latitudinarian, and impressed them
+as if she had lost all just horror of what was morally wrong in
+transgression; but it seemed her fixed habit to see faults only as
+diseases and immaturities, and to expect them to fall away with time.</p>
+
+<p>She saw the germs of good in what others regarded as only evil. She
+expected valuable results to come from what the world looked on only
+as eccentricities;<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> and she incessantly devoted herself to the task
+of guarding those whom the world condemned, and guiding them to those
+higher results of which she often thought that even their faults were
+prophetic.</p>
+
+<p>Before I quit this sketch of Lady Byron as I knew her, I will give one
+more of her letters. My return from that visit in Europe was met by the
+sudden death of the son mentioned in the foregoing account. At the time
+of this sorrow, Lady Byron was too unwell to write to me. The letter
+given alludes to this event, and speaks also of two coloured persons
+of remarkable talent, in whose career in England she had taken a deep
+interest. One of them is the 'friend' she speaks of.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="author">
+
+'<span class="smcap">London</span>, Feb. 6, 1859.
+</p>
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">Dear Mrs. Stowe</span>,&mdash;I seem to feel our friend as a bridge,
+over which our broken <i>outward</i> communication can be renewed without
+effort. Why broken? The words I would have uttered <i>at one time</i> were
+like drops of blood from my heart. Now I sympathise with the calmness
+you have gained, and can speak of your loss as I do of my own. Loss
+and restoration are more and more linked in my mind, but "to the
+<i>present</i> live." As long as <i>they</i> are in God's world they are in
+ours. I ask no other consolation.</p>
+
+<p>'Mrs. W&mdash;&mdash;'s recovery has astonished me, and her husband's prospects
+give me great satisfaction. They have achieved a benefit to their
+coloured people. She had a mission which her burning soul has worked
+out, almost in defiance of death. But who is "called" without being
+"crucified," man or woman? I know of none.</p>
+
+<p>'I fear that H. Martineau was too sanguine in her persuasion that the
+slave power had received a serious check from the ruin of so many of
+your Mammon-worshippers. With the return of commercial facilities,
+<i>that</i> article of commerce will again find purchasers enough to raise
+its value. Not that way is the iniquity to be overthrown. A deeper
+moral earthquake is needed.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> We English had ours in India; and
+though the cases are far from being alike, yet a consciousness of what
+we ought to have been and ought to be toward the natives could not
+have been awakened by less than the reddened waters of the Ganges. So
+I fear you will have to look on a day of judgment worse than has been
+painted.</p>
+
+<p>'As to all the frauds and impositions which have been disclosed by
+the failures, what a want of the sense of personal responsibility
+they show. It seems to be thought that "association" will "cover a
+multitude of sins;" as if "and Co." could enter heaven. A firm may be
+described as a partnership for lowering the standard of morals. Even
+ecclesiastical bodies are not free from the "and Co.;" very different
+from "the goodly fellowship of the apostles."</p>
+
+<p>'The better class of young gentlemen in England are seized with
+a mediæval mania, to which Ruskin has contributed much.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> The
+chief reason for regretting it is that taste is made to supersede
+benevolence. The money that would save thousands from perishing or
+suffering must be applied to raise the Gothic edifice where their last
+prayer may be uttered. Charity may be dead, while Art has glorified
+her. This is worse than Catholicism, which cultivates heart and eye
+together. The first cathedral was Truth, at the beginning of the
+fourth century, just as Christianity was exchanging a heavenly for an
+earthly crown. True religion may have to cast away the symbol for the
+spirit before "the kingdom" can come.</p>
+
+<p>'While I am speculating to little purpose, perhaps you are
+<i>doing</i>&mdash;what? Might not a biography from your pen bring forth again
+some great, half-obscured soul to act on the world? Even Sir Philip
+Sidney ought to be superseded by a still nobler type.</p>
+
+<p>'This must go immediately, to be in time for the bearer, of whose
+meeting with you I shall think as the friend of both. May it be happy!</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'Your affectionate</p>
+<p class="author">A. I. N. B.'
+</p></div>
+
+<p>One letter more from Lady Byron I give,&mdash;the last I received from her:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="author">
+
+<span class="smcap">London</span>, May 3, 1859.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">Dear Friend</span>,&mdash;I have found, particularly as to yourself,
+that, if I did not answer from the first impulse, all had evaporated.
+Your letter came by 'The Niagara' which brought Fanny Kemble to learn
+the loss of her best friend, the Miss F&mdash;&mdash; whom you saw at my house.</p>
+
+<p>'Her death, after an illness in which she was to the last a minister
+of good to others, is a soul-loss to me also; and your remarks are
+most appropriate to my feelings. I have been taught, however, to
+accept survivorship; even to feel it, in some cases, Heaven's best
+blessing.</p>
+
+<p>'I have an intense interest in your new novel.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> More power in
+these few numbers than in any of your former writings, relating,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> at
+least, to my own mind. It would amuse you to hear my grand-daughter
+and myself attempting to foresee the future of the love-story; being,
+for the moment, quite persuaded that James is at sea, and the minister
+about to ruin himself. We think that Mary will labour to be in love
+with the self-devoted man, under her mother's influence, and from that
+hyper-conscientiousness so common with good girls; but we don't wish
+her to succeed. Then what is to become of her older lover? Time will
+show.</p>
+
+<p>'The lady you desired to introduce to me will be welcomed as of you.
+She has been misled with respect to my having any house in Yorkshire
+(New Leeds). I am in London now to be of a little use to A&mdash;&mdash;; not
+ostensibly, for I can neither go out, nor give parties: but I am the
+confidential friend to whom she likes to bring her social gatherings,
+as she can see something of the world with others. Age and infirmity
+seem to be overlooked in what she calls the harmony between us,&mdash;not
+perfect agreement of opinion (which I should regret, with almost fifty
+years of difference), but the spirit-union: can you say what it is?</p>
+
+<p>'I am interrupted by a note from Mrs. K&mdash;&mdash;. She says that she cannot
+write of our lost friend yet, though she is less sad than she will
+be. Mrs. F&mdash;&mdash; may like to hear of her arrival, should you be in
+communication with our friend. She is the type of youth in age.</p>
+
+<p>'I often converse with Miss S&mdash;&mdash;, a judicious friend of the W&mdash;&mdash;s,
+about what is likely to await them. She would not succeed here as well
+as where she was a novelty. The character of our climate this year has
+been injurious to the respiratory organs; but I hope still to serve
+them.</p>
+
+<p>'I have just missed Dale Owen, with whom I wished to have conversed on
+spiritualism.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> Harris is lecturing here on religion. I do not hear
+him praised.</p>
+
+<p>'People are looking for helps to believe, everywhere but in life,&mdash;in
+music, in architecture, in antiquity, in ceremony; and upon all
+these is written, "Thou shalt <i>not</i> believe." At least, if this be
+faith, happier the unbeliever. I am willing to see <i>through</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> that
+materialism; but, if I am to rest there, I would rend the veil.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="author">
+'June 1.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>'The day of the packet's sailing. I shall hope to be visited by you
+here. The best flowers sent me have been placed in your little vases,
+giving life to the remembrance of you, though not, like them, to pass
+away.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'Ever yours,</p>
+<p class="author"><span class="smcap">'A. I. Noel Byron</span>.'
+</p></div>
+
+<p>Shortly after, I was in England again, and had one more opportunity of
+resuming our personal intercourse. The first time that I called on Lady
+Byron, I saw her in one of those periods of utter physical exhaustion
+to which she was subject on account of the constant pressure of cares
+beyond her strength. All who knew her will testify, that, in a state of
+health which would lead most persons to become helpless absorbents of
+service from others, she was assuming burdens, and making outlays of
+her vital powers in acts of love and service, with a generosity that
+often reduced her to utter exhaustion. But none who knew or loved her
+ever misinterpreted the coldness of those seasons of exhaustion. We
+knew that it was <i>not</i> the spirit that was chilled, but only the frail
+mortal tabernacle. When I called on her at this time, she could not see
+me at first; and when, at last, she came, it was evident that she was
+in a state of utter prostration. Her hands were like ice; her face was
+deadly pale; and she conversed with a restraint and difficulty which
+showed what exertion it was for her to keep up at all. I left as soon
+as possible, with an appointment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> for another interview. That interview
+was my last on earth with her, and is still beautiful in memory. It was
+a long, still summer afternoon, spent alone with her in a garden, where
+we walked together. She was enjoying one of those bright intervals
+of freedom from pain and languor, in which her spirits always rose
+so buoyant and youthful; and her eye brightened, and her step became
+elastic.</p>
+
+<p>One last little incident is cherished as most expressive of her. When
+it became time for me to leave, she took me in her carriage to the
+station. As we were almost there, I missed my gloves, and said, 'I must
+have left them; but there is not time to go back.'</p>
+
+<p>With one of those quick, impulsive motions which were so natural to her
+in doing a kindness, she drew off her own and said, 'Take mine if they
+will serve you.'</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated a moment; and then the thought, that I might never see
+her again, came over me, and I said, 'Oh, yes! thanks.' That was the
+last earthly word of love between us. But, thank God, those who love
+worthily never meet for the <i>last</i> time: there is always a future.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<p class="ph4">LADY BYRON'S STORY AS TOLD TO ME.</p>
+
+
+<p>I now come to the particulars of that most painful interview which has
+been the cause of all this controversy. My sister and myself were going
+from London to Eversley to visit the Rev. C. Kingsley. On our way, we
+stopped, by Lady Byron's invitation, to lunch with her at her summer
+residence on Ham Common, near Richmond; and it was then arranged, that
+on our return, we should make her a short visit, as she said she had a
+subject of importance on which she wished to converse with me alone.</p>
+
+<p>On our return from Eversley, we arrived at her house in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>It appeared to be one of Lady Byron's <i>well</i> days. She was up and
+dressed, and moved about her house with her usual air of quiet
+simplicity; as full of little acts of consideration for all about her
+as if they were the habitual invalids, and she the well person.</p>
+
+<p>There were with her two ladies of her most intimate friends, by whom
+she seemed to be regarded with a sort of worship. When she left the
+room for a moment, they looked after her with a singular expression of
+respect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> and affection, and expressed freely their admiration of her
+character, and their fears that her unselfishness might be leading her
+to over-exertion.</p>
+
+<p>After lunch, I retired with Lady Byron; and my sister remained with
+her friends. I should here remark, that the chief subject of the
+conversation which ensued was not entirely new to me. In the interval
+between my first and second visits to England, a lady who for many
+years had enjoyed Lady Byron's friendship and confidence, had, with her
+consent, stated the case generally to me, giving some of the incidents:
+so that I was in a manner prepared for what followed.</p>
+
+<p>Those who accuse Lady Byron of being a person fond of talking upon this
+subject, and apt to make unconsidered confidences, can have known very
+little of her, of her reserve, and of the apparent difficulty she had
+in speaking on subjects nearest her heart.</p>
+
+<p>Her habitual calmness and composure of manner, her collected dignity
+on all occasions, are often mentioned by her husband, sometimes with
+bitterness, sometimes with admiration. He says, 'Though I accuse Lady
+Byron of an excess of self-respect, I must in candour admit that, if
+ever a person had excuse for an extraordinary portion of it, she has;
+as, in all her thoughts, words, and deeds, she is the most decorous
+woman that ever existed, and must appear, what few I fancy could, a
+perfectly refined gentlewoman, even to her <i>femme de chambre</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This calmness and dignity were never more mani<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>fested than in this
+interview. In recalling the conversation at this distance of time, I
+cannot remember all the language used. Some particular words and forms
+of expression I do remember, and those I give; and in other cases I
+give my recollection of the substance of what was said.</p>
+
+<p>There was something awful to me in the intensity of repressed emotion
+which she showed as she proceeded. The great fact upon which all turned
+was stated in words that were unmistakable:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'He was guilty of incest with his sister!'</p>
+
+<p>She here became so deathly pale, that I feared she would faint; and
+hastened to say, 'My dear friend, I have heard that.' She asked
+quickly, 'From whom? and I answered, 'From Mrs. &mdash;&mdash;;' when she
+replied, 'Oh, yes!' as if recollecting herself.</p>
+
+<p>I then asked her some questions; in reply to which she said, 'I will
+tell you.'</p>
+
+<p>She then spoke of her first acquaintance with Lord Byron; from which I
+gathered that she, an only child, brought up in retirement, and living
+much within herself, had been, as deep natures often were, intensely
+stirred by his poetry; and had felt a deep interest in him personally,
+as one that had the germs of all that is glorious and noble.</p>
+
+<p>When she was introduced to him, and perceived his admiration of
+herself, and at last received his offer, although deeply moved, she
+doubted her own power to be to him all that a wife should be. She
+declined his offer,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> therefore, but desired to retain his friendship.
+After this, as she said, a correspondence ensued, mostly on moral and
+literary subjects; and, by this correspondence, her interest in him was
+constantly increased.</p>
+
+<p>At last, she said, he sent her a very beautiful letter, offering
+himself again. 'I thought,' she added, 'that it was sincere, and that I
+might now show him all I felt. I wrote just what was in my heart.</p>
+
+<p>'Afterwards,' she said, 'I found in one of his journals this notice of
+my letter: "A letter from Bell,&mdash;never rains but it pours."'</p>
+
+<p>There was through her habitual calm a shade of womanly indignation as
+she spoke these words; but it was gone in a moment. I said, 'And did he
+not love you, then?' She answered, 'No, my dear: he did not love me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, then, did he wish to marry you?' She laid her hand on mine, and
+said in a low voice, 'You will see.'</p>
+
+<p>She then told me, that, shortly after the declared engagement, he came
+to her father's house to visit her as an accepted suitor. The visit was
+to her full of disappointment. His appearance was so strange, moody,
+and unaccountable, and his treatment of her so peculiar, that she came
+to the conclusion that he did not love her, and sought an opportunity
+to converse with him alone.</p>
+
+<p>She told him that she saw from his manner that their engagement did not
+give him pleasure; that she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> should never blame him if he wished to
+dissolve it; that his nature was exceptional; and if, on a nearer view
+of the situation, he shrank from it, she would release him, and remain
+no less than ever his friend.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this, she said, he fainted entirely away.</p>
+
+<p>She stopped a moment, and then, as if speaking with great effort,
+added, '<i>Then</i> I was <i>sure</i> he must love me.'</p>
+
+<p>'And did he not?' said I. 'What other cause could have led to this
+emotion?'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me very sadly, and said, '<i>Fear of detection</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'What!' said I, 'did <i>that cause</i> then exist?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' she said, 'it did.' And she explained that she <i>now</i> attributed
+Lord Byron's great agitation to fear, that, in some way, suspicion of
+the crime had been aroused in her mind, and that on this account she
+was seeking to break the engagement. She said, that, from that moment,
+her sympathies were aroused for him, to soothe the remorse and anguish
+which seemed preying on his mind, and which she then regarded as the
+sensibility of an unusually exacting moral nature, which judged itself
+by higher standards, and condemned itself unsparingly for what most
+young men of his times regarded as venial faults. She had every hope
+for his future, and all the enthusiasm of belief that so many men and
+women of those times and ours have had in his intrinsic nobleness. She
+said the gloom, however, seemed to be even deeper when he came to the
+marriage; but she looked at it as the suffering of a peculiar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> being,
+to whom she was called to minister. I said to her, that, even in the
+days of my childhood, I had heard of something very painful that had
+passed as they were in the carriage, immediately after marriage. She
+then said that it was so; that almost his first words, when they were
+alone, were, that she <i>might</i> once have saved him; that, if she had
+accepted him when he first offered, she might have made him anything
+she pleased; but that, as it was, she would find she had married a
+devil.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation, as recorded in Lady Anne Barnard's Diary, seems only
+a continuation of the foregoing, and just what might have followed upon
+it.</p>
+
+<p>I then asked how she became certain of the true cause.</p>
+
+<p>She said, that, from the outset of their married life, his conduct
+towards her was strange and unaccountable, even during the first
+weeks after the wedding, while they were visiting her friends, and
+outwardly on good terms. He seemed resolved to shake and combat both
+her religious principles and her views of the family state. He tried
+to undermine her faith in Christianity as a rule of life by argument
+and by ridicule. He set before her the Continental idea of the liberty
+of marriage; it being a simple partnership of friendship and property,
+the parties to which were allowed by one another to pursue their own
+separate individual tastes. He told her, that, as he could not be
+expected to confine himself to her, neither should he expect or wish
+that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> she should confine herself to him; that she was young and pretty,
+and could have her lovers, and he should never object; and that she
+must allow him the same freedom.</p>
+
+<p>She said that she did not comprehend to what this was tending till
+after they came to London, and his sister came to stay with them.</p>
+
+<p>At what precise time the idea of an improper connection between her
+husband and his sister was first forced upon her, she did not say;
+but she told me <i>how</i> it was done. She said that one night, in her
+presence, he treated his sister with a liberty which both shocked and
+astonished her. Seeing her amazement and alarm, he came up to her, and
+said, in a sneering tone, 'I suppose you perceive <i>you</i> are not wanted
+here. Go to your own room, and leave us alone. We can amuse ourselves
+better without you.'</p>
+
+<p>She said, 'I went to my room, trembling. I fell down on my knees, and
+prayed to my heavenly Father to have mercy on them. I thought, "What
+shall I do?"'</p>
+
+<p>I remember, after this, a pause in the conversation, during which she
+seemed struggling with thoughts and emotions; and, for my part, I was
+unable to utter a word, or ask a question.</p>
+
+<p>She did not tell me what followed immediately upon this, nor how soon
+after she spoke on the subject with either of the parties. She first
+began to speak of conversations afterwards held with Lord Byron, in
+which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> he boldly avowed the connection as having existed in time past,
+and as one that was to continue in time to come; and implied that she
+must submit to it. She put it to his conscience as concerning his
+sister's soul, and he said that it was no sin; that it was the way
+the world was first peopled: the Scriptures taught that all the world
+descended from one pair; and how could that be unless brothers married
+their sisters? that, if not a sin then, it could not be a sin now.</p>
+
+<p>I immediately said, 'Why, Lady Byron, those are the very arguments
+given in the drama of "Cain."'</p>
+
+<p>'The very same,' was her reply. 'He could reason very speciously on
+this subject.' She went on to say, that, when she pressed him hard with
+the universal sentiment of mankind as to the horror and the crime, he
+took another turn, and said that the horror and crime were the very
+attraction; that he had worn out all <i>ordinary</i> forms of sin, and that
+he '<i>longed for the stimulus of a new kind of vice</i>.' She set before
+him the dread of detection; and then he became furious. <i>She</i> should
+never be the means of his detection, he said. She should leave him;
+<i>that</i> he was resolved upon: but she should always bear all the blame
+of the separation. In the sneering tone which was common with him,
+he said, 'The world will believe me, and it will <i>not</i> believe you.
+The world has made up its mind that "By" is a glorious boy; and the
+world will go for "By," right or wrong. Besides, I shall make it my
+life's object to discredit you: I shall use all my powers.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> Read "Caleb
+Williams,"<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> and you will see that I shall do by you just as Falkland
+did by Caleb.'</p>
+
+<p>I said that all this seemed to me like insanity. She said that she was
+for a time led to think that it was insanity, and excused and pitied
+him; that his treatment of her expressed such hatred and malignity,
+that she knew not what else to think of it: that he seemed resolved to
+drive her out of the house at all hazards, and threatened her, if she
+should remain, in a way to alarm the heart of any woman: yet, thinking
+him insane, she left him at last with the sorrow with which anyone<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+might leave a dear friend whose reason was wholly overthrown, and to
+whom in this desolation she was no longer permitted to minister.</p>
+
+<p>I inquired in one of the pauses of the conversation whether Mrs. Leigh
+was a peculiarly beautiful or attractive woman.</p>
+
+<p>'No, my dear: she was plain.'</p>
+
+<p>'Was she, then, distinguished for genius or talent of any kind?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no! Poor woman! she was weak, relatively to him, and wholly under
+his control.'</p>
+
+<p>'And what became of her?' I said.</p>
+
+<p>'She afterwards repented, and became a truly good woman.' I think it
+was here she mentioned that she had frequently seen and conversed with
+Mrs. Leigh in the latter part of her life; and she seemed to derive
+comfort from the recollection.</p>
+
+<p>I asked, 'Was there a child?' I had been told by Mrs. &mdash;&mdash; that there
+was a daughter, who had lived some years.</p>
+
+<p>She said there was one, a daughter, who made her friends much trouble,
+being of a very difficult nature to manage. I had understood that at
+one time this daughter escaped from her friends to the Continent, and
+that Lady Byron assisted in efforts to recover her. Of Lady Byron's
+kindness both to Mrs. Leigh and the child, I had before heard from Mrs.
+&mdash;&mdash;, who gave me my first information.</p>
+
+<p>It is also strongly impressed on my mind, that Lady<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> Byron, in answer
+to some question of mine as to whether there was ever any meeting
+between Lord Byron and his sister after he left England, answered,
+that she had insisted upon it, or made it a condition, that Mrs. Leigh
+should not go abroad to him.</p>
+
+<p>When the conversation as to events was over, as I stood musing, I said,
+'Have you no evidence that he repented?' and alluded to the mystery of
+his death, and the message he endeavoured to utter.</p>
+
+<p>She answered quickly, and with great decision, that whatever might have
+been his meaning at that hour, she felt sure he had finally repented;
+and added with great earnestness, 'I do not believe that <i>any</i> child of
+the heavenly Father is ever left to eternal sin.'</p>
+
+<p>I said that such a hope was most delightful to my feelings, but that I
+had always regarded the indulgence of it as a dangerous one.</p>
+
+<p>Her look, voice, and manner, at that moment, are indelibly fixed in my
+mind. She looked at me so sadly, so firmly, and said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Danger, Mrs. Stowe! What danger can come from indulging that hope,
+like the danger that comes from not having it?'</p>
+
+<p>I said in my turn, 'What danger comes from not having it?'</p>
+
+<p>'The danger of losing all faith in God,' she said, 'all hope for
+others, all strength to try and save them. I once knew a lady,' she
+added, 'who was in a state of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> scepticism and despair from belief in
+that doctrine. I think I saved her by giving her my faith.'</p>
+
+<p>I was silent; and she continued: 'Lord Byron believed in eternal
+punishment fully: for though he reasoned against Christianity as it is
+commonly received, he could not reason himself out of it; and I think
+it made him desperate. He used to say, "The worst of it is I <i>do</i>
+believe." Had he seen God as I see him, I am sure his heart would have
+relented.'</p>
+
+<p>She went on to say, that his sins, great as they were, admitted of
+much palliation and excuse; that he was the child of singular and
+ill-matched parents; that he had an organisation originally fine, but
+one capable equally of great good or great evil; that in his childhood
+he had only the worst and most fatal influences; that he grew up into
+manhood with no guide; that there was everything in the classical
+course of the schools to develop an unhealthy growth of passion, and no
+moral influence of any kind to restrain it; that the manners of his day
+were corrupt; that what were now considered vices in society were then
+spoken of as matters of course among young noblemen; that drinking,
+gaming, and licentiousness everywhere abounded: and that, up to a
+certain time, he was no worse than multitudes of other young men of his
+day,&mdash;only that the vices of his day were worse for him. The excesses
+of passion, the disregard of physical laws in eating, drinking, and
+living, wrought effects on him that they did not on less sensitively
+organised frames, and pre<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>pared him for the evil hour when he fell
+into the sin which shaded his whole life. All the rest was a struggle
+with its consequences,&mdash;sinning more and more to conceal the sin of
+the past. But she believed he never outlived remorse; that he always
+suffered; and that this showed that God had not utterly forsaken him.
+Remorse, she said, always showed moral sensibility, and, while <i>that</i>
+remained, there was always hope.</p>
+
+<p>She now began to speak of her grounds for thinking it might be her duty
+fully to publish this story before she left the world.</p>
+
+<p>First she said that, through the whole course of her life, she had
+felt the eternal value of truth, and seen how dreadful a thing was
+falsehood, and how fearful it was to be an accomplice in it, even by
+silence. Lord Byron had demoralised the moral sense of England, and he
+had done it in a great degree by the sympathy excited by falsehood.
+This had been pleaded in extenuation of all his crimes and vices, and
+led to a lowering of the standard of morals in the literary world. Now
+it was proposed to print cheap editions of his works, and sell them
+among the common people, and interest them in him by the circulation of
+this same story.</p>
+
+<p>She then said in effect, that she believed in retribution and suffering
+in the future life, and that the consequences of sins <i>here</i> follow us
+<i>there</i>; and it was strongly impressed upon her mind that Lord Byron
+must suffer in looking on the evil consequences of what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> he had done in
+this life, and in seeing the further extension of that evil.</p>
+
+<p>'It has sometimes strongly appeared to me,' she said, 'that he cannot
+be at peace until this injustice has been righted. Such is the strong
+feeling that I have when I think of going where he is.'</p>
+
+<p>These things, she said, had led her to inquire whether it might not be
+her duty to make a full and clear disclosure before she left the world.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I did not listen to this story as one who was investigating
+its worth. I received it as truth. And the purpose for which it was
+communicated was not to enable me to prove it to the world, but to ask
+my opinion whether <i>she</i> should show it to the world before leaving
+it. The whole consultation was upon the assumption that she had at her
+command such proofs as could not be questioned.</p>
+
+<p>Concerning what they were I did not minutely inquire: only, in answer
+to a general question, she said that she had letters and documents
+in proof of her story. Knowing Lady Byron's strength of mind, her
+clear-headedness, her accurate habits, and her perfect knowledge of the
+matter, I considered her judgment on this point decisive.</p>
+
+<p>I told her that I would take the subject into consideration, and give
+my opinion in a few days. That night, after my sister and myself had
+retired to our own apartment, I related to her the whole history, and
+we spent the night in talking of it. I was powerfully im<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>pressed with
+the justice and propriety of an immediate disclosure; while she, on the
+contrary, represented the painful consequences that would probably come
+upon Lady Byron from taking such a step.</p>
+
+<p>Before we parted the next day, I requested Lady Byron to give me some
+memoranda of such dates and outlines of the general story as would
+enable me better to keep it in its connection; which she did.</p>
+
+<p>On giving me the paper, Lady Byron requested me to return it to her
+when it had ceased to be of use to me for the purpose indicated.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, a day or two after, I enclosed it to her in a hasty note,
+as I was then leaving London for Paris, and had not yet had time fully
+to consider the subject.</p>
+
+<p>On reviewing my note, I can recall that then the whole history appeared
+to me like one of those singular cases where unnatural impulses to
+vice are the result of a taint of constitutional insanity. This has
+always seemed to me the only way of accounting for instances of
+utterly motiveless and abnormal wickedness and cruelty. These my first
+impressions were expressed in the hasty note written at the time:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="author">
+
+'<span class="smcap">London</span>, Nov. 5, 1856.
+</p>
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">Dearest Friend</span>,&mdash;I return these. They have held mine eyes
+waking! How strange! how unaccountable! Have you ever subjected the
+facts to the judgment of a medical man learned in nervous pathology?</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Is</i> it not insanity?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Great wits to madness nearly are allied,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thin partitions do their bounds divide."<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'But my purpose to-night is not to write you fully what I think of
+this matter. I am going to write to you from Paris more at leisure.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The rest of the letter was taken up in the final details of a
+charity in which Lady Byron had been engaged with me in assisting an
+unfortunate artist. It concludes thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I write now in all haste, <i>en route</i> for Paris. As to America, all
+is not lost yet.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> Farewell! I love you, my dear friend, as never
+before, with an intense feeling I cannot easily express. God bless you!</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'H. B. S.'
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The next letter is as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="author">
+
+'<span class="smcap">Paris</span>, Dec. 17, 1856.
+</p>
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">Dear Lady Byron</span>,&mdash;The Kansas Committee have written me a
+letter desiring me to express to Miss &mdash;&mdash; their gratitude for the
+five pounds she sent them. I am not personally acquainted with her,
+and must return these acknowledgments through you.</p>
+
+<p>'I wrote you a day or two since, enclosing the reply of the Kansas
+Committee to you.</p>
+
+<p>'On <i>that subject</i> on which you spoke to me the last time we were
+together, I have thought often and deeply.</p>
+
+<p>'I have changed my mind somewhat. Considering the peculiar
+circumstances of the case, I could wish that the sacred veil of
+silence, so bravely thrown over the past, should never be withdrawn
+during the time that you remain with us.</p>
+
+<p>'I would say, then, Leave all with some discreet friends, who, after
+<i>both</i> have passed from earth, shall say what was due to <i>justice</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'I am led to think this by seeing how low, how unjust, how unworthy,
+the judgments of this world are; and I would not that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> what I so much
+respect, love, and revere should be placed within reach of its harpy
+claw, which pollutes what it touches.</p>
+
+<p>'The day will yet come which will bring to light every hidden thing.
+"There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that
+shall not be known;" and so <i>justice will not fail</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'Such, my dear friend, are my thoughts; different from what they were
+since first I heard that strange, sad history. Meanwhile, <i>I love you
+ever</i>, whether we meet again on earth or not.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'Affectionately yours,</p>
+
+<p class="author">'H. B. S.'
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The following letter will here be inserted as confirming a part of Lady
+Byron's story:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">To the Editor of 'Macmillan's Magazine.'</span></p>
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">Sir</span>,&mdash;I trust that you will hold me excused from any desire
+to be troublesome, or to rush into print. Both these things are far
+from my wish. But the publication of a book having for its object the
+vindication of Lord Byron's character, and the subsequent appearance
+in your magazine of Mrs. Stowe's article in defence of Lady Byron,
+having led to so much controversy in the various newspapers of the
+day, I feel constrained to put in a few words among the rest.</p>
+
+<p>'My father was intimately acquainted with Lady Byron's family for many
+years, both before and after her marriage; being, in fact, steward to
+Sir Ralph Milbanke at Seaham, where the marriage took place; and, from
+all my recollections of what he told me of the affair (and he used
+often to talk of it, up to the time of his death, eight years ago), I
+fully agree with Mrs. Stowe's view of the case, and desire to add my
+humble testimony to the truth of what she has stated.</p>
+
+<p>'Whilst Byron was staying at Seaham, previous to his marriage, he
+spent most of his time pistol-shooting in the plantations adjoining
+the hall, often making use of his glove as a mark; his servant being
+with him to load for him.</p>
+
+<p>'When all was in readiness for the wedding-ceremony (which took place
+in the drawing-room of the hall), Byron had to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> sought for in the
+grounds, where he was walking in his usual surly mood.</p>
+
+<p>'After the marriage, they posted to Halnaby Lodge in Yorkshire, a
+distance of about forty miles; to which place my father accompanied
+them, and he always spoke strongly of Lady Byron's apparent distress
+during and at the end of the journey.</p>
+
+<p>'The insulting words mentioned by Mrs. Stowe were spoken by Byron
+before leaving the park at Seaham; after which he appeared to sit
+in moody silence, reading a book, for the rest of the journey. At
+Halnaby, a number of persons, tenants and others, were met to cheer
+them on their arrival. Of these he took not the slightest notice, but
+jumped out of the carriage, and walked away, leaving his bride to
+alight by herself. She shook hands with my father, and begged that he
+would see that some refreshment was supplied to those who had thus
+come to welcome them.</p>
+
+<p>'I have in my possession several letters (which I should be glad to
+show to anyone interested in the matter) both from Lady Byron, and her
+mother, Lady Milbanke, to my father, all showing the deep and kind
+interest which they took in the welfare of all connected with them,
+and directing the distribution of various charities, &amp;c. Pensions were
+allowed both to the old servants of the Milbankes and to several poor
+persons in the village and neighbourhood for the rest of their lives;
+and Lady Byron never ceased to take a lively interest in all that
+concerned them.</p>
+
+<p>'I desire to tender my humble thanks to Mrs. Stowe for having
+come forward in defence of one whose character has been much
+misrepresented; and to you, sir, for having published the same in your
+pages.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'I have the honour to be, sir, yours obediently,</p>
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">G. H. Aird</span>.</p>
+<p class="p3">
+'<span class="smcap">Daourty, Northamptonshire</span>, Sept. 29, 1869.'
+</p></div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<p class="ph4">CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY OF EVENTS.</p>
+
+
+<p>I have now fulfilled as conscientiously as possible the requests of
+those who feel that they have a right to know exactly what was said in
+this interview.</p>
+
+<p>It has been my object, in doing this, to place myself just where I
+should stand were I giving evidence under oath before a legal tribunal.
+In my first published account, there were given some smaller details of
+the story, of no particular value to the main purpose of it, which I
+received <i>not</i> from Lady Byron, but from her confidential friend. One
+of these was the account of her seeing Lord Byron's favourite spaniel
+lying at his door, and the other was the scene of the parting.</p>
+
+<p>The first was communicated to me before I ever saw Lady Byron, and
+under these circumstances:&mdash;I was invited to meet her, and had
+expressed my desire to do so, because Lord Byron had been all my life
+an object of great interest to me. I inquired what sort of a person
+Lady Byron was. My friend spoke of her with enthusiasm. I then said,
+'but of course she never <i>loved</i> Lord Byron, or she would not have left
+him.' The lady answered, 'I can show you with what feelings she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> left
+him by relating this story;' and then followed the anecdote.</p>
+
+<p>Subsequently, she also related to me the other story of the
+parting-scene between Lord and Lady Byron. In regard to these two
+incidents, my recollection is clear.</p>
+
+<p>It will be observed by the reader that Lady Byron's conversation with
+me was simply for consultation <i>on one point</i>, and that point whether
+<i>she herself</i> should publish the story before her death. It was not,
+therefore, a complete history of all the events in their order, but
+specimens of a few incidents and facts. Her object was, not to prove
+her story to me, nor to put me in possession of it with a view to <i>my</i>
+proving it, but simply and briefly to show me <i>what it was</i>, that I
+might judge as to the probable results of its publication at that time.</p>
+
+<p>It therefore comprised primarily these points:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1. An exact statement, in so many words, of the crime.</p>
+
+<p>2. A statement of the manner in which it was first forced on her
+attention by Lord Byron's words and actions, including: his admissions
+and defences of it.</p>
+
+<p>3. The admission of a period when she had ascribed his whole conduct to
+insanity.</p>
+
+<p>4. A reference to later positive evidences of guilt,&mdash;the existence of
+a child, and Mrs. Leigh's subsequent repentance.</p>
+
+<p>And here I have a word to say in reference to the alleged inaccuracies
+of my true story.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The dates that Lady Byron gave me on the memoranda did not relate
+either to the time of the first disclosure, or the period when her
+doubts became certainties; nor did her conversation touch either of
+these points: and, on a careful review of the latter, I see clearly
+that it omitted dwelling upon anything which I might be supposed to
+have learned from her already published statement.</p>
+
+<p>I re-enclosed that paper to her from London, and have never seen it
+since.</p>
+
+<p>In writing my account, which I designed to do in the most general
+terms, I took for my guide Miss Martineau's published Memoir of Lady
+Byron, which has long stood uncontradicted before the public, of which
+Macmillan's London edition is now before me. The reader is referred to
+page 316, which reads thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'She was born 1792; married in January 1814; returned to her father's
+house in 1816; died on May 16, 1860.' This makes her married life two
+years; but we need not say that the date is inaccurate, as Lady Byron
+was married in 1815.</p>
+
+<p>Supposing Lady Byron's married life to have covered two years, I
+could only reconcile its continuance for that length of time to her
+uncertainty as to his sanity; to deceptions practised on her, making
+her doubt at one time, and believe at another; and his keeping her in a
+general state of turmoil and confusion, till at last he took the step
+of banishing her.</p>
+
+<p>Various other points taken from Miss Martineau have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> also been attacked
+as inaccuracies; for example, the number of executions in the house:
+but these points, though of no importance, are substantially borne out
+by Moore's statements.</p>
+
+<p>This controversy, unfortunately, cannot be managed with the accuracy of
+a legal trial. Its course, hitherto, has rather resembled the course of
+a drawing-room scandal, where everyone freely throws in an assertion,
+with or without proof. In making out my narrative, however, I shall use
+only certain authentic sources, some of which have for a long time been
+before the public, and some of which have floated up from the waves of
+the recent controversy. I consider as authentic sources,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Moore's Life of Byron;</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron's own account of the separation, published in 1830;</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron's statements to me in 1856;</p>
+
+<p>Lord Lindsay's communication, giving an extract from Lady Anne
+Barnard's diary, and a copy of a letter from Lady Byron dated 1818,
+about three years after her marriage;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mimms' testimony, as given in a daily paper published at
+Newcastle, England;</p>
+
+<p>And Lady Byron's letters, as given recently in the late 'London
+Quarterly.'</p>
+
+<p>All which documents appear to arrange themselves into a connected
+series.</p>
+
+<p>From these, then, let us construct the story.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>According to Mrs. Mimms' account, which is likely to be accurate, the
+time spent by Lord and Lady Byron in bridal-visiting was three weeks at
+Halnaby Hall, and six weeks at Seaham, when Mrs. Mimms quitted their
+service.</p>
+
+<p>During this first period of three weeks, Lord Byron's treatment of his
+wife, as testified to by the servant, was such that she advised her
+young mistress to return to her parents; and, at one time, Lady Byron
+had almost resolved to do so.</p>
+
+<p>What the particulars of his conduct were, the servant refuses to state;
+being bound by a promise of silence to her mistress. She, however,
+testifies to a warm friendship existing between Lady Byron and Mrs.
+Leigh, in a manner which would lead us to feel that Lady Byron received
+and was received by Lord Byron's sister with the greatest affection.
+Lady Byron herself says to Lady Anne Barnard, 'I had heard that he was
+the best of brothers;' and the inference is, that she, at an early
+period of her married life, felt the greatest confidence in his sister,
+and wished to have her with them as much as possible. In Lady Anne's
+account, this wish to have the sister with her was increased by Lady
+Byron's distress at her husband's attempts to corrupt her principles
+with regard to religion and marriage.</p>
+
+<p>In Moore's Life, vol. iii., letter 217, Lord Byron writes from Seaham
+to Moore, under date of March 8, sending a copy of his verses in Lady
+Byron's handwriting, and saying, 'We shall leave this place to-mor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>row,
+and shall stop on our way to town, in the interval of taking a house
+there, at Colonel Leigh's, near Newmarket, where any epistle of yours
+will find its welcome way. I have been very comfortable here, listening
+to that d&mdash;&mdash;d monologue which elderly gentlemen call conversation, in
+which my pious father-in-law repeats himself every evening, save one,
+when he played upon the fiddle. However, they have been vastly kind and
+hospitable, and I like them and the place vastly; and I hope they will
+live many happy months. Bell is in health and unvaried good-humour and
+behaviour; but we are in all the agonies of packing and parting.'</p>
+
+<p>Nine days after this, under date of March 17, Lord Byron says, 'We
+mean to metropolize to-morrow, and you will address your next to
+Piccadilly.' The inference is, that the days intermediate were spent
+at Colonel Leigh's. The next letters, and all subsequent ones for six
+months, are dated from Piccadilly.</p>
+
+<p>As we have shown, there is every reason to believe that a warm
+friendship had thus arisen between Mrs. Leigh and Lady Byron, and that,
+during all this time, Lady Byron desired as much of the society of her
+sister-in-law as possible. She was a married woman and a mother, her
+husband's nearest relative; and Lady Byron could with more propriety
+ask, from her, counsel or aid in respect to his peculiarities than she
+could from her own parents. If we consider the character of Lady Byron
+as given by Mrs. Mimms,&mdash;that of a young person of warm but repressed
+feeling, without sister or brother,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> longing for human sympathy,
+and having so far found no relief but in talking with a faithful
+dependant,&mdash;we may easily see that the acquisition of a sister through
+Lord Byron might have been all in all to her, and that the feelings
+which he checked and rejected for himself might have flowed out towards
+his sister with enthusiasm. The date of Mrs. Leigh's visit does not
+appear.</p>
+
+<p>The first domestic indication in Lord Byron's letters from London is
+the announcement of the death of Lady Byron's uncle, Lord Wentworth,
+from whom came large expectations of property. Lord Byron had mentioned
+him before in his letters as so kind to Bell and himself that he
+could not find it in his heart to wish him in heaven if he preferred
+staying here. In his letter of April 23, he mentions going to the play
+immediately after hearing this news, 'although,' as he says, 'he ought
+to have stayed at home in sackcloth for "unc."'</p>
+
+<p>On June 12, he writes that Lady Byron is more than three months
+advanced in her progress towards maternity; and that they have been out
+very little, as he wishes to keep her quiet. We are informed by Moore
+that Lord Byron was at this time a member of the Drury-Lane Theatre
+Committee; and that, in this unlucky connection, one of the fatalities
+of the first year of trial as a husband lay. From the strain of Byron's
+letters, as given in Moore, it is apparent, that, while he thinks it
+best for his wife to remain at home, he does not propose to share the
+retirement, but prefers running his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> own separate career with such
+persons as thronged the greenroom of the theatre in those days.</p>
+
+<p>In commenting on Lord Byron's course, we must not by any means be
+supposed to indicate that he was doing any more or worse than most gay
+young men of his time. The licence of the day as to getting drunk at
+dinner-parties, and leading, generally, what would, in these days, be
+called a disorderly life, was great. We should infer that none of the
+literary men of Byron's time would have been ashamed of being drunk
+occasionally. The Noctes Ambrosianæ Club of 'Blackwood' is full of
+songs glorying, in the broadest terms, in out-and-out drunkenness, and
+inviting to it as the highest condition of a civilised being.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p>
+
+<p>But drunkenness upon Lord Byron had a peculiar and specific effect,
+which he notices afterwards, in his Journal, at Venice: 'The effect
+of all wines and spirits upon me is, however, strange. It settles,
+but makes me gloomy&mdash;gloomy at the very moment of their effect: it
+composes, however, though <i>sullenly</i>.'<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> And, again, in another
+place, he says, 'Wine and spirits make me sullen, and savage to
+ferocity.' </p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is well known that the effects of alcoholic excitement are various
+as the natures of the subjects. But by far the worst effects, and the
+most destructive to domestic peace, are those that occur in cases where
+spirits, instead of acting on the nerves of motion, and depriving
+the subject of power in that direction, stimulate the brain so as to
+produce there the ferocity, the steadiness, the utter deadness to
+compassion or conscience, which characterise a madman. How fearful
+to a sensitive young mother in the period of pregnancy might be the
+return of such a madman to the domestic roof! Nor can we account for
+those scenes described in Lady Anne Barnard's letters, where Lord Byron
+returned from his evening parties to try torturing experiments on his
+wife, otherwise than by his own statement, that spirits, while they
+<i>steadied</i> him, made him 'gloomy, and savage to ferocity.'</p>
+
+<p>Take for example this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'One night, coming home from one of his lawless parties, he saw me
+(Lady B.) so indignantly collected, and bearing all with such a
+determined calmness, that a rush of remorse seemed to come over him.
+He called himself a monster, and, though his sister was present, threw
+himself in agony at my feet. "I could not, no, I could not, forgive
+him such injuries! He had lost me for ever!" Astonished at this return
+to virtue, my tears, I believe, flowed over his face; and I said,
+"Byron, all is forgotten; <i>never</i>, never shall you hear of it more."</p>
+
+<p>'He started up, and folding his arms while he looked at me, burst
+out into laughter. "What do you mean?" said I. "Only a philosophical
+experiment; that's all," said he. "I wished to ascertain the value of
+your resolutions."'</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To ascribe such deliberate cruelty as this to the effect of drink upon
+Lord Byron, is the most charitable construction that can be put upon
+his conduct.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the manners of the period were such, that Lord Byron must have
+often come to this condition while only doing what many of his
+acquaintances did freely, and without fear of consequences.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Moore, with his usual artlessness, gives us an idea of a private
+supper between himself and Lord Byron. We give it, with our own
+italics, as a specimen of many others:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'Having taken upon me to order the repast, and knowing that Lord Byron
+for the last two days had done nothing towards sustenance beyond
+eating a few biscuits and (to appease appetite) chewing mastic, I
+desired that we should have a good supply of at least two kinds of
+fish. My companion, however, confined himself to lobsters; and of
+these finished two or three, to his own share, interposing, sometimes,
+a small liqueur-glass of strong white brandy, sometimes a tumbler of
+very hot water, and then pure brandy again, to the amount of near half
+a dozen small glasses of the latter, without which, alternately with
+the hot water, he appeared to think the lobster could not be digested.
+After this, we had claret, of which, having despatched two bottles
+between us, at about four o'clock in the morning we parted.</p>
+
+<p>'As Pope has thought his "delicious lobster-nights" worth
+commemorating, these particulars of one in which Lord Byron was
+concerned may also have some interest.</p>
+
+<p>'Among <i>other nights of the same description which I had the happiness
+of passing with him</i>, I remember once, in returning home from some
+assembly at rather a late hour, we saw lights in the windows of his
+old haunt, Stevens's in Bond Street, and agreed to stop there and
+sup. On entering, we found an old friend of his, Sir G&mdash;&mdash; W&mdash;&mdash;, who
+joined our party; and, the <i>lobsters and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> brandy and water being put
+in requisition, it was (as usual on such occasions) broad daylight
+before we separated</i>.'&mdash;Vol. iii. p. 83.</p></div>
+
+<p>During the latter part of Lady Byron's pregnancy, it appears from Moore
+that Byron was, night after night, engaged out at dinner parties,
+in which getting drunk was considered as of course the <i>finale</i>, as
+appears from the following letters:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">(<span class="smcap">Letter 228.</span>)</p>
+
+<p class="ph3">TO MR. MOORE.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="author">
+
+<span class="smcap">Terrace, Piccadilly</span>, Oct. 31, 1815.
+</p>
+
+<p>'I have not been able to ascertain precisely the time of duration of
+the stock-market; but I believe it is a good time for selling out, and
+I hope so. First, because I shall see you; and, next, because I shall
+receive certain moneys on behalf of Lady B., the which will materially
+conduce to my comfort; I wanting (as the duns say) "to make up a sum."</p>
+
+<p>'Yesterday I dined out with a large-ish party, where were Sheridan
+and Colman, Harry Harris, of C. G., and his brother, Sir Gilbert
+Heathcote, Ds. Kinnaird, and others of note and notoriety. <i>Like
+other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then
+argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible,<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> then
+altogethery, then inarticulate, and then drunk.</i> When we had reached
+the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down
+again without stumbling; and, to crown all, Kinnaird and I had
+to conduct Sheridan down a d&mdash;&mdash;d corkscrew staircase, which had
+certainly been constructed before the discovery of fermented liquors,
+and to which no legs, however crooked, could possibly accommodate
+themselves. We deposited him safe at home, where his man, <i>evidently
+used to the business</i>,<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> waited to receive him in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>'Both he and Colman were, as usual, very good; but I carried away much
+wine, and the wine had previously carried away my memory: so that
+all was hiccough and happiness for the last hour<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> or so, and I am
+not impregnated with any of the conversation. Perhaps you heard of a
+late answer of Sheridan to the watchman who found him bereft of that
+"divine particle of air" called reason.... He (the watchman) found
+Sherry in the street fuddled and bewildered, and almost insensible.
+"Who are <i>you</i>, sir?"&mdash;No answer. "What's your name?"&mdash;A hiccough.
+"What's your name?"&mdash;Answer, in a slow, deliberate, and impassive
+tone, "Wilberforce!" Is not that Sherry all over?&mdash;and, to my mind,
+excellent. Poor fellow, <i>his</i> very dregs are better than the "first
+sprightly runnings" of others.</p>
+
+<p>'My paper is full, and I have a grievous headache.</p>
+
+<p>'P.S.&mdash;Lady B. is in full progress. Next month will bring to light
+(with the aid of "Juno Lucina, <i>fer opem</i>," or rather <i>opes</i>, for the
+last are most wanted) the tenth wonder of the world; Gil Blas being
+the eighth, and he (my son's father) the ninth.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Here we have a picture of the whole story,&mdash;Lady Byron within a month
+of her confinement; her money being used to settle debts; her husband
+out at a dinner-party, going through the <i>usual course</i> of such
+parties, able to keep his legs and help Sheridan downstairs, and going
+home 'gloomy, and savage to ferocity,' to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Four days after this (letter 229), we find that this dinner-party is
+not an exceptional one, but one of a series: for he says, 'To-day I
+dine with Kinnaird,&mdash;we are to have Sheridan and Colman again; and
+to-morrow, once more, at Sir Gilbert Heathcote's.'</p>
+
+<p>Afterward, in Venice, he reviews the state of his health, at this
+period in London; and his account shows that his excesses in the
+vices of his times had wrought effects on his sensitive, nervous
+organisation, very dif<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>ferent from what they might on the more
+phlegmatic constitutions of ordinary Englishmen. In his journal, dated
+Venice, Feb. 2, 1821, he says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I have been considering what can be the reason why I always wake at
+a certain hour in the morning, and always in very bad spirits,&mdash;I may
+say, in actual despair and despondency, in all respects, even of that
+which pleased me over night. In about an hour or two this goes off,
+and I compose either to sleep again, or at least to quiet. In England,
+five years ago, I had the same kind of hypochondria, but accompanied
+with so violent a thirst, that I have drunk as many as fifteen bottles
+of soda-water in one night, after going to bed, and been still
+thirsty,&mdash;calculating, however, some lost from the bursting-out and
+effervescence and overflowing of the soda-water in drawing the corks,
+or striking off the necks of the bottles from mere thirsty impatience.
+At present, I have <i>not</i> the thirst; but the depression of spirits is
+no less violent.'&mdash;Vol. v. p. 96.</p></div>
+
+<p>These extracts go to show what <i>must</i> have been the condition of the
+man whom Lady Byron was called to receive at the intervals when he
+came back from his various social excitements and pleasures. That his
+nerves were exacerbated by violent extremes of abstinence and reckless
+indulgence; that he was often day after day drunk, and that drunkenness
+made him savage and ferocious,&mdash;such are the facts clearly shown by Mr.
+Moore's narrative. Of the natural peculiarities of Lord Byron's temper,
+he thus speaks to the Countess of Blessington:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I often think that I inherit my violence and bad temper from my poor
+mother,&mdash;not that my father, from all I could ever learn, had a much
+better; so that it is no wonder I have such a very bad one. As long
+as I can remember anything, I recollect being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> subject to violent
+paroxysms of rage, so disproportioned to the cause as to surprise me
+when they were over; and this still continues. I cannot coolly view
+any thing which excites my feelings; and, once the lurking devil in
+me is roused, I lose all command of myself. I do not recover a good
+fit of rage for days after. Mind, I do not by this mean that the
+ill humour continues, as, on the contrary, that quickly subsides,
+exhausted by its own violence; but it shakes me terribly, and leaves
+me low and nervous after.'&mdash;<i>Lady Blessington's Conversations</i>, p. 142.</p></div>
+
+<p>That during this time also his irritation and ill temper were increased
+by the mortification of duns, debts, and executions, is on the face of
+Moore's story. Moore himself relates one incident, which gives some
+idea of the many which may have occurred at these times, in a note
+on p. 215, vol. iv., where he speaks of Lord Byron's destroying a
+favourite old watch that had been his companion from boyhood, and gone
+with him to Greece. 'In a fit of vexation and rage, brought upon him by
+some of these humiliating embarrassments, to which he was now almost
+daily a prey, he furiously dashed this watch on the hearth, and ground
+it to pieces with the poker among the ashes.'</p>
+
+<p>It is no wonder, that, with a man of this kind to manage, Lady Byron
+should have clung to the only female companionship she could dare to
+trust in the case, and earnestly desired to retain with her the sister,
+who seemed, more than herself, to have influence over him.</p>
+
+<p>The first letter given by 'The Quarterly,' from Lady Byron to Mrs.
+Leigh, without a date, evidently belongs to this period, when the
+sister's society presented itself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> as a refuge in her approaching
+confinement. Mrs. Leigh speaks of leaving. The young wife conscious
+that the house presents no attractions, and that soon she herself shall
+be laid by, cannot urge Mrs. Leigh's stay as likely to give her any
+pleasure, but only as a comfort to herself.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'You will think me very foolish; but I have tried two or three times,
+and cannot <i>talk</i> to you of your departure with a decent visage: so
+let me say one word in this way to spare my philosophy. With the
+expectations which I have, I never will nor can ask you to stay one
+moment longer than you are inclined to do. It would [be] the worst
+return for all I ever received from you. But in this at least I <i>am</i>
+"truth itself," when I say, that whatever the situation may be, there
+is no one whose society is dearer to me, or can contribute more to my
+happiness. These feelings will not change under any circumstances,
+and I should be grieved if you did not understand them. Should you
+hereafter condemn me, I shall not love you less. I will say no more.
+Judge for yourself about going or staying. I wish you to consider
+<i>yourself</i>, if you could be wise enough to do that, for the first time
+in your life.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'Thine,</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'A. I. B.'</p>
+
+<p class="p3">
+Addressed on the cover, 'To The Hon. Mrs. Leigh.'
+</p></div>
+
+<p>This letter not being dated, we have no clue but what we obtain from
+its own internal evidence. It certainly is not written in Lady Byron's
+usual clear and elegant style; and is, in this respect, in striking
+contrast to all her letters that I have ever seen.</p>
+
+<p>But the notes written by a young woman under such peculiar and
+distressing circumstances must not be judged by the standard of calmer
+hours.</p>
+
+<p>Subsequently to this letter, and during that stormy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> irrational period
+when Lord Byron's conduct became daily more and more unaccountable, may
+have come that startling scene in which Lord Byron took every pains to
+convince his wife of improper relations subsisting between himself and
+his sister.</p>
+
+<p>What an <i>utter</i> desolation this must have been to the wife, tearing
+from her the last hold of friendship, and the last refuge to which she
+had clung in her sorrows, may easily be conceived.</p>
+
+<p>In this crisis, it appears that the <i>sister</i> convinced Lady Byron that
+the whole was to be attributed to insanity. It would be a conviction
+gladly accepted, and bringing infinite relief, although still
+surrounding her path with fearful difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>That such was the case is plainly asserted by Lady Byron in her
+statement published in 1830. Speaking of her separation, Lady Byron
+says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'The facts are, I left London for Kirkby Mallory, the residence of
+my father and mother, on the 15th of January, 1816. Lord Byron had
+signified to me in writing, Jan. 6, his <i>absolute desire</i> that I
+should leave London on the earliest day that I could conveniently fix.
+It was not safe for me to encounter the fatigues of a journey sooner
+than the 15th. <i>Previously to my departure, it had been strongly
+impressed on my mind that Lord Byron was under the influence of
+insanity.</i></p>
+
+<p>'This opinion was in a great measure derived from the communications
+made to me by his <i>nearest relatives</i> and personal attendant.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Now there was no nearer relative than Mrs. Leigh; and the personal
+attendant was Fletcher. It was there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>fore presumably Mrs. Leigh who
+convinced Lady Byron of her husband's insanity.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron says, 'It was even represented to me that he was in danger
+of destroying himself.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>With the concurrence</i> of his family, I had consulted with Dr.
+Baillie, as a friend, on Jan. 8, as to his supposed malady.' Now, Lord
+Byron's written order for her to leave came on Jan. 6. It appears,
+then, that Lady Byron, acting in concurrence with Mrs. Leigh and
+others of her husband's family, consulted Dr. Baillie, on Jan. 8, as
+to what she should do; the symptoms presented to Dr. Baillie being,
+evidently, insane hatred of his wife on the part of Lord Byron, and a
+determination to get her out of the house. Lady Byron goes on:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'On acquainting him with the state of the case, and with Lord
+Byron's desire that I should leave London, Dr. Baillie thought my
+absence might be advisable as an experiment, <i>assuming</i> the fact of
+mental derangement; for Dr. Baillie, not having had access to Lord
+Byron, could not pronounce an opinion on that point. He enjoined,
+that, in correspondence with Lord Byron, I should avoid all but
+light and soothing topics. Under these impressions, I left London,
+determined to follow the advice given me by Dr. Baillie. Whatever
+might have been the nature of Lord Byron's treatment of me from the
+time of my marriage, yet, supposing him to have been in a state of
+mental alienation, it was not for <i>me</i>, nor for any person of common
+humanity, to manifest at that moment a sense of injury.'</p></div>
+
+<p>It appears, then, that the domestic situation in Byron's house at the
+time of his wife's expulsion was one so grave as to call for family
+counsel; for Lady<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> Byron, generally accurate, speaks in the plural
+number. 'His <i>nearest</i> relatives' certainly includes Mrs. Leigh. 'His
+family' includes more. That some of Lord Byron's own relatives were
+cognisant of facts at this time, and that they took Lady Byron's side,
+is shown by one of his own chance admissions. In vol. vi. p. 394, in a
+letter on Bowles, he says, speaking of this time, '<i>All my relations</i>,
+save one, fell from me like leaves from a tree in autumn.' And in
+Medwin's Conversations he says, 'Even my cousin George Byron, who had
+been brought up with me, and whom I loved as a brother, took my wife's
+part.' The conduct must have been marked in the extreme that led to
+this result.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot help stopping here to say that Lady Byron's situation at
+this time has been discussed in our days with a want of ordinary human
+feeling that is surprising. Let any father and mother, reading this,
+look on their own daughter, and try to make the case their own.</p>
+
+<p>After a few short months of married life,&mdash;months full of patient
+endurance of the strangest and most unaccountable treatment,&mdash;she comes
+to them, expelled from her husband's house, an object of hatred and
+aversion to him, and having to settle for herself the awful question,
+whether he is a dangerous madman or a determined villain.</p>
+
+<p>Such was this young wife's situation.</p>
+
+<p>With a heart at times wrung with compassion for her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> husband as a
+helpless maniac, and fearful that all may end in suicide, yet compelled
+to leave him, she writes on the road the much-quoted letter, beginning
+'Dear Duck.' This is an exaggerated and unnatural letter, it is
+true, but of precisely the character that might be expected from an
+inexperienced young wife when dealing with a husband supposed to be
+insane.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, she addressed to Augusta this letter:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><span class="smcap">'My dearest A.</span>,&mdash;It is my great comfort that <i>you</i> are still
+in Piccadilly.'</p></div>
+
+<p>And again, on the 23rd:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">Dearest A.</span>,&mdash;I know you feel for me, as 1 do for you; and
+perhaps I am better understood than I think. You have been, ever since
+I knew you, my best comforter; and will so remain, unless you grow
+tired of the office,&mdash;which may well be.'</p></div>
+
+<p>We can see here how self-denying and heroic appears to Lady Byron the
+conduct of the sister, who patiently remains to soothe and guide and
+restrain the moody madman, whose madness takes a form, at times, so
+repulsive to every womanly feeling. She intimates that she should not
+wonder should Augusta grow weary of the office.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron continues her statement thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'When I arrived at Kirkby Mallory, my parents were unacquainted
+with the existence of any causes likely to destroy my prospects of
+happiness; and, when I communicated to them the opinion that had been
+formed concerning Lord Byron's state of mind, they were most anxious
+to promote his restoration by every means in their power. They assured
+those relations that were with him in London that "they would devote
+their whole care and attention to the alleviation of his malady."'</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Here we have a <i>quotation</i><a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> from a letter written by Lady Milbanke
+to the anxious 'relations' who are taking counsel about Lord Byron in
+town. Lady Byron also adds, in justification of her mother from Lord
+Byron's slanders, 'She had always treated him with an affectionate
+consideration and indulgence, which extended to every little
+peculiarity of his feelings. Never did an irritating word escape her
+lips in her whole intercourse with him.'</p>
+
+<p>Now comes a remarkable part of Lady Byron's statement:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'The accounts given me after I left Lord Byron, by those in constant
+intercourse with him,<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> <i>added</i> to those doubts which had before
+transiently occurred to my mind as to the reality of the alleged
+disease; and the reports of his medical attendants were far from
+establishing anything like lunacy.'</p></div>
+
+<p>When these doubts arose in her mind, it is not natural to suppose
+that they should, at first, involve Mrs. Leigh. She still appears to
+Lady Byron as the devoted, believ<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>ing sister, fully convinced of her
+brother's insanity, and endeavouring to restrain and control him.</p>
+
+<p>But if Lord Byron were sane, if the purposes he had avowed to his wife
+were real, he must have lied about his sister in the past, and perhaps
+have the worst intentions for the future.</p>
+
+<p>The horrors of that state of vacillation between the conviction of
+insanity and the commencing conviction of something worse can scarcely
+be told.</p>
+
+<p>At all events, the wife's doubts extend so far that she speaks out to
+her parents. '<span class="smcap">Under this uncertainty</span>,' says the statement,
+'I deemed it right to communicate to my parents, that, if I were to
+consider Lord Byron's past conduct as that of a person of sound mind,
+<i>nothing could induce me to return to him</i>. It therefore appeared
+expedient, both to them and to myself, to consult the ablest advisers.
+For that object, and also to obtain still further information
+respecting appearances which indicated mental derangement, my mother
+determined to go to London. She was empowered by me to take legal
+opinion on a written statement of mine; though I then had reasons for
+reserving a <i>part of the case from the knowledge even of my father and
+mother</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>It is during this time of uncertainty that the next letter to Mrs.
+Leigh may be placed. It seems to be rather a fragment of a letter
+than a whole one: perhaps it is an extract; in which case it would be
+desirable, if possible, to view it in connection with the remaining
+text:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="author">
+
+'Jan. 25, 1816.
+</p>
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">My dearest Augusta</span>,&mdash;Shall I still be your sister? I must
+resign my right to be so considered; but I don't think that will make
+any difference in the kindness I have so uniformly experienced from
+you.'</p></div>
+
+<p>This fragment is not signed, nor finished in any way, but indicates
+that the writer is about to take a decisive step.</p>
+
+<p>On the 17th, as we have seen, Lady Milbanke had written, inviting
+Lord Byron. Subsequently she went to London to make more particular
+inquiries into his state. This fragment seems part of a letter from
+Lady Byron, called forth in view of some evidence resulting from her
+mother's observations.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a></p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron now adds:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'Being convinced by the result of these inquiries, and by the tenour
+of Lord Byron's proceedings, that the notion of insanity was an
+illusion, I no longer hesitated to authorize such measures as were
+necessary in order to secure me from ever being again placed in his
+power.</p>
+
+<p>'Conformably with this resolution, my father wrote to him, on the 2nd
+of February, to request an amicable separation.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The following letter to Mrs. Leigh is dated the day after this
+application, and is in many respects a noticeable one:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="author">
+
+'<span class="smcap">Kirkby Mallory</span>, Feb. 3, 1816.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">My dearest Augusta</span>,&mdash;You are desired by your brother to ask
+if my father has acted with my concurrence in proposing a separation.
+He has. It cannot be supposed, that, in my present<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> distressing
+situation, I am capable of stating in a detailed manner the reasons
+which will not only justify this measure, but compel me to take it;
+and it never can be my wish to remember <i>unnecessarily</i> [<i>sic</i>]
+those injuries for which, however deep, I feel no resentment. I will
+now only recall to Lord Byron's mind his avowed and insurmountable
+aversion to the married state, and the desire and determination
+he has expressed ever since its commencement to free himself from
+that bondage, as finding it quite insupportable, though candidly
+acknowledging that no effort of duty or affection has been wanting on
+my part. He has too painfully convinced me that all these attempts
+to contribute towards his happiness were wholly useless, and most
+unwelcome to him. I enclose this letter to my father, wishing it to
+receive his sanction.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'Ever yours most affectionately,</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">A. I. Byron</span>.'
+</p></div>
+
+<p>We observe in this letter that it is written to <i>be shown</i> to Lady
+Byron's father, and receive his sanction; and, as that father was
+in ignorance of all the deeper causes of trouble in the case, it
+will be seen that the letter must necessarily be a reserved one.
+This sufficiently accounts for the guarded character of the language
+when speaking of the causes of separation. One part of the letter
+incidentally overthrows Lord Byron's statement, which he always
+repeated during his life, and which is repeated for him now; namely,
+that his wife <i>forsook</i> him, instead of being, as she claims,
+<i>expelled</i> by him.</p>
+
+<p>She recalls to Lord Byron's mind the 'desire and <i>determination</i> he has
+expressed ever since his marriage to free himself from its bondage.'</p>
+
+<p>This is in perfect keeping with the '<i>absolute</i> desire,' signified
+by writing, that she should leave his house on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> the earliest day
+possible; and she places the cause of the separation on his having 'too
+painfully' convinced her that he does not want her&mdash;as a wife.</p>
+
+<p>It appears that Augusta hesitates to show this note to her brother. It
+is bringing on a crisis which she, above all others, would most wish to
+avoid.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, Lady Byron receives a letter from Lord Byron, which
+makes her feel it more than ever essential to make the decision final.
+I have reason to believe that this letter is preserved in Lady Byron's
+papers:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="author">
+
+'Feb. 4, 1816.
+</p>
+
+<p>'I hope, my dear A., that you would on no account withhold from your
+brother the letter which I sent yesterday in answer to yours written
+by his desire, particularly as one which I have received from himself
+to-day renders it still more important that he should know the
+contents of that addressed to you, I am, in haste and not very well,</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'Yours most affectionately,</p>
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">A. I. Byron</span>.'
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The last of this series of letters is less like the style of Lady Byron
+than any of them. We cannot judge whether it is a whole consecutive
+letter, or fragments from a letter, selected and united. There is a
+great want of that clearness and precision which usually characterised
+Lady Byron's style. It shows, however, that the decision is made,&mdash;a
+decision which she regrets on account of the sister who has tried so
+long to prevent it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="author">
+
+'<span class="smcap">Kirkby Mallory</span>, Feb. 14, 1816.
+</p>
+
+<p>'The present sufferings of all may yet be repaid in blessings. Do
+not despair absolutely, dearest; and leave me but enough of your
+interest to afford you any consolation by partaking of that sorrow
+which I am most unhappy to cause thus unintentionally. <i>You will</i> be
+of my opinion hereafter; and at present your bitterest reproach would
+be forgiven, though Heaven knows you have considered me more than a
+thousand would have done,&mdash;more than anything but my affection for
+B., one most dear to you, could deserve. I must not remember these
+feelings. Farewell! God bless you from the bottom of my heart!</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'A. I. B.'
+</p></div>
+
+<p>We are here to consider that Mrs. Leigh has stood to Lady Byron in
+all this long agony as her only confidante and friend; that she has
+denied the charges her brother has made, and referred them to insanity,
+admitting insane <i>attempts</i> upon herself which she has been obliged to
+watch over and control.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron has come to the conclusion that Augusta is mistaken as to
+insanity; that there is a real wicked <i>purpose</i> and desire on the part
+of the brother, not as yet believed in by the sister. She regards the
+sister as one, who, though deceived and blinded, is still worthy of
+confidence and consideration; and so says to her, '<i>You will be of my
+opinion hereafter</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>She says, 'You have considered me more than a thousand would have
+done.' Mrs. Leigh is, in Lady Byron's eyes, a most abused and innocent
+woman, who, to spare her sister in her delicate situation, has taken on
+herself the whole charge of a maniacal brother, although suffering from
+him language and actions of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> most injurious kind. That Mrs. Leigh
+did not flee the house at once under such circumstances, and wholly
+decline the management of the case, seems to Lady Byron consideration
+and self-sacrifice greater than she can acknowledge.</p>
+
+<p>The knowledge of the <i>whole extent of the truth</i> came to Lady Byron's
+mind at a later period.</p>
+
+<p>We now take up the history from Lushington's letter to Lady Byron,
+published at the close of her statement.</p>
+
+<p>The application to Lord Byron for an act of separation was positively
+refused at first; it being an important part of his policy that all the
+responsibility and insistance should come from his wife, and that he
+should appear forced into it contrary to his will.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Lushington, however, says to Lady Byron,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I was originally consulted by Lady Noel on your behalf while you
+were in the country. The circumstances detailed by her were such
+as justified a separation; but they were not of that aggravated
+description as to render such a measure indispensable. On Lady
+Noel's representations, I deemed a reconciliation with Lord Byron
+practicable, and felt most sincerely a wish to aid in effecting it.
+There was not, on Lady Noel's part, any exaggeration of the facts,
+nor, so far as I could perceive, any determination to prevent a
+return to Lord Byron: certainly none was expressed when I spoke of a
+reconciliation.'</p></div>
+
+<p>In this crisis, with Lord Byron refusing the separation, with
+Lushington expressing a wish to aid in a reconciliation, and Lady Noel
+not expressing any aversion to it, the whole strain of the dreadful
+responsibility comes upon the wife.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She resolves to ask counsel of her lawyer, in view of a statement of
+the <i>whole</i> case.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron is spoken of by Lord Byron (letter 233) as being in town
+with her father on the 29th of February; viz., fifteen days after the
+date of the last letter to Mrs. Leigh. It must have been about this
+time, then, that she laid her whole case before Lushington; and he gave
+it a thorough examination.</p>
+
+<p>The result was, that Lushington expressed in the most decided terms his
+conviction that reconciliation was impossible. The language he uses is
+very striking:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'When you came to town in about a fortnight, or perhaps more, after my
+first interview with Lady Noel, I was, for the first time, informed
+by you of facts utterly unknown, as I have no doubt, to Sir Ralph and
+Lady Noel. On receiving this additional information, my opinion was
+entirely changed. I considered a reconciliation impossible. I declared
+my opinion, and added, that, if such an idea should be entertained, I
+could not, either professionally or otherwise, take any part towards
+effecting it.'</p></div>
+
+<p>It does not appear in this note what effect the lawyer's examination
+of the case had on Lady Byron's mind. By the expressions he uses, we
+should infer that she may still have been hesitating as to whether a
+reconciliation might not be her duty.</p>
+
+<p>This hesitancy he does away with most decisively, saying, 'A
+reconciliation is impossible;' and, supposing Lady Byron or her
+friends desirous of one, he declares positively that he cannot, either
+professionally as a lawyer or privately as a friend, have anything to
+do with effecting it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The lawyer, it appears, has drawn, from the facts of the case,
+inferences deeper and stronger than those which presented themselves to
+the mind of the young woman; and he instructs her in the most absolute
+terms.</p>
+
+<p>Fourteen years after, in 1830, for the first time the world was
+astonished by this declaration from Dr. Lushington, in language so
+pronounced and positive that there could be no mistake.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron had stood all these fourteen years slandered by her husband,
+and misunderstood by his friends, when, had she so chosen, this opinion
+of Dr. Lushington's could have been at once made public, which fully
+justified her conduct.</p>
+
+<p>If, as the 'Blackwood' of July insinuates, the story told to Lushington
+was a malignant slander, meant to injure Lord Byron, why did she
+suppress the judgment of her counsel at a time when all the world
+was on her side, and this decision would have been the decisive blow
+against her husband? Why, by sealing the lips of counsel, and of all
+whom she could influence, did she deprive herself finally of the very
+advantage for which it has been assumed she fabricated the story?</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<p class="ph4">THE CHARACTER OF THE TWO WITNESSES COMPARED.</p>
+
+
+<p>It will be observed, that, in this controversy, we are confronting two
+opposing stories,&mdash;one of Lord and the other of Lady Byron; and the
+statements from each are in point-blank contradiction.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron states that his wife deserted him. Lady Byron states that he
+expelled her, and reminds him, in her letter to Augusta Leigh, that the
+expulsion was a deliberate one, and that he had purposed it from the
+beginning of their marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron always stated that he was ignorant why his wife left him,
+and was desirous of her return. Lady Byron states that he told her that
+he would force her to leave him, and to leave him in such a way that
+the whole blame of the separation should always rest on her, and not on
+him.</p>
+
+<p>To say nothing of any deeper or darker accusations on either side,
+here, in the very outworks of the story, the two meet point-blank.</p>
+
+<p>In considering two opposing stories, we always, as a matter of fact,
+take into account the character of the witnesses.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If a person be literal and exact in his usual modes of speech,
+reserved, careful, conscientious, and in the habit of observing
+minutely the minor details of time, place, and circumstances, we give
+weight to his testimony from these considerations. But if a person
+be proved to have singular and exceptional principles with regard to
+truth; if he be universally held by society to be so in the habit of
+mystification, that large allowances must be made for his statements;
+if his assertions at one time contradict those made at another; and if
+his statements, also, sometimes come in collision with those of his
+best friends, so that, when his language is reported, difficulties
+follow, and explanations are made necessary,&mdash;all this certainly
+disqualifies him from being considered a trustworthy witness.</p>
+
+<p>All these disqualifications belong in a remarkable degree to Lord
+Byron, on the oft-repeated testimony of his best friends.</p>
+
+<p>We shall first cite the following testimony, given in an article from
+'Under the Crown,' which is written by an early friend and ardent
+admirer of Lord Byron:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'Byron had one pre-eminent fault,&mdash;a fault which must be considered as
+deeply criminal by everyone who does not, as I do, believe it to have
+resulted from monomania. He had a morbid love of a bad reputation.
+There was hardly an offence of which he would not, with perfect
+indifference, accuse himself. An old schoolfellow who met him on the
+Continent told me that he would continually write paragraphs against
+himself in the foreign journals, and delight in their republication
+by the English newspapers as in the success of a practical joke.
+Whenever anybody has related anything discreditable of Byron, assuring
+me that it must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> be true, for he heard it from himself, I always felt
+that he could not have spoken upon worse authority; and that, in all
+probability, the tale was a pure invention. If I could remember,
+and were willing to repeat, the various misdoings which I have from
+time to time heard him attribute to himself, I could fill a volume.
+But I never believed them. I very soon became aware of this strange
+idiosyncrasy: it puzzled me to account for it; but there it was, a
+sort of diseased and distorted vanity. The same eccentric spirit
+would induce him to report things which were false with regard to his
+family, which anybody else would have concealed, though true. He told
+me more than once that his father was insane, and killed himself. I
+shall never forget the manner in which he first told me this. While
+washing his hands, and singing a gay Neapolitan air, he stopped,
+looked round at me, and said, "There always was madness in the
+family." Then, after continuing his washing and his song, he added, as
+if speaking of a matter of the slightest indifference, "My father cut
+his throat." The contrast between the tenour of the subject and the
+levity of the expression was fearfully painful: it was like a stanza
+of "Don Juan." In this instance, I had no doubt that the fact was as
+he related it; but in speaking of it, only a few years since, to an
+old lady in whom I had perfect confidence, she assured me that it was
+not so. Mr. Byron, who was her cousin, had been extremely wild, but
+was quite sane, and had died very quietly in his bed. What Byron's
+reason could have been for thus calumniating not only himself but
+the blood which was flowing in his veins, who can divine? But, for
+some reason or other, it seemed to be his determined purpose to keep
+himself unknown to the great body of his fellow-creatures; to present
+himself to their view in moral masquerade.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Certainly the character of Lord Byron here given by his friend is
+not the kind to make him a trustworthy witness in any case: on the
+contrary, it seems to show either a subtle delight in falsehood for
+falsehood's sake, or else the wary artifices of a man who, having a
+deadly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> secret to conceal, employs many turnings and windings to throw
+the world off the scent. What intriguer, having a crime to cover, could
+devise a more artful course than to send half a dozen absurd stories to
+the press, which should, after a while, be traced back to himself, till
+the public should gradually look on all it heard from him as the result
+of this eccentric humour?</p>
+
+<p>The easy, trifling air with which Lord Byron made to this friend a
+false statement in regard to his father would lead naturally to the
+inquiry, on what <i>other</i> subjects, equally important to the good name
+of others, he might give false testimony with equal indifference.</p>
+
+<p>When Medwin's 'Conversations with Lord Byron' were first published,
+they contained a number of declarations of the noble lord affecting the
+honour and honesty of his friend and publisher Murray. These appear
+to have been made in the same way as those about his father, and with
+equal indifference. So serious were the charges, that Mr. Murray's
+friends felt that he ought, in justice to himself, to come forward and
+confront them with the facts as stated in Byron's letters to himself;
+and in vol. x., p. 143, of Murray's standard edition, accordingly
+these false statements are confronted with the letters of Lord Byron.
+The statements, as reported, are of a most material and vital nature,
+relating to Murray's financial honour and honesty, and to his general
+truthfulness and sincerity. In reply, Murray opposes to them the
+accounts of sums paid for different works, and letters from Byron<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+exactly contradicting his own statements as to Murray's character.</p>
+
+<p>The subject, as we have seen, was discussed in 'The Noctes.' No doubt
+appears to be entertained that Byron made the statements to Medwin; and
+the theory of accounting for them is, that 'Byron was "bamming" him.'</p>
+
+<p>It seems never to have occurred to any of these credulous gentlemen,
+who laughed at others for being 'bammed,' that Byron might be doing the
+very same thing by themselves. How many of his so-called packages sent
+to Lady Byron were <i>real</i> packages, and how many were mystifications?
+We find, in two places at least in his Memoir, letters to Lady Byron,
+written and shown to others, which, he says, were never sent by him.
+He told Lady Blessington that he was in the habit of writing to her
+<i>constantly</i>. Was this 'bamming'? Was he 'bamming,' also, when he told
+the world that Lady Byron suddenly deserted him, quite to his surprise,
+and that he never, to his dying day, could find out why?</p>
+
+<p>Lady Blessington relates, that, in one of his conversations with her,
+he entertained her by repeating epigrams and lampoons, in which many
+of his friends were treated with severity. She inquired of him, in
+case he should die, and such proofs of his friendship come before the
+public, what would be the feelings of these friends, who had supposed
+themselves to stand so high in his good graces. She says,</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'"That," said Byron, "is precisely one of the ideas that most amuses
+me. I often fancy the rage and humiliation of my quondam friends in
+hearing the truth, at least from me, for the first time, and when I
+am beyond the reach of their malice.... What grief," continued Byron,
+laughing, "could resist the charges of ugliness, dulness, or any of
+the thousand nameless defects, personal or mental, 'that flesh is heir
+to,' when reprisal or recantation was impossible?... People are in
+such daily habits of commenting on the defects of friends, that they
+are unconscious of the unkindness of it.... Now, I write down as well
+as speak my sentiments of those who think they have gulled me; and I
+only wish, in case I die before them, that I might return to witness
+the effects my posthumous opinions of them are likely to produce in
+their minds. What good fun this would be!... You don't seem to value
+this as you ought," said Byron with one of his sardonic smiles, seeing
+I looked, as I really felt, surprised at his avowed insincerity. I
+feel the same pleasure in anticipating the rage and mortification of
+my <i>soi-disant</i> friends at the discovery of my real sentiments of
+them, that a miser may be supposed to feel while making a will that
+will disappoint all the expectants that have been toadying him for
+years. Then how amusing it will be to compare my posthumous with my
+previously given opinions, the one throwing ridicule on the other!"'</p></div>
+
+<p>It is asserted, in a note to 'The Noctes,' that Byron, besides his
+Autobiography, prepared a voluminous dictionary of all his friends and
+acquaintances, in which brief notes of their persons and character
+were given, with his opinion of them. It was not considered that the
+publication of this would add to the noble lord's popularity; and it
+has never appeared.</p>
+
+<p>In Hunt's Life of Byron, there is similar testimony. Speaking of
+Byron's carelessness in exposing his friends' secrets, and showing or
+giving away their letters, he says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'If his five hundred confidants, by a reticence as remarkable as his
+laxity, had not kept his secrets better than he did himself, the
+very devil might have been played with I don't know how many people.
+But there was always this saving reflection to be made, that the man
+who could be guilty of such extravagances for the sake of making
+an impression might be guilty of exaggeration, or inventing what
+astonished you; and indeed, though he was a speaker of the truth on
+ordinary occasions,&mdash;that is to say, he did not tell you he had seen
+a dozen horses when he had seen only two,&mdash;yet, as he professed not
+to value the truth when in the way of his advantage (and there was
+nothing he thought more to his advantage than making you stare at
+him), the persons who were liable to suffer from his inconsistency had
+all the right in the world to the benefit of this consideration.'<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>With a person of such mental and moral habits as to truth, the inquiry
+always must be, <i>Where</i> does mystification end, and truth begin?</p>
+
+<p>If a man is careless about his father's reputation for sanity, and
+reports him a crazy suicide; if he gaily accuses his publisher and
+good friend of double-dealing, shuffling, and dishonesty; if he tells
+stories about Mrs. Clermont,<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> to which his sister offers a public
+refutation,&mdash;is it to be supposed that he will always tell the truth
+about his wife, when the world is pressing him hard, and every instinct
+of self-defence is on the alert?</p>
+
+<p>And then the ingenuity that could write and publish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> false documents
+about himself, that they might re-appear in London papers,&mdash;to what
+other accounts might it not be turned? Might it not create documents,
+invent statements, about his wife as well as himself?</p>
+
+<p>The document so ostentatiously given to M. G. Lewis 'for circulation
+among friends in England' was a specimen of what the Noctes Club would
+call 'bamming.'</p>
+
+<p>If Byron wanted a legal investigation, why did he not take it in the
+first place, instead of signing the separation? If he wanted to cancel
+it, as he said in this document, why did he not go to London, and enter
+a suit for the restitution of conjugal rights, or a suit in chancery to
+get possession of his daughter? That this was in his mind, passages in
+Medwin's 'Conversations' show. He told Lady Blessington also that he
+might claim his daughter in chancery at any time.</p>
+
+<p>Why did he not do it? Either of these two steps would have brought on
+that public investigation he so longed for. Can it be possible that all
+the friends who passed this private document from hand to hand never
+suspected that they were being 'bammed' by it?</p>
+
+<p>But it has been universally assumed, that, though Byron was thus
+remarkably given to mystification, yet <i>all</i> his statements in regard
+to this story are to be accepted, simply because he makes them. <i>Why</i>
+must we accept them, any more than his statements as to Murray or his
+own father?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So we constantly find Lord Byron's incidental statements coming in
+collision with those of others: for example, in his account of his
+marriage, he tells Medwin that Lady Byron's maid was put between his
+bride and himself, on the same seat, in the wedding-journey. The lady's
+maid herself, Mrs. Mimms, says she was sent before them to Halnaby, and
+was there to receive them when they alighted.</p>
+
+<p>He said of Lady Byron's mother, 'She always detested me, and had not
+the decency to conceal it in her own house. Dining with her one day, I
+broke a tooth, and was in great pain; which I could not help showing.
+"It will do you good," said Lady Noel; "I am glad of it!"'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron says, speaking of her mother, 'She always treated him with
+an affectionate consideration and indulgence, which extended to every
+little peculiarity of his feelings. Never did an irritating word escape
+her.'</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron states that the correspondence between him and Lady Byron,
+after his refusal, was first opened by her. Lady Byron's friends deny
+the statement, and assert that the direct contrary is the fact.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we see that Lord Byron's statements are directly opposed to
+those of his family in relation to his father; directly against
+Murray's accounts, and his own admission to Murray; directly against
+the statement of the lady's maid as to her position in the journey;
+directly against Mrs. Leigh's as to Mrs. Clermont, and against Lady
+Byron as to her mother.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We can see, also, that these misstatements were so fully perceived by
+the men of his times, that Medwin's 'Conversations' were simply laughed
+at as an amusing instance of how far a man might be made the victim of
+a mystification. Christopher North thus sentences the book:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I don't mean to call Medwin a liar.... The captain <i>lies</i>, sir, but
+it is under a thousand mistakes. Whether Byron bammed him, or he, by
+virtue of his own egregious stupidity, was the sole and sufficient
+bammifier of himself, I know not; neither greatly do I care. This much
+is certain, ... that the book throughout is full of things that were
+not, and most resplendently deficient <i>quoad</i> the things that were.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Yet it is on Medwin's 'Conversations' alone that many of the magazine
+assertions in regard to Lady Byron are founded.</p>
+
+<p>It is on that authority that Lady Byron is accused of breaking open
+her husband's writing-desk in his absence, and sending the letters
+she found there to the husband of a lady compromised by them; and
+likewise that Lord Byron is declared to have paid back his wife's
+ten-thousand-pound wedding portion, and doubled it. Moore makes no such
+statements; and his remarks about Lord Byron's use of his wife's money
+are unmistakable evidence to the contrary. Moore, although Byron's
+ardent partisan, was too well informed to make assertions with regard
+to him, which, at that time, it would have been perfectly easy to
+refute.</p>
+
+<p>All these facts go to show that Lord Byron's cha<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>racter for accuracy
+or veracity was not such as to entitle him to ordinary confidence as a
+witness, especially in a case where he had the strongest motives for
+misstatement.</p>
+
+<p>And if we consider that the celebrated Autobiography was the finished,
+careful work of such a practised 'mystifier,' who can wonder that it
+presented a web of such intermingled truth and lies that there was no
+such thing as disentangling it, and pointing out where falsehood ended
+and truth began?</p>
+
+<p>But in regard to Lady Byron, what has been the universal impression
+of the world? It has been alleged against her that she was a precise,
+straight-forward woman, so accustomed to plain, literal dealings, that
+she could not understand the various mystifications of her husband; and
+from that cause arose her unhappiness. Byron speaks, in 'The Sketch,'
+of her <i>peculiar</i> truthfulness; and even in the 'Clytemnestra' poem,
+when accusing her of lying, he speaks of her as departing from</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'The <i>early</i> truth that was her proper praise.'
+</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron's careful accuracy as to dates, to time, place, and
+circumstances, will probably be vouched for by all the very large
+number of persons whom the management of her extended property and
+her works of benevolence brought to act as co-operators or agents
+with her. She was not a person in the habit of making exaggerated or
+ill-considered statements. Her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> published statement of 1830 is clear,
+exact, accurate, and perfectly intelligible. The dates are carefully
+ascertained and stated, the expressions are moderate, and all the
+assertions firm and perfectly definite.</p>
+
+<p>It therefore seems remarkable that the whole reasoning on this Byron
+matter has generally been conducted by assuming all Lord Byron's
+statements to be true, and requiring all Lady Byron's statements to be
+sustained by other evidence.</p>
+
+<p>If Lord Byron asserts that his wife deserted him, the assertion is
+accepted without proof; but, if Lady Byron asserts that he ordered
+her to leave, that requires proof. Lady Byron asserts that she
+took counsel, on this order of Lord Byron, with his family friends
+and physician, under the idea that it originated in insanity. The
+'Blackwood' asks, '<i>What</i> family friends?' says it doesn't know of any;
+and asks proof.</p>
+
+<p>If Lord Byron asserts that he always longed for a public investigation
+of the charges against him, the 'Quarterly' and 'Blackwood' quote
+the saying with ingenuous confidence. They are obliged to admit
+that he refused to stand that public test; that he signed the deed
+of separation rather than meet it. They know, also, that he could
+have at any time instituted suits against Lady Byron that would have
+brought the whole matter into court, and that he did not? Why did he
+not? The 'Quarterly' simply intimates that such suits would have been
+unpleasant. Why? On account of personal delicacy? The man that wrote
+'Don Juan',<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> and furnished the details of his wedding-night, held
+back from clearing his name by delicacy! It is astonishing to what
+extent this controversy has consisted in simply repeating Lord Byron's
+assertions over and over again, and calling the result proof.</p>
+
+<p>Now, we propose a different course. As Lady Byron is not stated by
+her warm admirers to have had <i>any</i> monomania for speaking untruths
+on any subject, we rank her value as a witness at a higher rate than
+Lord Byron's. She never accused her parents of madness or suicide,
+merely to make a sensation; never 'bammed' an acquaintance by false
+statements concerning the commercial honour of anyone with whom she
+was in business relations; never wrote and sent to the press as a
+clever jest false statements about herself; and never, in any other
+ingenious way, tampered with truth. We therefore hold it to be a mere
+dictate of reason and common sense, that, in all cases where her
+statements conflict with her husband's, hers are to be taken as the
+more trustworthy.</p>
+
+<p>The 'London Quarterly,' in a late article, distinctly repudiates Lady
+Byron's statements as sources of evidence, and throughout quotes
+statements of Lord Byron as if they had the force of self-evident
+propositions. We consider such a course contrary to common sense as
+well as common good manners.</p>
+
+<p>The state of the case is just this: If Lord Byron did not make false
+statements on this subject it was certainly an exception to his usual
+course. He certainly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> did make such on a great variety of other
+subjects. By his own showing, he had a peculiar pleasure in falsifying
+language, and in misleading and betraying even his friends.</p>
+
+<p>But, if Lady Byron gave false witness upon this subject, it was an
+exception to the whole course of her life.</p>
+
+<p>The habits of her mind, the government of her conduct, her life-long
+reputation, all were those of a literal, exact truthfulness.</p>
+
+<p>The accusation of her being untruthful was first brought forward by
+her husband in the 'Clytemnestra' poem, in the autumn of 1816; but it
+never was publicly circulated till after his death, and it was first
+formally made the basis of a published attack on Lady Byron in the
+July 'Blackwood' of 1869. Up to that time, we look in vain through
+current literature for any indications that the world regarded Lady
+Byron otherwise than as a cold, careful, prudent woman, who made no
+assertions, and had no confidants. When she spoke in 1830, it is
+perfectly evident that Christopher North and his circle believed what
+she said, though reproving her for saying it at all.</p>
+
+<p>The 'Quarterly' goes on to heap up a number of vague assertions,&mdash;that
+Lady Byron, about the time of her separation, made a confidant of a
+young officer; that she told the clergyman of Ham of some trials with
+Lord Ockham; and that she told stories of different things at different
+times.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>All this is not proof: it is mere assertion, and assertion made to
+produce prejudice. It is like raising a whirlwind of sand to blind
+the eyes that are looking for landmarks. It is quite probable Lady
+Byron told different stories about Lord Byron at various times. No
+woman could have a greater variety of stories to tell; and no woman
+ever was so persecuted and pursued and harassed, both by public
+literature and private friendship, to say <i>something</i>. She had plenty
+of causes for a separation, without the fatal and final one. In her
+conversations with Lady Anne Barnard, for example, she gives reasons
+enough for a separation, though none of them are the chief one. It is
+not <i>different</i> stories, but <i>contradictory</i> stories, that must be
+relied on to disprove the credibility of a witness. The 'Quarterly'
+has certainly told a great number of different stories,&mdash;stories which
+may prove as irreconcilable with each other as any attributed to Lady
+Byron; but its denial of all weight to her testimony is simply begging
+the whole question under consideration.</p>
+
+<p>A man gives testimony about the causes of a railroad accident, being
+the only eye-witness.</p>
+
+<p>The opposing counsel begs, whatever else you do, you will not admit
+that man's testimony. You ask, 'Why? Has he ever been accused of want
+of veracity on other subjects?'&mdash;'No: he has stood high as a man of
+probity and honour for years.'&mdash;'Why, then, throw out his testimony?'</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Because he lies in this instance,' says the adversary: 'his testimony
+does not agree with this and that.'&mdash;'Pardon me, that is the very point
+in question,' say you: 'we expect to prove that it does agree with this
+and that.'</p>
+
+<p>Because certain letters of Lady Byron's do not agree with the
+'Quarterly's' theory of the facts of the separation, it at once assumes
+that she is an untruthful witness, and proposes to throw out her
+evidence altogether.</p>
+
+<p>We propose, on the contrary, to regard Lady Byron's evidence with all
+the attention due to the statement of a high-minded conscientious
+person, never in any other case accused of violation of truth;
+we also propose to show it to be in strict agreement with all
+well-authenticated facts and documents; and we propose to treat
+Lord Byron's evidence as that of a man of great subtlety, versed in
+mystification and delighting in it, and who, on many other subjects,
+not only deceived, but gloried in deception; and then we propose to
+show that it contradicts well-established facts and received documents.</p>
+
+<p>One thing more we have to say concerning the laws of evidence in regard
+to documents presented in this investigation.</p>
+
+<p>This is not a London West-End affair, but a grave historical inquiry,
+in which the whole English-speaking world are interested to know the
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>As it is now too late to have the securities of a legal trial,
+certainly the rules of historical evidence should be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> strictly
+observed. All important documents should be presented in an entire
+state, with a plain and open account of their history,&mdash;who had them,
+where they were found, and how preserved.</p>
+
+<p>There have been most excellent, credible, and authentic documents
+produced in this case; and, as a specimen of them, we shall mention
+Lord Lindsay's letter, and the journal and letter it authenticates.
+Lord Lindsay at once comes forward, gives his name boldly, gives the
+history of the papers he produces, shows how they came to be in his
+hands, why never produced before, and why now. We feel confidence at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>But in regard to the important series of letters presented as Lady
+Byron's, this obviously proper course has not been pursued. Though
+assumed to be of the most critical importance, no such distinct history
+of them was given in the first instance. The want of such evidence
+being noticed by other papers, the 'Quarterly' appears hurt that the
+high character of the magazine has not been a sufficient guarantee;
+and still deals in vague statements that the letters have been freely
+circulated, and that two noblemen of the highest character would vouch
+for them if necessary.</p>
+
+<p>In our view, <i>it is necessary</i>. These noblemen should imitate Lord
+Lindsay's example,&mdash;give a fair account of these letters, under
+their own names; and then, we would add, it is needful for complete
+satisfaction to have the letters <i>entire</i>, and not in fragments.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The 'Quarterly' gave these letters with the evident implication that
+they are entirely destructive to Lady Byron's character as a witness.
+Now, has that magazine much reason to be hurt at even an insinuation on
+its own character when making such deadly assaults on that of another?
+The individuals who bring forth documents that they suppose to be
+deadly to the character of a noble person, always in her generation
+held to be eminent for virtue, certainly should not murmur at being
+called upon to substantiate these documents in the manner usually
+expected in historical investigations.</p>
+
+<p>We have shown that these letters do not contradict, but that they
+perfectly confirm the facts, and agree with the dates in Lady Byron's
+published statements of 1830; and this is our reason for deeming them
+authentic.</p>
+
+<p>These considerations with regard to the manner of conducting the
+inquiry seem so obviously proper, that we cannot but believe that they
+will command a serious attention.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<p class="ph4">THE DIRECT ARGUMENT TO PROVE THE CRIME.</p>
+
+
+<p>We shall now proceed to state the argument against Lord Byron.</p>
+
+<p>1st, There is direct evidence that Lord Byron was guilty of some
+unusual immorality.</p>
+
+<p>The evidence is not, as the 'Blackwood' says, that Lushington yielded
+assent to the <i>ex parte</i> statement of a client; nor, as the 'Quarterly'
+intimates, that he was affected by the charms of an attractive young
+woman.</p>
+
+<p>The first evidence of it is the fact that Lushington and Romilly
+<i>offered to take the case into court, and make there a public
+exhibition of the proofs</i> on which their convictions were founded.</p>
+
+<p>2nd, It is very strong evidence of this fact, that Lord Byron, while
+loudly declaring that he wished to know with what he was charged,
+<i>declined</i> this open investigation, and, rather than meet it, signed a
+paper which he had before refused to sign.</p>
+
+<p>3rd, It is also strong evidence of this fact, that although secretly
+declaring to all his intimate friends that he still wished open
+investigation in a court of justice, and affirming his belief that his
+character was being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> ruined for want of it, he never afterwards took
+the means to get it. Instead of writing a private handbill, he might
+have come to England and entered a suit; and he did not do it.</p>
+
+<p>That Lord Byron was conscious of a great crime is further made probable
+by the peculiar malice he seemed to bear to his wife's legal counsel.</p>
+
+<p>If there had been nothing to fear in that legal investigation wherewith
+they threatened him, why did he not only flee from it, but regard
+with a peculiar bitterness those who advised and proposed it? To an
+innocent man falsely accused, the certainties of law are a blessing
+and a refuge. Female charms cannot mislead in a court of justice; and
+the atrocities of rumour are there sifted, and deprived of power. A
+trial is not a threat to an innocent man: it is an invitation, an
+opportunity. Why, then, did he hate Sir Samuel Romilly, so that he
+exulted like a fiend over his tragical death? The letter in which he
+pours forth this malignity was so brutal, that Moore was obliged, by
+the general outcry of society, to suppress it. Is this the language of
+an innocent man who has been offered a fair trial under his country's
+laws? or of a guilty man, to whom the very idea of public trial means
+public exposure?</p>
+
+<p>4th, It is probable that the crime was the one now alleged, because
+that was the most important crime charged against him by rumour at the
+period. This appears by the following extract of a letter from Shelley,
+furnished by the 'Quarterly,' dated Bath, Sept. 29, 1816:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I saw Kinnaird, and had a long talk with him. He informed me that
+Lady Byron was now in perfect health; that she was living with your
+sister. I felt much pleasure from this intelligence. I consider the
+latter part of it as affording a decisive contradiction to the only
+important calumny that ever was advanced against you. On this ground,
+at least, it will become the world hereafter to be silent.'</p></div>
+
+<p>It appears evident here that the charge of improper intimacy with his
+sister was, in the mind of Shelley, the only important one that had yet
+been made against Lord Byron.</p>
+
+<p>It is fairly inferable, from Lord Byron's own statements, that his
+family friends believed this charge. Lady Byron speaks, in her
+statement, of 'nearest relatives' and family friends who were cognizant
+of Lord Byron's strange conduct at the time of the separation; and
+Lord Byron, in the letter to Bowles, before quoted, says that every
+one of his relations, except his sister, fell from him in this crisis
+like leaves from a tree in autumn. There was, therefore, not only
+this report, but such appearances in support of it as convinced those
+nearest to the scene, and best apprised of the facts; so that they
+fell from him entirely, notwithstanding the strong influence of family
+feeling. The Guiccioli book also mentions this same allegation as
+having arisen from peculiarities in Lord Byron's manner of treating his
+sister:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'This deep, fraternal affection assumed at times, under the influence
+of his powerful genius, and under exceptional circumstances, an
+almost too passionate expression, which opened a fresh field to his
+enemies.'<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It appears, then, that there was nothing in the character of Lord
+Byron and of his sister, as they appeared before their generation,
+that prevented such a report from arising: on the contrary, there was
+something in their relations that made it seem probable. And it appears
+that his own family friends were so affected by it, that they, with
+one accord, deserted him. The 'Quarterly' presents the fact that Lady
+Byron went to visit Mrs. Leigh at this time, as triumphant proof that
+<i>she</i> did not then believe it. Can the 'Quarterly' show just what Lady
+Byron's state of mind was, or what her motives were, in making that
+visit?</p>
+
+<p>The 'Quarterly' seems to assume, that no woman, without gross
+hypocrisy, can stand by a sister proven to have been guilty. We can
+appeal on this subject to all women. We fearlessly ask any wife,
+'Supposing your husband and sister were involved together in an
+infamous crime, and that you were the mother of a young daughter whose
+life would be tainted by a knowledge of that crime, what would be
+your wish? Would you wish to proclaim it forthwith? or would you wish
+quietly to separate from your husband, and to cover the crime from the
+eye of man?'</p>
+
+<p>It has been proved that Lady Byron did not reveal this even to her
+nearest relatives. It is proved that she sealed the mouths of her
+counsel, and even of servants, so effectually, that they remain sealed
+even to this day. This is evidence that she did not wish the thing
+known. It is proved also, that, in spite of her secrecy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> with her
+parents and friends, the rumour got out, and was spoken of by Shelley
+as the <i>only</i> important one.</p>
+
+<p>Now, let us see how this note, cited by the 'Quarterly,' confirms one
+of Lady Byron's own statements. She says to Lady Anne Barnard,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I trust you understand my wishes, which never were to injure Lord
+Byron in any way; for, <i>though he would not suffer me to remain his
+wife, he cannot prevent me from continuing his friend; and it was from
+considering myself as such that I silenced the accusations by which my
+own conduct might have been more fully justified</i>.'</p></div>
+
+<p>How did Lady Byron <i>silence accusations</i>? First, by keeping silence
+to her nearest relatives; second, by shutting the mouths of servants;
+third, by imposing silence on her friends,&mdash;as Lady Anne Barnard;
+fourth, by silencing her legal counsel; fifth, and most entirely, by
+treating Mrs. Leigh, before the world, with unaltered kindness. In the
+midst of the rumours, Lady Byron went to visit her; and Shelley says
+that the movement was effectual. Can the 'Quarterly' prove that, at
+this time, Mrs. Leigh had not confessed all, and thrown herself on Lady
+Byron's mercy?</p>
+
+<p>It is not necessary to suppose great horror and indignation on the
+part of Lady Byron. She may have regarded her sister as the victim
+of a most singularly powerful tempter. Lord Byron, as she knew, had
+tried to corrupt her own morals and faith. He had obtained a power
+over some women, even in the highest circles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> in England, which had
+led them to forego the usual decorums of their sex, and had given rise
+to great scandals. He was a being of wonderful personal attractions.
+He had not only strong poetical, but also strong logical power. He was
+daring in speculation, and vigorous in sophistical argument; beautiful,
+dazzling, and possessed of magnetic power of fascination. His sister
+had been kind and considerate to Lady Byron when Lord Byron was brutal
+and cruel. She had been overcome by him, as a weaker nature sometimes
+sinks under the force of a stronger one; and Lady Byron may really have
+considered her to be more sinned against than sinning.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron, if we look at it rightly, did not corrupt Mrs. Leigh
+any more than he did the whole British public. They rebelled at the
+immorality of his conduct and the obscenity of his writings; and he
+resolved that they should accept both. And he made them do it. At
+first, they execrated 'Don Juan.' Murray was afraid to publish it.
+Women were determined not to read it. In 1819, Dr. William Maginn of
+the Noctes wrote a song against it in the following virtuous strain:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Be "Juan," then, unseen, unknown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It must, or we shall rue it.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We may have virtue of our own:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ah! why should we undo it?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The treasured faith of days long past<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We still would prize o'er any,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And grieve to hear the ribald jeer<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of scamps like Don Giovanni.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p>
+<p>Lord Byron determined to conquer the virtuous scruples of the Noctes
+Club; and so we find this same Dr. William Maginn, who in 1819 wrote
+so valiantly, in 1822 declaring that he would rather have written a
+page of 'Don Juan' than a ton of 'Childe Harold.' All English morals
+were, in like manner, formally surrendered to Lord Byron. Moore details
+his adulteries in Venice with unabashed particularity: artists send
+for pictures of his principal mistresses; the literary world call for
+biographical sketches of their points; Moore compares his wife and his
+last mistress in a neatly-turned sentence; and yet the professor of
+morals in Edinburgh University recommends the biography as <i>pure</i>, and
+having no mud in it. The mistress is lionized in London, and in 1869 is
+introduced to the world of letters by 'Blackwood,' and bid, 'without a
+blush, to say she loved'&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>This much being done to all England, it is quite possible that a woman
+like Lady Byron, standing silently aside and surveying the course of
+things, may have thought that Mrs. Leigh was no more seduced than all
+the rest of the world, and have said as we feel disposed to say of that
+generation, and of a good many in this, 'Let him that is without sin
+among you cast the first stone.'</p>
+
+<p>The peculiar bitterness of remorse expressed in his works by Lord
+Byron is a further evidence that he had committed an unusual crime.
+We are aware that evidence cannot be drawn in this manner from an
+author's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> works merely, if unsupported by any external probability.
+For example, the subject most frequently and powerfully treated by
+Hawthorne is the influence of a secret, unconfessed crime on the soul:
+nevertheless, as Hawthorne is well known to have always lived a pure
+and regular life, nobody has ever suspected him of any greater sin
+than a vigorous imagination. But here is a man believed guilty of an
+uncommon immorality by the two best lawyers in England, and threatened
+with an open exposure, which he does not dare to meet. The crime is
+named in society; his own relations fall away from him on account of
+it; it is only set at rest by the heroic conduct of his wife. Now, this
+man is stated by many of his friends to have had all the appearance of
+a man secretly labouring under the consciousness of crime. Moore speaks
+of this propensity in the following language:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I have known him more than once, as we sat together after dinner,
+and he was a little under the influence of wine, to fall seriously
+into this dark, self-accusing mood, and throw out hints of his past
+life with an air of gloom and mystery designed evidently to awaken
+curiosity and interest.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Moore says that it was his own custom to dispel these appearances by
+ridicule, to which his friend was keenly alive. And he goes on to say,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'It has sometimes occurred to me, that the occult causes of his lady's
+separation from him, round which herself and her legal advisers have
+thrown such formidable mystery, may have been nothing more than some
+imposture of this kind, some dimly-hinted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> confession of undefined
+horror, which, though intended by the relater to mystify and surprise,
+the hearer so little understood as to take in sober seriousness.'<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p></div>
+
+<p>All we have to say is, that Lord Byron's conduct in this respect
+is exactly what might have been expected if he had a crime on his
+conscience.</p>
+
+<p>The energy of remorse and despair expressed in 'Manfred' were so
+appalling and so vividly <i>personal</i>, that the belief was universal on
+the Continent that the experience was wrought out of some actual crime.
+Goethe expressed this idea, and had heard a murder imputed to Byron as
+the cause.</p>
+
+<p>The allusion to the crime and consequences of incest is so plain in
+'Manfred,' that it is astonishing that any one can pretend, as Galt
+does, that it had any other application.</p>
+
+<p>The hero speaks of the love between himself and the imaginary being
+whose spirit haunts him as having been the <i>deadliest sin</i>, and one
+that has, perhaps, caused her eternal destruction.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'What is she now? A sufferer for my sins;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A thing I dare not think upon.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He speaks of her blood as haunting him, and as being</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">'<i>My</i> blood,&mdash;the pure, warm stream<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That ran in the veins of <i>my</i> fathers, and in <i>ours</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When we were in our youth, and had one heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And loved each other as we should not love.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This work was conceived in the commotion of mind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> immediately following
+his separation. The scenery of it was sketched in a journal sent to his
+sister at the time.</p>
+
+<p>In letter 377, defending the originality of the conception, and showing
+that it did not arise from reading 'Faust,' he says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'It was the Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else, more than
+Faustus, that made me write "Manfred."'</p></div>
+
+<p>In letter 288, speaking of the various accounts given by critics of the
+origin of the story, he says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'The conjecturer is out, and knows nothing of the matter. I had a
+better origin than he could devise or divine for the soul of him.'</p></div>
+
+<p>In letter 299, he says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'As to the germs of "Manfred," they may be found in the journal I sent
+to Mrs. Leigh, part of which you saw.'</p></div>
+
+<p>It may be said, plausibly, that Lord Byron, if conscious of this crime,
+would not have expressed it in his poetry. But his nature was such
+that he could not help it. Whatever he wrote that had any real power
+was generally wrought out of self; and, when in a tumult of emotion,
+he could not help giving glimpses of the cause. It appears that he
+did know that he had been accused of incest, and that Shelley thought
+<i>that</i> accusation the only really important one; and yet, sensitive as
+he was to blame and reprobation, he ran upon this very subject most
+likely to re-awaken scandal.</p>
+
+<p>But Lord Byron's strategy was always of the bold<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> kind. It was the
+plan of the fugitive, who, instead of running away, stations himself
+so near to danger, that nobody would ever think of looking for him
+there. He published passionate verses to his sister on this principle.
+He imitated the security of an innocent man in every thing but the
+unconscious energy of the agony which seized him when he gave vent to
+his nature in poetry. The boldness of his strategy is evident through
+all his life. He began by charging his wife with the very cruelty and
+deception which he was himself practising. He had spread a net for her
+feet, and he accused her of spreading a net for his. He had placed
+her in a position where she could not speak, and then leisurely shot
+arrows at her; and he represented her as having done the same by him.
+When he attacked her in 'Don Juan,' and strove to take from her the
+very protection<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> of womanly sacredness by putting her name into the
+mouth of every ribald, he did a bold thing, and he knew it. He meant to
+do a bold thing. There was a general outcry against it; and he fought
+it down, and gained his point. By sheer boldness and perseverance,
+he turned the public <i>from</i> his wife, and <i>to</i> himself, in the face
+of their very groans and protests. His 'Manfred' and his 'Cain' were
+parts of the same game. But the involuntary cry of remorse and despair
+pierced even through his own artifices, in a manner that produced a
+conviction of reality. </p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His evident fear and hatred of his wife were other symptoms of crime.
+There was no apparent occasion for him to hate her. He admitted that
+she had been bright, amiable, good, agreeable; that her marriage had
+been a very uncomfortable one; and he said to Madame de Staël, that
+he did not doubt she thought him deranged. Why, then, did he hate her
+for wanting to live peaceably by herself? Why did he so fear her, that
+not one year of his life passed without his concocting and circulating
+some public or private accusation against her? She, by his own showing,
+published none against him. It is remarkable, that, in all his zeal to
+represent himself injured, he nowhere quotes a single remark from Lady
+Byron, nor a story coming either directly or indirectly from her or her
+family. He is in a fever in Venice, not from what she has spoken, but
+because she has sealed the lips of her counsel, and because she and her
+family do not speak: so that he professes himself utterly ignorant what
+form her allegations against him may take. He had heard from Shelley
+that his wife silenced the most important calumny by going to make Mrs.
+Leigh a visit; and yet he is afraid of her,&mdash;so afraid, that he tells
+Moore he expects she will attack him after death, and charges him to
+defend his grave.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if Lord Byron knew that his wife had a deadly secret that she
+could tell, all this conduct is explicable: it is in the ordinary
+course of human nature. Men always distrust those who hold facts
+by which they can be ruined. They fear them; they are antagonistic
+to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> them; they cannot trust them. The feeling of Falkland to Caleb
+Williams, as portrayed in Godwin's masterly sketch, is perfectly
+natural, and it is exactly illustrative of what Byron felt for his
+wife. He hated her for having his secret; and, so far as a human being
+could do it, he tried to destroy her character before the world, that
+she might not have the power to testify against him. If we admit this
+solution, Byron's conduct is at least that of a man who is acting as
+men ordinarily would act under such circumstances: if we do not, he
+is acting like a fiend. Let us look at admitted facts. He married his
+wife without love, in a gloomy, melancholy, morose state of mind. The
+servants testify to strange, unaccountable treatment of her immediately
+after marriage; such that her confidential maid advises her return to
+her parents. In Lady Byron's letter to Mrs. Leigh, she reminds Lord
+Byron that he always expressed a desire and determination to free
+himself from the marriage. Lord Byron himself admits to Madame de
+Staël that his behaviour was such, that his wife must have thought him
+insane. Now we are asked to believe, that simply because, under these
+circumstances, Lady Byron wished to live separate from her husband, he
+hated and feared her so that he could never let her alone afterwards;
+that he charged her with malice, slander, deceit, and deadly intentions
+against himself, merely out of spite, because she preferred not to live
+with him. This last view of the case certainly makes Lord Byron more
+unaccountably wicked than the other.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The first supposition shows him to us as a man in an agony of
+self-preservation; the second as a fiend, delighting in gratuitous
+deceit and cruelty.</p>
+
+<p>Again: a presumption of this crime appears in Lord Byron's admission,
+in a letter to Moore, that he had an illegitimate child born before he
+left England, and still living at the time.</p>
+
+<p>In letter 307, to Mr. Moore, under date Venice, Feb. 2, 1818, Byron
+says, speaking of Moore's loss of a child,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I know how to feel with you, because I am quite wrapped up in my own
+children. Besides my little legitimate, I have made unto myself an
+illegitimate since [since Ada's birth] <i>to say nothing of one before</i>;
+and I look forward to one of these as the pillar of my old age,
+supposing that I ever reach, as I hope I never shall, that desolating
+period.'</p></div>
+
+<p>The illegitimate child that he had made to himself since Ada's birth
+was Allegra, born about nine or ten months after the separation. The
+other illegitimate alluded to was born before, and, as the reader sees,
+was spoken of as still living.</p>
+
+<p>Moore appears to be puzzled to know who this child can be, and
+conjectures that it may possibly be the child referred to in an early
+poem, written, while a schoolboy of nineteen, at Harrow.</p>
+
+<p>On turning back to the note referred to, we find two things: first,
+that the child there mentioned was not claimed by Lord Byron as his
+own, but that he asked his mother to care for it as belonging to a
+schoolmate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> now dead; second, that the infant died shortly after, and,
+consequently, could not be the child mentioned in this letter.</p>
+
+<p>Now, besides this fact, that Lord Byron admitted a living illegitimate
+child born before Ada, we place this other fact, that there was a
+child in England which was believed to be his by those who had every
+opportunity of knowing.</p>
+
+<p>On this subject we shall cite a passage from a letter recently received
+by us from England, and written by a person who appears well informed
+on the subject of his letter:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'The fact is, the incest was first committed, and the child of it born
+<i>before</i>, shortly before, the Byron marriage. The child (a daughter)
+must not be confounded with the natural daughter of Lord Byron, born
+about a year after his separation.</p>
+
+<p>'The history, more or less, of that child of incest, is known to many;
+for in Lady Byron's attempts to watch over her, and rescue her from
+ruin, she was compelled to employ various agents at different times.'</p></div>
+
+<p>This letter contains a full recognition, by an intelligent person in
+England, of a child corresponding well with Lord Byron's declaration of
+an illegitimate, born before he left England.</p>
+
+<p>Up to this point, we have, then, the circumstantial evidence against
+Lord Byron as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A good and amiable woman, who had married him from love, determined to
+separate from him.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the greatest lawyers of England confirmed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> her in this decision,
+and threatened Lord Byron, that, unless he consented to this, they
+would expose the evidence against him in a suit for divorce. He fled
+from this exposure, and never afterwards sought public investigation.</p>
+
+<p>He was angry with and malicious towards the counsel who supported his
+wife; he was angry at and afraid of a wife who did nothing to injure
+him, and he made it a special object to defame and degrade her. He gave
+such evidence of remorse and fear in his writings as to lead eminent
+literary men to believe he had committed a great crime. The public
+rumour of his day specified what the crime was. His relations, by his
+own showing, joined against him. The report was silenced by his wife's
+efforts only. Lord Byron subsequently declares the existence of an
+illegitimate child, born before he left England. Corresponding to this,
+there is the history, known in England, of a child believed to be his,
+in whom his wife took an interest.</p>
+
+<p>All these presumptions exist independently of any direct testimony from
+Lady Byron. They are to be admitted as true, whether she says a word
+one way or the other.</p>
+
+<p>From this background of proof, I come forward, and testify to an
+interview with Lady Byron, in which she gave me specific information
+of the facts in the case. That I report the facts just as I received
+them from her, not altered or misremembered, is shown by the testimony
+of my sister, to whom I related them at the time. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> cannot, then, be
+denied that I had this interview, and that this communication was made.
+I therefore testify that Lady Byron, for a proper purpose, and at a
+proper time, stated to me the following things:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1. That the crime which separated her from Lord Byron was incest. 2.
+That she first discovered it by improper actions towards his sister,
+which, he <i>meant</i> to make her understand, indicated the guilty
+relation. 3. That he admitted it, reasoned on it, defended it, tried to
+make her an accomplice, and, failing in that, hated her and expelled
+her. 4. That he threatened her that he would make it his life's object
+to destroy her character. 5. That for a period she was led to regard
+this conduct as insanity, and to consider him only as a diseased
+person. 6. That she had subsequent proof that the facts were really as
+she suspected; that there had been a child born of the crime, whose
+history she knew; that Mrs. Leigh had repented.</p>
+
+<p>The purpose for which this was stated to me was to ask, Was it her duty
+to make the truth fully known during her lifetime?</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, is a man believed guilty of an unusual crime by two
+lawyers, the best in England, who have seen the evidence,&mdash;a man who
+dares not meet legal investigation. The crime is named in society, and
+deemed so far probable to the men of his generation as to be spoken
+of by Shelley as the only important allegation against him. He acts
+through life exactly like a man struggling with remorse, and afraid
+of detection;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> he has all the restlessness and hatred and fear that a
+man has who feels that there is evidence which might destroy him. He
+admits an illegitimate child besides Allegra. A child believed to have
+been his is known to many in England. Added to all this, his widow,
+now advanced in years, and standing on the borders of eternity, being,
+as appears by her writings and conversation, of perfectly sound mind
+at the time, testifies to me the facts before named, which exactly
+correspond to probabilities.</p>
+
+<p>I publish the statement; and the solicitors who hold Lady Byron's
+private papers do not deny the truth of the story. They try to cast
+discredit on me for speaking; but they do not say that I have spoken
+falsely, or that the story is not true. The lawyer who knew Lady
+Byron's story in 1816 does not now deny that this is the true one.
+Several persons in England testify that, at various times, and for
+various purposes, the same story has been told to them. Moreover, it
+appears from my last letter addressed to Lady Byron on this subject,
+that I recommended her to leave <i>all necessary papers</i> in the hands
+of some discreet persons, who, after <i>both</i> had passed away, should
+see that justice was done. The solicitors admit that Lady Byron <i>has</i>
+left sealed papers of great importance in the hands of trustees, with
+discretionary power. I have been informed very directly that the nature
+of these documents was such as to lead to the suppression of Lady
+Byron's life and writings. This is all exactly as it would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> be, if the
+story related by Lady Byron were the true one.</p>
+
+<p>The evidence under this point of view is so strong, that a great effort
+has been made to throw out Lady Byron's testimony.</p>
+
+<p>This attempt has been made on two grounds. 1st, That she was under a
+mental hallucination. This theory has been most ably refuted by the
+very first authority in England upon the subject. He says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'No person practically acquainted with the true characteristics of
+insanity would affirm, that, had this idea of "incest" been an insane
+hallucination, Lady Byron could, from the lengthened period which
+intervened between her unhappy marriage and death, have refrained
+from exhibiting it, not only to legal advisers and trustees (assuming
+that she revealed to them the fact), but to others, exacting no
+pledge of secrecy from them as to her mental impressions. Lunatics
+do for a time, and for some special purpose, most cunningly conceal
+their delusions; but they have not the capacity to struggle for
+thirty-six years, as Lady Byron must have done, with so frightful an
+hallucination, without the insane state of mind becoming obvious to
+those with whom they are daily associating. Neither is it consistent
+with experience to suppose, that, if Lady Byron had been a monomaniac,
+her state of disordered understanding would have been restricted to
+one hallucination. Her diseased brain, affecting the normal action of
+thought, would, in all probability, have manifested other symptoms
+besides those referred to of aberration of intellect.</p>
+
+<p>'During the last thirty years, I have not met with a case of insanity
+(assuming the hypothesis of hallucination) at all parallel with that
+of Lady Byron. In my experience, it is unique. I never saw a patient
+with such a delusion.'</p></div>
+
+<p>We refer our readers to a careful study of Dr. Forbes Winslow's
+consideration of this subject given in Part III.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> Anyone who has been
+familiar with the delicacy and acuteness of Dr. Winslow, as shown in
+his work on obscure diseases of the brain and nerves, must feel that
+his positive assertion on this ground is the best possible evidence.
+We here gratefully acknowledge our obligations to Dr. Winslow for
+the corrected proof of his valuable letter, which he has done us the
+honour to send for this work. We shall consider that his argument,
+in connection with what the reader may observe of Lady Byron's own
+writings, closes that issue of the case completely.</p>
+
+<p>The other alternative is, that Lady Byron deliberately committed false
+witness. This was the ground assumed by the 'Blackwood,' when in July,
+1869, it took upon itself the responsibility of re-opening the Byron
+controversy. It is also the ground assumed by 'The London Quarterly' of
+to-day.</p>
+
+<p>Both say, in so many words, that no crime was imputed to Lord Byron;
+that the representations made to Lushington in the beginning were false
+ones; and that the story told to Lady Byron's confidential friends in
+later days was also false.</p>
+
+<p>Let us examine this theory. In the first place, it requires us to
+believe in the existence of a moral monster of whom Madame Brinvilliers
+is cited as the type. The 'Blackwood,' let it be remembered, opens
+the controversy with the statement that Lady Byron was a Madame
+Brinvilliers. The 'Quarterly' does not shrink from the same assumption.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Let us consider the probability of this question.</p>
+
+<p>If Lady Byron were such a woman, and wished to ruin her husband's
+reputation in order to save her own, and, being perfectly unscrupulous,
+had circulated against him a story of unnatural crime which had no
+proofs, how came two of the first lawyers of England to assume the
+responsibility of offering to present her case in open court? How
+came her husband, if he knew himself guiltless, to shrink from that
+public investigation which must have demonstrated his innocence? Most
+astonishing of all, when he fled from trial, and the report got abroad
+against him in England, and was believed even by his own relations,
+why did not his wife avail herself of the moment to complete her
+victory? If at that moment she had publicly broken with Mrs. Leigh,
+she might have confirmed every rumour. Did she do it? and why not?
+According to the 'Blackwood,' we have here a woman who has made up a
+frightful story to ruin her husband's reputation, yet who takes every
+pains afterwards to prevent its being ruined. She fails to do the very
+thing she undertakes; and for years after, rather than injure him, she
+loses public sympathy, and, by sealing the lips of her legal counsel,
+deprives herself of the advantage of their testimony.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, if a desire for revenge could have been excited in her,
+it would have been provoked by the first publication of the fourth
+canto of 'Childe Harold,' when she felt that Byron was attacking her
+before the world. Yet we have Lady Anne Barnard's testimony,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> that,
+at this time, she was so far from wishing to injure him, that all her
+communications were guarded by cautious secrecy. At this time, also,
+she had a strong party in England, to whom she could have appealed.
+Again: when 'Don Juan' was first printed, it excited a violent
+re-action against Lord Byron. Had his wife chosen <i>then</i> to accuse
+him, and display the evidence she had shown to her counsel, there is
+little doubt that all the world would have stood with her; but she did
+not. After his death, when she spoke at last, there seems little doubt
+from the strength of Dr. Lushington's language, that Lady Byron had a
+very strong case, and that, had she been willing, her counsel could
+have told much more than he did. She might <i>then</i> have told her whole
+story, and been believed. Her word was believed by Christopher North,
+and accepted as proof that Byron had been a great criminal. Had revenge
+been her motive, she could have spoken the <span class="smcap">ONE WORD</span> more that
+North called for.</p>
+
+<p>The 'Quarterly' asks why she waited till everybody concerned was dead.
+There is an obvious answer. Because, while there was anybody living
+to whom the testimony would have been utterly destructive, there were
+the best reasons for withholding it. When all were gone from earth,
+and she herself was in constant expectation of passing away, there
+<i>was</i> a reason, and a proper one, why she should speak. By nature and
+principle truthful, she had had the opportunity of silently watching
+the operation of a permitted lie upon a whole gene<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>ration. She had been
+placed in a position in which it was necessary, by silence, to allow
+the spread and propagation through society of a radical falsehood. Lord
+Byron's life, fame, and genius had all struck their roots into this
+lie, been nourished by it, and had derived thence a poisonous power.</p>
+
+<p>In reading this history, it will be remarked that he pleaded his
+personal misfortunes in his marriage as excuses for every offence
+against morality, and that the literary world of England accepted
+the plea, and tolerated and justified the crimes. Never before, in
+England, had adultery been spoken of in so respectful a manner, and
+an adulteress openly praised and <i>fêted</i>, and obscene language and
+licentious images publicly tolerated; and all on the plea of a man's
+private misfortunes.</p>
+
+<p>There was, therefore, great force in the suggestion made to Lady
+Byron, that she owed a testimony in this case to truth and justice,
+irrespective of any personal considerations. There is no more real
+reason for allowing the spread of a hurtful falsehood that affects
+ourselves than for allowing one that affects our neighbour. This
+falsehood had corrupted the literature and morals of both England and
+America, and led to the public toleration, by respectable authorities,
+of forms of vice at first indignantly rejected. The question was,
+Was this falsehood to go on corrupting literature as long as history
+lasted? Had the world no right to true history? Had she who possessed
+the truth no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> responsibility to the world? Was not a final silence a
+confirmation of a lie with all its consequences?</p>
+
+<p>This testimony of Lady Byron, so far from being thrown out altogether,
+as the 'Quarterly' proposes, has a peculiar and specific value from the
+great forbearance and reticence which characterised the greater part of
+her life.</p>
+
+<p>The testimony of a person who has shown in every action perfect
+friendliness to another comes with the more weight on that account.
+Testimony extorted by conscience from a parent against a child, or a
+wife against a husband, where all the other actions of the life prove
+the existence of kind feeling, is held to be the strongest form of
+evidence.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that Lady Byron, under the severest temptations and the
+bitterest insults and injuries, withheld every word by which Lord
+Byron could be criminated, so long as he and his sister were living,
+is strong evidence, that, when she did speak, it was not under the
+influence of ill-will, but of pure conscientious convictions; and the
+fullest weight ought, therefore, to be given to her testimony.</p>
+
+<p>We are asked now why she ever spoke at all. The fact that her story
+is known to several persons in England is brought up as if it were a
+crime. To this we answer, Lady Byron had an undoubted moral right to
+have exposed the whole story in a public court in 1816, and thus cut
+herself loose from her husband by a divorce. For the sake of saving
+her husband and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> sister from destruction, she waived this right to
+self-justification, and stood for years a silent sufferer under calumny
+and misrepresentation. She desired nothing but to retire from the
+whole subject; to be permitted to enjoy with her child the peace and
+seclusion that belong to her sex. Her husband made her, through his
+life and after his death, a subject of such constant discussion, that
+she must either abandon the current literature of her day, or run the
+risk of reading more or less about herself in almost every magazine
+of her time. Conversations with Lord Byron, notes of interviews with
+Lord Byron, journals of time spent with Lord Byron, were constantly
+spread before the public. Leigh Hunt, Galt, Medwin, Trelawney, Lady
+Blessington, Dr. Kennedy, and Thomas Moore, all poured forth their
+memorials; and in all she figured prominently. All these had their
+tribes of reviewers and critics, who also discussed her. The profound
+mystery of her silence seemed constantly to provoke inquiry. People
+could not forgive her for not speaking. Her privacy, retirement,
+and silence were set down as coldness, haughtiness, and contempt
+of human sympathy. She was constantly challenged to say something:
+as, for example, in the 'Noctes' of November 1825, six months after
+Byron's death, Christopher North says, speaking of the burning of the
+Autobiography,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I think, since the Memoir was burned by these people, these people
+are bound to put us in possession of the best evidence they still
+have the power of producing, in order that we may come to a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> just
+conclusion as to a subject upon which, by their act, at least, as much
+as by any other people's act, we are compelled to consider it our duty
+to make up our deliberate opinion,&mdash;deliberate and decisive. Woe be
+to those who provoke this curiosity, and will not allay it! Woe be to
+them! say I. Woe to them! says the world.'</p></div>
+
+<p>When Lady Byron published her statement, which certainly seemed called
+for by this language, Christopher North blamed her for doing it, and
+then again said that she ought to go on and tell the whole story. If
+she was thus adjured to speak, blamed for speaking, and adjured to
+speak further, all in one breath, by public prints, there is reason to
+think that there could not have come less solicitation from private
+sources,&mdash;from friends who had access to her at all hours, whom she
+loved, by whom she was beloved, and to whom her refusal to explain
+might seem a breach of friendship. Yet there is no evidence on record,
+that we have seen, that she ever had other confidant than her legal
+counsel, till after all the actors in the events were in their graves,
+and the daughter, for whose sake largely the secret was guarded, had
+followed them.</p>
+
+<p>Now, does anyone claim, that, because a woman has sacrificed for twenty
+years all cravings for human sympathy, and all possibility of perfectly
+free and unconstrained intercourse with her friends, that she is
+obliged to go on bearing this same lonely burden to the end of her days?</p>
+
+<p>Let anyone imagine the frightful constraint and solitude implied in
+this sentence. Let anyone, too,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> think of its painful complications in
+life. The roots of a falsehood are far-reaching. Conduct that can only
+be explained by criminating another must often seem unreasonable and
+unaccountable; and the most truthful person, who feels bound to keep
+silence regarding a radical lie of another, must often be placed in
+positions most trying to conscientiousness. The great merit of 'Caleb
+Williams' as a novel consists in its philosophical analysis of the
+utter helplessness of an innocent person who agrees to keep the secret
+of a guilty one. One sees there how that necessity of silence produces
+all the effect of falsehood on his part, and deprives him of the
+confidence and sympathy of those with whom he would take refuge.</p>
+
+<p>For years, this unnatural life was forced on Lady Byron, involving her
+as in a network, even in her dearest family relations.</p>
+
+<p>That, when all the parties were dead, Lady Byron should allow herself
+the sympathy of a circle of intimate friends, is something so perfectly
+proper and natural, that we cannot but wonder that her conduct in this
+respect has ever been called in question. If it was her right to have
+had a public <i>exposé</i> in 1816, it was certainly her right to show to
+her own intimate circle the secret of her life when all the principal
+actors were passed from earth.</p>
+
+<p>The 'Quarterly' speaks as if, by thus waiting, she deprived Lord Byron
+of the testimony of living witnesses. But there were as many witnesses
+and partisans<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> dead on her side as on his. Lady Milbanke and Sir Ralph,
+Sir Samuel Romilly and Lady Anne Barnard were as much dead as Hobhouse,
+Moore, and others of Byron's partisans.</p>
+
+<p>The 'Quarterly' speaks of Lady Byron as 'running round, and repeating
+her story to people mostly below her own rank in life.'</p>
+
+<p>To those who know the personal dignity of Lady Byron's manners,
+represented and dwelt on by her husband in his conversations with Lady
+Blessington, this coarse and vulgar attack only proves the poverty of a
+cause which can defend itself by no better weapons.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron speaks of his wife as 'highly cultivated;' as having 'a
+degree of self-control I never saw equalled.'</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I am certain,' he says, 'that Lady Byron's first idea is what is due
+to herself: I mean that it is the undeviating rule of her conduct....
+Now, my besetting sin is a want of that self-respect which she
+has in excess.... But, though I accuse Lady Byron of an excess of
+self-respect, I must, in candour, admit, that, if any person ever had
+excuse for an extraordinary portion of it, she has; as, in all her
+thoughts, words, and actions, she is the most decorous woman that ever
+existed.'</p></div>
+
+<p>This is the kind of woman who has lately been accused in the public
+prints as a babbler of secrets and a gossip in regard to her private
+difficulties with children, grandchildren, and servants. It is a fair
+specimen of the justice that has generally been meted out to Lady Byron.</p>
+
+<p>In 1836, she was accused of having made a confidant of Campbell, on
+the strength of having written him a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> note <i>declining</i> to give him any
+information, or answer any questions. In July, 1869, she was denounced
+by 'Blackwood' as a Madame Brinvilliers for keeping such perfect
+silence on the matter of her husband's character; and in the last
+'Quarterly' she is spoken of as a gossip 'running round, and repeating
+her story to people below her in rank.'</p>
+
+<p>While we are upon this subject, we have a suggestion to make. John
+Stuart Mill says that utter self-abnegation has been preached to women
+as a peculiarly feminine virtue. It is true; but there is a moral limit
+to the value of self-abnegation.</p>
+
+<p>It is a fair question for the moralist, whether it is right and proper
+wholly to ignore one's personal claims to justice. The teachings of
+the Saviour give us warrant for submitting to personal injuries; but
+both the Saviour and St. Paul manifested bravery in denying false
+accusations, and asserting innocence.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron was falsely accused of having ruined <i>the</i> man of his
+generation, and caused all his vices and crimes, and all their evil
+effects on society. She submitted to the accusation for a certain
+number of years for reasons which commended themselves to her
+conscience; but when all the personal considerations were removed, and
+she was about passing from life, it was right, it was just, it was
+strictly in accordance with the philosophical and ethical character
+of her mind, and with her habit of considering all things in their
+widest relations to the good of mankind, that she should give<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> serious
+attention and consideration to the last duty which she might owe to
+abstract truth and justice in her generation.</p>
+
+<p>In her letter on the religious state of England, we find her advocating
+an absolute frankness in all religious parties. She would have all
+openly confess those doubts, which, from the best of motives, are
+usually suppressed; and believed, that, as a result of such perfect
+truthfulness, a wider love would prevail among Christians. This shows
+the strength of her conviction of the power and the importance of
+absolute truth; and shows, therefore, that her doubts and conscientious
+inquiries respecting her duty on this subject are exactly what might
+have been expected from a person of her character and principles.</p>
+
+<p>Having thus shown that Lady Byron's testimony is the testimony of a
+woman of strong and sound mind, that it was not given from malice nor
+ill-will, that it was given at a proper time and in a proper manner,
+and for a purpose in accordance with the most elevated moral views, and
+that it is coincident with all the established facts of this history,
+and furnishes a perfect solution of every mystery of the case, we think
+we shall carry the reader with us in saying that it is to be received
+as absolute truth.</p>
+
+<p>This conviction we arrive at while as yet we are deprived of the
+statement prepared by Lady Byron, and the proof by which she expected
+to sustain it; both which, as we understand, are now in the hands of
+her trustees.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a></h2>
+
+<p class="ph4">PHYSIOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.</p>
+
+
+<p>The credibility of the accusation of the unnatural crime charged to
+Lord Byron is greater than if charged to most men. He was born of
+parents both of whom were remarkable for perfectly ungoverned passions.
+There appears to be historical evidence that he was speaking literal
+truth when he says to Medwin of his father,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'He would have made a bad hero for Hannah More. He ran out three
+fortunes, and married or ran away with three women.... He seemed born
+for his own ruin and that of the other sex. He began by seducing
+Lady Carmarthen, and spent her four thousand pounds; and, not
+content with one adventure of this kind, afterwards eloped with Miss
+Gordon.'&mdash;<i>Medwin's Conversations</i>, p. 31.</p></div>
+
+<p>Lady Carmarthen here spoken of was the mother of Mrs. Leigh. Miss
+Gordon became Lord Byron's mother.</p>
+
+<p>By his own account, and that of Moore, she was a passionate,
+ungoverned, though affectionate woman. Lord Byron says to Medwin,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I lost my father when I was only six years of age. My mother, when
+she was in a passion with me (and I gave her cause enough), used to
+say, "O you little dog! you are a Byron all over, you are as bad as
+your father!"'&mdash;<i>Ibid.</i>, p. 31.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>By all the accounts of his childhood and early youth, it is made
+apparent that ancestral causes had sent him into the world with a most
+perilous and exceptional sensitiveness of brain and nervous system,
+which it would have required the most judicious course of education to
+direct safely and happily.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron often speaks as if he deemed himself subject to tendencies
+which might terminate in insanity. The idea is so often mentioned
+and dwelt upon in his letters, journals, and conversations, that we
+cannot but ascribe it to some very peculiar experience, and not to mere
+affectation.</p>
+
+<p>But, in the history of his early childhood and youth, we see no
+evidence of any original malformation of nature. We see only evidence
+of one of those organisations, full of hope and full of peril,
+which adverse influences might easily drive to insanity, but wise
+physiological training and judicious moral culture might have guided
+to the most splendid results. But of these he had neither. He was
+alternately the pet and victim of his mother's tumultuous nature,
+and equally injured both by her love and her anger. A Scotch maid of
+religious character gave him early serious impressions of religion, and
+thus added the element of an awakened conscience to the conflicting
+ones of his character.</p>
+
+<p>Education, in the proper sense of the word, did not exist in England in
+those days. Physiological considerations of the influence of the body
+on the soul, of the power of brain and nerve over moral development,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
+had then not even entered the general thought of society. The school
+and college education literally taught him nothing but the ancient
+classics, of whose power in exciting and developing the animal passions
+Byron often speaks.</p>
+
+<p>The morality of the times is strikingly exemplified even in its
+literary criticism.</p>
+
+<p>For example: One of Byron's poems, written while a schoolboy at Harrow,
+is addressed to 'My Son.' Mr. Moore, and the annotator of the standard
+edition of Byron's poems, gravely give the public their speculations on
+the point, whether Lord Byron first became a father while a schoolboy
+at Harrow; and go into particulars in relation to a certain infant, the
+claim to which lay between Lord Byron and another schoolfellow. It is
+not the nature of the event itself, so much as the cool, unembarrassed
+manner in which it is discussed, that gives the impression of the
+state of public morals. There is no intimation of anything unusual, or
+discreditable to the school, in the event, and no apparent suspicion
+that it will be regarded as a serious imputation on Lord Byron's
+character.</p>
+
+<p>Modern physiological developments would lead any person versed in
+the study of the reciprocal influence of physical and moral laws to
+anticipate the most serious danger to such an organisation as Lord
+Byron's, from a precocious development of the passions. Alcoholic and
+narcotic stimulants, in the case of such a person, would be regarded as
+little less than suicidal, and an early<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> course of combined drinking
+and licentiousness as tending directly to establish those unsound
+conditions which lead towards moral insanity. Yet not only Lord Byron's
+testimony, but every probability from the licence of society, goes to
+show that this was exactly what did take place.</p>
+
+<p>Neither restrained by education, nor warned by any correct
+physiological knowledge, nor held in check by any public sentiment, he
+drifted directly upon the fatal rock.</p>
+
+<p>Here we give Mr. Moore full credit for all his abatements in regard
+to Lord Byron's excesses in his early days. Moore makes the point
+very strongly that he was not, <i>de facto</i>, even so bad as many of his
+associates; and we agree with him. Byron's physical organisation was
+originally as fine and sensitive as that of the most delicate woman.
+He possessed the faculty of moral ideality in a high degree; and
+he had not, in the earlier part of his life, an attraction towards
+mere brutal vice. His physical sensitiveness was so remarkable that
+he says of himself, 'A dose of salts has the effect of a temporary
+inebriation, like light champagne, upon me.' Yet this exceptionally
+delicately-organised boy and youth was in a circle where not to conform
+to the coarse drinking-customs of his day was to incur censure and
+ridicule. That he early acquired the power of bearing large quantities
+of liquor is manifested by the record in his Journal, that, on the day
+when he read the severe 'Edinburgh' article upon his schoolboy poems,
+he drank three bottles of claret at a sitting.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Yet Byron was so far superior to his times, that some vague impulses to
+physiological prudence seem to have suggested themselves to him, and
+been acted upon with great vigour. He never could have lived so long
+as he did, under the exhaustive process of every kind of excess, if he
+had not re-enforced his physical nature by an assiduous care of his
+muscular system. He took boxing-lessons, and distinguished himself in
+all athletic exercises.</p>
+
+<p>He also had periods in which he seemed to try vaguely to retrieve
+himself from dissipation, and to acquire self-mastery by what he called
+temperance.</p>
+
+<p>But, ignorant and excessive in all his movements, his very efforts
+at temperance were intemperate. From violent excesses in eating
+and drinking, he would pass to no less unnatural periods of utter
+abstinence. Thus the very conservative power which Nature has of
+adapting herself to any <i>settled</i> course was lost. The extreme
+sensitiveness produced by long periods of utter abstinence made the
+succeeding debauch more maddening and fatal. He was like a fine musical
+instrument, whose strings were every day alternating between extreme
+tension and perfect laxity. We have in his Journal many passages, of
+which the following is a specimen:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'I have dined regularly to-day, for the first time since Sunday last;
+this being Sabbath too,&mdash;all the rest, tea and dry biscuits, six <i>per
+diem</i>. I wish to God I had not dined, now! It kills me with heaviness,
+stupor, and horrible dreams; and yet it was but a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> pint of bucellas,
+and fish. Meat I never touch, nor much vegetable diet. I wish I were
+in the country, to take exercise, instead of being obliged to <i>cool</i>
+by abstinence, in lieu of it. I should not so much mind a little
+accession of flesh: my bones can well bear it. But the worst is, the
+Devil always came with it, till I starved him out; and I will <i>not</i>
+be the slave of <i>any</i> appetite. If I do err, it shall be my heart, at
+least, that heralds the way. O my head! how it aches! The horrors of
+digestion! I wonder how Bonaparte's dinner agrees with him.'&mdash;<i>Moore's
+Life</i>, vol. ii. p. 264.</p></div>
+
+<p>From all the contemporary history and literature of the times,
+therefore, we have reason to believe that Lord Byron spoke the exact
+truth when he said to Medwin,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'My own master at an age when I most required a guide, left to the
+dominion of my passions when they were the strongest, with a fortune
+anticipated before I came into possession of it, and a constitution
+impaired by early excesses, I commenced my travels, in 1809,
+with a joyless indifference to the world and all that was before
+me.'&mdash;<i>Medwin's Conversations</i>, p. 42.</p></div>
+
+<p>Utter prostration of the whole physical man from intemperate excess,
+the deadness to temptation which comes from utter exhaustion, was his
+condition, according to himself and Moore, when he first left England,
+at twenty-one years of age.</p>
+
+<p>In considering his subsequent history, we are to take into account
+that it was upon the brain and nerve-power, thus exhausted by early
+excess, that the draughts of sudden and rapid literary composition
+began to be made. There was something unnatural and unhealthy in the
+rapidity, clearness, and vigour with which his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> various works followed
+each other. Subsequently to the first two cantos of 'Childe Harold,'
+'The Bride of Abydos,' 'The Corsair,' 'The Giaour,' 'Lara,' 'Parisina,'
+and 'The Siege of Corinth,' all followed close upon each other, in a
+space of less than three years, and those the three most critical years
+of his life. 'The Bride of Abydos' came out in the autumn of 1813,
+and was written in a week; and 'The Corsair' was composed in thirteen
+days. A few months more than a year before his marriage, and the brief
+space of his married life, was the period in which all this literary
+labour was performed, while yet he was running the wild career of
+intrigue and fashionable folly. He speaks of 'Lara' as being tossed
+off in the intervals between masquerades and balls, &amp;c. It is with the
+physical results of such unnatural efforts that we have now chiefly
+to do. Every physiologist would say that the demands of such poems on
+a healthy brain, in that given space, must have been exhausting; but
+when we consider that they were cheques drawn on a bank broken by early
+extravagance, and that the subject was prodigally spending vital forces
+in every other direction at the same time, one can scarcely estimate
+the physiological madness of such a course as Lord Byron's.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident from his Journal, and Moore's account, that any amount
+of physical force which was for the time restored by his first foreign
+travel was recklessly spent in this period, when he threw himself with
+a mad recklessness into London society in the time just pre<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>ceding
+his marriage. The revelations made in Moore's Memoir of this period
+are sad enough: those to Medwin are so appalling as to the state of
+contemporary society in England, as to require, at least, the benefit
+of the doubt for which Lord Byron's habitual carelessness of truth gave
+scope. His adventures with ladies of the highest rank in England are
+there paraded with a freedom of detail that respect for womanhood must
+lead every woman to question. The only thing that is unquestionable
+is, that Lord Byron made these assertions to Medwin, not as remorseful
+confessions, but as relations of his <i>bonnes fortunes</i>, and that Medwin
+published them in the very face of the society to which they related.</p>
+
+<p>When Lord Byron says, 'I have seen a great deal of Italian society, and
+swum in a gondola; but nothing could equal the profligacy of high life
+in England ... when I knew it,' he makes certainly strong assertions,
+if we remember what Mr. Moore reveals of the harem kept in Venice.</p>
+
+<p>But when Lord Byron intimates that three married women in his own
+rank in life, who had once held illicit relations with him, made
+wedding-visits to his wife at one time, we must hope that he drew on
+his active imagination, as he often did, in his statements in regard to
+women.</p>
+
+<p>When he relates at large his amour with Lord Melbourne's wife, and
+represents her as pursuing him with an insane passion, to which he with
+difficulty responded;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> and when he says that she tracked a rival lady
+to his lodgings, and came into them herself, disguised as a carman&mdash;one
+<i>hopes</i> that he exaggerates. And what are we to make of passages like
+this?&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'There was a lady at that time, double my own age, the mother of
+several children who were perfect angels, with whom I formed a
+<i>liaison</i> that continued without interruption for eight months. She
+told me she was never in love till she was thirty, and I thought
+myself so with her when she was forty. I never felt a stronger
+passion, which she returned with equal ardour....</p>
+
+<p>'Strange as it may seem, she gained, as all women do, an influence
+over me so strong that I had great difficulty in breaking with her.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, these statements, though probably exaggerated, are, for
+substance, borne out in the history of the times. With every possible
+abatement for exaggeration in these statements, there remains still
+undoubted evidence from other sources that Lord Byron exercised a most
+peculiar and fatal power over the moral sense of the women with whom he
+was brought in relation; and that love for him, in many women, became
+a sort of insanity, depriving them of the just use of their faculties.
+All this makes his fatal history both possible and probable.</p>
+
+<p>Even the article in 'Blackwood,' written in 1825 for the express
+purpose of vindicating his character, admits that his name had been
+coupled with those of three, four, or more women of rank, whom it
+speaks of as 'licentious, unprincipled, characterless women.'</p>
+
+<p>That such a course, in connection with alternate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> extremes of excess
+and abstinence in eating and drinking, and the immense draughts on
+the brain-power of rapid and brilliant composition, should have ended
+in that abnormal state in which cravings for unnatural vice give
+indications of approaching brain-disease, seems only too probable.</p>
+
+<p>This symptom of exhausted vitality becomes often a frequent type in
+periods of very corrupt society. The dregs of the old Greek and Roman
+civilisation were foul with it; and the apostle speaks of the turning
+of the use of the natural into that which is against nature, as the
+last step in abandonment.</p>
+
+<p>The very literature of such periods marks their want of physical and
+moral soundness. Having lost all sense of what is simple and natural
+and pure, the mind delights to dwell on horrible ideas, which give a
+shuddering sense of guilt and crime. All the writings of this fatal
+period of Lord Byron's life are more or less intense histories of
+unrepentant guilt and remorse or of unnatural crime. A recent writer
+in 'Temple Bar' brings to light the fact, that 'The Bride of Abydos,'
+the first of the brilliant and rapid series of poems which began in
+the period immediately preceding his marriage, was, in its first
+composition, an intense story of love between a brother and sister in
+a Turkish harem; that Lord Byron declared, in a letter to Galt, that
+it was drawn from <i>real life</i>; that, in compliance with the prejudices
+of the age, he altered the relationship to that of cousins before
+publication.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This same writer goes on to show, by a series of extracts from Lord
+Byron's published letters and journals, that his mind about this
+time was in a fearfully unnatural state, and suffering singular and
+inexplicable agonies of remorse; that, though he was accustomed
+fearlessly to confide to his friends immoralities which would be looked
+upon as damning, there was now a secret to which he could not help
+alluding in his letters, but which he told Moore he could not tell now,
+but 'some day or other when we are <i>veterans</i>.' He speaks of his heart
+as eating itself out; of a mysterious <i>person</i>, whom he says, 'God
+knows I love too well, and the Devil probably too.' He wrote a song,
+and sent it to Moore, addressed to a partner in some awful guilt, whose
+very name he dares not mention, because</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'There is grief in the sound, there is guilt in the fame.'</p></div>
+
+<p>He speaks of struggles of remorse, of efforts at repentance, and
+returns to guilt, with a sort of horror very different from the
+well-pleased air with which he relates to Medwin his common intrigues
+and adulteries. He speaks of himself generally as oppressed by a
+frightful, unnatural gloom and horror, and, when occasionally happy,
+'not in a way that <i>can</i> or <i>ought</i> to last.'</p>
+
+<p>'The Giaour,' 'The Corsair,' 'Lara,' 'Parisina,' 'The Siege of
+Corinth,' and 'Manfred,' all written or conceived about this period
+of his life, give one picture of a desperate, despairing, unrepentant
+soul, whom suffering maddens, but cannot reclaim.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In all these he paints only the one woman, of concentrated,
+unconsidering passion, ready to sacrifice heaven and defy hell for a
+guilty man, beloved in spite of religion or reason. In this unnatural
+literature, the stimulus of crime is represented as intensifying love.
+Medora, Gulnare, the Page in 'Lara,' Parisina, and the lost sister
+of Manfred, love the more intensely because the object of the love
+is a criminal, out-lawed by God and man. The next step beyond this
+is&mdash;<i>madness</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The work of Dr. Forbes Winslow on 'Obscure Diseases of the Brain and
+Nerves'<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> contains a passage so very descriptive of the case of
+Lord Byron, that it might seem to have been written for it. The sixth
+chapter of his work, on 'Anomalous and Masked Affections of the Mind,'
+contains, in our view, the only clue that can unravel the sad tragedy
+of Byron's life. He says, p. 87:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'These forms of unrecognised mental disorder are not always
+accompanied by any well-marked disturbance of the bodily health
+requiring medical attention, or any obvious departure from a normal
+state of thought and conduct such as to justify legal interference;
+neither do these affections always incapacitate the party from
+engaging in the ordinary business of life.... The change may have
+progressed insidiously and stealthily, having slowly and almost
+imperceptibly induced important molecular modifications in the
+delicate vesicular neurine of the brain, ultimately resulting in some
+aberration of the ideas, alteration of the affections, or perversion
+of the propensities or instincts....</p>
+
+<p>'Mental disorder of a dangerous character has been known for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> years
+to be stealthily advancing, without exciting the slightest notion of
+its presence, until some sad and terrible catastrophe, homicide, or
+suicide, has painfully awakened attention to its existence. Persons
+suffering from latent insanity often affect singularity of dress,
+gait, conversation, and phraseology. The most trifling circumstances
+stimulate their excitability. They are martyrs to ungovernable
+paroxysms of passion, are inflamed to a state of demoniacal fury
+by the most insignificant of causes, and occasionally lose all
+sense of delicacy of feeling, sentiment, refinement of manners and
+conversation. Such manifestations of undetected mental disorder may be
+seen associated with intellectual and moral qualities of the highest
+order.'</p></div>
+
+<p>In another place, Dr. Winslow again adverts to this latter symptom,
+which was strikingly marked in the case of Lord Byron:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'All delicacy and decency of thought are occasionally banished from
+the mind, so effectually does the principle of thought in these
+attacks succumb to the animal instincts and passions....</p>
+
+<p>'Such cases will commonly be found associated with organic
+predisposition to insanity or cerebral disease.... Modifications of
+the malady are seen allied with genius. The biographies of Cowper,
+Burns, Byron, Johnson, Pope, and Haydon establish that the most
+exalted intellectual conditions do not escape unscathed.</p>
+
+<p>'In early childhood, this form of mental disturbance may, in many
+cases, be detected. To its existence is often to be traced the
+<i>motiveless</i> crimes of the young.'</p></div>
+
+<p>No one can compare this passage of Dr. Forbes Winslow with the
+incidents we have already cited as occurring in that fatal period
+before the separation of Lord and Lady Byron, and not feel that the
+hapless young wife was indeed struggling with those inflexible natural
+laws, which, at some stages of retribution, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>volve in their awful
+sweep the guilty with the innocent. She longed to save; but he was gone
+past redemption. Alcoholic stimulants and licentious excesses, without
+doubt, had produced those unseen changes in the brain, of which Dr.
+Forbes Winslow speaks; and the results were terrible in proportion to
+the peculiar fineness and delicacy of the organism deranged.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! the history of Lady Byron is the history of too many women in
+every rank of life who are called, in agonies of perplexity and fear,
+to watch that gradual process by which physical excesses change the
+organism of the brain, till slow, creeping, moral insanity comes on.
+The woman who is the helpless victim of cruelties which only unnatural
+states of the brain could invent, who is heart-sick to-day and dreads
+to-morrow,&mdash;looks in hopeless horror on the fatal process by which a
+lover and a protector changes under her eyes, from day to day, to a
+brute and a fiend.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron's married life&mdash;alas! it is lived over in many a cottage and
+tenement-house, with no understanding on either side of the cause of
+the woful misery.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Winslow truly says, 'The science of these brain-affections is yet
+in its infancy in England.' At that time, it had not even begun to be.
+Madness was a fixed point; and the inquiries into it had no nicety.
+Its treatment, if established, had no redeeming power. Insanity simply
+locked a man up as a dangerous being; and the very suggestion of it,
+therefore, was resented as an injury.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A most peculiar and affecting feature of that form of brain disease
+which hurries its victim, as by an overpowering mania, into crime, is,
+that often the moral faculties and the affections remain to a degree
+unimpaired, and protest with all their strength against the outrage.
+Hence come conflicts and agonies of remorse proportioned to the
+strength of the moral nature. Byron, more than any other one writer,
+may be called the poet of remorse. His passionate pictures of this
+feeling seem to give new power to the English language:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'There is a war, a chaos of the mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When all its elements convulsed&mdash;combined,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lie dark and jarring with perturbèd force,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And gnashing with impenitent remorse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That juggling fiend, who never spake before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But cries, "I warned thee!" when the deed is o'er.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was this remorse that formed the only redeeming feature of the case.
+Its eloquence, its agonies, won from all hearts the interest that we
+give to a powerful nature in a state of danger and ruin; and it may
+be hoped that this feeling, which tempers the stern justice of human
+judgments, may prove only a faint image of the wider charity of Him
+whose thoughts are as far above ours as the heaven is above the earth.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a></h2>
+
+<p class="ph4">HOW COULD SHE LOVE HIM?</p>
+
+
+<p>It has seemed, to some, wholly inconsistent, that Lady Byron, if this
+story were true, could retain any kindly feeling for Lord Byron, or
+any tenderness for his memory; that the profession implied a certain
+hypocrisy: but, in this sad review, we may see how the woman who once
+had loved him, might, in spite of every wrong he had heaped upon her,
+still have looked on this awful wreck and ruin chiefly with pity. While
+she stood afar, and refused to justify or join in the polluted idolatry
+which defended his vices, there is evidence in her writings that her
+mind often went back mournfully, as a mother's would, to the early days
+when he might have been saved.</p>
+
+<p>One of her letters in Robinson's Memoirs, in regard to his religious
+opinions, shows with what intense earnestness she dwelt upon the
+unhappy influences of his childhood and youth, and those early
+theologies which led him to regard himself as one of the reprobate. She
+says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'Not merely from casual expressions, but from the whole tenor of Lord
+Byron's feelings, I could not but conclude that he was a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> believer
+in the inspiration of the Bible, and had the gloomiest Calvinistic
+tenets. To that unhappy view of the relation of the creature to the
+Creator I have always ascribed the misery of his life.</p>
+
+<p>'It is enough for me to know that he who thinks his transgression
+beyond forgiveness ... has righteousness beyond that of the
+self-satisfied sinner. It is impossible for me to doubt, that, could
+he once have been assured of pardon, his living faith in moral duty,
+and love of virtue ("I love the virtues that I cannot claim"), would
+have conquered every temptation. Judge, then, how I must hate the
+creed that made him see God as an Avenger, and not as a Father! My own
+impressions were just the reverse, but could have but little weight;
+and it was in vain to seek to turn his thoughts from that fixed idea
+with which he connected his personal peculiarity as a stamp. Instead
+of being made happier by any apparent good, he felt convinced that
+every blessing would be turned into a curse to him.... "The worst of
+it is, I do believe," he said. <i>I</i>, like all connected with him, was
+broken against the rock of predestination. I may be pardoned for my
+frequent reference to the sentiment (expressed by him), that I was
+only sent to show him the happiness he was forbidden to enjoy.'</p></div>
+
+<p>In this letter we have the heart, not of the wife, but of the
+mother,&mdash;the love that searches everywhere for extenuations of the
+guilt it is forced to confess.</p>
+
+<p>That Lady Byron was not alone in ascribing such results to the
+doctrines of Calvinism, in certain cases, appears from the language of
+the Thirty-nine Articles, which says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'As the godly consideration of predestination, and our election in
+Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly
+persons, and such as feel in themselves the workings of the spirit of
+Christ; ... so, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the spirit of
+Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's
+predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> the Devil doth
+thrust them either into desperation, or into recklessness of most
+unclean living,&mdash;no less perilous than desperation.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Lord Byron's life is an exact commentary on these words, which passed
+under the revision of Calvin himself.</p>
+
+<p>The whole tone of this letter shows not only that Lady Byron never lost
+her deep interest in her husband, but that it was by this experience
+that all her religious ideas were modified. There is another of
+these letters in which she thus speaks of her husband's writings and
+character:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'The author of the article on "Goethe" appears to me to have the
+mind which could dispel the illusion about <i>another</i> poet, without
+depreciating his claims ... to the truest inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>'Who has sought to distinguish between the holy and the unholy in that
+spirit? to prove, by the very degradation of the one, how high the
+other was. A character is never done justice to by extenuating its
+faults: so I do not agree to <i>nisi bonum</i>. It is kinder to read the
+blotted page.'</p></div>
+
+<p>These letters show that Lady Byron's idea was that, even were the
+whole mournful truth about Lord Byron fully told, there was still a
+foundation left for pity and mercy. She seems to have remembered,
+that if his sins were peculiar, so also were his temptations; and to
+have schooled herself for years to gather up, and set in order in her
+memory, all that yet remained precious in this great ruin. Probably no
+English writer that ever has made the attempt could have done this more
+perfectly. Though Lady Byron was not a poet <i>par<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> excellence</i>, yet she
+belonged to an order of souls fully equal to Lord Byron. Hers was more
+the analytical mind of the philosopher than the creative mind of the
+poet; and it was, for that reason, the one mind in our day capable of
+estimating him fully both with justice and mercy. No person in England
+had a more intense sensibility to genius, in its loftier acceptation,
+than Lady Byron; and none more completely sympathised with what was
+pure and exalted in her husband's writings.</p>
+
+<p>There is this peculiarity in Lord Byron, that the pure and the impure
+in his poetry often run side by side without mixing,&mdash;as one may see
+at Geneva the muddy stream of the Arve and the blue waters of the
+Rhone flowing together unmingled. What, for example, can be nobler,
+and in a higher and tenderer moral strain than his lines on the dying
+gladiator, in 'Childe Harold'? What is more like the vigour of the old
+Hebrew Scriptures than his thunderstorm in the Alps? What can more
+perfectly express moral ideality of the highest kind than the exquisite
+descriptions of Aurora Raby,&mdash;pure and high in thought and language,
+occurring, as they do, in a work full of the most utter vileness?</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron's hopes for her husband fastened themselves on all the noble
+fragments yet remaining in that shattered temple of his mind which lay
+blackened and thunder-riven; and she looked forward to a sphere beyond
+this earth, where infinite mercy should bring all again to symmetry and
+order. If the strict theo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>logian must regret this as an undue latitude
+of charity, let it at least he remembered that it was a charity which
+sprang from a Christian virtue, and which she extended to every human
+being, however lost, however low. In her view, the mercy which took
+<i>him</i> was mercy that could restore all.</p>
+
+<p>In my recollections of the interview with Lady Byron, when this whole
+history was presented, I can remember that it was with a softened and
+saddened feeling that I contemplated the story, as one looks on some
+awful, inexplicable ruin.</p>
+
+<p>The last letter which I addressed to Lady Byron upon this subject will
+show that such was the impression of the whole interview. It was in
+reply to the one written on the death of my son:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="author">
+
+'Jan. 30, 1858.
+</p>
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">My dear Friend</span>,&mdash;I <i>did</i> long to hear from you at a time
+when few knew how to speak, because I knew that <i>you</i> had known
+everything that sorrow can teach,&mdash;you, whose whole life has been a
+crucifixion, a long ordeal.</p>
+
+<p>'But I believe that the Lamb, who stands for ever "in the midst of the
+throne, as it had been slain," has everywhere His followers,&mdash;those
+who seem sent into the world, as He was, to suffer for the redemption
+of others; and, like Him, they must look to the joy set before
+them,&mdash;of redeeming others.</p>
+
+<p>'I often think that God called you to this beautiful and terrible
+ministry when He suffered you to link your destiny with one so
+strangely gifted and so fearfully tempted. Perhaps the reward that is
+to meet you when you enter within the veil where you must so soon pass
+will be to see <i>that</i> spirit, once chained and defiled, set free and
+purified; and to know that to you it has been given, by your life of
+love and faith, to accomplish this glorious change.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I think increasingly on the subject on which you conversed with me
+once,&mdash;the future state of retribution. It is evident to me that the
+spirit of Christianity has produced in the human spirit a tenderness
+of love which wholly revolts from the old doctrine on this subject;
+and I observe, that, the more Christ-like anyone becomes, the more
+difficult it seems for them to accept it as hitherto presented. And
+yet, on the contrary, it was <i>Christ</i> who said, "Fear Him that is
+able to destroy both soul and body in hell;" and the most appalling
+language is that of Christ himself.</p>
+
+<p>'Certain ideas, once prevalent, certainly must be thrown off. An
+endless <i>infliction</i> for past sins was once the doctrine: <i>that</i> we
+now generally reject. The doctrine now generally taught is, that an
+eternal persistence in evil necessitates everlasting suffering, since
+evil induces misery by the eternal nature of things; and this, I fear,
+is inferable from the analogies of Nature, and confirmed by the whole
+implication of the Bible.</p>
+
+<p>'What attention have you given to this subject? and is there any fair
+way of disposing of the current of assertion, and the still deeper
+<i>under</i>-current of implication, on this subject, without admitting
+one which loosens all faith in revelation, and throws us on pure
+naturalism? But of one thing I always feel sure: probation does not
+end with this present life; and the number of the saved may therefore
+be infinitely greater than the world's history leads us to suppose.</p>
+
+<p>'I think the Bible implies a great crisis, a struggle, an agony, in
+which God and Christ and all the good are engaged in redeeming from
+sin; and we are not to suppose that the little portion that is done
+for souls as they pass between the two doors of birth and death is all.</p>
+
+<p>'The Bible is certainly silent there. The primitive Church believed in
+the mercies of an intermediate state; and it was only the abuse of it
+by Romanism that drove the Church into its present position, which,
+I think, is wholly indefensible, and wholly irreconcilable with the
+spirit of Christ. For if it were the case, that probation in all cases
+begins and ends here, God's example would surely be one that could not
+be followed, and He would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> seem to be far less persevering than even
+human beings in efforts to save.</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing is plainer than that it would be wrong to give up any mind to
+eternal sin till every possible thing had been done for its recovery;
+and that is so clearly <i>not</i> the case here, that I can see that, with
+thoughtful minds, this belief would cut the very roots of religious
+faith in God: for there is a difference between facts that we do not
+understand, and facts which we <i>do</i> understand, and perceive to be
+wholly irreconcilable with a certain character professed by God.</p>
+
+<p>'If God says He is love, and certain ways of explaining Scripture
+make Him <i>less</i> loving and patient than man, then we make Scripture
+contradict itself. Now, as no passage of Scripture limits probation to
+this life, and as one passage in Peter certainly unequivocally asserts
+that Christ preached to the spirits in prison while His body lay in
+the grave, I am clear upon this point.</p>
+
+<p>'But it is also clear, that if there be those who persist in refusing
+God's love, who choose to dash themselves for ever against the
+inflexible laws of the universe, such souls must for ever suffer.</p>
+
+<p>'There may be souls who hate purity because it reveals their vileness;
+who refuse God's love, and prefer eternal conflict with it. For such
+there can be no peace. Even in this life, we see those whom the purest
+self-devoting love only inflames to madness; and we have only to
+suppose an eternal persistence in this to suppose eternal misery.</p>
+
+<p>'But on this subject we can only leave all reverently in the hands
+of that Being whose almighty power is "declared chiefly in showing
+mercy."'</p></div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a></h2>
+
+<p class="ph4">CONCLUSION.</p>
+
+
+<p>In leaving this subject, I have an appeal to make to the men, and more
+especially to the women, who have been my readers.</p>
+
+<p>In justice to Lady Byron, it must be remembered that this publication
+of her story is not her act, but mine. I trust you have already
+conceded, that, in so severe and peculiar a trial, she had a right to
+be understood fully by her immediate circle of friends, and to seek
+of them counsel in view of the moral questions to which such very
+exceptional circumstances must have given rise. Her communication to me
+was not an address to the public: it was a statement of the case for
+advice. True, by leaving the whole, unguarded by pledge or promise, it
+left discretionary power with me to use it if needful.</p>
+
+<p>You, my sisters, are to judge whether the accusation laid against Lady
+Byron by the 'Blackwood,' in 1869, was not of so barbarous a nature as
+to justify my producing the truth I held in my hands in reply.</p>
+
+<p>The 'Blackwood' claimed a right to re-open the subject because it was
+<i>not</i> a private but a public matter.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> It claimed that Lord Byron's
+unfortunate marriage might have changed not only his own destiny, but
+that of all England. It suggested, that, but for this, instead of
+wearing out his life in vice, and corrupting society by impure poetry,
+he might, at this day, have been leading the counsels of the State, and
+helping the onward movements of the world. Then it directly charged
+Lady Byron with meanly forsaking her husband in a time of worldly
+misfortune; with fabricating a destructive accusation of crime against
+him, and confirming this accusation by years of persistent silence more
+guilty than open assertion.</p>
+
+<p>It has been alleged, that, even admitting that Lady Byron's story were
+true, it never ought to have been told.</p>
+
+<p>Is it true, then, that a woman has not the same right to individual
+justice that a man has? If the cases were reversed, would it have been
+thought just that Lord Byron should go down in history loaded with
+accusations of crime because he could be only vindicated by exposing
+the crime of his wife?</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that the crime charged on Lady Byron was comparatively
+unimportant, and the one against Lord Byron was deadly.</p>
+
+<p>But the 'Blackwood,' in opening the controversy, called Lady Byron by
+the name of an unnatural female criminal, whose singular atrocities
+alone entitle her to infamous notoriety; and the crime charged upon her
+was sufficient to warrant the comparison.</p>
+
+<p>Both crimes are foul, unnatural, horrible; and there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> is no middle
+ground between the admission of the one or the other.</p>
+
+<p>You must either conclude that a woman, all whose other works, words,
+and deeds were generous, just, and gentle, committed this one monstrous
+exceptional crime, without a motive, and against all the analogies of
+her character, and all the analogies of her treatment of others; or you
+must suppose that a man known by all testimony to have been boundlessly
+licentious, who took the very course which, by every physiological law,
+would have led to unnatural results, did, at last, commit an unnatural
+crime.</p>
+
+<p>The question, whether I did right, when Lady Byron was thus held up as
+an abandoned criminal by the 'Blackwood,' to interpose my knowledge
+of the real truth in her defence, is a serious one; but it is one for
+which I must account to God alone, and in which, without any contempt
+of the opinions of my fellow-creatures, I must say, that it is a small
+thing to be judged of man's judgment.</p>
+
+<p>I had in the case a responsibility very different from that of many
+others. I had been consulted in relation to the publication of this
+story by Lady Byron, at a time when she had it in her power to have
+exhibited it with all its proofs, and commanded an instant conviction.
+I have reason to think that my advice had some weight in suppressing
+that disclosure. I gave that advice under the impression that the Byron
+controversy was a thing for ever passed, and never likely to return.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It had never occurred to me, that, nine years after Lady Byron's death,
+a standard English periodical would declare itself free to re-open this
+controversy, when all the generation who were her witnesses had passed
+from earth; and that it would re-open it in the most savage form of
+accusation, and with the indorsement and commendation of a hook of the
+vilest slanders, edited by Lord Byron's mistress.</p>
+
+<p>Let the reader mark the retributions of justice. The accusations of the
+'Blackwood,' in 1869, were simply an intensified form of those first
+concocted by Lord Byron in his 'Clytemnestra' poem of 1816. He forged
+that weapon, and bequeathed it to his party. The 'Blackwood' took it
+up, gave it a sharper edge, and drove it to the heart of Lady Byron's
+fame. The result has been the disclosure of this history. It is,
+then, Lord Byron himself, who, by his network of wiles, his ceaseless
+persecutions of his wife, his efforts to extend his partisanship beyond
+the grave, has brought on this tumultuous exposure. He, and he alone,
+is the cause of this revelation.</p>
+
+<p>And now I have one word to say to those in England who, with all the
+facts and documents in their hands which could at once have cleared
+Lady Byron's fame, allowed the barbarous assault of the 'Blackwood'
+to go over the civilised world without a reply. I speak to those who,
+knowing that I am speaking the truth, stand silent; to those who have
+now the ability to produce the facts and documents by which this cause
+might be instantly settled, and who do not produce them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I do not judge them; but I remind them that a day is coming when they
+and I must stand side by side at the great judgment-seat,&mdash;I to give an
+account for my speaking, they for their silence.</p>
+
+<p>In that day, all earthly considerations will have vanished like morning
+mists, and truth or falsehood, justice or injustice, will be the only
+realities.</p>
+
+<p>In that day, God, who will judge the secrets of all men, will judge
+between this man and this woman. Then, if never before, the full truth
+shall be told both of the depraved and dissolute man who made it his
+life's object to defame the innocent, and the silent, the self-denying
+woman who made it her life's object to give space for repentance to the
+guilty.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="PART_III" id="PART_III">PART III.</a></h2>
+
+<p class="ph3">MISCELLANEOUS DOCUMENTS.</p>
+
+<p class="ph4">THE TRUE STORY OF LADY BYRON'S LIFE,</p>
+
+<p class="ph4">AS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 'THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.'</p>
+
+
+<p>The reading world of America has lately been presented with a book
+which is said to sell rapidly, and which appears to meet with universal
+favour.</p>
+
+<p>The subject of the book may be thus briefly stated: The mistress of
+Lord Byron comes before the world for the sake of vindicating his fame
+from slanders and aspersions cast on him by his wife. The story of the
+mistress <i>versus</i> wife may be summed up as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron, the hero of the story, is represented as a human being
+endowed with every natural charm, gift, and grace, who, by the one
+false step of an unsuitable marriage, wrecked his whole life. A
+narrow-minded, cold-hearted precisian, without sufficient intellect to
+comprehend his genius, or heart to feel for his temptations, formed
+with him one of those mere worldly marriages common in high life; and,
+finding that she could not reduce him to the mathematical proprieties
+and conventional rules of her own mode of life, suddenly, and without
+warning, abandoned him in the most cruel and inexplicable manner.</p>
+
+<p>It is alleged that she parted from him in apparent affection and
+good-humour, wrote him a playful, confiding letter upon the way, but,
+after reaching her father's house, suddenly, and without explanation,
+announced to him that she would never see him again; that this sudden
+abandonment drew down upon him a perfect storm of scandalous stories,
+which his wife never contradicted; that she never in any way or shape
+stated what the exact reasons for her departure had been, and thus<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+silently gave scope to all the malice of thousands of enemies. The
+sensitive victim was actually driven from England, his home broken up,
+and be doomed to be a lonely wanderer on foreign shores.</p>
+
+<p>In Italy, under bluer skies, and among a gentler people, with more
+tolerant modes of judgment, the authoress intimates that he found
+peace and consolation. A lovely young Italian countess falls in love
+with him, and, breaking her family ties for his sake, devotes herself
+to him; and, in blissful retirement with her, he finds at last that
+domestic life for which he was so fitted.</p>
+
+<p>Soothed, calmed, and refreshed, he writes 'Don Juan,' which the world
+is at this late hour informed was a poem with a high moral purpose,
+designed to be a practical illustration of the doctrine of total
+depravity among young gentlemen in high life.</p>
+
+<p>Under the elevating influence of love, he rises at last to higher
+realms of moral excellence, and resolves to devote the rest of his life
+to some noble and heroic purpose; becomes the saviour of Greece; and
+dies untimely, leaving a nation to mourn his loss.</p>
+
+<p>The authoress dwells with a peculiar bitterness on Lady Byron's entire
+<i>silence</i> during all these years, as the most aggravated form of
+persecution and injury. She informs the world that Lord Byron wrote his
+Autobiography with the purpose of giving a fair statement of the exact
+truth in the whole matter; and that Lady Byron bought up the manuscript
+of the publisher, and insisted on its being destroyed, unread; thus
+inflexibly depriving her husband of his last chance of a hearing before
+the tribunal of the public.</p>
+
+<p>As a result of this silent persistent cruelty on the part of a cold,
+correct, narrow-minded woman, the character of Lord Byron has been
+misunderstood, and his name transmitted to after-ages clouded with
+aspersions and accusations which it is the object of this book to
+remove.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Such is the story of Lord Byron's mistress,&mdash;a story which is going
+the length of this American continent, and rousing up new sympathy
+with the poet, and doing its best to bring the youth of America once
+more under the power of that brilliant, seductive genius, from which
+it was hoped they had escaped. Already we are seeing it revamped in
+magazine-articles, which take up the slanders of the paramour and
+enlarge on them, and wax eloquent in denunciation of the marble-hearted
+insensible wife.</p>
+
+<p>All this while, it does not appear to occur to the thousands of
+unreflecting readers that they are listening merely to the story of
+Lord Byron's mistress, and of Lord Byron; and that, even by their own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+showing, their heaviest accusation against Lady Byron is that <i>she has
+not spoken at all</i>. Her story has never been told.</p>
+
+<p>For many years after the rupture between Lord Byron and his wife, that
+poet's personality, fate, and happiness had an interest for the whole
+civilized world, which, we will venture to say, was unparalleled. It
+is within the writer's recollection, how, in the obscure mountain-town
+where she spent her early days, Lord Byron's separation from his wife
+was, for a season, the all-engrossing topic.</p>
+
+<p>She remembers hearing her father recount at the breakfast-table the
+facts as they were given in the public papers, together with his own
+suppositions and theories of the causes.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron's 'Fare thee well,' addressed to Lady Byron, was set to
+music, and sung with tears by young school-girls, even in this distant
+America.</p>
+
+<p>Madame de Staël said of this appeal, that she was sure it would have
+drawn her at once to his heart and his arms; <i>she</i> could have forgiven
+everything: and so said all the young ladies all over the world, not
+only in England but in France and Germany, wherever Byron's poetry
+appeared in translation.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron's obdurate cold-heartedness in refusing even to listen to
+his prayers, or to have any intercourse with him which might lead to
+reconciliation, was the one point conceded on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>The stricter moralists defended her; but gentler hearts throughout all
+the world regarded her as a marble-hearted monster of correctness and
+morality, a personification of the law unmitigated by the gospel.</p>
+
+<p>Literature in its highest walks busied itself with Lady Byron. Hogg,
+in the character of the Ettrick Shepherd, devotes several eloquent
+passages to expatiating on the conjugal fidelity of a poor Highland
+shepherd's wife, who, by patience and prayer and forgiveness, succeeds
+in reclaiming her drunken husband, and making a good man of him; and
+then points his moral by contrasting with this touching picture the
+cold-hearted pharisaical correctness of Lady Byron.</p>
+
+<p>Moore, in his 'Life of Lord Byron,' when beginning the recital of the
+series of disgraceful amours which formed the staple of his life in
+Venice, has this passage:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Highly censurable in point of morality and decorum as was his course
+of life while under the roof of Madame &mdash;&mdash;, it was (with pain I am
+forced to confess) venial in comparison with the strange, headlong
+career of licence to which, when weaned from that connection, he so
+unrestrainedly, and, it may be added, defyingly abandoned himself. Of
+the state of his mind on leaving England, I have already endeavoured<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+to convey some idea; and among the feelings that went to make up that
+self-centred spirit of resistance which he then opposed to his fate was
+an indignant scorn for his own countrymen for the wrongs he thought
+they had done him. For a time, <i>the kindly sentiments which he still
+harboured toward Lady Byron, and a sort of vague hope, perhaps, that
+all would yet come right again</i>, kept his mind in a mood somewhat
+more softened and docile, as well as sufficiently under the influence
+of English opinions to prevent his breaking out into open rebellion
+against it, as he unluckily did afterward.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>By the failure of the attempted mediation with Lady Byron</i>, his
+last link with home was severed: while, notwithstanding the quiet and
+unobtrusive life which he led at Geneva, there was as yet, he found,
+no cessation of the slanderous warfare against his character; the same
+busy and misrepresenting spirit which had tracked his every step at
+home, having, with no less malicious watchfulness, dogged him into
+exile.'</p>
+
+<p>We should like to know what the misrepresentations and slanders
+must have been, when this sort of thing is admitted in Mr. Moore's
+<i>justification</i>. It seems to us rather wonderful how anybody, unless it
+were a person like the Countess Guiccioli, could misrepresent a life
+such as even Byron's friend admits he was leading.</p>
+
+<p>During all these years, when he was setting at defiance every principle
+of morality and decorum, the interest of the female mind all over
+Europe in the conversion of this brilliant prodigal son was unceasing,
+and reflects the greatest credit upon the faith of the sex.</p>
+
+<p>Madame de Staël commenced the first effort at evangelization
+immediately after he left England, and found her catechumen in a most
+edifying state of humility. He was, metaphorically, on his knees in
+penitence, and confessed himself a miserable sinner in the loveliest
+manner possible. Such sweetness and humility took all hearts. His
+conversations with Madame de Staël were printed, and circulated all
+over the world; making it to appear that only the inflexibility of Lady
+Byron stood in the way of his entire conversion.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Blessington, among many others, took him in hand five or six years
+afterwards, and was greatly delighted with his docility, and edified by
+his frank and free confessions of his miserable offences. Nothing now
+seemed wanting to bring the wanderer home to the fold but a kind word
+from Lady Byron. But, when the fair countess offered to mediate, the
+poet only shook his head in tragic despair; 'he had so many times tried
+in vain; Lady Byron's course had been from the first that of obdurate
+silence.'</p>
+
+<p>Any one who would wish to see a specimen of the skill of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
+honourable poet in mystification will do well to read a letter to Lady
+Byron, which Lord Byron, on parting from Lady Blessington, enclosed for
+her to read just before he went to Greece. He says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'The letter which I enclose <i>I was prevented from sending by my despair
+of its doing any good</i>. I was perfectly sincere when I wrote it, and
+am so still. But it is difficult for me to withstand the thousand
+provocations on that subject which both friends and foes have for seven
+years been throwing in the way of a man whose feelings were once quick,
+and whose temper was never patient.'</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="center">'<span class="smcap">TO LADY BYRON, CARE OF THE HON. MRS. LEIGH, LONDON</span></p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">Pisa</span>, <i>Nov.</i> 17, 1821.
+</p>
+
+<p>'I have to acknowledge the receipt of "Ada's hair," which is very
+soft and pretty, and nearly as dark already as mine was at twelve
+years old, if I may judge from what I recollect of some in Augusta's
+possession, taken at that age. But it didn't curl&mdash;perhaps from its
+being let grow.</p>
+
+<p>'I also thank you for the inscription of the date and name; and I will
+tell you why: I believe that they are the only two or three words
+of your handwriting in my possession. For your letters I returned;
+and except the two words, or rather the one word, "Household,"
+written twice in an old account book, I have no other. I burnt your
+last note, for two reasons: firstly, it was written in a style not
+very agreeable; and, secondly, I wished to take your word without
+documents, which are the worldly resources of suspicious people.</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose that this note will reach you somewhere about Ada's
+birthday&mdash;the 10th of December, I believe. She will then be six:
+so that, in about twelve more, I shall have some chance of meeting
+her; perhaps sooner, if I am obliged to go to England by business
+or otherwise. Recollect, however, one thing, either in distance or
+nearness&mdash;every day which keeps us asunder should, after so long a
+period, rather soften our mutual feelings; which must always have one
+rallying point as long as our child exists, which, I presume, we both
+hope will be long after either of her parents.</p>
+
+<p>'The time which has elapsed since the separation has been considerably
+more than the whole brief period of our union, and the not much longer
+one of our prior acquaintance. We both made a bitter mistake; but
+now it is over, and irrevocably so. For at thirty-three on my part,
+and few years less on yours, though it is no very extended period of
+life, still it is one when the habits and thought are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> generally so
+formed as to admit of no modification; and, as we could not agree when
+younger, we should with difficulty do so now.</p>
+
+<p>'I say all this, because I own to you, that notwithstanding
+everything, I considered our reunion as not impossible for more than
+a year after the separation; but then I gave up the hope entirely
+and for ever. But this very impossibility of reunion seems to me
+at least a reason why, on all the few points of discussion which
+can arise between us, we should preserve the courtesies of life,
+and as much of its kindness as people who are never to meet may
+preserve,&mdash;perhaps more easily than nearer connections. For my own
+part, I am violent, but not malignant; for only fresh provocations can
+awaken my resentments. To you, who are colder and more concentrated,
+I would just hint, that you may sometimes mistake the depth of a cold
+anger for dignity, and a worse feeling for duty. I assure you that
+I bear you <i>now</i> (whatever I may have done) no resentment whatever.
+Remember, that, <i>if you have injured me</i> in aught, this forgiveness
+is something; and that, if I have <i>injured you</i>, it is something more
+still, if it be true, as the moralists say, that the most offending
+are the least forgiving.</p>
+
+<p>'Whether the offence has been solely on my side, or reciprocal, or on
+yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect upon any but two things; viz.,
+that you are the mother of my child, and that we shall never meet
+again. I think, if you also consider the two corresponding points with
+reference to myself, it will be better for all three.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'Yours ever,</p>
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">Noel Byron</span>.'
+</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The artless Thomas Moore introduces this letter in the 'Life,' with the
+remark,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'There are few, I should think, of my readers, who will not agree with
+me in pronouncing, that, if the author of the following letter had not
+<i>right</i> on his side, he had at least most of those good feelings which
+are found in general to accompany it.'</p>
+
+<p>The reader is requested to take notice of the important admission, that
+<i>the letter was never sent to Lady Byron at all</i>. It was, in fact,
+never <i>intended</i> for her, but was a nice little dramatic performance,
+composed simply with the view of acting on the sympathies of Lady
+Blessington and Byron's numerous female admirers; and the reader will
+agree with us, we think, that, in this point of view, it was very
+neatly done, and deserves immortality as a work of high art. For six
+years he had been plunged into every kind of vice and excess, pleading
+his shattered domestic joys, and his wife's obdurate heart, as the
+apology and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> impelling cause; filling the air with his shrieks
+and complaints concerning the slander which pursued him, while he
+filled letters to his confidential correspondents with records of new
+mistresses. During all these years, the silence of Lady Byron was
+unbroken; though Lord Byron not only drew in private on the sympathies
+of his female admirers, but employed his talents and position as an
+author in holding her up to contempt and ridicule before thousands
+of readers. We shall quote at length his side of the story, which he
+published in the First Canto of 'Don Juan,' that the reader may see
+how much reason he had for assuming the injured tone which he did in
+the letter to Lady Byron quoted above. That letter never was sent to
+her; and the unmanly and indecent caricature of her, and the indelicate
+exposure of the whole story on his own side, which we are about to
+quote, were the only communications that could have reached her
+solitude.</p>
+
+<p>In the following verses, Lady Byron is represented as Donna Inez, and
+Lord Byron as Don José; but the incidents and allusions were so very
+pointed, that nobody for a moment doubted whose history the poet was
+narrating.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'His mother was a learned lady, famed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For every branch of every science known<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In every Christian language ever named,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With virtues equalled by her wit alone:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She made the cleverest people quite ashamed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And even the good with inward envy groaned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Finding themselves so very much exceeded<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In their own way by all the things that she did.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="r5" />
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Save that her duty both to man and God<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Required this conduct; which seemed very odd.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She kept a journal where his faults were noted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And opened certain trunks of books and letters,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(All which might, if occasion served, be quoted);<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And then she had all Seville for abettors,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Besides her good old grandmother (who doted):<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The hearers of her case become repeaters,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then advocates, inquisitors, and judges,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some for amusement, others for old grudges.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And then this best and meekest woman bore<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With such serenity her husband's woes!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just as the Spartan ladies did of yore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who saw their spouses killed, and nobly chose<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Never to say a word about them more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Calmly she heard each calumny that rose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And saw <i>his</i> agonies with such sublimity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That all the world exclaimed, "What magnanimity!"'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is the longest and most elaborate version of his own story
+that Byron ever published; but he busied himself with many others,
+projecting at one time a Spanish romance, in which the same story is
+related in the same transparent manner: but this he was dissuaded
+from printing. The booksellers, however, made a good speculation in
+publishing what they called his domestic poems; that is, poems bearing
+more or less relation to this subject.</p>
+
+<p>Every person with whom he became acquainted with any degree of intimacy
+was made familiar with his side of the story. Moore's Biography is
+from first to last, in its representations, founded upon Byron's
+communicativeness, and Lady Byron's silence; and the world at last
+settled down to believing that the account so often repeated, and never
+contradicted, must be substantially a true one.</p>
+
+<p>The true history of Lord and Lady Byron has long been perfectly
+understood in many circles in England; but the facts were of a nature
+that could not be made public. While there was a young daughter living
+whose future might be prejudiced by its recital, and while there were
+other persons on whom the disclosure of the real truth would have been
+crushing as an avalanche, Lady Byron's only course was the perfect
+silence in which she took refuge, and those sublime works of charity
+and mercy to which she consecrated her blighted early life.</p>
+
+<p>But the time is now come when the truth may be told. All the actors
+in the scene have disappeared from the stage of mortal existence, and
+passed, let us have faith to hope, into a world where they would desire
+to expiate their faults by a late publication of the truth.</p>
+
+<p>No person in England, we think, would as yet take the responsibility of
+relating the true history which is to clear Lady Byron's memory; but,
+by a singular concurrence of circumstances, all the facts of the case,
+in the most undeniable and authentic form, were at one time placed in
+the hands of the writer of this sketch, with authority to make such
+use of them as she should judge best. Had this melancholy history been
+allowed to sleep, no public use would have been made of them; but the
+appearance of a popular attack on the character of Lady Byron calls for
+a vindication, and the true story of her married life will therefore
+now be related.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron has described in one of his letters the impression left<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+upon his mind by a young person whom he met one evening in society,
+and who attracted his attention by the simplicity of her dress, and a
+certain air of singular purity and calmness with which she surveyed the
+scene around her.</p>
+
+<p>On inquiry, he was told that this young person was Miss Milbanke, an
+only child, and one of the largest heiresses in England.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron was fond of idealising his experiences in poetry; and the
+friends of Lady Byron had no difficulty in recognising the portrait of
+Lady Byron, as she appeared at this time of her life, in his exquisite
+description of Aurora Raby:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">'There was<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Indeed a certain fair and fairy one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the best class, and better than her class,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Aurora Raby, a young star who shone<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O'er life, too sweet an image for such glass;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A lovely being scarcely formed or moulded;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr class="r5" />
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Early in years, and yet more infantine<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In figure, she had something of sublime<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In eyes which sadly shone as seraphs' shine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All youth, but with an aspect beyond time;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Radiant and grave, as pitying man's decline;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mournful, but mournful of another's crime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She looked as if she sat by Eden's door,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And grieved for those who could return no more.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="r5" />
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As seeking not to know it; silent, lone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And kept her heart serene within its zone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There was awe in the homage which she drew;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her spirit seemed as seated on a throne,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Apart from the surrounding world, and strong<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In its own strength,&mdash;most strange in one so young!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Some idea of the course which their acquaintance took, and of the
+manner in which he was piqued into thinking of her, is given in a
+stanza or two:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The dashing and proud air of Adeline<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Imposed not upon her: she saw her blaze<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Much as she would have seen a glowworm shine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Then turned unto the stars for loftier rays.<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Juan was something she could not divine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Being no sibyl in the new world's ways;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet she was nothing dazzled by the meteor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because she did not pin her faith on feature.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His fame too (for he had that kind of fame<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which sometimes plays the deuce with womankind,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A heterogeneous mass of glorious blame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Half virtues and whole vices being combined;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Faults which attract because they are not tame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Follies tricked out so brightly that they blind),&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These seals upon her wax made no impression,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such was her coldness or her self-possession.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Aurora sat with that indifference<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which piques a <i>preux</i> chevalier,&mdash;as it ought.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of all offences, that's the worst offence<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which seems to hint you are not worth a thought.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="r5" />
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To his gay nothings, nothing was replied,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or something which was nothing, as urbanity<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Required. Aurora scarcely looked aside,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor even smiled enough for any vanity.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Devil was in the girl! Could it be pride,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or modesty, or absence, or inanity?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="r5" />
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Juan was drawn thus into some attentions,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Slight but select, and just enough to express,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To females of perspicuous comprehensions,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That he would rather make them more than less.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Aurora at the last (so history mentions,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Though probably much less a fact than guess)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So far relaxed her thoughts from their sweet prison<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As once or twice to smile, if not to listen.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="r5" />
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But Juan had a sort of winning way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A proud humility, if such there be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which showed such deference to what females say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As if each charming word were a decree.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His tact, too, tempered him from grave to gay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And taught him when to be reserved or free.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He had the art of drawing people out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without their seeing what he was about.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Aurora, who in her indifference,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Confounded him in common with the crowd<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Of flatterers, though she deemed he had more sense<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than whispering foplings or than witlings loud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Commenced (from such slight things will great commence)<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To feel that flattery which attracts the proud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rather by deference than compliment,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wins even by a delicate dissent.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And then he had good looks: that point was carried<br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Nem. con.</i> amongst the women.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="r5" />
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Now, though we know of old that looks deceive,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And always have done, somehow these good looks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make more impression than the best of books.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Aurora, who looked more on books than faces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was very young, although so very sage:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Admiring more Minerva than the Graces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Especially upon a printed page.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But Virtue's self, with all her tightest laces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Has not the natural stays of strict old age;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Socrates, that model of all duty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Owned to a penchant, though discreet for beauty.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The presence of this high-minded, thoughtful, unworldly woman is
+described through two cantos of the wild, rattling 'Don Juan,' in a
+manner that shows how deeply the poet was capable of being affected by
+such an appeal to his higher nature.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, when Don Juan sits silent and thoughtful amid a circle of
+persons who are talking scandal, the poet says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">''Tis true, he saw Aurora look as though<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She approved his silence: she perhaps mistook<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its motive for that charity we owe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But seldom pay, the absent.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class="r5" />
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He gained esteem where it was worth the most;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And certainly Aurora had renewed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In him some feelings he had lately lost<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or hardened,&mdash;feelings which, perhaps ideal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are so divine that I must deem them real:&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The love of higher things and better days;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The unbounded hope and heavenly ignorance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of what is called the world and the world's ways;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The moments when we gather from a glance<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">More joy than from all future pride or praise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which kindled manhood, but can ne'er entrance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heart in an existence of its own<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of which another's bosom is the zone.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And full of sentiments sublime as billows<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Heaving between this world and worlds beyond,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Don Juan, when the midnight hour of pillows<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Arrived, retired to his.'...<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In all these descriptions of a spiritual unworldly nature acting on
+the spiritual and unworldly part of his own nature, every one who ever
+knew Lady Byron intimately must have recognised the model from which
+he drew, and the experience from which he spoke, even though nothing
+was further from his mind than to pay this tribute to the woman he had
+injured, and though before these lines, which showed how truly he knew
+her real character, had come one stanza of ribald, vulgar caricature,
+designed as a slight to her:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'There was Miss Millpond, smooth as summer's sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That usual paragon, an only daughter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who seemed the cream of equanimity<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Till skimmed; and then there was some milk and water;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a slight shade of blue, too, it might be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Beneath the surface: but what did it matter?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love's riotous; but marriage should have quiet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, being consumptive, live on a milk diet.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The result of Byron's intimacy with Miss Milbanke and the enkindling
+of his nobler feelings was an offer of marriage, which she, though
+at the time deeply interested in him, declined with many expressions
+of friendship and interest. In fact, she already loved him, but had
+that doubt of her power to be to him all that a wife should be which
+would be likely to arise in a mind so sensitively constituted and so
+unworldly. They, however, continued a correspondence as friends; on her
+part, the interest continually increased; on his, the transient rise of
+better feelings was choked and overgrown by the thorns of base unworthy
+passions.</p>
+
+<p>From the height at which he might have been happy as the husband of a
+noble woman, he fell into the depths of a secret adulterous intrigue
+with a blood relation, so near in consanguinity, that discovery must
+have been utter ruin and expulsion from civilised society.</p>
+
+<p>From henceforth, this damning guilty secret became the ruling force<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> in
+his life; holding him with a morbid fascination, yet filling him with
+remorse and anguish, and insane dread of detection. Two years after his
+refusal by Miss Milbanke, his various friends, seeing that for some
+cause he was wretched, pressed marriage upon him.</p>
+
+<p>Marriage has often been represented as the proper goal and terminus
+of a wild and dissipated career; and it has been supposed to be the
+appointed mission of good women to receive wandering prodigals, with
+all the rags and disgraces of their old life upon them, and put rings
+on their hands, and shoes on their feet, and introduce them, clothed
+and in their right minds, to an honourable career in society.</p>
+
+<p>Marriage was, therefore, universally recommended to Lord Byron by his
+numerous friends and well-wishers; and so he determined to marry, and,
+in an hour of reckless desperation, sat down and wrote proposals to two
+ladies. One was declined: the other, which was accepted, was to Miss
+Milbanke. The world knows well that he had the gift of expression, and
+will not be surprised that he wrote a very beautiful letter, and that
+the woman who had already learned to love him fell at once into the
+snare.</p>
+
+<p>Her answer was a frank, outspoken avowal of her love for him, giving
+herself to him heart and hand. The good in Lord Byron was not so
+utterly obliterated that he could receive such a letter without
+emotion, or practise such unfairness on a loving, trusting heart
+without pangs of remorse. He had sent the letter in mere recklessness;
+he had not seriously expected to be accepted; and the discovery of the
+treasure of affection which he had secured was like a vision of lost
+heaven to a soul in hell.</p>
+
+<p>But, nevertheless, in his letters written about the engagement,
+there are sufficient evidences that his self-love was flattered at
+the preference accorded him by so superior a woman, and one who had
+been so much sought. He mentions with an air of complacency that
+she has employed the last two years in refusing five or six of his
+acquaintance; that he had no idea she loved him, admitting that it was
+an old attachment on his part. He dwells on her virtues with a sort
+of pride of ownership. There is a sort of childish levity about the
+frankness of these letters, very characteristic of the man who skimmed
+over the deepest abysses with the lightest jests. Before the world, and
+to his intimates, he was acting the part of the successful <i>fiancé</i>,
+conscious all the while of the deadly secret that lay cold at the
+bottom of his heart.</p>
+
+<p>When he went to visit Miss Milbanke's parents as her accepted lover
+she was struck with his manner and appearance: she saw him moody and
+gloomy, evidently wrestling with dark and desperate thoughts, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
+anything but what a happy and accepted lover should be. She sought an
+interview with him alone, and told him that she had observed that he
+was not happy in the engagement; and magnanimously added, that, if on
+review, he found he had been mistaken in the nature of his feelings,
+she would immediately release him, and they should remain only friends.</p>
+
+<p>Overcome with the conflict of his feelings, Lord Byron fainted away.
+Miss Milbanke was convinced that his heart must really be deeply
+involved in an attachment with reference to which he showed such
+strength of emotion, and she spoke no more of a dissolution of the
+engagement.</p>
+
+<p>There is no reason to doubt that Byron was, as he relates in his
+'Dream,' profoundly agonized and agitated when he stood before God's
+altar with the trusting young creature whom he was leading to a fate so
+awfully tragic; yet it was not the memory of Mary Chaworth, but another
+guiltier and more damning memory, that overshadowed that hour.</p>
+
+<p>The moment the carriage-doors were shut upon the bridegroom and the
+bride, the paroxysm of remorse and despair&mdash;unrepentant remorse and
+angry despair&mdash;broke forth upon her gentle head:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'You might have saved me from this, madam! You had all in your own
+power when I offered myself to you first. Then you might have made
+me what you pleased; but now you will find that you have married a
+<i>devil</i>!'</p>
+
+<p>In Miss Martineau's Sketches, recently published, is an account of the
+termination of this wedding-journey, which brought them to one of Lady
+Byron's ancestral country seats, where they were to spend the honeymoon.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Martineau says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'At the altar she did not know that she was a sacrifice; but before
+sunset of that winter day she knew it, if a judgment may be formed from
+her face, and attitude of despair, when she alighted from the carriage
+on the afternoon of her marriage-day. It was not the traces of tears
+which won the sympathy of the old butler who stood at the open door.
+The bridegroom jumped out of the carriage and walked away. The bride
+alighted, and came up the steps alone, with a countenance and frame
+agonized and listless with evident horror and despair. The old servant
+longed to offer his arm to the young, lonely creature, as an assurance
+of sympathy and protection. From this shock she certainly rallied,
+and soon. The pecuniary difficulties of her new home were exactly
+what a devoted spirit like hers was fitted to encounter. Her husband
+bore testimony, after the catastrophe, that a brighter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> being, a more
+sympathising and agreeable companion, never blessed any man's home.
+When he afterwards called her cold and mathematical, and over-pious,
+and so forth, it was when public opinion had gone against him, and
+when he had discovered that her fidelity and mercy, her silence and
+magnanimity, might be relied on, so that he was at full liberty to make
+his part good, as far as she was concerned.</p>
+
+<p>'Silent she was even to her own parents, whose feelings she
+magnanimously spared. She did not act rashly in leaving him, though she
+had been most rash in marrying him.'</p>
+
+<p>Not all at once did the full knowledge of the dreadful reality into
+which she had entered come upon the young wife. She knew vaguely, from
+the wild avowals of the first hours of their marriage, that there was
+a dreadful secret of guilt; that Byron's soul was torn with agonies of
+remorse, and that he had no love to give to her in return for a love
+which was ready to do and dare all for him. Yet bravely she addressed
+herself to the task of soothing and pleasing and calming the man whom
+she had taken 'for better or for worse.'</p>
+
+<p>Young and gifted; with a peculiar air of refined and spiritual beauty;
+graceful in every movement; possessed of exquisite taste; a perfect
+companion to his mind in all the higher walks of literary culture; and
+with that infinite pliability to all his varying, capricious moods
+which true love alone can give; bearing in her hand a princely fortune,
+which, with a woman's uncalculating generosity, was thrown at his
+feet,&mdash;there is no wonder that she might feel for a while as if she
+could enter the lists with the very Devil himself, and fight with a
+woman's weapons for the heart of her husband.</p>
+
+<p>There are indications scattered through the letters of Lord Byron,
+which, though brief indeed, showed that his young wife was making every
+effort to accommodate herself to him, and to give him a cheerful home.
+One of the poems that he sends to his publisher about this time, he
+speaks of as being copied by her. He had always the highest regard for
+her literary judgments and opinions; and this little incident shows
+that she was already associating herself in a wifely fashion with his
+aims as an author.</p>
+
+<p>The poem copied by her, however, has a sad meaning, which she
+afterwards learned to understand only too well:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone that fades so fast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the tender bloom of heart is gone e'er youth itself be past.<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt, or ocean of excess:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The shore to which their shivered sail shall never stretch again.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Only a few days before she left him for ever, Lord Byron sent Murray
+manuscripts, in Lady Byron's handwriting, of the 'Siege of Corinth,'
+and 'Parisina,' and wrote,&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<p>'I am very glad that the handwriting was a favourable omen of the
+<i>morale</i> of the piece: but you must not trust to that; for my copyist
+would write out anything I desired, in all the ignorance of innocence.'</p>
+
+<p>There were lucid intervals in which Lord Byron felt the charm of his
+wife's mind, and the strength of her powers. 'Bell, you could be a poet
+too, if you only thought so,' he would say. There were summer-hours in
+her stormy life, the memory of which never left her, when Byron was as
+gentle and tender as he was beautiful; when he seemed to be possessed
+by a good angel: and then for a little time all the ideal possibilities
+of his nature stood revealed.</p>
+
+<p>The most dreadful men to live with are those who thus alternate between
+angel and devil. The buds of hope and love called out by a day or two
+of sunshine are frozen again and again, till the tree is killed.</p>
+
+<p>But there came an hour of revelation,&mdash;an hour when, in a manner
+which left no kind of room for doubt, Lady Byron saw the full depth
+of the abyss of infamy which her marriage was expected to cover, and
+understood that she was expected to be the cloak and the accomplice of
+this infamy.</p>
+
+<p>Many women would have been utterly crushed by such a disclosure; some
+would have fled from him immediately, and exposed and denounced the
+crime. Lady Byron did neither. When all the hope of womanhood died out
+of her heart, there arose within her, stronger, purer, and brighter,
+that immortal kind of love such as God feels for the sinner,&mdash;the love
+of which Jesus spoke, and which holds the one wanderer of more account
+than the ninety and nine that went not astray. She would neither leave
+her husband nor betray him, nor yet would she for one moment justify
+his sin; and hence came two years of convulsive struggle, in which
+sometimes, for a while, the good angel seemed to gain ground, and then
+the evil one returned with sevenfold vehemence.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron argued his case with himself and with her with all the
+sophistries of his powerful mind. He repudiated Christianity as
+authority; asserted the right of every human being to follow out what
+he called 'the impulses of nature.' Subsequently he introduced into one
+of his dramas the reasoning by which he justified himself in incest.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the drama of 'Cain,' Adah, the sister and the wife of Cain, thus
+addresses him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">'Cain, walk not with this spirit.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bear with what we have borne, and love me: I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love thee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Lucifer.</i> More than thy mother and thy sire?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Adah.</i> I do. Is that a sin, too?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Lucifer.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No, not yet:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It one day will be in your children.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Adah.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Must not my daughter love her brother Enoch?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Lucifer.</i> Not as thou lovest Cain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Adah.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O my God!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall they not love, and bring forth things that love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of their love? Have they not drawn their milk<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of this bosom? Was not he, their father,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Born of the same sole womb, in the same hour<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With me? Did we not love each other, and,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In multiplying our being, multiply<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Things which will love each other as we love<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Them? And as I love thee, my Cain, go not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forth with this spirit: he is not of ours.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Lucifer.</i> The sin I speak of is not of my making<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And cannot be a sin in you, whate'er<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It seems in those who will replace ye in<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mortality.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Adah.</i> What is the sin which is not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sin in itself? Can circumstance make sin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of virtue? If it doth, we are the slaves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of'&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Lady Byron, though slight and almost infantine in her bodily presence,
+had the soul, not only of an angelic woman, but of a strong reasoning
+man. It was the writer's lot to know her at a period when she formed
+the personal acquaintance of many of the very first minds of England;
+but, among all with whom this experience brought her in connection,
+there was none who impressed her so strongly as Lady Byron. There was
+an almost supernatural power of moral divination, a grasp of the very
+highest and most comprehensive things, that made her lightest opinions
+singularly impressive. No doubt, this result was wrought out in a great
+degree from the anguish and conflict of these two years, when, with no
+one to help or counsel her but Almighty God, she wrestled and struggled
+with fiends of darkness for the redemption of her husband's soul.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She followed him through all his sophistical reasonings with a keener
+reason. She besought and implored, in the name of his better nature,
+and by all the glorious things that he was capable of being and doing;
+and she had just power enough to convulse and shake and agonise, but
+not power enough to subdue.</p>
+
+<p>One of the first of living writers, in the novel of 'Romola,' has
+given, in her masterly sketch of the character of Tito, the whole
+history of the conflict of a woman like Lady Byron with a nature like
+that of her husband. She has described a being full of fascinations
+and sweetnesses, full of generosities and of good-natured impulses; a
+nature that could not bear to give pain, or to see it in others, but
+entirely destitute of any firm moral principle; she shows how such a
+being, merely by yielding step by step to the impulses of passion,
+and disregarding the claims of truth and right, becomes involved in a
+fatality of evil, in which deceit, crime, and cruelty are a necessity,
+forcing him to persist in the basest ingratitude to the father who has
+done all for him, and hard-hearted treachery to the high-minded wife
+who has given herself to him wholly.</p>
+
+<p>There are few scenes in literature more fearfully tragic than the one
+between Romola and Tito, when he finally discovers that she knows him
+fully, and can be deceived by him no more. Some such hour always must
+come for strong decided natures irrevocably pledged&mdash;one to the service
+of good, and the other to the slavery of evil. The demoniac cried out,
+'What have I to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to
+torment me before the time?' The presence of all-pitying purity and
+love was a torture to the soul possessed by the demon of evil.</p>
+
+<p>These two years in which Lady Byron was with all her soul struggling to
+bring her husband back to his better self were a series of passionate
+convulsions.</p>
+
+<p>During this time, such was the disordered and desperate state of his
+worldly affairs, that there were ten executions for debt levied on
+their family establishment; and it was Lady Byron's fortune each time
+which settled the account.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the last, she and her husband saw less and less of each other;
+and he came more and more decidedly under evil influences, and seemed
+to acquire a sort of hatred of her.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron once said significantly to a friend who spoke of some
+causeless dislike in another, 'My dear, I have known people to be hated
+for no other reason than because they impersonated conscience.'</p>
+
+<p>The biographers of Lord Byron, and all his apologists, are careful to
+narrate how sweet and amiable and obliging he was to everybody who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+approached him; and the saying of Fletcher, his man-servant, that
+'<i>anybody</i> could do anything with my Lord, except my Lady,' has often
+been quoted.</p>
+
+<p>The reason of all this will now be evident. 'My Lady' was the only one,
+fully understanding the deep and dreadful secrets of his life, who had
+the courage resolutely and persistently and inflexibly to plant herself
+in his way, and insist upon it, that, if he went to destruction, it
+should be in spite of her best efforts.</p>
+
+<p>He had tried his strength with her fully. The first attempt had been
+to make her an accomplice by sophistry; by destroying her faith in
+Christianity, and confusing her sense of right and wrong, to bring her
+into the ranks of those convenient women who regard the marriage-tie
+only as a friendly alliance to cover licence on both sides.</p>
+
+<p>When her husband described to her the Continental latitude (the
+good-humoured marriage, in which complaisant couples mutually agreed
+to form the cloak for each other's infidelities), and gave her to
+understand that in this way alone she could have a peaceful and
+friendly life with him, she answered him simply, 'I am too truly your
+friend to do this.'</p>
+
+<p>When Lord Byron found that he had to do with one who would not yield,
+who knew him fully, who could not be blinded and could not be deceived,
+he determined to rid himself of her altogether.</p>
+
+<p>It was when the state of affairs between herself and her husband seemed
+darkest and most hopeless, that the only child of this union was
+born. Lord Byron's treatment of his wife during the sensitive period
+that preceded the birth of this child, and during her confinement,
+was marked by paroxysms of unmanly brutality, for which the only
+possible charity on her part was the supposition of insanity. Moore
+sheds a significant light on this period, by telling us that, about
+this time, Byron was often drunk, day after day, with Sheridan. There
+had been insanity in the family; and this was the plea which Lady
+Byron's love put in for him. She regarded him as, if not insane, at
+least so nearly approaching the boundaries of insanity as to be a
+subject of forbearance and tender pity; and she loved him with that
+love resembling a mother's, which good wives often feel when they have
+lost all faith in their husband's principles, and all hopes of their
+affections. Still, she was in heart and soul his best friend; true to
+him with a truth which he himself could not shake.</p>
+
+<p>In the verses addressed to his daughter, Lord Byron speaks of her as</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The child of love, though born in bitterness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And nurtured in convulsion.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A day or two after the birth of this child, Lord Byron came sud<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>denly
+into Lady Byron's room, and told her that her mother was dead. It was
+an utter falsehood; but it was only one of the many nameless injuries
+and cruelties by which he expressed his hatred of her. A short time
+after her confinement, she was informed by him, in a note, that, as
+soon as she was able to travel, she must go; that he could not and
+would not longer have her about him; and, when her child was only five
+weeks old, he carried this threat of expulsion into effect.</p>
+
+<p>Here we will insert briefly Lady Byron's own account (the only one she
+ever gave to the public) of this separation. The circumstances under
+which this brief story was written are affecting.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron was dead. The whole account between him and her was closed
+for ever in this world. Moore's life had been prepared, containing
+simply and solely Lord Byron's own version of their story. Moore
+sent this version to Lady Byron, and requested to know if she had
+any remarks to make upon it. In reply, she sent a brief statement to
+him,&mdash;the first and only one that had come from her during all the
+years of the separation, and which appears to have mainly for its
+object the exculpation of her father and mother from the charge, made
+by the poet, of being the instigators of the separation.</p>
+
+<p>In this letter, she says, with regard to their separation,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'The facts are, I left London for Kirkby Mallory, the residence of my
+father and mother, on the 15th of January, 1816. <span class="smcap">Lord Byron had
+signified to me in writing, Jan. 6, his absolute desire that I should
+leave London on the earliest day that I could conveniently fix.</span> It
+was not safe for me to undertake the fatigue of a journey sooner than
+the 15th. Previously to my departure, it had been strongly impressed
+upon my mind that Lord Byron was under the influence of insanity.
+This opinion was derived, in a great measure, from the communications
+made me by his nearest relatives and personal attendant, who had more
+opportunity than myself for observing him during the latter part of my
+stay in town. It was even represented to me that he was in danger of
+destroying himself.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>With the concurrence of his family</i>, I had consulted Dr. Baillie as a
+friend (Jan. 8) respecting the supposed malady. On acquainting him with
+the state of the case, and with Lord Byron's desire that I should leave
+London, Dr. Baillie thought that my absence might be advisable as an
+experiment, assuming the fact of mental derangement; for Dr. Baillie,
+not having had access to Lord Byron, could not pronounce a positive
+opinion on that point. He enjoined that, in correspondence with Lord
+Byron, I should avoid all but light and soothing topics. Under these
+impressions, I left London, determined to follow the advice given by
+Dr. Baillie. Whatever might have been the conduct of Lord<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> Byron toward
+me from the time of my marriage, yet, supposing him to be in a state of
+mental alienation, it was not for <i>me</i>, nor for any person of common
+humanity, to manifest at that moment a sense of injury.'</p>
+
+<p>Nothing more than this letter from Lady Byron is necessary to
+substantiate the fact, that she did not <i>leave</i> her husband, but <i>was
+driven</i> from him,&mdash;driven from him that he might give himself up to
+the guilty infatuation that was consuming him, without being tortured
+by her imploring face, and by the silent power of her presence and her
+prayers.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time before this, she had seen little of him. On the day
+of her departure, she passed by the door of his room, and stopped to
+caress his favourite spaniel, which was lying there; and she confessed
+to a friend the weakness of feeling a willingness even to be something
+as humble as that poor little creature, might she only be allowed to
+remain and watch over him. She went into the room where he and the
+partner of his sins were sitting together, and said, 'Byron, I come to
+say good-bye,' offering, at the same time, her hand.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron put his hands behind him, retreated to the mantel-piece,
+and, looking on the two that stood there, with a sarcastic smile said,
+'When shall we three meet again?' Lady Byron answered, 'In heaven, I
+trust.' And those were her last words to him on earth.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if the reader wishes to understand the real talents of Lord Byron
+for deception and dissimulation, let him read, with this story in his
+mind, the 'Fare thee well,' which he addressed to Lady Byron through
+the printer:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Fare thee well; and if for ever,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still for ever fare thee well!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even though unforgiving, never<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Would that breast were bared before thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where thy head so oft hath lain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While that placid sleep came o'er thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thou canst never know again!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Though my many faults defaced me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Could no other arm be found<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than the one which once embraced me<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To inflict a careless wound?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The re-action of society against him at the time of the separation from
+his wife was something which he had not expected, and for which, it
+appears, he was entirely unprepared. It broke up the guilty intrigue
+and drove him from England. He had not courage to meet or endure it.
+The world, to be sure, was very far from suspecting what the truth was:
+but the tide was setting against him with such vehemence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> as to make
+him tremble every hour lest the whole should be known; and henceforth,
+it became a warfare of desperation to make his story good, no matter at
+whose expense.</p>
+
+<p>He had tact enough to perceive at first that the assumption of the
+pathetic and the magnanimous, and general confessions of faults,
+accompanied with admissions of his wife's goodness, would be the best
+policy in his case. In this mood, he thus writes to Moore:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'The fault was not in my choice (unless in choosing at all); for I do
+not believe (and I must say it in the very dregs of all this bitter
+business) that there ever was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder,
+or a more amiable, agreeable being than Lady Byron. I never had, nor
+can have, any reproach to make her while with me. Where there is blame,
+it belongs to myself.'</p>
+
+<p>As there must be somewhere a scapegoat to bear the sin of the affair,
+Lord Byron wrote a poem called 'A Sketch,' in which he lays the blame
+of stirring up strife on a friend and former governess of Lady Byron's;
+but in this sketch he introduces the following just eulogy on Lady
+Byron:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">'Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deceit infect not, near contagion soil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Indulgence weaken, nor example spoil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor mastered science tempt her to look down<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On humbler talents with a pitying frown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor fortune change, pride raise, nor passion bow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor virtue teach austerity,&mdash;till now;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Serenely purest of her sex that live,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But wanting one sweet weakness,&mdash;to forgive;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too shocked at faults her soul can never know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She deemed that all could be like her below:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue's friend;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For Virtue pardons those she would amend.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In leaving England, Lord Byron first went to Switzerland, where he
+conceived and in part wrote out the tragedy of 'Manfred.' Moore speaks
+of his domestic misfortunes, and the sufferings which he underwent at
+this time, as having influence in stimulating his genius, so that he
+was enabled to write with a greater power.</p>
+
+<p>Anybody who reads the tragedy of 'Manfred' with this story in his mind
+will see that it is true.</p>
+
+<p>The hero is represented as a gloomy misanthrope, dwelling with
+im<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>penitent remorse on the memory of an incestuous passion which has
+been the destruction of his sister for this life and the life to come,
+but which, to the very last gasp, he despairingly refuses to repent of,
+even while he sees the fiends of darkness rising to take possession
+of his departing soul. That Byron knew his own guilt well, and judged
+himself severely, may be gathered from passages in this poem, which are
+as powerful as human language can be made; for instance this part of
+the 'incantation,' which Moore says was written at this time:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Though thy slumber may be deep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet thy spirit shall not sleep:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There are shades which will not vanish;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There are thoughts thou canst not banish.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By a power to thee unknown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou canst never be alone:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art wrapt as with a shroud;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou art gathered in a cloud;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And for ever shalt thou dwell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the spirit of this spell.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="r5" />
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From thy false tears I did distil<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An essence which had strength to kill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From thy own heart I then did wring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The black blood in its blackest spring;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From thy own smile I snatched the snake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For there it coiled as in a brake;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From thy own lips I drew the charm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which gave all these their chiefest harm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In proving every poison known,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I found the strongest was thine own.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By thy cold breast and serpent smile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By thy unfathomed gulfs of guile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By that most seeming virtuous eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By thy shut soul's hypocrisy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the perfection of thine art<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which passed for human thine own heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By thy delight in other's pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And by thy brotherhood of Cain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I call upon thee, and compel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thyself to be thy proper hell!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Again: he represents Manfred as saying to the old abbot, who seeks to
+bring him to repentance,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Old man, there is no power in holy men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor agony, nor greater than all these,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The innate tortures of that deep despair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which is remorse without the fear of hell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, all in all sufficient to itself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would make a hell of heaven, can exorcise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon itself: there is no future pang<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can deal that justice on the self-condemned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He deals on his own soul.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And when the abbot tells him,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">'All this is well;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For this will pass away, and be succeeded<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By an auspicious hope, which shall look up<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With calm assurance to that blessed place<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which all who seek may win, whatever be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their earthly errors,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He answers,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">'It is too late.'</span></div></div>
+
+<p>Then the old abbot soliloquises:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'This should have been a noble creature: he<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath all the energy which would have made<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A goodly frame of glorious elements,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had they been wisely mingled; as it is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is an awful chaos,&mdash;light and darkness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mind and dust, and passions and pure thoughts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mixed, and contending without end or order.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>The world can easily see, in Moore's Biography, what, after this, was
+the course of Lord Byron's life; how he went from shame to shame, and
+dishonour to dishonour, and used the fortune which his wife brought him
+in the manner described in those private letters which his biographer
+was left to print. Moore, indeed, says Byron had made the resolution
+not to touch his lady's fortune; but adds, that it required more
+self-command than he possessed to carry out so honourable a purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron made but one condition with him. She had him in her power;
+and she exacted that the unhappy partner of his sins should not follow
+him out of England, and that the ruinous intrigue should be given
+up. Her inflexibility on this point kept up that enmity which was
+constantly expressing itself in some publication or other, and which
+drew her and her private relations with him before the public.</p>
+
+<p>The story of what Lady Byron did with the portion of her fortune which
+was reserved to her is a record of noble and skilfully administered
+charities.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> Pitiful and wise and strong, there was no form of human
+suffering or sorrow that did not find with her refuge and help. She
+gave not only systematically, but also impulsively.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Martineau claims for her the honour of having first invented
+practical schools, in which the children of the poor were turned
+into agriculturists, artizans, seamstresses, and good wives for poor
+men. While she managed with admirable skill and economy permanent
+institutions of this sort, she was always ready to relieve suffering
+in any form. The fugitive slaves William and Ellen Crafts, escaping to
+England, were fostered by her protecting care.</p>
+
+<p>In many cases where there was distress or anxiety from poverty among
+those too self-respecting to make their sufferings known, the delicate
+hand of Lady Byron ministered to the want with a consideration which
+spared the most refined feelings.</p>
+
+<p>As a mother, her course was embarrassed by peculiar trials. The
+daughter inherited from the father not only brilliant talents, but a
+restlessness and morbid sensibility which might be too surely traced
+to the storms and agitations of the period in which she was born. It
+was necessary to bring her up in ignorance of the true history of
+her mother's life; and the consequence was that she could not fully
+understand that mother.</p>
+
+<p>During her early girlhood, her career was a source of more anxiety than
+of comfort. She married a man of fashion, ran a brilliant course as a
+gay woman of fashion, and died early of a lingering and painful disease.</p>
+
+<p>In the silence and shaded retirement of the sick-room, the daughter
+came wholly back to her mother's arms and heart; and it was on that
+mother's bosom that she leaned as she went down into the dark valley.
+It was that mother who placed her weak and dying hand in that of her
+Almighty Saviour.</p>
+
+<p>To the children left by her daughter, she ministered with the
+faithfulness of a guardian angel; and it is owing to her influence that
+those who yet remain are among the best and noblest of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>The person whose relations with Byron had been so disastrous, also, in
+the latter years of her life, felt Lady Byron's loving and ennobling
+influences, and, in her last sickness and dying hours, looked to her
+for consolation and help.</p>
+
+<p>There was an unfortunate child of sin, born with the curse upon
+her, over whose wayward nature Lady Byron watched with a mother's
+tenderness. She was the one who could have patience when the patience
+of every one else failed; and though her task was a difficult one, from
+the strange abnormal propensities to evil in the object of her cares,
+yet Lady Byron never faltered, and never gave over, till death took the
+responsibility from her hands.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>During all this trial, strange to say, her belief that the good in Lord
+Byron would finally conquer was unshaken.</p>
+
+<p>To a friend who said to her, 'Oh! how could you love him?' she answered
+briefly, 'My dear, there was the angel in him.' It is in us all.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this angel that she had faith. It was for the deliverance
+of this angel from degradation and shame and sin that she unceasingly
+prayed. She read every work that Byron wrote&mdash;read it with a deeper
+knowledge than any human being but herself could possess. The ribaldry
+and the obscenity and the insults with which he strove to make her
+ridiculous in the world fell at her pitying feet unheeded.</p>
+
+<p>When he broke away from all this unworthy life to devote himself to a
+manly enterprise for the redemption of Greece, she thought that she saw
+the beginning of an answer to her prayers. Even although one of his
+latest acts concerning her was to repeat to Lady Blessington the false
+accusation which made Lady Byron the author of all his errors, she
+still had hopes from the one step taken in the right direction.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of these hopes came the news of his sudden death. On his
+death-bed, it is well-known that he called his confidential English
+servant to him, and said to him, 'Go to my sister; tell her&mdash;Go to Lady
+Byron,&mdash;you will see her,&mdash;and say'&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Here followed twenty minutes of indistinct mutterings, in which the
+names of his wife, daughter, and sister, frequently occurred. He then
+said, 'Now I have told you all.'</p>
+
+<p>'My lord,' replied Fletcher, 'I have not understood a word your
+lordship has been saying.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not understand me!' exclaimed Lord Byron with a look of the utmost
+distress: 'what a pity! Then it is too late,&mdash;all is over!' He
+afterwards, says Moore, tried to utter a few words, of which none were
+intelligible except 'My sister&mdash;my child.'</p>
+
+<p>When Fletcher returned to London, Lady Byron sent for him, and walked
+the room in convulsive struggles to repress her tears and sobs, while
+she over and over again strove to elicit something from him which
+should enlighten her upon what that last message had been; but in vain:
+the gates of eternity were shut in her face, and not a word had passed
+to tell her if he had repented.</p>
+
+<p>For all that, Lady Byron never doubted his salvation. Ever before her,
+during the few remaining years of her widowhood, was the image of her
+husband, purified and ennobled, with the shadows of earth for ever
+dissipated, the stains of sin for ever removed; 'the angel in him,' as
+she expressed it, 'made perfect, according to its divine ideal.'</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p>
+<p>Never has more divine strength of faith and love existed in woman.
+Out of the depths of her own loving and merciful nature, she gained
+such views of the divine love and mercy as made all hopes possible.
+There was no soul of whose future Lady Byron despaired,&mdash;such was her
+boundless faith in the redeeming power of love.</p>
+
+<p>After Byron's death, the life of this delicate creature&mdash;so frail in
+body that she seemed always hovering on the brink of the eternal world,
+yet so strong in spirit, and so unceasing in her various ministries of
+mercy&mdash;was a miracle of mingled weakness and strength.</p>
+
+<p>To talk with her seemed to the writer of this sketch the nearest
+possible approach to talking with one of the spirits of the just made
+perfect.</p>
+
+<p>She was gentle, artless; approachable as a little child; with ready,
+outflowing sympathy for the cares and sorrows and interests of all who
+approached her; with a <i>naïve</i> and gentle playfulness, that adorned,
+without hiding, the breadth and strength of her mind; and, above all,
+with a clear, divining, moral discrimination; never mistaking wrong
+for right in the slightest shade, yet with a mercifulness that made
+allowance for every weakness, and pitied every sin.</p>
+
+<p>There was so much of Christ in her, that to have seen her seemed to be
+to have drawn near to heaven. She was one of those few whom absence
+cannot estrange from friends; whose mere presence in this world seems
+always a help to every generous thought, a strength to every good
+purpose, a comfort in every sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Living so near the confines of the spiritual world, she seemed already
+to see into it: hence the words of comfort which she addressed to a
+friend who had lost a son:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Dear friend, remember, as long as our loved ones are in <i>God's</i> world,
+they are in <i>ours</i>.'</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>It has been thought by some friends who have read the proof-sheets
+of the foregoing that the author should give more specifically her
+authority for these statements.</p>
+
+<p>The circumstances which led the writer to England at a certain time
+originated a friendship and correspondence with Lady Byron, which was
+always regarded as one of the greatest acquisitions of that visit.</p>
+
+<p>On the occasion of a second visit to England, in 1856, the writer
+received a note from Lady Byron, indicating that she wished to have
+some private, confidential conversation upon important subjects,
+and inviting her, for that purpose, to spend a day with her at her
+country-seat near London.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p>
+<p>The writer went and spent a day with Lady Byron alone; and the object
+of the invitation was explained to her. Lady Byron was in such a state
+of health, that her physicians had warned her that she had very little
+time to live. She was engaged in those duties and retrospections which
+every thoughtful person finds necessary, when coming deliberately, and
+with open eyes, to the boundaries of this mortal life.</p>
+
+<p>At that time, there was a cheap edition of Byron's works in
+contemplation, intended to bring his writings into circulation among
+the masses; and the pathos arising from the story of his domestic
+misfortunes was one great means relied on for giving it currency.</p>
+
+<p>Under these circumstances, some of Lady Byron's friends had proposed
+the question to her, <i>whether she had not a responsibility to society
+for the truth</i>; whether <i>she did right</i> to allow these writings to gain
+influence over the popular mind by giving a silent consent to what she
+knew to be utter falsehoods.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron's whole life had been passed in the most heroic
+self-abnegation and self-sacrifice: and she had now to consider whether
+one more act of self-denial was not required of her before leaving this
+world; namely, to declare the absolute truth, no matter at what expense
+to her own feelings.</p>
+
+<p>For this reason, it was her desire to recount the whole history to a
+person of another country, and entirely out of the sphere of personal
+and local feelings which might be supposed to influence those in the
+country and station in life where the events really happened, in order
+that she might be helped by such a person's views in making up an
+opinion as to her own duty.</p>
+
+<p>The interview had almost the solemnity of a death-bed avowal. Lady
+Byron stated the facts which have been embodied in this article, and
+gave to the writer a paper containing a brief memorandum of the whole,
+with the dates affixed.</p>
+
+<p>We have already spoken of that singular sense of the reality of the
+spiritual world which seemed to encompass Lady Byron during the last
+part of her life, and which made her words and actions seem more like
+those of a blessed being detached from earth than of an ordinary
+mortal. All her modes of looking at things, all her motives of action,
+all her involuntary exhibitions of emotion, were so high above any
+common level, and so entirely regulated by the most unworldly causes,
+that it would seem difficult to make the ordinary world understand
+exactly how the thing seemed to lie before her mind. What impressed
+the writer more strongly than anything else was Lady Byron's perfect
+conviction that her husband was now a redeemed spirit; that he looked
+back with pain and shame and regret on all that was unworthy in his
+past life; and that, if he could speak or could act in the case,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> he
+would desire to prevent the further circulation of base falsehoods,
+and of seductive poetry, which had been made the vehicle of morbid and
+unworthy passions.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Byron's experience had led her to apply the powers of her strong
+philosophical mind to the study of mental pathology: and she had become
+satisfied that the solution of the painful problem which first occurred
+to her as a young wife, was, after all, the true one; namely, that
+Lord Byron had been one of those unfortunately constituted persons in
+whom the balance of nature is so critically hung, that it is always in
+danger of dipping towards insanity; and that, in certain periods of his
+life, he was so far under the influence of mental disorder as not to be
+fully responsible for his actions.</p>
+
+<p>She went over with a brief and clear analysis the history of his
+whole life as she had thought it out during the lonely musings of her
+widowhood. She dwelt on the ancestral causes that gave him a nature
+of exceptional and dangerous susceptibility. She went through the
+mismanagements of his childhood, the history of his school-days, the
+influence of the ordinary school-course of classical reading on such
+a mind as his. She sketched boldly and clearly the internal life of
+the young men of the time, as she, with her purer eyes, had looked
+through it; and showed how habits, which, with less susceptible fibre,
+and coarser strength of nature, were tolerable for his companions,
+were deadly to him, unhinging his nervous system, and intensifying the
+dangers of ancestral proclivities. Lady Byron expressed the feeling
+too, that the Calvinistic theology, as heard in Scotland, had proved
+in his case, as it often does in certain minds, a subtle poison. He
+never could either disbelieve or become reconciled to it; and the sore
+problems it proposes embittered his spirit against Christianity.</p>
+
+<p>'The worst of it is, I <i>do believe</i>,' he would often say with violence,
+when he had been employing all his powers of reason, wit, and ridicule
+upon these subjects.</p>
+
+<p>Through all this sorrowful history was to be seen, not the care of a
+slandered woman to make her story good, but the pathetic anxiety of
+a mother, who treasures every particle of hope, every intimation of
+good, in the son whom she cannot cease to love. With indescribable
+resignation, she dwelt on those last hours, those words addressed to
+her, never to be understood till repeated in eternity.</p>
+
+<p>But all this she looked upon as for ever past; believing, that, with
+the dropping of the earthly life, these morbid impulses and influences
+ceased, and that higher nature which he often so beautifully expressed
+in his poems became the triumphant one.</p>
+
+<p>While speaking on this subject, her pale ethereal face became luminous
+with a heavenly radiance; there was something so sublime in her belief
+in the victory of love over evil, that faith with her seemed to have
+become sight. She seemed so clearly to perceive the divine ideal of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+the man she had loved, and for whose salvation she had been called to
+suffer and labour and pray, that all memories of his past unworthiness
+fell away, and were lost.</p>
+
+<p>Her love was never the doting fondness of weak women; it was the
+appreciative and discriminating love by which a higher nature
+recognised god-like capabilities under all the dust and defilement
+of misuse and passion: and she never doubted that the love which in
+her was so strong, that no injury or insult could shake it, was yet
+stronger in the God who made her capable of such a devotion, and that
+in him it was accompanied by power to subdue all things to itself.</p>
+
+<p>The writer was so impressed and excited by the whole scene and recital,
+that she begged for two or three days to deliberate before forming any
+opinion. She took the memorandum with her, returned to London, and gave
+a day or two to the consideration of the subject. The decision which
+she made was chiefly influenced by her reverence and affection for Lady
+Byron. She seemed so frail, she had suffered so much, she stood at
+such a height above the comprehension of the coarse and common world,
+that the author had a feeling that it would almost be like violating a
+shrine to ask her to come forth from the sanctuary of a silence where
+she had so long abode, and plead her cause. She wrote to Lady Byron,
+that while this act of justice did seem to be called for, and to be in
+some respects most desirable, yet, as it would involve so much that was
+painful to her, the writer considered that Lady Byron would be entirely
+justifiable in leaving the truth to be disclosed after her death; and
+recommended that all the facts necessary should be put in the hands of
+some person, to be so published.</p>
+
+<p>Years passed on. Lady Byron lingered four years after this interview to
+the wonder of her physicians and all her friends.</p>
+
+<p>After Lady Byron's death, the writer looked anxiously, hoping to see a
+Memoir of the person whom she considered the most remarkable woman that
+England has produced in the century. No such Memoir has appeared on the
+part of her friends; and the mistress of Lord Byron has the ear of the
+public, and is sowing far and wide unworthy slanders, which are eagerly
+gathered up and read by an undiscriminating community.</p>
+
+<p>There may be family reasons in England which prevent Lady Byron's
+friends from speaking. But Lady Byron has an American name and an
+American existence; and reverence for pure womanhood is, we think, a
+national characteristic of the American; and, so far as this country is
+concerned, we feel that the public should have this refutation of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
+slanders of the Countess Guiccioli's book.</p>
+
+
+<p class="ph4">LORD LINDSAY'S LETTER TO THE LONDON 'TIMES.'</p>
+
+<p class="center">TO THE EDITOR OF 'THE TIMES.'</p>
+
+<p>Sir,&mdash;I have waited in expectation of a categorical denial of the
+horrible charge brought by Mrs. Beecher Stowe against Lord Byron and
+his sister on the alleged authority of the late Lady Byron. Such denial
+has been only indirectly given by the letter of Messrs. Wharton and
+Fords in your impression of yesterday. That letter is sufficient to
+prove that Lady Byron never contemplated the use made of her name, and
+that her descendants and representatives disclaim any countenance of
+Mrs. B. Stowe's article; but it does not specifically meet Mrs. Stowe's
+allegation, that Lady Byron, in conversing with her thirteen years ago,
+affirmed the charge now before us. It remains open, therefore, to a
+scandal-loving world, to credit the calumny through the advantage of
+this flaw, involuntary, I believe, in the answer produced against it.
+My object in addressing you is to supply that deficiency by proving
+that what is now stated on Lady Byron's supposed authority is at
+variance, in all respects, with what she stated immediately after the
+separation, when everything was fresh in her memory in relation to
+the time during which, according to Mrs. B. Stowe, she believed that
+Byron and his sister were living together in guilt. I publish this
+evidence with reluctance, but in obedience to that higher obligation
+of justice to the voiceless and defenceless dead which bids me break
+through a reserve that otherwise I should have held sacred. The Lady
+Byron of 1818 would, I am certain, have sanctioned my doing so, had
+she foreseen the present unparalleled occasion, and the bar that the
+conditions of her will present (as I infer from Messrs. Wharton and
+Fords' letter) against any fuller communication. Calumnies such as the
+present sink deep and with rapidity into the public mind, and are not
+easily eradicated. The fame of one of our greatest poets, and that
+of the kindest and truest and most constant friend that Byron ever
+had, is at stake; and it will not do to wait for revelations from the
+fountain-head, which are not promised, and possibly may never reach us.</p>
+
+<p>The late Lady Anne Barnard, who died in 1825, a contemporary and friend
+of Burke, Windham, Dundas, and a host of the wise and good of that
+generation, and remembered in letters as the authoress of 'Auld Robin
+Gray,' had known the late Lady Byron from infancy, and took a warm
+interest in her; holding Lord Byron in corresponding repugnance, not
+to say prejudice, in consequence of what she believed to be his harsh
+and cruel treatment of her young friend. I transcribe the following
+passages, and a letter from Lady Byron herself (written in 1818) from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
+<i>ricordi</i>, or private family memoirs, in Lady Anne's autograph, now
+before me. I include the letter, because, although treating only in
+general terms of the matter and causes of the separation, it affords
+collateral evidence bearing strictly upon the point of the credibility
+of the charge now in question:&mdash;</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>'The separation of Lord and Lady Byron astonished the world, which
+believed him a reformed man as to his habits, and a becalmed man as to
+his remorses. He had written nothing that appeared after his marriage
+till the famous "Fare thee well," which had the power of compelling
+those to pity the writer who were not well aware that he was not the
+unhappy person he affected to be. Lady Byron's misery was whispered
+soon after her marriage and his ill usage, but no word transpired,
+no sign escaped, from her. She gave birth, shortly, to a daughter;
+and when she went, as soon as she was recovered, on a visit to her
+father's, taking her little Ada with her, no one knew that it was to
+return to her lord no more. At that period, a severe fit of illness had
+confined me to bed for two months. I heard of Lady Byron's distress;
+of the pains he took to give a harsh impression of her character
+to the world. I wrote to her, and entreated her to come and let me
+see and hear her, if she conceived my sympathy or counsel could be
+any comfort to her. She came; but what a tale was unfolded by this
+interesting young creature, who had so fondly hoped to have made a
+young man of genius and romance (as she supposed) happy! They had not
+been an hour in the carriage which conveyed them from the church, when,
+breaking into a malignant sneer, "Oh! what a dupe you have been to your
+imagination! How is it possible a woman of your sense could form the
+wild hope of reforming <i>me</i>? Many are the tears you will have to shed
+ere that plan is accomplished. It is enough for me that you are my wife
+for me to hate you! If you were the wife of any other man, I own you
+might have charms," &amp;c. I who listened was astonished. "How could you
+go on after this," said I, "my dear? Why did you not return to your
+father's?" "Because I had not a conception he was in earnest; because I
+reckoned it a bad jest, and told him so,&mdash;that my opinions of him were
+very different from his of himself, otherwise he would not find me by
+his side. He laughed it over when he saw me appear hurt: and I forgot
+what had passed, till forced to remember it. I believe he was pleased
+with me, too, for a little while. I suppose it had escaped his memory
+that I was his wife." But she described the happiness they enjoyed to
+have been unequal and perturbed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> Her situation, in a short time, might
+have entitled her to some tenderness; but she made no claim on him for
+any. He sometimes reproached her for the motives that had induced her
+to marry him: all was "vanity, the vanity of Miss Milbanke carrying the
+point of reforming Lord Byron! He always knew <i>her</i> inducements; her
+pride shut her eyes to <i>his</i>: <i>he</i> wished to build up his character
+and his fortunes; both were somewhat deranged: she had a high name,
+and would have a fortune worth his attention,&mdash;let her look to that
+for his motives!"&mdash;"O Byron, Byron!" she said, "how you desolate me!"
+He would then accuse himself of being mad, and throw himself on the
+ground in a frenzy, which she believed was affected to conceal the
+coldness and malignity of his heart,&mdash;an affectation which at that
+time never failed to meet with the tenderest commiseration. I could
+find by some implications, not followed up by me, lest she might have
+condemned herself afterwards for her involuntary disclosures, that he
+soon attempted to corrupt her principles, both with respect to her own
+conduct and her latitude for his. She saw the precipice on which she
+stood, and kept his sister with her as much as possible. He returned
+in the evenings from the haunts of vice, where he made her understand
+he had been, with manners so profligate! "O the wretch!" said I. "And
+had he no moments of remorse?" "Sometimes he appeared to have them.
+One night, coming home from one of his lawless parties, he saw me so
+indignantly collected, and bearing all with such a determined calmness,
+that a rush of remorse seemed to come over him. He called himself a
+monster, though his sister was present, and threw himself in agony at
+my feet. I could not&mdash;no&mdash;I could not forgive him such injuries. He
+had lost me for ever! Astonished at the return of virtue, my tears, I
+believe, flowed over his face, and I said, 'Byron, all is forgotten:
+never, never shall you hear of it more!' He started up, and, folding
+his arms while he looked at me, burst into laughter. 'What do you
+mean?' said I. 'Only a philosophical experiment; that's all,' said
+he. 'I wished to ascertain the value of your resolutions.'" I need
+not say more of this prince of duplicity, except that varied were his
+methods of rendering her wretched, even to the last. When her lovely
+little child was born, and it was laid beside its mother on the bed,
+and he was informed he might see his daughter, after gazing at it with
+an exulting smile, this was the ejaculation that broke from him: "Oh,
+what an implement of torture have I acquired in you!" Such he rendered
+it by his eyes and manner, keeping her in a perpetual alarm for its
+safety when in his presence. All this reads madder than I believe he
+was: but she had not then made up her mind to disbelieve his pretended
+insanity, and conceived it best to intrust her secret with the
+excellent Dr. Baillie; telling him all that seemed to regard the state
+of her husband's mind, and letting his advice regulate her conduct.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>
+Baillie doubted of his derangement; but, as he did not reckon his own
+opinion infallible, he wished her to take precautions as if her husband
+were so. He recommended her going to the country, but to give him no
+suspicion of her intentions of remaining there, and, for a short time,
+to show no coldness in her letters, till she could better ascertain his
+state. She went, regretting, as she told me, to wear any semblance but
+the truth. A short time disclosed the story to the world. He acted the
+part of a man driven to despair by her inflexible resentment and by the
+arts of a governess (once a servant in the family) who hated him. "I
+will give you," proceeds Lady Anne, "a few paragraphs transcribed from
+one of Lady Byron's own letters to me. It is sorrowful to think, that,
+in a very little time, this young and amiable creature, wise, patient,
+and feeling, will have her character mistaken by every one who reads
+Byron's works. To rescue her from this, I preserved her letters; and,
+when she afterwards expressed a fear that any thing of her writings
+should ever fall into hands to injure him (I suppose she meant by
+publication), I safely assured her that it never should. But here this
+letter shall be placed, a sacred record in her favour, unknown to
+herself":&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>'"I am a very incompetent judge of the impression which the last canto
+of 'Childe Harold' may produce on the minds of indifferent readers.
+It contains the usual trace of a conscience restlessly awake; though
+his object has been too long to aggravate its burden, as if it could
+thus be oppressed into eternal stupor. I will hope, as you do, that it
+survives for his ultimate good. It was the acuteness of his remorse,
+impenitent in its character, which so long seemed to demand from my
+compassion to spare every resemblance of reproach, every look of
+grief, which might have said to his conscience, 'You have made me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+
+wretched.' I am decidedly of opinion that he is responsible. He has
+wished to be thought partially deranged, or on the brink of it, to
+perplex observers, and prevent them from tracing effects to their
+real causes through all the intricacies of his conduct. I was, as
+I told you, at one time the dupe of his acted insanity, and clung
+to the former delusions in regard to the motives that concerned me
+personally, till the whole system was laid bare. He is the absolute
+monarch of words, and uses them, as Bonaparte did lives, for conquest,
+without more regard to their intrinsic value; considering them only
+as ciphers, which must derive all their import from the situation in
+which he places them, and the ends to which he adapts them with such
+consummate skill. Why, then, you will say, does he not employ them to
+give a better colour to his own character? Because he is too good an
+actor to over-act, or to assume a moral garb which it would be easy
+to strip off. In regard to his poetry, egotism is the vital principle
+of his imagination, which it is difficult for him to kindle on any
+subject with which his own character and interests are not identified:
+but by the introduction of fictitious incidents, by change of scene
+or time, he has enveloped his poetical disclosures in a system
+impenetrable except to a very few; and his constant desire of creating
+a sensation makes him not averse to be the object of wonder and
+curiosity, even though accompanied by some dark and vague suspicions.
+Nothing has contributed more to the misunderstanding of his real
+character than the lonely grandeur in which he shrouds it, and his
+affectation of being above mankind, when he exists almost in their
+voice. The romance of his sentiments is another feature of this mask
+of state. I know no one more habitually destitute of that enthusiasm
+he so beautifully expresses, and to which he can work up his fancy
+chiefly by contagion. I had heard he was the best of brothers, the
+most generous of friends; and I thought such feelings only required to
+be warmed and cherished into more diffusive benevolence. Though these
+opinions are eradicated, and could never return but with the decay
+of my memory, you will not wonder if there are still moments when
+the association of feelings which arose from them soften and sadden
+my thoughts. But I have not thanked you, dearest Lady Anne, for your
+kindness in regard to a principal object,&mdash;that of rectifying false
+impressions. I trust you understand my wishes, which never were to
+injure Lord Byron in any way: for, though he would not suffer me to
+remain his wife, he cannot prevent me from continuing his friend; and
+it was from considering myself as such that I silenced the accusations
+by which my own conduct might have been more fully justified. It is
+not necessary to speak ill of his heart in general: it is sufficient
+that to me it was hard and impenetrable; that my own must have been
+broken before his could have been touched. I would rather represent
+this as <i>my</i> misfortune than as <i>his</i> guilt; but surely that
+misfortune is not to be made my crime! Such are my feelings: you will
+judge how to act. His allusions to me in 'Childe Harold' are cruel
+and cold, but with such a semblance as to make <i>me</i> appear so, and to
+attract all sympathy to himself. It is said in this poem that hatred
+of him will be taught as a lesson to his child. I might appeal to all
+who have ever heard me speak of him, and still more to my own heart,
+to witness that there has been no moment when I have remembered injury
+otherwise than affectionately and sorrowfully. It is not my duty to
+give way to hopeless and wholly unrequited affection; but, so long as
+I live, my chief struggle will probably be not to remember him too
+kindly. I do not seek the sympathy of the world; but I wish to be
+known by those whose opinion is valuable, and whose kindness is dear
+to me. Among such, my dear Lady Anne, you will ever be remembered by
+your truly affectionate,</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="author">'"<span class="smcap">A. Byron.</span>"'</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is the province of your readers, and of the world at large, to
+judge between the two testimonies now before them,&mdash;Lady Byron's in
+1816 and 1818, and that put forward in 1869 by Mrs. B. Stowe, as
+communicated by Lady Byron thirteen years ago. In the face of the
+evidence now given, positive, negative, and circumstantial, there
+can be but two alternatives in the case: either Mrs. B. Stowe must
+have entirely misunderstood Lady Byron, and been thus led into error
+and misstatement, or we must conclude that, under the pressure of a
+lifelong and secret sorrow, Lady Byron's mind had become clouded with
+an hallucination in respect of the particular point in question.</p>
+
+<p>Tho reader will admire the noble but severe character displayed
+in Lady Byron's letter; but those who keep in view what her first
+impressions were, as above recorded, may probably place a more lenient
+interpretation than hers upon some of the incidents alleged to Byron's
+discredit. I shall conclude with some remarks upon his character,
+written shortly after his death by a wise, virtuous, and charitable
+judge, the late Sir Walter Scott, likewise in a letter to Lady Anne
+Barnard:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Fletcher's account of poor Byron is extremely interesting. I
+had always a strong attachment to that unfortunate though most
+richly-gifted man, because I thought I saw that his virtues (and he had
+many) were his own; and his eccentricities the result of an irritable
+temperament, which sometimes approached nearly to mental disease. Those
+who are gifted with strong nerves, a regular temper, and habitual
+self-command, are not, perhaps, aware how much of what they may think
+virtue they owe to constitution; and such are but too severe judges of
+men like Byron, whose mind, like a day of alternate storm and sunshine,
+is all dark shades and stray gleams of light, instead of the twilight
+gray which illuminates happier though less distinguished mortals. I
+always thought, that, when a moral proposition was placed plainly
+before Lord Byron, his mind yielded a pleased and willing assent to
+it; but, if there was any side view given in the way of raillery or
+otherwise, he was willing enough to evade conviction.... It augurs
+ill for the cause of Greece that this master-spirit should have been
+withdrawn from their assistance just as he was obtaining a complete
+ascendency over their counsels. I have seen several letters from the
+Ionian Islands, all of which unite in speaking in the highest praise of
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> wisdom and temperance of his counsels, and the ascendency he was
+obtaining over the turbulent and ferocious chiefs of the insurgents. I
+have some verses written by him on his last birthday: they breathe a
+spirit of affection towards his wife, and a desire of dying in battle,
+which seems like an anticipation of his approaching fate.'</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+I remain, sir, your obedient servant,
+</p>
+
+<p class="author"><span class="smcap">Lindsay</span>,</p>
+
+
+<p class="p3"><span class="smcap">Dunecht</span>, Sept. 3.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="ph4">DR. FORBES WINSLOW'S LETTER TO THE LONDON 'TIMES.'</p>
+
+<p class="center">TO THE EDITOR.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,&mdash;Your paper of the 4th of September, containing an able
+and deeply interesting 'Vindication of Lord Byron,' has followed me
+to this place. With the general details of the 'True Story' (as it is
+termed) of Lady Byron's separation from her husband, as recorded in
+'Macmillan's Magazine,' I have no desire or intention to grapple. It
+is only with the hypothesis of insanity, as suggested by the clever
+writer of the 'Vindication' to account for Lady Byron's sad revelations
+to Mrs. Beecher Stowe, with which I propose to deal. I do not believe
+that the mooted theory of mental aberration can, in this case, be for a
+moment maintained. If Lady Byron's statement of facts to Mrs. B. Stowe
+is to be viewed as the creation of a distempered fancy, a delusion or
+hallucination of an insane mind, what part of the narrative are we to
+draw the boundary-line between fact and delusion, sanity and insanity?
+Where are we to fix the <i>point d'appui</i> of the lunacy? Again: is the
+alleged 'hallucination' to be considered as strictly confined to the
+idea that Lord Byron had committed the frightful sin of incest? or is
+the whole of the 'True Story' of her married life, as reproduced with
+such terrible minuteness by Mrs. Beecher Stowe, to be viewed as the
+delusion of a disordered fancy? If Lady Byron was the subject of an
+'hallucination' with regard to her husband, I think it not unreasonable
+to conclude that the mental alienation existed on the day of her
+marriage. If this proposition be accepted, the natural inference will
+be, that the details of the conversation which Lady Byron represents to
+have occurred between herself and Lord Byron as soon as they entered
+the carriage never took place. Lord Byron is said to have remarked
+to Lady Byron, 'You might have prevented this (or words to this
+effect): you will now find that you have married a devil.' Is this
+alleged conversation to be viewed as <i>fact</i>, or <i>fiction</i>? evidence of
+<i>sanity</i>, or <i>insanity</i>? Is the revelation which Lord Byron is said to
+have made to his wife of his 'incestuous passion' another delusion,
+having no foundation except in his wife's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> disordered imagination? Are
+his alleged attempts to justify to Lady Byron's mind the <i>morale</i> of
+the plea of 'Continental latitude&mdash;the good-humoured marriage, in which
+complaisant couples mutually agree to form the cloak for each other's
+infidelities,'&mdash;another morbid perversion of her imagination? Did this
+conversation ever take place? It will be difficult to separate one
+part of the 'True Story' from another, and maintain that this portion
+indicates insanity, and that portion represents sanity. If we accept
+the hypothesis of hallucination, we are bound to view the whole of Lady
+Byron's conversations with Mrs. B. Stowe, and the written statement
+laid before her, as the wild and incoherent representations of a
+lunatic. On the day when Lady Byron parted from her husband, did she
+enter his private room, and find him with the 'object of his guilty
+passion?' and did he say, as they parted, 'When shall we three meet
+again?' Is this to be considered as an actual occurrence, or as another
+form of hallucination? It is quite inconsistent with the theory of Lady
+Byron's insanity to imagine that her delusion was restricted to the
+idea of his having committed 'incest.' In common fairness, we are bound
+to view the aggregate mental phenomena which she exhibited from the
+day of the marriage to their final separation and her death. No person
+practically acquainted with the true characteristics of insanity would
+affirm, that, had this idea of 'incest' been an insane hallucination,
+Lady Byron could, from the lengthened period which intervened between
+her unhappy marriage and death, have refrained from exhibiting her
+mental alienation, not only to her legal advisers and trustees, but to
+others, exacting no pledge of secrecy from them as to her disordered
+impressions. Lunatics do for a time, and for some special purpose, most
+cunningly conceal their delusions; but they have not the capacity to
+struggle for thirty-six years with a frightful hallucination, similar
+to the one Lady Byron is alleged to have had, without the insane state
+of mind becoming obvious to those with whom they are daily associating.
+Neither is it consistent with experience to suppose that, if Lady Byron
+had been a monomaniac, her state of disordered understanding would have
+been restricted to one hallucination. Her diseased brain, affecting the
+normal action of thought, would, in all probability, have manifested
+other symptoms besides those referred to of aberration of intellect.</p>
+
+<p>During the last thirty years, I have not met with a case of insanity
+(assuming the hypothesis of hallucination) at all parallel with that
+of Lady Byron's. In my experience, it is unique. I never saw a patient
+with such a delusion. If it should be established, by the statements of
+those who are the depositors of the secret (and they are now bound, in
+vindication of Lord Byron's memory, to deny, if they have the power of
+doing so, this most frightful accusation), that the idea of incest did
+un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>happily cross Lady Byron's mind prior to her finally leaving him, it
+no doubt arose from a most inaccurate knowledge of facts and perfectly
+unjustifiable data, and was not, in the right psychological acceptation
+of the phrase, an insane hallucination.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+Sir, I remain your obedient servant,</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+<span class="smcap">Forbes Winslow</span>, M.D.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p3"><span class="smcap">Zaringerhof, Freiburg-en-Breisgau</span>, Sept. 8, 1869.</p>
+
+
+<p class="ph4">EXTRACT FROM LORD BYRON'S EXPUNGED LETTER.</p>
+
+<p class="center">TO MR. MURRAY.</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">Bologna</span>, June 7, 1819.
+</p>
+
+<p>... 'Before I left Venice, I had returned to you your late, and Mr.
+Hobhouse's sheets of "Juan." Don't wait for further answers from
+me, but address yours to Venice as usual. I know nothing of my own
+movements. I may return there in a few days, or not for some time:
+all this depends on circumstances. I left Mr. Hoppner very well. My
+daughter Allegra is well too, and is growing pretty: her hair is
+growing darker, and her eyes are blue. Her temper and her ways, Mr.
+Hoppner says, are like mine, as well as her features: she will make, in
+that case, a manageable young lady.</p>
+
+<p>'I have never seen anything of Ada, the little Electra of my Mycenæ....
+But there will come a day of reckoning, even if I should not live
+to see it. I have at least seen &mdash;&mdash; shivered, who was one of my
+assassins. When that man was doing his worst to uproot my whole
+family,&mdash;tree, branch, and blossoms; when, after taking my retainer,
+he went over to them; when he was bringing desolation on my hearth,
+and destruction on my household gods,&mdash;did he think that, in less
+than three years, a natural event, a severe domestic, but an expected
+and common calamity, would lay his carcass in a cross-road, or stamp
+his name in a verdict of lunacy? Did he (who in his sexagenary ...)
+reflect or consider what my feelings must have been when wife and child
+and sister, and name and fame and country, were to be my sacrifice on
+his legal altar?&mdash;and this at a moment when my health was declining,
+my fortune embarrassed, and my mind had been shaken by many kinds of
+disappointment? while I was yet young, and might have reformed what
+might be wrong in my conduct, and retrieved what was perplexing in
+my affairs? But he is in his grave, and&mdash;What a long letter I have
+scribbled!'...</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>In order that the reader may measure the change of moral tone with
+regard to Lord Byron, wrought by the constant efforts of himself and
+his party, we give the two following extracts from 'Blackwood.'</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The first is 'Blackwood' in 1819, just after the publication of 'Don
+Juan': the second is 'Blackwood' in 1825.</p>
+
+<p>'In the composition of this work, there is, unquestionably, a more
+thorough and intense infusion of genius and vice, power and profligacy,
+than in any poem which had ever before been written in the English,
+or, indeed, in any other modern language. Had the wickedness been less
+inextricably mingled with the beauty and the grace and the strength of
+a most inimitable and incomprehensible Muse, our task would have been
+easy. 'Don Juan' is by far the most admirable specimen of the mixture
+of ease, strength, gaiety, and seriousness, extant in the whole body
+of English poetry: the author has devoted his powers to the worst of
+purposes and passions; and it increases his guilt and our sorrow that
+he has devoted them entire.</p>
+
+<p>'The moral strain of the whole poem is pitched in the lowest key. Love,
+honour, patriotism, religion, are mentioned only to be scoffed at, as
+if their sole resting-place were, or ought to be, in the bosoms of
+fools. It appears, in short, as if this miserable man, having exhausted
+every species of sensual gratification, having drained the cup of sin
+even to its bitterest dregs, were resolved to show us that he is no
+longer a human being, even in his frailties, but a cool, unconcerned
+fiend, laughing with a detestable glee over the whole of the better and
+worse elements of which human life is composed; treating well-nigh with
+equal derision the most pure of virtues, and the most odious of vices;
+dead alike to the beauty of the one, and the deformity of the other;
+a mere heartless despiser of that frail but noble humanity, whose
+type was never exhibited in a shape of more deplorable degradation
+than in his own contemptuously distinct delineation of himself. To
+confess to his Maker, and weep over in secret agonies the wildest and
+most fantastic transgressions of heart and mind, is the part of a
+conscious sinner, in whom sin has not become the sole principle of life
+and action; but to lay bare to the eye of man and of <i>woman</i> all the
+hidden convulsions of a wicked spirit, and to do all this without one
+symptom of contrition, remorse, or hesitation, with a calm, careless
+ferociousness of contented and satisfied depravity,&mdash;this was an insult
+which no man of genius had ever before dared to put upon his Creator
+or his species. Impiously railing against his God, madly and meanly
+disloyal to his sovereign and his country, and brutally outraging all
+the best feelings of female honor, affection, and confidence, how small
+a part of chivalry is that which remains to the descendant of the
+Byrons!&mdash;a gloomy visor and a deadly weapon!</p>
+
+<p>'Those who are acquainted (as who is not?) with the main incidents in
+the private life of Lord Byron, and who have not seen this produc<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>tion,
+will scarcely believe that malignity should have carried him so far as
+to make him commence a filthy and impious poem with an elaborate satire
+on the character and manners of his wife, from whom, even by his own
+confession, he has been separated only in consequence of his own cruel
+and heartless misconduct. It is in vain for Lord Byron to attempt in
+any way to justify his own behaviour in that affair; and, now that he
+has so openly and audaciously invited inquiry and reproach, we do not
+see any good reason why he should not be plainly told so by the general
+voice of his countrymen. It would not be an easy matter to persuade
+any man who has any knowledge of the nature of woman, that a female
+such as Lord Byron has himself described his wife to be would rashly or
+hastily or lightly separate herself from the love with which she had
+once been inspired for such a man as he is or was. Had he not heaped
+insult upon insult, and scorn upon scorn, had he not forced the iron
+of his contempt into her very soul, there is no woman of delicacy and
+virtue, as he <i>admitted</i> Lady Byron to be, who would not have hoped all
+things, and suffered all things, from one, her love of whom must have
+been inwoven with so many exalting elements of delicious pride, and
+more delicious humility. To offend the love of such a woman was wrong,
+but it might be forgiven; to desert her was unmanly, but he might have
+returned, and wiped for ever from her eyes the tears of her desertion:
+but to injure and to desert, and then to turn back and wound her
+widowed privacy with unhallowed strains of cold-blooded mockery, was
+brutally, fiendishly, inexpiably mean. For impurities there might be
+some possibility of pardon, were they supposed to spring only from the
+reckless buoyancy of young blood and fiery passions; for impiety there
+might at least be pity, were it visible that the misery of the impious
+soul equalled its darkness: but for offences such as this, which cannot
+proceed either from the madness of sudden impulse or the bewildered
+agonies of doubt, but which speak the wilful and determined spite of
+an unrepenting, unsoftened, smiling, sarcastic, joyous sinner, there
+can be neither pity nor pardon. Our knowledge that it is committed
+by one of the most powerful intellects our island ever has produced
+lends intensity a thousand-fold to the bitterness of our indignation.
+Every high thought that was ever kindled in our breasts by the Muse of
+Byron, every pure and lofty feeling that ever responded from within
+us to the sweep of his majestic inspirations, every remembered moment
+of admiration and enthusiasm, is up in arms against him. We look back
+with a mixture of wrath and scorn to the delight with which we suffered
+ourselves to be filled by one, who, all the while he was furnishing
+us with delight, must, we cannot doubt it, have been mocking us with
+a cruel mockery; less cruel only, because less peculiar,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> than that
+with which he has now turned him from the lurking-place of his selfish
+and polluted exile to pour the pitiful chalice of his contumely on
+the surrendered devotion of a virgin bosom, and the holy hopes of the
+mother of his child. It is indeed a sad and a humiliating thing to
+know, that in the same year, there proceeded from the same pen two
+productions in all things so different as the fourth canto of "Childe
+Harold" and his loathsome "Don Juan."</p>
+
+<p>'We have mentioned one, and, all will admit, the worst instance of the
+private malignity which has been embodied in so many passages of "Don
+Juan;" and we are quite sure the lofty-minded and virtuous <i>men</i> whom
+Lord Byron has debased himself by insulting will close the volume which
+contains their own injuries, with no feelings save those of pity for
+him that has inflicted them, and for her who partakes so largely in the
+same injuries.'&mdash;<i>August, 1819.</i></p>
+
+
+<p class="ph4">'BLACKWOOD,'&mdash;<i>iterum</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'We shall, like all others who say anything about Lord Byron, begin,
+<i>sans apologie</i>, with his personal character. This is the great object
+of attack, the constant theme of open vituperation to one set, and the
+established mark for all the petty but deadly artillery of sneers,
+shrugs, groans, to another. Two widely different matters, however,
+are generally, we might say universally, mixed up here,&mdash;the personal
+character of the man, as proved by his course of life; and his personal
+character, as revealed in or guessed from his books. Nothing can be
+more unfair than the style in which this mixture is made use of. Is
+there a noble sentiment, a lofty thought, a sublime conception, in
+the book? "Ah, yes!" is the answer, "But what of that? It is only
+the <i>roué</i> Byron that speaks!" Is a kind, a generous action of the
+man mentioned? "Yes, yes!" comments the sage; "but only remember the
+atrocities of 'Don Juan:' depend on it, this, if it be true, must have
+been a mere freak of caprice, or perhaps a bit of vile hypocrisy."
+Salvation is thus shut out at either entrance: the poet damns the man,
+and the man the poet.</p>
+
+<p>'Nobody will suspect us of being so absurd as to suppose that it is
+possible for people to draw no inferences as to the character of an
+author from his book, or to shut entirely out of view, in judging of
+a book, that which they may happen to <i>know</i> about the man who writes
+it. The cant of the day supposes such things to be practicable; but
+they are not. But what we complain of and scorn is the extent to which
+they are carried in the case of this particular individual, as compared
+with others; the impudence with which things are at once assumed to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> be
+facts in regard to <i>his</i> private history; and the absolute unfairness
+of never arguing from <i>his</i> writings to <i>him, but for evil</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'Take the man, in the first place, as unconnected, in so far as we
+can thus consider him, with his works; and ask, What, after all, are
+the bad things we know of him? Was he dishonest or dishonourable?
+had he ever <i>done</i> anything to forfeit, or even endanger, his rank
+as a gentleman? Most assuredly, no such accusations have ever been
+maintained against Lord Byron the private nobleman, although something
+of the sort may have been insinuated against the author. "But he was
+such a profligate in his morals, that his name cannot be mentioned with
+anything like tolerance." Was he so, indeed? We should like extremely
+to have the catechising of the individual <i>man</i> who says so. That
+he indulged in sensual vices, to some extent, is certain, and to be
+regretted and condemned. But was he worse, as to such matters, than
+the enormous majority of those who join in the cry of horror upon this
+occasion? We most assuredly believe exactly the reverse; and we rest
+our belief upon very plain and intelligible grounds. First, we hold it
+impossible that the majority of mankind, or that anything beyond a very
+small minority, are or can be entitled to talk of sensual profligacy as
+having formed a part of the life and character of the man, who, dying
+at six and thirty, bequeathed a collection of works such as Byron's to
+the world. Secondly, we hold it impossible, that laying the extent of
+his intellectual labours out of the question, and looking only to the
+nature of the intellect which generated, and delighted in generating,
+such beautiful and noble conceptions as are to be found in almost all
+Lord Byron's works,&mdash;we hold it impossible that very many men can be
+at once capable of comprehending these conceptions, and entitled to
+consider sensual profligacy as having formed the principal, or even
+a principal, trait in Lord Byron's character. Thirdly, and lastly,
+we have never been able to hear any one fact established which could
+prove Lord Byron to deserve anything like the degree or even kind
+of odium which has, in regard to matters of this class, been heaped
+upon his name. We have no story of base unmanly seduction, or false
+and villainous intrigue, against him,&mdash;none whatever. It seems to us
+quite clear, that, if he had been at all what is called in society
+an unprincipled sensualist, there must have been many such stories,
+authentic and authenticated. But there are none such,&mdash;absolutely none.
+His name has been coupled with the names of three, four, or more women
+of some rank: but what kind of women? Every one of them, in the first
+place, about as old as himself in years, and therefore a great deal
+older in character; every one of them utterly battered in reputation
+long before he came into contact with them,&mdash;licentious, unprincipled,
+cha<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>racterless women. What father has ever reproached him with the ruin
+of his daughter? What husband has denounced him as the destroyer of his
+peace?</p>
+
+<p>'Let us not be mistaken. We are not defending the offences of which
+Lord Byron unquestionably was guilty; neither are we finding fault
+with those, who, after looking honestly within and around themselves,
+condemn those offences, no matter how severely: but we are speaking
+of society in general as it now exists; and we say that there is vile
+hypocrisy in the tone in which Lord Byron is talked of <i>there</i>. We
+say, that, although all offences against purity of life are miserable
+things, and condemnable things, the degrees of guilt attached to
+different offences of this class are as widely different as are the
+degrees of guilt between an assault and a murder; and we confess our
+belief, that no man of Byron's station or age could have run much risk
+in gaining a very bad name in society, had a course of life similar
+(in so far as we know any thing of that) to Lord Byron's been the only
+thing chargeable against him.</p>
+
+<p>'The last poem he wrote was produced upon his birthday, not many weeks
+before he died. We consider it as one of the finest and most touching
+effusions of his noble genius. We think he who reads it, and can ever
+after bring himself to regard even the worst transgressions that have
+been charged against Lord Byron with any feelings but those of humble
+sorrow and manly pity, is not deserving of the name of man. The deep
+and passionate struggles with the inferior elements of his nature (and
+ours) which it records; the lofty thirsting after purity; the heroic
+devotion of a soul half weary of life, because unable to believe in
+its own powers to live up to what it so intensely felt to be, and so
+reverentially honoured as, the right; the whole picture of this mighty
+spirit, often darkened, but never sunk,&mdash;often erring, but never
+ceasing to see and to worship the beauty of virtue; the repentance of
+it; the anguish; the aspiration, almost stilled in despair,&mdash;the whole
+of this is such a whole, that we are sure no man can read these solemn
+verses too often; and we recommend them for repetition, as the best and
+most conclusive of all possible answers whenever the name of Byron is
+insulted by those who permit themselves to forget nothing, either in
+his life or in his writings, but the good.'&mdash;[1825.]</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The following letters of Lady Byron's are reprinted from the Memoirs of
+H. C. Robinson. They are given that the reader may form some judgment
+of the strength and activity of her mind, and the elevated class of
+subjects upon which it habitually dwelt.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center">LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">Dec.</span> 31, 1853.
+</p>
+
+<p>'<span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Crabb Robinson</span>,&mdash;I have an inclination, if I were
+not afraid of trespassing on your time (but you can put my letter by
+for any leisure moment), to enter upon the history of a character which
+I think less appreciated than it ought to be. Men, I observe, do not
+understand men in certain points, without a woman's interpretation.
+Those points, of course, relate to feelings.</p>
+
+<p>'Here is a man taken by most of those who come in his way either for
+Dry-as-Dust, Matter-of-fact, or for a "vain visionary." There are,
+doubtless, some defective or excessive characteristics which give rise
+to those impressions.</p>
+
+<p>'My acquaintance was made, oddly enough, with him twenty-seven years
+ago. A pauper said to me of him, "He's the <i>poor man's</i> doctor." Such
+a recommendation seemed to me a good one: and I also knew that his
+organizing head had formed the first district society in England (for
+Mrs. Fry told me she could not have effected it without his aid); yet
+he has always ignored his own share of it. I felt in him at once the
+curious combination of the Christian and the cynic,&mdash;of reverence for
+<i>man</i>, and contempt of <i>men</i>. It was then an internal war, but one in
+which it was evident to me that the holier cause would be victorious,
+because there was deep belief, and, as far as I could learn, a
+blameless and benevolent life. He appeared only to want sunshine. It
+was a plant which could not be brought to perfection in darkness. He
+had begun life by the most painful conflict between filial duty and
+conscience,&mdash;a large provision in the church secured for him by his
+father; but he could not <i>sign</i>. There was discredit, as you know,
+attached to such scruples.</p>
+
+<p>'He was also, when I first knew him, under other circumstances of
+a nature to depress him, and to make him feel that he was unjustly
+treated. The gradual removal of these called forth his better nature
+in thankfulness to God. Still the old misanthropic modes of expressing
+himself obtruded themselves at times. This passed in '48 between him
+and Robertson. Robertson said to me, "I want to know something about
+ragged schools." I replied, "You had better ask Dr. King: he knows
+more about them."&mdash;"I?" said Dr. King. "I take care to know nothing of
+ragged schools, lest they should make <i>me</i> ragged." Robertson did not
+see through it. Perhaps I had been taught to understand such suicidal
+speeches by my cousin, Lord Melbourne.</p>
+
+<p>'The example of Christ, imperfectly as it may be understood by him, has
+been ever before his eyes: he woke to the thought of following it, and
+he went to rest consoled or rebuked by it. After nearly thirty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> years
+of intimacy, I may, without presumption, form that opinion. There is
+something pathetic to me in seeing any one <i>so</i> unknown. Even the other
+medical friends of Robertson, when I knew that Dr. King felt a woman's
+tenderness, said on one occasion to him, "But we know that you, Dr.
+King, are <i>above all feeling</i>."</p>
+
+<p>'If I have made the character more consistent to you by putting in
+these bits of mosaic, my pen will not have been ill employed, nor
+unpleasingly to you.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'Yours truly,</p>
+
+<p class="author">'<span class="smcap">A. Noel Byron</span>.'
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">Brighton</span>, Nov. 15, 1854.
+</p>
+
+<p>'The thoughts of all this public and private suffering have taken
+the life out of my pen when I tried to write on matters which would
+otherwise have been most interesting to me: <i>these</i> seemed the shadows,
+<i>that</i> the stern reality. It is good, however, to be drawn out of
+scenes in which one is absorbed most unprofitably, and to have one's
+natural interests revived by such a letter as I have to thank you for,
+as well as its predecessor. You touch upon the very points which do
+interest me the most, habitually. The change of form, and enlargement
+of design, in "The Prospective" <i>had</i> led me to express to one of the
+promoters of that object my desire to contribute. The religious crisis
+is instant; but the man for it? The next best thing, if, as I believe,
+he is not to be found <i>in England</i>, is an association of such men as
+are to edit the new periodical. An address delivered by Freeman Clarke
+at Boston, last May, makes me think him better fitted for a leader than
+any other of the religious "Free-thinkers." I wish I could send you
+my one copy; but you do not <i>need</i>, it, and others do. His object is
+the same as that of the "Alliance Universelle:" only he is still more
+free from "partialism" (his own word) in his aspirations and practical
+suggestions with respect to an ultimate "Christian synthesis." He
+so far adopts Comte's theory as to speak of religion itself under
+three successive aspects, historically,&mdash;1. Thesis; 2. Antithesis;
+3. Synthesis. I made his acquaintance in England; and he inspired
+confidence at once by his brave independence (<i>incomptis capillis</i>) and
+self-<i>un</i>consciousness. J. J. Tayler's address of last month follows in
+the same path,&mdash;all in favour of the "irenics," instead of polemics.</p>
+
+<p>'The answer which you gave me so fully and distinctly to the questions
+I proposed for your consideration was of value in turning to my view
+certain aspects of the case which I had not before observed. I had
+begun a second attack on your patience, when all was forgotten in the
+news of the day.'</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center">Lady Byron to H. C. R.</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">Brighton</span>, Dec. 25, 1854.
+</p>
+
+<p>'With J. J. Tayler, though almost a stranger to him, I have a peculiar
+reason for sympathising. A book of his was a treasure to my daughter on
+her death-bed.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p>
+
+<p>'I must confess to intolerance of opinion as to these two
+points,&mdash;<i>eternal</i> evil in any form, and (involved in it) <i>eternal</i>
+suffering. To believe in these would take away my God, who is
+all-loving. With a God with whom omnipotence and omniscience were all,
+evil might be eternal; but why do I say to you what has been better
+said elsewhere?'</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">Brighton</span>, Jan. 31, 1855.
+</p>
+
+<p>... 'The great difficulty in respect to "The Review"<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> seems to be
+to settle a basis, inclusive and exclusive; in short, a <i>boundary
+question</i>. From what you said, I think you agreed with me, that
+a latitudinarian Christianity ought to be the character of the
+periodical; but the depth of the roots should correspond with the width
+of the branches of that tree of knowledge. Of some of those minds one
+might say, "They have no root;" and then, the richer the foliage, the
+more danger that the trunk will fall. "Grounded in Christ" has to me
+a most practical significance and value. I, too, have anxiety about
+a friend (Miss Carpenter) whose life is of public importance: she,
+more than any of the English reformers, unless Nash and Wright, has
+found the art of drawing out the good of human nature, and proving its
+existence. She makes these discoveries by the light of love. I hope
+she may recover, from to-day's report. The object of a Reformatory
+in Leicester has just been secured at a county meeting.... Now the
+desideratum is well-qualified masters and mistresses. If you hear
+of such by chance, pray let me know. The regular schoolmaster is an
+extinguisher. Heart, and familiarity with the class to be educated,
+are all important. At home and abroad, the evidence is conclusive on
+that point; for I have for many years attended to such experiments
+in various parts of Europe. "The Irish Quarterly" has taken up the
+subject with rather more zeal than judgment. I had hoped that a sound
+and temperate exposition of the facts might form an article in the
+"Might-have-been Review."' </p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center">LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">Brighton</span>, Feb. 12, 1855.
+</p>
+
+<p>'I have at last earned the pleasure of writing to you by having settled
+troublesome matters of little moment, except locally; and I gladly take
+a wider range by sympathizing in your interests. There is, besides, no
+responsibility&mdash;for me at least&mdash;in canvassing the merits of Russell
+or Palmerston, but much in deciding whether the "village politician"
+Jackson or Thompson shall be leader in the school or public-house.</p>
+
+<p>'Has not the nation been brought to a conviction that the <i>system</i>
+should be broken up? and is Lord Palmerston, who has used it so long
+and so cleverly, likely to promote that object?</p>
+
+<p>'But, whatever obstacles there may be in state affairs, that general
+persuasion must modify other departments of action and knowledge.
+"Unroasted coffee" will no longer be accepted under the official
+seal,&mdash;another reason for a new literary combination for distinct
+special objects, a review in which every separate article should be
+<i>convergent</i>. If, instead of the problem to make a circle pass through
+three given points, it were required to find the centre from which to
+describe a circle through any three articles in the "Edinburgh" or
+"Westminster Review," who would accomplish it? Much force is lost for
+want of this one-mindedness amongst the contributors. It would not
+exclude variety or freedom in the unlimited discussion of means towards
+the ends unequivocally recognized. If St. Paul had edited a review, he
+might have admitted Peter as well as Luke or Barnabas....</p>
+
+<p>'Ross gave us an excellent sermon, yesterday, on "Hallowing the Name."
+Though far from commonplace, it might have been delivered in any church.</p>
+
+<p>'We have had Fanny Kemble here last week. I only heard her "Romeo
+and Juliet,"&mdash;not less instructive, as her readings always are, than
+exciting; for in her glass Shakspeare is a philosopher. I know her, and
+honour her, for her truthfulness amidst all trials.'</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">Brighton</span>, March 5, 1855.
+</p>
+
+<p>'I recollect only those passages of Dr. Kennedy's book which bear
+upon the opinions of Lord Byron. Strange as it may seem, Dr. Kennedy
+is most faithful where you doubt his being so. Not merely from casual
+expressions, but from the whole tenor of Lord Byron's feelings, I could
+not but conclude he was a believer in the inspiration of the Bible,
+and had the gloomiest Calvinistic tenets. To that unhappy view of the
+relation of the creature to the Creator, I have always ascribed the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>
+misery of his life.... It is enough for me to remember, that he who
+thinks his transgressions beyond <i>forgiveness</i> (and such was his own
+deepest feeling) <i>has</i> righteousness beyond that of the self-satisfied
+sinner, or, perhaps, of the half-awakened. It was impossible for me to
+doubt, that, could he have been at once assured of pardon, his living
+faith in a moral duty, and love of virtue ("I love the virtues which
+I cannot claim"), would have conquered every temptation. Judge, then,
+how I must hate the creed which made him see God as an Avenger, not a
+Father! My own impressions were just the reverse, but could have little
+weight; and it was in vain to seek to turn his thoughts for long from
+that <i>idée fixe</i> with which he connected his physical peculiarity as
+a stamp. Instead of being made happier by any apparent good, he felt
+convinced that every blessing would be "turned into a curse" to him.
+Who, possessed by such ideas, could lead a life of love and service to
+God or man? They must, in a measure, realize themselves. "The worst
+of it is, I <i>do</i> believe," he said. I, like all connected with him,
+was broken against the rock of predestination. I may be pardoned for
+referring to his frequent expression of the sentiment that I was only
+sent to show him the happiness he was forbidden to enjoy. You will now
+better understand why "The Deformed Transformed" is too painful to me
+for discussion. Since writing the above, I have read Dr. Granville's
+letter on the Emperor of Russia, some passages of which seem applicable
+to the prepossession I have described. I will not mix up less serious
+matters with these, which forty years have not made less than present
+still to me.'</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">Brighton</span>, April 8, 1855.
+</p>
+
+<p>... 'The book which has interested me most, lately, is that on
+"Mosaism," translated by Miss Goldsmid, and which I read, as you
+will believe, without any Christian (unchristian?) prejudice. The
+missionaries of the Unity were always, from my childhood, regarded by
+me as in that sense <i>the</i> people; and I believe they were true to that
+mission, though blind, intellectually, in demanding the crucifixion.
+The present aspect of Jewish opinions, as shown in that book, is
+all but Christian. The author is under the error of taking, as the
+representatives of Christianity, the Mystics, Ascetics, and Quietists;
+and therefore he does not know how near he is to the true spirit of the
+gospel. If you should happen to see Miss Goldsmid, pray tell her what
+a great service I think she has rendered to us <i>soi-disant</i> Christians
+in translating a book which must make us sensible of the little we have
+done, and the much we have to do, to justify our preference of the
+later to the earlier dispensation.'...</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p class="center">LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+'<span class="smcap">Brighton</span>, April 11, 1855.
+</p>
+
+<p>'You appear to have more definite information respecting "The Review"
+than I have obtained.... It was also said that "The Review" would, in
+fact, be "The Prospective" amplified,&mdash;not satisfactory to me, because
+I have always thought that periodical too Unitarian, in the sense of
+separating itself from other Christian churches, if not by a high wall,
+at least by a wire-gauze fence. Now, separation is to me <i>the</i>
+&#945;&#955;&#961;&#949;&#963;&#953;&#962;. The revelation through Nature never separates: it is the
+revelation through the Book which separates. Whewell and Brewster
+would have been one, had they not, I think, equally dimmed their lamps
+of science when reading their Bibles. As long as we think a truth
+<i>better</i> for being shut up in a text, we are not of the wide-world
+religion, which is to include all in one fold: for that text will not
+be accepted by the followers of other books, or students of the same;
+and separation will ensue. The Christian Scripture should be dear to
+us, not as the charter of a few, but of mankind; and to fashion it into
+cages is to deny its ultimate objects. These thoughts hot, like the
+roll at breakfast, where your letter was so welcome an addition.'</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p class="ph4">THREE DOMESTIC POEMS BY LORD BYRON.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">FARE THEE WELL.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fare thee well! and if for ever,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still for ever fare thee well!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even though unforgiving, never<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Would that breast were bared before thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where thy head so oft hath lain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While that placid sleep came o'er thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which thou ne'er canst know again!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Would that breast, by thee glanced over,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Every inmost thought could show!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then thou wouldst at last discover<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Twas not well to spurn it so.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Though the world for this commend thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Though it smile upon the blow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even its praises must offend thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Founded on another's woe.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Though my many faults defaced me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Could no other arm be found,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than the one which once embraced me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To inflict a cureless wound?<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet, oh! yet, thyself deceive not<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Love may sink by slow decay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, by sudden wrench, believe not<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hearts can thus be torn away:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Still thine own its life retaineth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still must mine, though bleeding, beat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the undying thought which paineth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is&mdash;that we no more may meet.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">These are words of deeper sorrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than the wail above the dead:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both shall live, but every morrow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wake us from a widowed bed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And when thou wouldst solace gather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When our child's first accents flow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wilt thou teach her to say 'Father,'<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Though his care she must forego?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When her little hand shall press thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When her lip to thine is pressed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Think of him thy love had blessed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Should her lineaments resemble<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Those thou never more mayst see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then thy heart will softly tremble<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With a pulse yet true to me.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All my faults, perchance, thou knowest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All my madness none can know:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All my hopes, where'er thou goest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wither; yet with thee they go.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Every feeling hath been shaken:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pride, which not a world could bow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bows to thee, by thee forsaken;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Even my soul forsakes me now.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But 'tis done: all words are idle;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Words from me are vainer still;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the thoughts we cannot bridle<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Force their way without the will.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fare thee well!&mdash;thus disunited,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Torn from every nearer tie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seared in heart, and lone and blighted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">More than this I scarce can die.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">A SKETCH.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Promoted thence to deck her mistress' head;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Next&mdash;for some gracious service unexpress'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And from its wages only to be guessed&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Raised from the toilette to the table, where<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her wondering betters wait behind her chair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With eye unmoved, and forehead unabashed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She dines from off the plate she lately washed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quick with the tale, and ready with the lie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The genial confidante and general spy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who could, ye gods! her next employment guess?&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An only infant's earliest governess!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She taught the child to read, and taught so well,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That she herself, by teaching, learned to spell.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An adept next in penmanship she grows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As many a nameless slander deftly shows:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What she had made the pupil of her art,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">None know; but that high soul secured the heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And panted for the truth it could not hear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With longing breast and undeluded ear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deceit infect not, near contagion soil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Indulgence weaken, nor example spoil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor mastered science tempt her to look down<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On humbler talents with a pitying frown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor fortune change, pride raise, nor passion bow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor virtue teach austerity, till now.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Serenely purest of her sex that live;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But wanting one sweet weakness,&mdash;to forgive;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too shocked at faults her soul can never know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She deems that all could be like her below:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue's friend;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For Virtue pardons those she would amend.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But to the theme, now laid aside too long,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The baleful burthen of this honest song.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though all her former functions are no more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She rules the circle which she served before.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If mothers&mdash;none know why&mdash;before her quake;<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">If daughters dread her for the mothers' sake;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If early habits&mdash;those false links, which bind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At times the loftiest to the meanest mind&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have given her power too deeply to instil<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The angry essence of her deadly will;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If like a snake she steal within your walls<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If like a viper to the heart she wind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And leave the venom there she did not find,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What marvel that this hag of hatred works<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eternal evil latent as she lurks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make a Pandemonium where she dwells,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And reign the Hecate of domestic hells?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Skilled by a touch to deepen scandal's tints<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With all the kind mendacity of hints,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While mingling truth with falsehood, sneers with smiles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A thread of candour with a web of wiles;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hide her bloodless heart's soul-hardened scheming<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, without feeling, mock at all who feel;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A cheek of parchment, and an eye of stone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mark how the channels of her yellow blood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ooze to her skin, and stagnate there to mud!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(For drawn from reptiles only may we trace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Congenial colours in that soul or face,)&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look on her features! and behold her mind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As in a mirror of itself defined.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no trait which might not be enlarged:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet true to 'Nature's journeymen,' who made<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This monster when their mistress left off trade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This female dog-star of her little sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where all beneath her influence droop or die.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">O wretch without a tear, without a thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Save joy above the ruin thou hast wrought!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The time shall come, nor long remote, when thou<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now,&mdash;<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And turn thee howling in unpitied pain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May the strong curse of crushed affections light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Back on thy bosom with reflected blight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And make thee, in thy leprosy of mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As loathsome to thyself as to mankind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Black as thy will for others would create;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thy soul welter in its hideous crust!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The widowed couch of fire, that thou hast spread<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then, when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with prayer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look on thine earthly victims, and despair!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down to the dust! and, as thou rott'st away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But for the love I bore, and still must bear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To her thy malice from all ties would tear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy name, thy human name, to every eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The climax of all scorn, should hang on high,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Exalted o'er thy less abhorred compeers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And festering in the infamy of years.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p class="ph4">LINES</p>
+
+<p class="center">ON HEARING THAT LADY BYRON WAS ILL.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And thou wert sad, yet I was not with thee!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And thou wert sick, and yet I was not near!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Methought that joy and health alone could be<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where I was <i>not</i>, and pain and sorrow here.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And is it thus? It is as I foretold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And shall be more so; for the mind recoils<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon itself, and the wrecked heart lies cold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While heaviness collects the shattered spoils.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is not in the storm nor in the strife<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We feel benumbed, and wish to be no more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But in the after-silence on the shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When all is lost except a little life.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am too well avenged! But 'twas my right:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whate'er my sins might be, <i>thou</i> wert not sent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be the Nemesis who should requite;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mercy is for the merciful!&mdash;if thou<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hast been of such, 'twill be accorded now.<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy nights are banished from the realms of sleep!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yes! they may flatter thee; but thou shalt feel<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A hollow agony which will not heal;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For thou art pillowed on a curse too deep:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The bitter harvest in a woe as real!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have had many foes, but none like thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For 'gainst the rest myself I could defend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And be avenged, or turn them into friend;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But thou in safe implacability<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hadst nought to dread, in thy own weakness shielded<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in my love, which hath but too much yielded,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And spared, for thy sake, some I should not spare.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thus upon the world,&mdash;trust in thy truth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the wild fame of my ungoverned youth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On things that were not and on things that are,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even upon such a basis hast thou built<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A monument, whose cement hath been guilt;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hewed down, with an unsuspected sword,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fame, peace, and hope, and all the better life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might still have risen from out the grave of strife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And found a nobler duty than to part.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But of thy virtues didst thou make a vice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Trafficking with them in a purpose cold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For present anger and for future gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And buying others' grief at any price.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thus, once entered into crooked ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The early truth, which was thy proper praise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did not still walk beside thee, but at times,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with a breast unknowing its own crimes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deceit, averments incompatible,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Equivocations, and the thoughts which dwell<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In Janus-spirits; the significant eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which learns to lie with silence; the pretext<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of prudence, with advantages annexed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The acquiescence in all things which tend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No matter how, to the desired end,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All found a place in thy philosophy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The means were worthy, and the end is won<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would not do by thee as thou hast done.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>Spottiswoode &amp; Co., Printers, New-street Square, London.</i> FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p class="ph3">FOOTNOTES</p>
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The italics are mine.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The italics are mine.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> In Lady Blessington's 'Memoirs' this name is given
+Charlemont; in the late 'Temple Bar' article on the character of Lady
+Byron it is given Clermont. I have followed the latter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> The italics are mine.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> In Lady Blessington's conversations with Lord Byron, just
+before he went to Greece, she records that he gave her this poem in
+manuscript. It was published in her 'Journal.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Vol. vi. p. 22.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> 'Byron's Miscellany', vol. ii. p. 358. London, 1853.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> The italics are mine.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Lord Byron says, in his observations on an article in
+'Blackwood': 'I recollect being much hurt by Romilly's conduct:
+he (having a general retainer for me) went over to the adversary,
+alleging, on being reminded of his retainer, that he had forgotten it,
+as his clerk had so many. I observed that some of those who were now so
+eagerly laying the axe to my roof-tree might see their own shaken. His
+fell and crushed him.'
+</p>
+<p>
+In the first edition of Moore's Life of Lord Byron there was printed a
+letter on Sir Samuel Romilly, so brutal that it was suppressed in the
+subsequent editions. (See Part III.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Vol. iv. p. 40.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Ibid. p. 46.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> The italics are mine.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Vol. iv. p 143.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Lord Byron took especial pains to point out to Murray the
+importance of these two letters. Vol. V. Letter 443, he says: 'You must
+also have from Mr. Moore the correspondence between me and Lady B., to
+whom I offered a sight of all that concerns herself in these papers.
+This is important. He has <i>her</i> letter and my answer.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a>
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And I, who with them on the cross am placed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i34">... truly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My savage wife, more than aught else, doth harm me.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Inferno</i>, Canto, XVI., Longfellow's translation.</span><br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> 'Conversations,' p. 108.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Murray's edition of 'Byron's Works,' Vol. ii. p. 189;
+date of dedication to Hobhouse, Jan. 2, 1818.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Recently, Lord Lindsay has published another version of
+this story, which makes it appear that he has conversed with a lady who
+conversed with Hobhouse during his lifetime, in which this story is
+differently reported. In the last version, it is made to appear that
+Hobhouse had this declaration from Lady Byron herself.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> The references are to the first volume of the first
+edition of Moore's Life', originally published by itself.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> 'The officious spies of his privacy,' p. 650.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> 'The deserted husband,' p. 651.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> 'I (Campbell) had not time to ask Lady Byron's permission
+to print this private letter; but it seemed to me important, and I have
+published it <i>meo periculo</i>.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> 'Noctes,' July 1822.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> 'Noctes,' September 1832.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Miss Martineau's Biographical Sketches.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> The italics are mine.&mdash;H. B. S.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> In 'The Noctes' of November, 1824 Christopher North says,
+'I don't call Medwin a liar.... Whether Byron bammed him, or he, by
+virtue of his own stupidity, was the sole and sufficient bammifier of
+himself, I know not.' A note says that Murray had been much shocked by
+Byron's misstatements to Medwin as to money-matters with him. The note
+goes on to say, 'Medwin could not have invented them, for they were
+mixed up with acknowledged facts; and the presumption is that Byron
+mystified his gallant acquaintance. He was fond of such tricks.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> This one fact is, that Lord Byron might have had an open
+examination in court, if he had only persisted in refusing the deed of
+separation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> In the history of 'Blackwood's Magazine,' prefaced to
+the American edition of 1854, Mackenzie says of the 'Noctes' papers,
+'Great as was their popularity in England it was peculiarly in
+America that their high merit and undoubted originality received the
+heartiest recognition and appreciation. Nor is this wonderful when it
+is considered that for one reader of "Blackwood's Magazine" in the old
+country there cannot be less than fifty in the new.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> The reader is here referred to Lady Byron's other
+letters, in Part III.; which also show the peculiarly active and
+philosophical character of her mind, and the class of subjects on which
+it habitually dwelt.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> See her character of Dr. King, Part III.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Alluding to the financial crisis in the United States in
+1857.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> 'The Minister's Wooing.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> See her letter on spiritualistic phenomena, Part III.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> This novel of Godwin's is a remarkably powerful story. It
+is related in the first person by the supposed hero, Caleb Williams. He
+represents himself as private secretary to a gentleman of high family
+named Falkland. Caleb accidentally discovers that his patron has, in a
+moment of passion, committed a murder. Falkland confesses the crime to
+Caleb, and tells him that henceforth he shall always suspect him, and
+keep watch over him. Caleb finds this watchfulness insupportable, and
+tries to escape, but without success. He writes a touching letter to
+his patron, imploring him to let him go, and promising never to betray
+him. The scene where Falkland refuses this is the most highly wrought
+in the book. He says to him, "Do not imagine that I am afraid of you;
+I wear an armour against which all your weapons are impotent. I have
+dug a pit for you: and whichever way you move, backward or forward, to
+the right or the left, it is ready to swallow you. Be still! If once
+you fall, call as loud as you will, no man on earth shall hear your
+cries: prepare a tale however plausible or however true, the whole
+world shall execrate you for an impostor. Your innocence shall be of no
+service to you. I laugh at so feeble a defence. It is I that say it:
+you may believe what I tell you. Do you know, miserable wretch!" added
+he, stamping on the ground with fury, "that I have sworn to preserve
+my reputation, whatever be the expense; that I love it more than the
+whole world and its inhabitants taken together? and do you think that
+you shall wound it?" The rest of the book shows how this threat was
+executed.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> Alluding to Buchanan's election.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Shelton Mackenzie, in a note to the 'Noctes' of July
+1822, gives the following saying of Maginn, one of the principal lights
+of the club: 'No man, however much he might tend to civilisation,
+was to be regarded as having absolutely reached its apex until he
+was drunk.' He also records it as a further joke of the club, that a
+man's having reached this apex was to be tested by his inability to
+pronounce the word 'civilisation,' which, he says, after ten o'clock at
+night ought to be abridged to <i>civilation</i>, 'by syncope, or vigorously
+speaking by hic-cup.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Vol. v. pp. 61, 75.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> These italics are ours.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> These italics are ours.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> This little incident shows the characteristic carefulness
+and accuracy of Lady Byron's habits. This statement was written
+<i>fourteen</i> years after the events spoken of; but Lady Byron carefully
+quotes a passage from her mother's letter written at that time. This
+shows that a copy of Lady Milbanke's letter had been preserved, and
+makes it appear probable that copies of the whole correspondence of
+that period were also kept. Great light could be thrown on the whole
+transaction, could these documents be consulted.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Here, again, Lady Byron's sealed papers might furnish
+light. The letters addressed to her at this time by those in constant
+intercourse with Lord Byron are doubtless preserved, and would show her
+ground of action.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> Probably Lady Milbanke's letters are among the sealed
+papers, and would more fully explain the situation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> Hunt's Byron, p. 77. Philadelphia, 1828.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> From the Temple Bar article, October 1869. 'Mrs. Leigh,
+Lord Byron's sister, had other thoughts of Mrs. Clermont, and wrote
+to her offering public testimony to her tenderness and forbearance
+under circumstances which must have been trying to any friend of Lady
+Byron.'&mdash;<i>Campbell, in the New Monthly Magazine</i>, 1830, p. 380.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> 'My Recollections,' p. 238.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Vol. vi. p. 212.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> The reader is here referred to the remarks of 'Blackwood'
+on 'Don Juan' in Part III.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> The article in question is worth a careful reading. Its
+industry and accuracy in amassing evidence are worthy attention.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Probably 'The Christian Aspects of Faith and Duty.'
+Mr. Tayler has also written 'A Retrospect of the Religious Life of
+England.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> 'The National Review.'</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Lady Byron Vindicated, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
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+Project Gutenberg's Lady Byron Vindicated, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lady Byron Vindicated
+       A History of The Byron Controversy
+
+Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+Release Date: January 29, 2014 [EBook #44791]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY BYRON VINDICATED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+
+  BYRON CONTROVERSY.
+
+
+  LONDON: PRINTED BY
+  SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
+  AND PARLIAMENT STREET
+
+
+
+
+  LADY BYRON VINDICATED.
+
+  A History
+  OF
+  THE BYRON CONTROVERSY
+
+  FROM ITS BEGINNING IN 1816 TO THE PRESENT TIME.
+
+  BY
+  HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
+
+
+  LONDON:
+  SAMPSON LOW, SON, AND MARSTON
+  CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET.
+  1870.
+
+  (_All rights reserved._)
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+BY
+
+THE PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+The subject of this volume is of such painful notoriety that any
+apology from the Publishers may seem unnecessary upon issuing the
+Author's reply to the counter statements which her narrative in
+_Macmillan's Magazine_ has called forth. Nevertheless they consider it
+right to state that their strong regard for the Author, respect for her
+motives, and assurance of her truthfulness, would, even in the absence
+of all other considerations, be sufficient to induce them to place
+their imprint on the title-page.
+
+The publication has been undertaken by them at the Author's request,
+'as her friends,' and as the publishers of her former works, and from
+a feeling that whatever difference of opinion may be entertained
+respecting the Author's judiciousness in publishing 'The True Story,'
+she is entitled to defend it, having been treated with grave injustice,
+and often with much maliciousness, by her critics and opponents, and
+been charged with motives from which no person living is more free.
+An intense love of justice and hatred of oppression, with an utter
+disregard of her own interests, characterise Mrs. STOWE'S
+conduct and writings, as all who know her well will testify; and the
+Publishers can unhesitatingly affirm their belief that neither fear
+for loss of her literary fame, nor hope of gain, has for one moment
+influenced her in the course she has taken.
+
+ LONDON: _January 1870_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  PART I.
+
+
+  CHAPTER I.                                                   PAGE
+
+  INTRODUCTION                                                    1
+
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+
+  THE ATTACK ON LADY BYRON                                        6
+
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+
+  RESUME OF THE CONSPIRACY                                       50
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+
+  RESULTS AFTER LORD BYRON'S DEATH                               57
+
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+
+  THE ATTACK ON LADY BYRON'S GRAVE                              102
+
+
+  PART II.
+
+
+  CHAPTER I.
+
+  LADY BYRON AS I KNEW HER                                      132
+
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+
+  LADY BYRON'S STORY AS TOLD ME                                 153
+
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+
+  CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY OF EVENTS                               171
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+
+  THE CHARACTER OF THE TWO WITNESSES COMPARED                   199
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+
+  THE DIRECT ARGUMENT TO PROVE THE CRIME                        217
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+
+  PHYSIOLOGICAL ARGUMENT                                        247
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+
+  HOW COULD SHE LOVE HIM?                                       262
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  CONCLUSION                                                    269
+
+
+  PART III.
+
+  MISCELLANEOUS DOCUMENTS.
+
+  THE TRUE STORY OF LADY BYRON'S LIFE (AS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED
+  IN 'THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY')                                    274
+
+  LORD LINDSAY'S LETTER TO 'THE LONDON TIMES'                   304
+
+  DR. FORBES WINSLOW'S LETTER TO 'THE LONDON TIMES'             310
+
+  EXTRACT FROM LORD BYRON'S EXPUNGED LETTER TO MURRAY           312
+
+  EXTRACTS FROM 'BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE'                          315
+
+  LETTERS OF LADY BYRON TO H. C. ROBINSON                       318
+
+  DOMESTIC POEMS BY LORD BYRON                                  323
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+The interval since my publication of 'The True Story of Lady Byron's
+Life' has been one of stormy discussion and of much invective.
+
+I have not thought it necessary to disturb my spirit and confuse my
+sense of right by even an attempt at reading the many abusive articles
+that both here and in England have followed that disclosure. Friends
+have undertaken the task for me, giving me from time to time the
+substance of anything really worthy of attention which came to view in
+the tumult.
+
+It appeared to me essential that this first excitement should in a
+measure spend itself before there would be a possibility of speaking
+to any purpose. Now, when all would seem to have spoken who can speak,
+and, it is to be hoped, have said the utmost they can say, there seems
+a propriety in listening calmly, if that be possible, to what I have to
+say in reply.
+
+And, first, why have I made this disclosure at all?
+
+_To this I answer briefly, Because I considered it my duty to make it._
+
+I made it in defence of a beloved, revered friend, whose memory stood
+forth in the eyes of the civilised world charged with most repulsive
+crimes, of which I _certainly_ knew her innocent.
+
+I claim, and shall prove, that Lady Byron's reputation has been the
+victim of a concerted attack, begun by her husband during her lifetime,
+and coming to its climax over her grave. I claim, and shall prove, that
+it was not I who stirred up this controversy in this year 1869. I shall
+show _who did do it_, and who is responsible for bringing on me that
+hard duty of making these disclosures, which it appears to me ought to
+have been made by others.
+
+I claim that these facts were given to me unguarded by any promise or
+seal of secrecy, expressed or implied; that they were lodged with me
+as one sister rests her story with another for sympathy, for counsel,
+for defence. _Never_ did I suppose the day would come that I should
+be subjected to so cruel an anguish as this use of them has been to
+me. Never did I suppose that,--when those kind hands, that had shed
+nothing but blessings, were lying in the helplessness of death,--when
+that gentle heart, so sorely tried and to the last so full of love, was
+lying cold in the tomb,--a countryman in England could be found to cast
+the foulest slanders on her grave, and not one in all England to raise
+an effective voice in her defence.
+
+I admit the feebleness of my plea, in point of execution. It was
+written in a state of exhausted health, when no labour of the kind was
+safe for me,--when my hand had not strength to hold the pen, and I was
+forced to dictate to another.
+
+I have been told that I have no reason to congratulate myself on it as
+a literary effort. O my brothers and sisters! is there then nothing in
+the world to think of but literary efforts? I ask any man with a heart
+in his bosom, if he had been obliged to tell a story so cruel, because
+his mother's grave gave no rest from slander,--I ask any woman who had
+been forced to such a disclosure to free a dead sister's name from
+grossest insults, whether she would have thought of making this work of
+bitterness a literary success?
+
+Are the cries of the oppressed, the gasps of the dying, the last
+prayers of mothers,--are _any_ words wrung like drops of blood from the
+human heart to be judged as literary efforts?
+
+My fellow-countrymen of America, men of the press, I have done you one
+act of justice,--of all your bitter articles, I have read not one.
+I shall never be troubled in the future time by the remembrance of
+any unkind word you have said of me, for at this moment I recollect
+not one. I had such faith in you, such pride in my countrymen, as
+men with whom, above all others, the cause of woman was safe and
+sacred, that I was at first astonished and incredulous at what I
+heard of the course of the American press, and was silent, not merely
+from the impossibility of being heard, but from grief and shame. But
+reflection convinces me that you were, in many cases, acting from a
+misunderstanding of facts and through misguided honourable feeling;
+and I still feel courage, therefore, to ask from you a fair hearing.
+Now, as I have done you this justice, will you also do me the justice
+to hear me seriously and candidly?
+
+What interest have you or I, my brother and my sister, in this short
+life of ours, to utter anything but the truth? Is not truth between man
+and man and between man and woman the foundation on which all things
+rest? Have you not, every individual of you, who must hereafter give
+an account yourself alone to God, an interest to know the exact truth
+in this matter, and a duty to perform as respects that truth? Hear me,
+then, while I tell you the position in which I stood, and what was my
+course in relation to it.
+
+A shameless attack on my friend's memory had appeared in the
+'Blackwood' of July 1869, branding Lady Byron as the vilest of
+criminals, and recommending the Guiccioli book to a Christian public
+as interesting from the very fact that it was the avowed production
+of Lord Byron's mistress. No efficient protest was made against
+this outrage in England, and Littell's 'Living Age' reprinted the
+'Blackwood' article, and the Harpers, the largest publishing house in
+America, perhaps in the world, re-published the book.
+
+Its statements--with those of the 'Blackwood,' 'Pall Mall Gazette,' and
+other English periodicals--were being propagated through all the young
+reading and writing world of America. I was meeting them advertised
+in dailies, and made up into articles in magazines, and thus the
+generation of to-day, who had no means of judging Lady Byron but by
+these fables of her slanderers, were being foully deceived. The friends
+who knew her personally were a small select circle in England, whom
+death is every day reducing. They were few in number compared with the
+great world, and were _silent_. I saw these foul slanders crystallising
+into history uncontradicted by friends who knew her personally, who,
+firm in their own knowledge of her virtues and limited in view as
+aristocratic circles generally are, had no idea of the width of the
+world they were living in, and the exigency of the crisis. When time
+passed on and no voice was raised, I spoke. I gave at first a simple
+story, for I knew instinctively that whoever put the first steel point
+of truth into this dark cloud of slander must wait for the storm to
+spend itself. I must say the storm exceeded my expectations, and has
+raged loud and long. But now that there is a comparative stillness I
+shall proceed, first, to prove what I have just been asserting, and,
+second, to add to my true story such facts and incidents as I did not
+think proper at first to state.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE ATTACK ON LADY BYRON.
+
+
+In proving what I asserted in the first chapter, I make four points:
+1st. A concerted attack upon Lady Byron's reputation, begun by Lord
+Byron in self-defence. 2nd. That he transmitted his story to friends to
+be continued after his death. 3rd. That they did so continue it. 4th.
+That the accusations reached their climax over Lady Byron's grave in
+'Blackwood' of 1869, and the Guiccioli book, and that this re-opening
+of the controversy was my reason for speaking.
+
+And first I shall adduce my proofs that Lady Byron's reputation
+was, during the whole course of her husband's life, the subject of
+a concentrated, artfully planned attack, commencing at the time of
+the separation and continuing during his life. By various documents
+carefully prepared, and used publicly or secretly as suited the case,
+he made converts of many honest men, some of whom were writers and men
+of letters, who put their talents at his service during his lifetime in
+exciting sympathy for him, and who, by his own request, felt bound to
+continue their defence of him after he was dead.
+
+In order to consider the force and significance of the documents I
+shall cite, we are to bring to our view just the issues Lord Byron had
+to meet, both at the time of the separation and for a long time after.
+
+In Byron's 'Memoirs,' Vol. IV. Letter 350, under date December 10,
+1819, nearly four years after the separation, he writes to Murray in
+a state of great excitement on account of an article in 'Blackwood,'
+in which his conduct towards his wife had been sternly and justly
+commented on, and which he supposed to have been written by Wilson, of
+the 'Noctes Ambrosianae.' He says in this letter: 'I like and admire
+W----n, and he should not have indulged himself in such outrageous
+license.... When he talks of Lady Byron's business he talks of what he
+knows nothing about; and you may tell him _no man can desire a public
+investigation of that affair more than I do_.'[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: The italics are mine.]
+
+He shortly after wrote and sent to Murray a pamphlet for publication,
+which was printed, but not generally circulated till some time
+afterwards. Though more than three years had elapsed since the
+separation, the current against him at this time was so strong in
+England that his friends thought it best, at first, to use this article
+of Lord Byron's discreetly with influential persons rather than to give
+it to the public.
+
+The writer in 'Blackwood' and the indignation of the English public,
+of which that writer was the voice, were now particularly stirred up
+by the appearance of the first two cantos of 'Don Juan,' in which the
+indecent caricature of Lady Byron was placed in vicinity with other
+indecencies, the publication of which was justly considered an insult
+to a Christian community.
+
+It must here be mentioned, for the honour of Old England, that at
+first she did her duty quite respectably in regard to 'Don Juan.' One
+can still read, in Murray's standard edition of the poems, how every
+respectable press thundered reprobations, which it would be well enough
+to print and circulate as tracts for our days.
+
+Byron, it seems, had thought of returning to England, but he says, in
+the letter we have quoted, that he has changed his mind, and shall not
+go back, adding: 'I have finished the Third Canto of "Don Juan," but
+the things I have heard and read discourage all future publication.
+You may try the copy question, but you'll lose it; the cry is up, and
+the cant is up. I should have no objection to return the price of the
+copyright, and have written to Mr. Kinnaird on this subject.'
+
+One sentence quoted by Lord Byron from the 'Blackwood' article will
+show the modern readers what the respectable world of that day were
+thinking and saying of him:--
+
+ 'It appears, in short, as if this miserable man, having exhausted
+ _every species_ of sensual gratification--having drained the cup of
+ sin even to its bitterest dregs--were resolved to show us that he is
+ no longer a human being even in his frailties, but a cool, unconcerned
+ fiend, laughing with detestable glee over the whole of the better and
+ worse elements of which human life is composed.'
+
+The defence which Lord Byron makes, in his reply to that paper, is of a
+man cornered and fighting for his life. He speaks thus of the state of
+feeling at the time of his separation from his wife:--
+
+ 'I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and private
+ rancour; my name, which had been a knightly or a noble one since my
+ fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Norman, was
+ tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered and muttered and murmured
+ was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for
+ me. I withdrew; but this was not enough. In other countries--in
+ Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue depth of the
+ lakes--I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight. I crossed
+ the mountains, but it was the same; so I went a little farther, and
+ settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who
+ betakes him to the waters.
+
+ 'If I may judge by the statements of the few friends who gathered
+ round me, the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all
+ precedent, all parallel, even in those cases where political motives
+ have sharpened slander and doubled enmity. I was advised not to go to
+ the theatres lest I should be hissed, nor to my duty in parliament
+ lest I should be insulted by the way; even on the day of my departure
+ my most intimate friend told me afterwards that he was under the
+ apprehension of violence from the people who might be assembled at the
+ door of the carriage.'
+
+Now Lord Byron's charge against his wife was that SHE was
+directly responsible for getting up and keeping up this persecution,
+which drove him from England,--that she did it in a deceitful,
+treacherous manner, which left him no chance of defending himself.
+
+He charged against her that, taking advantage of a time when his
+affairs were in confusion, and an execution in the house, she left him
+suddenly, with treacherous professions of kindness, which were repeated
+by letters on the road, and that soon after her arrival at her home
+her parents sent him word that she would never return to him, and she
+confirmed the message; that when he asked the reason why, she refused
+to state any; and that when this step gave rise to a host of slanders
+against him she silently encouraged and confirmed the slanders. His
+claim was that he was denied from that time forth even the justice of
+any tangible accusation against himself which he might meet and refute.
+
+He observes, in the same article from which we have quoted:--
+
+ 'When one tells me that I cannot "in any way _justify_ my own
+ behaviour in that affair," I acquiesce, because no man can "_justify_"
+ himself until he knows of what he is accused; and I have never
+ had--and, God knows, my whole desire has ever been to obtain it--any
+ specific charge, in a tangible shape, submitted to me by the
+ adversary, nor by others, unless the atrocities of public rumour and
+ the mysterious silence of the lady's legal advisers may be deemed
+ such.'
+
+Lord Byron, his publishers, friends, and biographers, thus agree
+in representing his wife as the secret author and abettor of that
+persecution, which it is claimed broke up his life, and was the source
+of all his subsequent crimes and excesses.
+
+Lord Byron wrote a poem in September 1816, in Switzerland, just after
+the separation, in which he stated, in so many words, these accusations
+against his wife. Shortly after the poet's death Murray published
+this poem, together with the 'Fare thee well,' and the lines to his
+sister, under the title of 'Domestic Pieces,' in his standard edition
+of Byron's poetry. It is to be remarked, then, that this was for some
+time a private document, shown to confidential friends, and made use of
+judiciously, as readers or listeners to his story were able to bear it.
+Lady Byron then had a strong party in England. Sir Samuel Romilly and
+Dr. Lushington were her counsel. Lady Byron's parents were living, and
+the appearance in the public prints of such a piece as this would have
+brought down an aggravated storm of public indignation.
+
+For the general public such documents as the 'Fare thee well' were
+circulating in England, and he frankly confessed his wife's virtues and
+his own sins to Madame de Stael and others in Switzerland, declaring
+himself in the wrong, sensible of his errors, and longing to cast
+himself at the feet of that serene perfection,
+
+  'Which wanted one sweet weakness--to forgive.'
+
+But a little later he drew for his private partisans this bitter
+poetical indictment against her, which, as we have said, was used
+discreetly during his life, and published after his death.
+
+Before we proceed to lay that poem before the reader we will refresh
+his memory with some particulars of the tragedy of AEschylus, which
+Lord Byron selected as the exact parallel and proper illustration of
+his wife's treatment of himself. In his letters and journals he often
+alludes to her as Clytemnestra, and the allusion has run the round of
+a thousand American papers lately, and been read by a thousand good
+honest people, who had no very clear idea who Clytemnestra was, and
+what she did which was like the proceedings of Lady Byron. According
+to the tragedy, Clytemnestra secretly hates her husband Agamemnon,
+whom she professes to love, and wishes to put him out of the way that
+she may marry her lover, AEgistheus. When her husband returns from the
+Trojan war she receives him with pretended kindness, and officiously
+offers to serve him at the bath. Inducing him to put on a garment, of
+which she had adroitly sewed up the sleeves and neck so as to hamper
+the use of his arms, she gives the signal to a concealed band of
+assassins, who rush upon him and stab him. Clytemnestra is represented
+by AEschylus as grimly triumphing in her success, which leaves her free
+to marry an adulterous paramour.
+
+  'I did it, too, in such a cunning wise,
+  That he could neither 'scape nor ward off doom.
+  I staked around his steps an endless net,
+  As for the fishes.'
+
+In the piece entitled 'Lines on hearing Lady Byron is ill,' Lord Byron
+charges on his wife a similar treachery and cruelty. The whole poem
+is in Murray's English edition, Vol. IV. p. 207. Of it we quote the
+following. The reader will bear in mind that it is addressed to Lady
+Byron on a sick-bed:--
+
+  'I am too well avenged, but 'twas my right;
+  Whate'er my sins might be, _thou_ wert not sent
+  To be the Nemesis that should requite,
+  Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument.
+  Mercy is for the merciful! If thou
+  Hast been of such, 't will be accorded now.
+  Thy nights are banished from the realms of sleep,
+  For thou art pillowed on a curse too deep;
+  Yes! they may flatter thee, but thou shalt feel
+  A hollow agony that will not heal.
+  Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap
+  The bitter harvest in a woe as real.
+  _I have had many foes, but none like thee_;
+  For 'gainst the rest myself I could defend,
+  And be avenged, or turn them into friend;
+  But thou, in safe implacability,
+  Hast naught to dread,--in thy own weakness shielded,
+  And in my love, which hath but too much yielded,
+  And spared, for thy sake, some I should not spare.
+  And thus upon the world, trust in thy truth,
+  And the wild fame of my ungoverned youth,--
+  On things that were not and on things that are,--
+  Even upon such a basis thou hast built
+  A monument whose cement hath been guilt!
+  The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord,
+  And hewed down with an unsuspected sword
+  Fame, peace, and hope, and all that better life
+  Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart,
+  Might yet have risen from the grave of strife
+  And found a nobler duty than to part.
+  But of thy virtues thou didst make a vice,
+  Trafficking in them with a purpose cold,
+  And buying others' woes at any price,
+  For present anger and for future gold;
+  And thus, once entered into crooked ways,
+  The early truth, that was thy proper praise,
+  Did not still walk beside thee, but at times,
+  And with a breast unknowing its own crimes,
+  Deceits, averments incompatible,
+  Equivocations, and the thoughts that dwell
+  _In Janus spirits, the significant eye
+  That learns to lie with silence_,[2] the pretext
+  Of prudence with advantages annexed,
+  The acquiescence in all things that tend,
+  No matter how, to the desired end,--
+  All found a place in thy philosophy.
+  The means were worthy and the end is won.
+  I would not do to thee as thou hast done.'
+
+[Footnote 2: The italics are mine.]
+
+Now, if this language means anything, it means, in plain terms, that,
+whereas, in her early days, Lady Byron was peculiarly characterised by
+truthfulness, she has in her recent dealings with him acted the part
+of a liar,--that she is not only a liar, but that she lies for cruel
+means and malignant purposes,--that she is a moral assassin, and her
+treatment of her husband has been like that of the most detestable
+murderess and adulteress of ancient history,--that she has learned to
+lie skilfully and artfully, that she equivocates, says incompatible
+things, and crosses her own tracks,--that she is double-faced, and
+has the art to lie even by silence, and that she has become wholly
+unscrupulous, and acquiesces in _any_thing, no matter what, that tends
+to the desired end, and that end the destruction of her husband. This
+is a brief summary of the story that Byron made it his life's business
+to spread through society, to propagate and make converts to during
+his life, and which has been in substance reasserted by 'Blackwood' in
+a recent article this year.
+
+Now, the reader will please to notice that this poem is dated in
+September 1816, and that on the 29th of March of that same year, he
+had thought proper to tell quite another story. At that time the deed
+of separation was not signed, and negotiations between Lady Byron,
+acting by legal counsel, and himself were still pending. At that time,
+therefore, he was standing in a community who knew all he had said
+in former days of his wife's character, who were in an aroused and
+excited state by the fact that so lovely and good and patient a woman
+had actually been forced for some unexplained cause to leave him. His
+policy at that time was to make large general confessions of sin,
+and to praise and compliment her, with a view of enlisting sympathy.
+Everybody feels for a handsome sinner, weeping on his knees, asking
+pardon for his offences against his wife in the public newspapers.
+
+The celebrated 'Fare thee well', as we are told, was written on the
+17th of March, and accidentally found its way into the newspapers at
+this time 'through the imprudence of a friend whom he allowed to take a
+copy.' These 'imprudent friends' have all along been such a marvellous
+convenience to Lord Byron.
+
+But the question met him on all sides, What is the matter? This wife
+you have declared the brightest, sweetest, most amiable of beings, and
+against whose behaviour as a wife you actually never had nor can have
+a complaint to make,--why is she _now_ all of a sudden so inflexibly
+set against you?
+
+This question required an answer, and he answered by writing another
+poem, which also _accidentally_ found its way into the public prints.
+It is in his 'Domestic Pieces,' which the reader may refer to at the
+end of this volume, and is called 'A Sketch.'
+
+There was a most excellent, respectable, well-behaved Englishwoman, a
+Mrs. Clermont,[3] who had been Lady Byron's governess in her youth,
+and was still, in mature life, revered as her confidential friend. It
+appears that this person had been with Lady Byron during a part of her
+married life, especially the bitter hours of her lonely child-bed, when
+a young wife so much needs a sympathetic friend. This Mrs. Clermont was
+the person selected by Lord Byron at this time to be the scapegoat to
+bear away the difficulties of the case into the wilderness.
+
+[Footnote 3: In Lady Blessington's 'Memoirs' this name is given
+Charlemont; in the late 'Temple Bar' article on the character of Lady
+Byron it is given Clermont. I have followed the latter.]
+
+We are informed in Moore's Life what a noble pride of rank Lord Byron
+possessed, and how when the headmaster of a school, against whom he had
+a pique, invited him to dinner, he declined, saying, 'To tell you the
+truth, Doctor, if you should come to Newstead, I shouldn't think of
+inviting _you_ to dine with _me_, and so I don't care to dine with you
+here.' Different countries, it appears, have different standards as to
+good taste; Moore gives this as an amusing instance of a young lord's
+spirit.
+
+Accordingly, his first attack against this 'lady,' as we Americans
+should call her, consists in gross statements concerning her having
+been born poor and in an inferior rank. He begins by stating that she
+was
+
+  'Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred,
+  Promoted thence to deck her mistress' head;
+  Next--for some gracious service unexpressed
+  And from its wages only to be guessed--
+  Raised from the toilet to the table, where
+  Her wondering betters wait behind her chair.
+  With eye unmoved and forehead unabashed.
+  She dines from off the plate she lately washed;
+  Quick with the tale, and ready with the lie,
+  The genial confidante and general spy,--
+  Who could, ye gods! her next employment guess,--
+  An _only infant's earliest governess_!
+  What had she made the pupil of her art
+  None knows; _but that high soul secured the heart,
+  And panted for the truth it could not hear
+  With longing soul and undeluded ear_!'[4]
+
+[Footnote 4: The italics are mine.]
+
+The poet here recognises as a singular trait in Lady Byron her peculiar
+love of truth,--a trait which must have struck everyone that had any
+knowledge of her through life. He goes on now to give what he certainly
+knew to be the real character of Lady Byron:--
+
+  'Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind,
+  Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind,
+  _Deceit infect_ not, nor contagion soil,
+  Indulgence weaken, or example spoil,
+  Nor mastered science tempt her to look down
+  On humbler talent with a pitying frown,
+  Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain,
+  Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain.
+
+We are now informed that Mrs. Clermont, whom he afterwards says in his
+letters was a spy of Lady Byron's mother, set herself to make mischief
+between them. He says:--
+
+  'If early habits,--those strong links that bind
+  At times the loftiest to the meanest mind,
+  Have given her power too deeply to instil
+  The angry essence of her deadly will;
+  If like a snake she steal within your walls,
+  Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;
+  If like a viper to the heart she wind,
+  And leaves the venom there she did not find,--
+  What marvel that this hag of hatred works
+  Eternal evil latent as she lurks.'
+
+The noble lord then proceeds to abuse this woman of inferior rank in
+the language of the upper circles. He thus describes her person and
+manner:--
+
+  'Skilled by a touch to deepen scandal's tints
+  With all the kind mendacity of hints,
+  While mingling truth with falsehood, sneers with smiles,
+  A thread of candour with a web of wiles;
+  A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming,
+  To hide her bloodless heart's soul-harden'd scheming;
+  A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal,
+  And without feeling mock at all who feel;
+  With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown,--
+  A cheek of parchment and an eye of stone.
+  Mark how the channels of her yellow blood
+  Ooze to her skin and stagnate there to mud,
+  Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,
+  Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale,--
+  (For drawn from reptiles only may we trace
+  Congenial colours in that soul or face,)
+  Look on her features! and behold her mind
+  As in a mirror of itself defined:
+  Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged
+  There is no trait which might not be enlarged.'
+
+The poem thus ends:--
+
+  'May the strong curse of crushed affections light
+  Back on thy bosom with reflected blight,
+  And make thee in thy leprosy of mind
+  As loathsome to thyself as to mankind!
+  Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate,
+  Black--as thy will for others would create;
+  Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,
+  And thy soul welter in its hideous crust.
+  O, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,
+  The widowed couch of fire, that thou hast spread
+  Then when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with prayer,
+  Look on thy earthly victims--and despair!
+  Down to the dust! and as thou rott'st away,
+  Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.
+  _But for the love I bore and still must bear_
+  To her thy malice from all ties would tear,
+  Thy name,--thy human name,--to every eye
+  The climax of all scorn, should hang on high,
+  Exalted o'er thy less abhorred compeers,
+  And festering in the infamy of years.'
+
+  March 16, 1816.
+
+Now, on the 29th of March 1816, this was Lord Byron's story. He states
+that his wife had a truthfulness even from early girlhood that the most
+artful and unscrupulous governess could not pollute,--that she always
+_panted_ for truth,--that flattery could not fool nor baseness blind
+her,--that though she was a genius and master of science, she was yet
+gentle and tolerant, and one whom no envy could ruffle to retaliate
+pain.
+
+In September of the same year she is a monster of unscrupulous deceit
+and vindictive cruelty. Now, what had happened in the five months
+between the dates of these poems to produce such a change of opinion?
+Simply this:--
+
+1st. The negotiation between him and his wife's lawyers had ended in
+his signing a deed of separation in preference to standing a suit for
+divorce.
+
+2nd. Madame de Stael, moved by his tears of anguish and professions of
+repentance, had offered to negotiate with Lady Byron on his behalf, and
+had failed.
+
+The failure of this application is the only apology given by Moore and
+Murray for this poem, which gentle Thomas Moore admits was not in quite
+as generous a strain as the 'Fare thee well'.
+
+But Lord Byron knew perfectly well, when he suffered that application
+to be made, that Lady Byron had been entirely convinced that her
+marriage relations with him could never be renewed, and that duty both
+to man and God required her to separate from him. The allowing the
+negotiation was, therefore, an artifice to place his wife before the
+public in the attitude of a hard-hearted, inflexible woman; her refusal
+was what he knew beforehand must inevitably be the result, and merely
+gave him capital in the sympathy of his friends, by which they should
+be brought to tolerate and accept the bitter accusations of this poem.
+
+We have recently heard it asserted that this last-named piece of poetry
+was the sudden offspring of a fit of ill-temper, and was never intended
+to be published at all. There were certainly excellent reasons why
+his friends should have advised him not to publish it _at that time_.
+But that it was read with sympathy by the circle of his intimate
+friends, and believed by them, is evident from the frequency with which
+allusions to it occur in his confidential letters to them.[5]
+
+[Footnote 5: In Lady Blessington's conversations with Lord Byron, just
+before he went to Greece, she records that he gave her this poem in
+manuscript. It was published in her 'Journal.']
+
+About three months after, under date March 10, 1817, he writes to
+Moore: 'I suppose now I shall never be able to shake off my sables in
+public imagination, more particularly since my moral ---- clove down my
+fame.' Again to Murray in 1819, three years after, he says: 'I never
+hear anything of Ada, the little Electra of Mycenae.'
+
+Electra was the daughter of Clytemnestra, in the Greek poem, who lived
+to condemn her wicked mother, and to call on her brother to avenge the
+father. There was in this mention of Electra more than meets the ear.
+Many passages in Lord Byron's poetry show that he intended to make this
+daughter a future partisan against her mother, and explain the awful
+words he is stated in Lady Anne Barnard's diary to have used when
+first he looked on his little girl,--'What an instrument of torture I
+have gained in you!'
+
+In a letter to Lord Blessington, April 6, 1823, he says, speaking of
+Dr. Parr:[6]--
+
+ 'He did me the honour once to be a patron of mine, though a great
+ friend of the _other branch of the house of Atreus_, and the Greek
+ teacher, I believe, of my _moral_ Clytemnestra. I say _moral_ because
+ it is true, and is so useful to the virtuous, that it enables them to
+ do anything without the aid of an AEgistheus.'
+
+[Footnote 6: Vol. vi. p. 22.]
+
+If Lord Byron wrote this poem merely in a momentary fit of spleen, why
+were there so many persons evidently quite familiar with his allusions
+to it? and why was it preserved in Murray's hands? and why published
+after his death? That Byron was in the habit of reposing documents in
+the hands of Murray, to be used as occasion offered, is evident from
+a part of a note written by him to Murray respecting some verses so
+intrusted: 'Pray let not these _versiculi_ go forth with my name except
+_to the initiated_.'[7]
+
+[Footnote 7: 'Byron's Miscellany', vol. ii. p. 358. London, 1853.]
+
+Murray, in publishing this attack on his wife after Lord Byron's death,
+showed that he believed in it, and, so believing, deemed Lady Byron a
+woman whose widowed state deserved neither sympathy nor delicacy of
+treatment. At a time when every sentiment in the heart of the most
+deeply wronged woman would forbid her appearing to justify herself from
+such cruel slander of a dead husband, an honest, kind-hearted, worthy
+Englishman actually thought it right and proper to give these lines
+to her eyes and the eyes of all the reading world. Nothing can show
+more plainly what this poem was written for, and how thoroughly it did
+its work! Considering Byron as a wronged man, Murray thought he was
+contributing his mite towards doing him justice. His editor prefaced
+the whole set of 'Domestic Pieces' with the following statements:--
+
+ 'They all refer to the unhappy separation, of which the precise causes
+ are still a mystery, and which he declared to the last were never
+ disclosed to himself. He admitted that pecuniary embarrassments,
+ disordered health, and dislike to family restraints had aggravated his
+ naturally violent temper, and driven him to excesses. He suspected
+ that his mother-in-law had fomented the discord,--which Lady Byron
+ denies,--and that more was due to the malignant offices of a female
+ dependant, who is the subject of the bitterly satirical sketch.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+ 'To these general statements can only be added the still vaguer
+ allegations of Lady Byron, that she conceived his conduct to be the
+ result of insanity,--that, the physician pronouncing him responsible
+ for his actions, she could submit to them no longer, and that
+ Dr. Lushington, her legal adviser, agreed that a reconciliation
+ was neither proper nor possible. _No weight can be attached to
+ the opinions of an opposing counsel upon accusations made by one
+ party behind the back of the other, who urgently demanded and was
+ pertinaciously refused the least opportunity of denial or defence._ He
+ rejected the proposal for an amicable separation, but _consented when
+ threatened with a suit in Doctors' Commons_.'[8]
+
+[Footnote 8: The italics are mine.]
+
+Neither John Murray nor any of Byron's partisans seem to have pondered
+the admission in these last words.
+
+Here, as appears, was a woman, driven to the last despair, standing
+with her child in her arms, asking from English laws protection for
+herself and child against her husband.
+
+She had appealed to the first counsel in England, and was acting under
+their direction.
+
+Two of the greatest lawyers in England have pronounced that there
+has been such a cause of offence on his part that a return to him is
+neither proper nor possible, and that no alternative remains to her but
+separation or divorce.
+
+He asks her to state her charges against him. She, making answer
+under advice of her counsel, says, 'That if he _insists_ on the
+specifications, he must receive them in open court in a suit for
+divorce.'
+
+What, now, ought to have been the conduct of any brave, honest man,
+who believed that his wife was taking advantage of her reputation for
+virtue to turn every one against him, who saw that she had turned on
+her side even the lawyer he sought to retain on his;[9] that she was
+an unscrupulous woman, who acquiesced in every and any thing to gain
+her ends, while he stood before the public, as he says, 'accused of
+every monstrous vice, by public rumour or private rancour'? When she,
+under advice of her lawyers, made the alternative legal _separation_ or
+open investigation in court for divorce, what did he do?
+
+[Footnote 9: Lord Byron says, in his observations on an article in
+'Blackwood': 'I recollect being much hurt by Romilly's conduct:
+he (having a general retainer for me) went over to the adversary,
+alleging, on being reminded of his retainer, that he had forgotten it,
+as his clerk had so many. I observed that some of those who were now so
+eagerly laying the axe to my roof-tree might see their own shaken. His
+fell and crushed him.'
+
+In the first edition of Moore's Life of Lord Byron there was printed a
+letter on Sir Samuel Romilly, so brutal that it was suppressed in the
+subsequent editions. (See Part III.)]
+
+HE SIGNED THE ACT OF SEPARATION AND LEFT ENGLAND.
+
+Now, let any man who knows the legal mind of England,--let any lawyer
+who knows the character of Sir Samuel Romilly and Dr. Lushington, ask
+whether _they_ were the men to take a case into court for a woman that
+had no _evidence_ but her own statements and impressions? Were _they_
+men to go to trial without proofs? Did they not know that there were
+artful, hysterical women in the world, and would _they_, of all people,
+be the men to take a woman's story on her own side, and advise her in
+the last issue to bring it into open court, without legal proof of
+the strongest kind? Now, as long as Sir Samuel Romilly lived, this
+statement of Byron's--that he was condemned unheard, and had no chance
+of knowing whereof he _was accused--never appeared in public_.
+
+It, however, was most actively circulated _in private_. That Byron was
+in the habit of intrusting to different confidants articles of various
+kinds to be shown to different circles as they could bear them, we have
+already shown. We have recently come upon another instance of this
+kind. In the late eagerness to exculpate Byron, a new document has
+turned up, of which Mr. Murray, it appears, had never heard when, after
+Byron's death, he published in the preface to his 'Domestic Pieces'
+the sentence: '_He rejected the proposal for an amicable separation,
+but consented when threatened with a suit in Doctors' Commons_.' It
+appears that, up to 1853, neither John Murray senior, nor the son who
+now fills his place, had taken any notice of this newly found document,
+which we are now informed 'was drawn up by Lord Byron in August 1817,
+while Mr. Hobhouse was staying with him at La Mira, near Venice,
+given to Mr. Matthew Gregory Lewis, _for circulation among friends in
+England_, found in Mr. Lewis's papers after his death, and _now_ in the
+possession of Mr. Murray.' Here it is:--
+
+ 'It has been intimated to me that the persons understood to be the
+ legal advisers of Lady Byron have declared "their lips to be sealed
+ up" on the cause of the separation between her and myself. If their
+ lips are sealed up, they are not sealed up by me, and the greatest
+ favour _they_ can confer upon me will be to open them. From the first
+ hour in which I was apprised of the intentions of the Noel family to
+ the last communication between Lady Byron and myself in the character
+ of wife and husband (a period of some months), I called repeatedly and
+ in vain for a statement of their or her charges, and it was chiefly
+ in consequence of Lady Byron's claiming (in a letter still existing)
+ a promise on my part to consent to a separation, if such was _really_
+ her wish, that I consented at all; this claim, and the exasperating
+ and inexpiable manner in which their object was pursued, which
+ rendered it next to an impossibility that two persons so divided could
+ ever be reunited, induced me reluctantly then, and repentantly still,
+ to sign the deed, which I shall be happy--most happy--to cancel, and
+ go before any tribunal which may discuss the business in the most
+ public manner.
+
+ 'Mr. Hobhouse made this proposition on my part, viz. to abrogate
+ all prior intentions--and go into court--the very day before the
+ separation was signed, and it was declined by the other party, as
+ also the publication of the correspondence during the previous
+ discussion. Those propositions I beg here to repeat, and to call
+ upon her and hers to say their worst, pledging myself to meet their
+ allegations,--whatever they may be,--and only too happy to be informed
+ at last of their real nature.
+
+  'BYRON.'
+
+  'August 9, 1817.
+
+ 'P.S.--I have been, and am now, utterly ignorant of what description
+ her allegations, charges, or whatever name they may have assumed,
+ are; and am as little aware for what purpose they have been kept
+ back,--unless it was to sanction the most infamous calumnies by
+ silence.
+
+  'BYRON.'
+
+  'LA MIRA, near VENICE.'
+
+It appears the circulation of this document must have been _very
+private_, since Moore, not _over_-delicate towards Lady Byron, did not
+think fit to print it; since John Murray neglected it, and since it has
+come out at this late hour for the first time.
+
+If Lord Byron really desired Lady Byron and her legal counsel to
+understand the facts herein stated, and was willing at all hazards to
+bring on an open examination, why was this _privately_ circulated?
+Why not issued as a card in the London papers? Is it likely that
+Mr. Matthew Gregory Lewis, and a chosen band of friends acting as a
+committee, requested an audience with Lady Byron, Sir Samuel Romilly,
+and Dr. Lushington, and formally presented this cartel of defiance?
+
+We incline to think not. We incline to think that this small serpent,
+in company with many others of like kind, crawled secretly and
+privately around, and when it found a good chance, bit an honest
+Briton, whose blood was thenceforth poisoned by an undetected falsehood.
+
+The reader now may turn to the letters that Mr. Moore has thought fit
+to give us of this stay at La Mira, beginning with Letter 286, dated
+July 1, 1817,[10] where he says: 'I have been working up my impressions
+into a _Fourth_ Canto of Childe Harold,' and also 'Mr. Lewis is in
+Venice. I am going up to stay a week with him there.'
+
+[Footnote 10: Vol. iv. p. 40.]
+
+Next, under date La Mira, Venice, July 10,[11] he says, 'Monk Lewis is
+here; how pleasant!'
+
+[Footnote 11: Ibid. p. 46.]
+
+Next, under date July 20, 1817, to Mr. Murray: 'I write to give you
+notice that I have _completed the fourth and ultimate canto of Childe
+Harold_.... It is yet to be copied and polished, and the notes are to
+come.'
+
+Under date of La Mira, August 7, 1817, he records that the new canto is
+one hundred and thirty stanzas in length, and talks about the price for
+it. He is now ready to launch it on the world; and, as now appears, on
+August 9, 1817, _two days after_, he wrote the document above cited,
+and put it into the hands of Mr. Lewis, as we are informed, 'for
+circulation among friends in England.'
+
+The reason of this may now be evident. Having prepared a suitable
+number of those whom he calls in his notes to Murray 'the initiated,'
+by private documents and statements, he is now prepared to publish his
+accusations against his wife, and the story of his wrongs, in a great
+immortal poem, which shall have a band of initiated interpreters, shall
+be read through the civilised world, and stand to accuse her after his
+death.
+
+In the Fourth Canto of 'Childe Harold,' with all his own overwhelming
+power of language, he sets forth his cause as against the silent woman
+who all this time had been making no party, and telling no story,
+and whom the world would therefore conclude to be silent because she
+had no answer to make. I remember well the time when this poetry, so
+resounding in its music, so mournful, so apparently generous, filled
+my heart with a vague anguish of sorrow for the sufferer, and of
+indignation at the cold insensibility that had maddened him. Thousands
+have felt the power of this great poem, which stands, and must stand to
+all time, a monument of what sacred and solemn powers God gave to this
+wicked man, and how vilely he abused this power as a weapon to slay the
+innocent.
+
+It is among the ruins of ancient Rome that his voice breaks forth in
+solemn imprecation:--
+
+  'O Time, thou beautifier of the dead,
+  Adorner of the ruin, comforter,
+  And only healer when the heart hath bled!--
+  Time, the corrector when our judgments err,
+  The test of truth, love,--sole philosopher,
+  For all besides are sophists,--from thy shrift
+  That never loses, though it doth defer!--
+  Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift
+  My hands and heart and eyes, and claim of thee a gift.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  'If thou hast ever seen me too elate,
+  Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne
+  Good, and reserved my pride against the hate
+  Which shall not whelm me, _let me not have worn
+  This iron in my soul in vain,--shall THEY not mourn?_
+  And thou who never yet of human wrong
+  Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis,
+  Here where the ancients paid their worship long,
+  Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss,
+  And round Orestes bid them howl and hiss
+  _For that unnatural retribution,--just
+  Had it but come from hands less near_,--in this
+  Thy former realm I call thee from the dust.
+  Dost thou not hear, my heart? awake thou shalt and must!
+  It is not that I may not have incurred
+  For my ancestral faults and mine, the wound
+  Wherewith I bleed withal, and had it been conferred
+  With a just weapon it had flowed unbound,
+  But now my blood shall not sink in the ground.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  'But in this page a record will I seek;
+  Not in the air shall these my words disperse,
+  Though I be ashes,--a far hour shall wreak
+  The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,
+  And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse.
+  That curse shall be forgiveness. Have I not,--
+  Hear me, my Mother Earth! behold it, Heaven,--
+  Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?
+  Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?
+  Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,
+  Hopes sapped, name blighted, life's life lied away,
+  And only not to desperation driven,
+  Because not altogether of such clay
+  As rots into the soul of those whom I survey?
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  'From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy,
+  Have I not seen what human things could do,--
+  From the loud roar of foaming calumny,
+  To the small whispers of the paltry few,
+  And subtler venom of the reptile crew,
+  _The Janus glance of whose significant eye,
+  Learning to lie with silence, would seem true,
+  And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,
+  Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy_?'[12]
+
+[Footnote 12: The italics are mine.]
+
+The reader will please notice that the lines in italics are almost,
+word for word, a repetition of the lines in italics in the former poem
+on his wife, where he speaks of a _significant eye_ that has _learned
+to lie in silence_, and were evidently meant to apply to Lady Byron and
+her small circle of confidential friends.
+
+Before this, in the Third Canto of 'Childe Harold,' he had claimed the
+sympathy of the world, as a loving father, deprived by a severe fate of
+the solace and society of his only child:--
+
+  'My daughter,--with this name my song began,--
+  My daughter,--with this name my song shall end,--
+  I see thee not and hear thee not, but none
+  Can be so wrapped in thee; thou art the friend
+  To whom the shadows of far years extend.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  'To aid thy mind's developments, to watch
+  The dawn of little joys, to sit and see
+  Almost thy very growth, to view thee catch
+  Knowledge of objects,--wonders yet to thee,--
+  And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,--
+  This it should seem was not reserved for me.
+  Yet this was in my nature,--as it is,
+  I know not what there is, yet something like to this.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  '_Yet though dull hate as duty should be taught_,
+  I know that thou wilt love me; though my name
+  Should be shut out from thee as spell still fraught
+  With desolation and a broken claim,
+  Though the grave close between us,--'t were the same,
+  I know that thou wilt love me, though to drain
+  My blood from out thy being were an aim
+  And an attainment,--all will be in vain.'
+
+To all these charges against her, sent all over the world in verses
+as eloquent as the English language is capable of, the wife replied
+nothing.
+
+  'Assailed by slander and the tongue of strife,
+  Her only answer was,--a blameless life.'
+
+She had a few friends, a very few, with whom she sought solace and
+sympathy. One letter from her, written at this time, preserved by
+accident, is the only authentic record of how the matter stood with her.
+
+We regret to say that the publication of this document was not brought
+forth to clear Lady Byron's name from her husband's slanders, but to
+shield him from the worst accusation against him, by showing that this
+crime was not included in the few private confidential revelations that
+friendship wrung from the young wife at this period.
+
+Lady Anne Barnard, authoress of 'Auld Robin Grey', a friend whose
+age and experience made her a proper confidante, sent for the
+broken-hearted, perplexed wife, and offered her a woman's sympathy.
+
+To her Lady Byron wrote many letters, under seal of confidence, and
+Lady Anne says: 'I will give you a few paragraphs transcribed from
+one of Lady Byron's own letters to me. It is sorrowful to think that
+in a very little time this young and amiable creature, wise, patient,
+and feeling, will have her character mistaken by every one who reads
+Byron's works. To rescue her from this I preserved her letters, and
+when she afterwards expressed a fear that anything of her writing
+should ever fall into hands to injure him (I suppose she meant by
+publication), I safely assured her that it never should. But here this
+letter shall be placed, a sacred record in her favour, unknown to
+herself.
+
+ 'I am a very incompetent judge of the impression which the last Canto
+ of "Childe Harold" may produce on the minds of indifferent readers.
+
+ 'It contains the usual trace of a conscience restlessly awake, though
+ his object has been too long to aggravate its burden, as if it could
+ thus be oppressed into eternal stupor. I will hope, as you do, that it
+ survives for his ultimate good.
+
+ 'It was the acuteness of his remorse, impenitent in its character,
+ which so long seemed to demand from my compassion to spare every
+ semblance of reproach, every look of grief, which might have said to
+ his conscience, "You have made me wretched."
+
+ 'I am decidedly of opinion that he is responsible. He has wished to
+ be thought partially deranged, or on the brink of it, to perplex
+ observers and _prevent them from tracing effects to their real causes_
+ through all the intricacies of his conduct. I was, as I told you, at
+ one time the dupe of his acted insanity, and clung to the former
+ delusions in regard to the motives that concerned me personally, till
+ the whole system was laid bare.
+
+ 'He is the absolute monarch of words, and uses them, as Bonaparte did
+ lives, for conquest, without more regard to their intrinsic value,
+ considering them only as ciphers, which must derive all their import
+ from the situation in which he places them, and the ends to which he
+ adapts them, with such consummate skill.
+
+ 'Why, then, you will say, does he not employ them to give a better
+ colour to his own character? Because he is too good an actor to
+ over-act, or to assume a moral garb, which it would be easy to strip
+ off.
+
+ 'In regard to his poetry, egotism is the vital principle of his
+ imagination, which it is difficult for him to kindle on any subject
+ with which his own character and interests are not identified; but by
+ the introduction of fictitious incidents, by change of scene or time,
+ _he has enveloped his poetical disclosures in a system impenetrable
+ except to a very few_; and his constant desire of creating a sensation
+ makes him not averse to be the object of wonder and curiosity, even
+ though accompanied _by some dark and vague suspicions_.
+
+ 'Nothing has contributed more to the misunderstanding of his real
+ character than the lonely grandeur in which he shrouds it, and his
+ affectation of being above mankind, when he exists almost in their
+ voice. The romance of his sentiments is another feature of this mask
+ of state. I know no one more habitually destitute of that enthusiasm
+ he so beautifully expresses, and to which he can work up his fancy
+ chiefly by contagion.
+
+ '_I had heard he was the best of brothers, the most generous of
+ friends, and I thought such feelings only required to be warmed and
+ cherished into more diffusive benevolence. Though these opinions are
+ eradicated, and could never return but with the decay of my memory_,
+ you will not wonder if there are still moments when the association of
+ feelings which arose from them soften and sadden my thoughts.
+
+ 'But I have not thanked you, dearest Lady Anne, for your kindness in
+ regard to a principal object,--that of rectifying false impressions.
+ I trust you understand my wishes, which never were to injure Lord
+ Byron in any way; for, _though he would not suffer me to remain his
+ wife, he cannot prevent me from continuing his friend; and it was from
+ considering myself as such that I silenced the accusations by which my
+ own conduct might have been more fully justified_.
+
+ 'It is not necessary to speak ill of his heart in general; it is
+ sufficient that to me it was hard and impenetrable,--that my own must
+ have been broken before his could have been touched. I would rather
+ represent this as _my_ misfortune than as _his_ guilt; but, surely,
+ that misfortune is not to be made my crime! Such are my feelings; you
+ will judge how to act.
+
+ 'His allusions to me in "Childe Harold" are cruel and cold, but
+ with such a semblance as to make _me_ appear so, and to attract all
+ sympathy to himself. It is said in this poem that hatred of him will
+ be taught as a lesson to his child. I might appeal to all who have
+ ever heard me speak of him, and still more to my own heart, to witness
+ that there has been no moment when I have remembered injury otherwise
+ than affectionately and sorrowfully.
+
+ 'It is not my duty to give way to hopeless and wholly unrequited
+ affection; but, so long as I live, my chief struggle will probably
+ be not to remember him too kindly. I do not seek the sympathy of the
+ world, but I wish to be known by those whose opinion is valuable and
+ whose kindness is dear to me. Among such, my dear Lady Anne, you will
+ ever be remembered by your truly affectionate
+
+  'A. BYRON.'
+
+On this letter I observe Lord Lindsay remarks that it shows a noble
+but rather severe character, and a recent author has remarked that it
+seemed to be written rather in a 'cold spirit of criticism.' It seems
+to strike these gentlemen as singular that Lady Byron did not enjoy the
+poem! But there are two remarkable sentences in this letter which have
+escaped the critics hitherto. Lord Byron, in this, the Third Canto
+of 'Childe Harold,' expresses in most affecting words an enthusiasm
+of love for his sister. So long as he lived he was her faithful
+correspondent; he sent her his journals; and, dying, he left her and
+her children everything he had in the world. This certainly seems like
+an affectionate brother; but in what words does Lady Byron speak of
+this affection?
+
+'I _had heard he was the best of brothers_, the most generous of
+friends. I thought these feelings only required to be warmed and
+cherished into more diffusive benevolence. THESE OPINIONS ARE
+ERADICATED, AND COULD NEVER RETURN BUT WITH THE DECAY OF MEMORY.'
+Let me ask those who give this letter as a proof that at this time no
+idea such as I have stated was in Lady Byron's mind, to account for
+these words. Let them please answer these questions: Why had Lady Byron
+ceased to think him a good brother? Why does she use so strong a word
+as that the opinion was eradicated, torn up by the roots, and could
+never grow again in her except by decay of memory?
+
+And yet this is a document Lord Lindsay vouches for as authentic, and
+which he brings forward _in defence_ of Lord Byron.
+
+Again she says,'Though he _would not suffer me to remain his wife_, he
+cannot prevent me from continuing his friend.' Do these words not say
+that in some past time, in some decided manner, Lord Byron had declared
+to her his rejection of her as a wife? I shall yet have occasion to
+explain these words.
+
+Again she says, 'I silenced accusations by which my conduct might have
+been more fully justified.'
+
+The people in England who are so very busy in searching out evidence
+against my true story have searched out and given to the world an
+important confirmation of this assertion of Lady Byron's.
+
+It seems that the confidential waiting-maid who went with Lady Byron
+on her wedding journey has been sought out and interrogated, and, as
+appears by description, is a venerable, respectable old person, quite
+in possession of all her senses in general, and of that sixth sense of
+propriety in particular, which appears not to be a common virtue in our
+days.
+
+As her testimony is important, we insert it just here, with a
+description of her person in full. The ardent investigators thus
+speak:--
+
+ 'Having gained admission, we were shown into a small but neatly
+ furnished and scrupulously clean apartment, where sat the object
+ of our visit. Mrs. Mimms is a venerable-looking old lady, of short
+ stature, slight and active appearance, with a singularly bright and
+ intelligent countenance. Although midway between eighty and ninety
+ years of age, she is in full possession of her faculties, discourses
+ freely and cheerfully, hears apparently as well as ever she did,
+ and her sight is so good that, aided by a pair of spectacles, she
+ reads the Chronicle every day with ease. Some idea of her competency
+ to contribute valuable evidence to the subject which now so much
+ engages public attention on three continents may be found from her
+ own narrative of her personal relations with Lady Byron. Mrs. Mimms
+ was born in the neighbourhood of Seaham, and knew Lady Byron from
+ childhood. During the long period of ten years she was Miss Milbanke's
+ lady's-maid, and in that capacity became the close confidante of her
+ mistress. There were circumstances which rendered their relationship
+ peculiarly intimate. Miss Milbanke had no sister or female friend
+ to whom she was bound by the ties of more than a common affection;
+ and her mother, whatever other excellent qualities she may have
+ possessed, was too high-spirited and too hasty in temper to attract
+ the sympathies of the young. Some months before Miss Milbanke was
+ married to Lord Byron, Mrs. Mimms had quitted her service on the
+ occasion of her own marriage with Mr. Mimms; but she continued to
+ reside in the neighbourhood of Seaham, and remained on the most
+ friendly terms with her former mistress. As the courtship proceeded,
+ Miss Milbanke concealed nothing from her faithful attendant; and
+ when the wedding-day was fixed, she begged Mrs. Mimms to return and
+ fulfil the duties of lady's-maid, at least during the honeymoon. Mrs.
+ Mimms at the time was nursing her first child, and it was no small
+ sacrifice to quit her own home at such a moment, but she could not
+ refuse her old mistress's request. Accordingly, she returned to Seaham
+ Hall some days before the wedding, was present at the ceremony, and
+ then preceded Lord and Lady Byron to Halnaby Hall, near Croft, in the
+ North Riding of Yorkshire, one of Sir Ralph Milbanke's seats, where
+ the newly married couple were to spend the honeymoon. Mrs. Mimms
+ remained with Lord and Lady Byron during the three weeks they spent at
+ Halnaby Hall, and then accompanied them to Seaham, where they spent
+ the next six weeks. It was during the latter period that she finally
+ quitted Lady Byron's service; but she remained in the most friendly
+ communication with her ladyship till the death of the latter, and for
+ some time was living in the neighbourhood of Lady Byron's residence
+ in Leicestershire, where she had frequent opportunities of seeing her
+ former mistress. It may be added that Lady Byron was not unmindful of
+ the faithful services of her friend and attendant in the instructions
+ to her executors contained in her will. Such was the position of Mrs.
+ Mimms towards Lady Byron; and we think no one will question that
+ it was of a nature to entitle all that Mrs. Mimms may say on the
+ subject of the relations of Lord and Lady Byron to the most respectful
+ consideration and credit.'
+
+Such is the chronicler's account of the faithful creature whom nothing
+but intense indignation and disgust at Mrs. Beecher Stowe would lead
+to speak on her mistress's affairs; but Mrs. Beecher Stowe feels none
+the less sincere respect for her, and is none the less obliged to her
+for having spoken. Much of Mrs. Mimms's testimony will be referred to
+in another place; we only extract one passage, to show that while Lord
+Byron spent his time in setting afloat slanders against his wife, she
+spent hers in sealing the mouths of witnesses against him.
+
+Of the period of the honeymoon Mrs. Mimms says:--
+
+ 'The happiness of Lady Byron, however, was of brief duration; even
+ during the short three weeks they spent at Halnaby, the irregularities
+ of Lord Byron occasioned her the greatest distress, and she even
+ contemplated returning to her father. Mrs. Mimms was her constant
+ companion and confidante through this painful period, and she does not
+ believe that her ladyship concealed a thought from her. _With laudable
+ reticence, the old lady absolutely refuses to disclose the particulars
+ of Lord Byron's misconduct at this time; she gave Lady Byron a solemn
+ promise not to do so._
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+ 'So serious did Mrs. Mimms consider the conduct of Lord Byron, that
+ she recommended her mistress to confide all the circumstances to her
+ father, Sir Ralph Milbanke, a calm, kind, and most excellent parent,
+ and take his advice as to her future course. At one time Mrs. Mimms
+ thinks Lady Byron had resolved to follow her counsel and impart her
+ wrongs to Sir Ralph; but on arriving at Seaham Hall her ladyship
+ strictly enjoined Mrs. Mimms to preserve absolute silence on the
+ subject--a course which she followed herself;--so that when, six weeks
+ later, she and Lord Byron left Seaham for London, not a word had
+ escaped her to disturb her parents' tranquility as to their daughter's
+ domestic happiness. As might be expected, Mrs. Mimms bears the
+ warmest testimony to the noble and lovable qualities of her departed
+ mistress. She also declares that Lady Byron was by no means of a cold
+ temperament, but that the affectionate impulses of her nature were
+ checked by the unkind treatment she experienced from her husband.'
+
+We have already shown that Lord Byron had been, ever since his
+separation, engaged in a systematic attempt to reverse the judgment of
+the world against himself, by making converts of all his friends to a
+most odious view of his wife's character, and inspiring them with the
+zeal of propagandists to spread these views through society. We have
+seen how he prepared partisans to interpret the Fourth Canto of 'Childe
+Harold.'
+
+This plan of solemn and heroic accusation was the first public attack
+on his wife. Next we see him commencing a scurrilous attempt to turn
+her to ridicule in the First Canto of 'Don Juan.'
+
+It is to our point now to show how carefully and cautiously this Don
+Juan campaign was planned.
+
+Vol. IV. p. 138, we find Letter 325 to Mr. Murray:--
+
+  'VENICE: January 25, 1819.
+
+ 'You will do me the favour to _print privately, for private
+ distribution, fifty copies of "Don Juan."_ The list of the men to whom
+ I wish it presented I will send hereafter.'
+
+The poem, as will be remembered, begins with the meanest and foulest
+attack on his wife that ever ribald wrote, and puts it in close
+neighbourhood with scenes which every pure man or woman must feel
+to be the beastly utterances of a man who had lost all sense of
+decency. Such a potion was too strong to be administered even in a
+time when great license was allowed, and men were not over-nice. But
+Byron chooses fifty armour-bearers of that class of men who would
+find indecent ribaldry about a wife a good joke, and talk about the
+'artistic merits' of things which we hope would make an honest boy
+blush.
+
+At this time he acknowledges that his vices had brought him to a state
+of great exhaustion, attended by such debility of the stomach that
+nothing remained on it; and adds, 'I was obliged to reform my way of
+life, which was conducting me from the yellow leaf to the ground with
+all deliberate speed.'[13] But as his health is a little better he
+employs it in making the way to death and hell elegantly easy for other
+young men, by breaking down the remaining scruples of a society not
+over-scrupulous.
+
+[Footnote 13: Vol. iv. p 143.]
+
+Society revolted, however, and fought stoutly against the nauseous
+dose. His sister wrote to him that she heard such things said of it
+that _she_ never would read it; and the outcry against it on the part
+of all women of his acquaintance was such that for a time he was quite
+overborne; and the Countess Guiccioli finally extorted a promise from
+him to cease writing it. Nevertheless, there came a time when England
+accepted 'Don Juan,'--when Wilson, in the 'Noctes Ambrosianae,' praised
+it as a classic, and took every opportunity to reprobate Lady Byron's
+conduct. When first it appeared the 'Blackwood' came out with that
+indignant denunciation of which we have spoken, and to which Byron
+replied in the extracts we have already quoted. He did something more
+than reply. He marked out Wilson as one of the strongest literary men
+of the day, and set his 'initiated' with their documents to work upon
+him.
+
+One of these documents to which he requested Wilson's attention was the
+private autobiography, written expressly to give his own story of all
+the facts of the marriage and separation.
+
+In the indignant letter he writes Murray on the 'Blackwood' article,
+Vol. IV., Letter 350--under date December 10, 1819--he says:--
+
+ 'I sent home for Moore, and for Moore only (who has my journal also),
+ my memoir written up to 1816, and I gave him leave to show it to
+ whom he pleased, _but not to publish_ on any account. _You_ may read
+ it, and you may let Wilson read it if he likes--not for his public
+ opinion, but his private, for I like the man, and care very little
+ about the magazine. And I could wish Lady Byron herself to read
+ it, that she may have it in her power to mark anything mistaken or
+ misstated. As it will never appear till after my extinction, it would
+ be but fair she should see it; that is to say, herself willing. Your
+ "Blackwood" accuses me of treating women harshly; but I have been
+ their martyr; my whole life has been sacrificed to them and by them.'
+
+It was a part of Byron's policy to place Lady Byron in positions before
+the world where she _could_ not speak, and where her silence would be
+set down to her as haughty, stony indifference and obstinacy. Such was
+the pretended negotiation through Madame de Stael, and such now this
+apparently fair and generous offer to let Lady Byron see and mark this
+manuscript.
+
+The little Ada is now in her fifth year--a child of singular
+sensibility and remarkable mental powers--one of those exceptional
+children who are so perilous a charge for a mother.
+
+Her husband proposes this artful snare to her,--that she shall mark
+what is false in a statement which is all built on a damning lie, that
+she cannot refute over that daughter's head,--and which would perhaps
+be her ruin to discuss.
+
+Hence came an addition of two more documents, to be used 'privately
+among friends,'[14] and which 'Blackwood' uses after Lady Byron is
+safely out of the world to cast ignominy on her grave--the wife's
+letter, that of a mother standing at bay for her daughter, knowing that
+she is dealing with a desperate, powerful, unscrupulous enemy.
+
+  'KIRKBY MALLORY: March 10, 1820.
+
+ [Footnote 14: Lord Byron took especial pains to point out to Murray
+ the importance of these two letters. Vol. V. Letter 443, he says: 'You
+ must also have from Mr. Moore the correspondence between me and Lady
+ B., to whom I offered a sight of all that concerns herself in these
+ papers. This is important. He has _her_ letter and my answer.']
+
+ 'I received your letter of January 1, offering to my perusal a
+ Memoir of part of your life. I decline to inspect it. I consider
+ the publication or circulation of such a composition at any time as
+ prejudicial to Ada's future happiness. For my own sake, I have no
+ reason to shrink from publication; but, notwithstanding the injuries
+ which I have suffered, I should lament some of the _consequences_.
+
+  'A. BYRON.
+
+  'To Lord Byron.'
+
+Lord Byron, writing for the public, as is his custom, makes reply:--
+
+  'RAVENNA: April 3, 1820.
+
+ 'I received yesterday your answer, dated March 10. My offer was an
+ honest one, and surely could only be construed as such even by the
+ most malignant casuistry. I could answer you, but it is too late, and
+ it is not worth while. To the mysterious menace of the last sentence,
+ whatever its import may be--and I cannot pretend to unriddle it--I
+ could hardly be very sensible even if I understood it, as, before it
+ can take place, I shall be where "nothing can touch him further".... I
+ advise you, however, to anticipate the period of your intention, for,
+ be assured, no power of figures can avail beyond the present; and if
+ it could, I would answer with the Florentine:--
+
+  '"Ed io, che posto son con loro in croce
+                            ... e certo
+  La fiera moglie, piu ch' altro, mi nuoce."[15]
+
+  'BYRON.
+
+  'To Lady Byron.'
+
+[Footnote 15:
+
+  'And I, who with them on the cross am placed,
+                                    ... truly
+  My savage wife, more than aught else, doth harm me.'
+
+  _Inferno_, Canto, XVI., Longfellow's translation.
+]
+
+Two things are very evident in this correspondence: Lady Byron
+intimates that, if he publishes his story, some _consequences_ must
+follow which she shall regret.
+
+Lord Byron receives this as a threat, and says he doesn't understand
+it. But directly after he says, 'Before IT can take place, I shall be,'
+&c.
+
+The intimation is quite clear. He _does_ understand what the
+consequences alluded to are. They are evidently that Lady Byron will
+speak out and tell her story. He says she cannot do this till _after
+he is dead_, and then he shall not care. In allusion to her accuracy
+as to dates and figures, he says: 'Be assured no power of figures can
+avail beyond the present' (life); and then ironically _advises_ her to
+_anticipate the period_,--i.e. to speak out while he is alive.
+
+In Vol. VI. Letter 518, which Lord Byron wrote to Lady Byron, but did
+not send, he says: 'I burned your last note for two reasons,--firstly,
+because it was written in a style not very agreeable; and, secondly,
+because I wished to take your word without documents, which are the
+resources of worldly and suspicious people.'
+
+It would appear from this that there _was_ a last letter of Lady Byron
+to her husband, which he did not think proper to keep on hand, or show
+to the 'initiated' with his usual unreserve; that this letter contained
+some kind of _pledge_ for which he preferred to take her word, _without
+documents_.
+
+Each reader can imagine for himself what that _pledge_ might have been;
+but from the tenor of the three letters we should infer that it was a
+promise of silence for his lifetime, on _certain conditions_, and that
+the publication of the autobiography would violate those conditions,
+and make it her duty to speak out.
+
+This celebrated autobiography forms so conspicuous a figure in the
+whole history, that the reader must have a full idea of it, as given by
+Byron himself, in Vol. IV. Letter 344, to Murray:--
+
+ 'I gave to Moore, who is gone to Rome, my life in MS.,--in
+ seventy-eight folio sheets, brought down to 1816 ... also a journal
+ kept in 1814. Neither are for publication during my life, but when I
+ am cold you may do what you please. In the mean time, if you like to
+ read them you may, and show them to anybody you like. I care not....'
+
+He tells him also:--
+
+ 'You will find in it a detailed account of my marriage and its
+ consequences, as true as a party concerned can make such an account.'
+
+Of the extent to which this autobiography was circulated we have the
+following testimony of Shelton Mackenzie, in notes to 'The Noctes' of
+June 1824.
+
+In 'The Noctes' Odoherty says:--
+
+ 'The fact is, the work had been copied for the private reading of a
+ great lady in Florence.'
+
+The note says:--
+
+ 'The great lady in Florence, for whose private reading Byron's
+ autobiography was copied, was the Countess of Westmoreland.... Lady
+ Blessington had the autobiography in her possession for weeks, and
+ confessed to having copied every line of it. Moore remonstrated, and
+ she committed her copy to the flames, but did not tell him that her
+ sister, Mrs. Home Purvis, now Viscountess of Canterbury, had also made
+ a copy!... From the quantity of copy I have seen,--and others were
+ more in the way of falling in with it than myself,--I surmise that at
+ least half a dozen copies were made, and of these _five_ are now in
+ existence. Some particular parts, such as the marriage and separation,
+ were copied separately; but I think there cannot be less than five
+ full copies yet to be found.'
+
+This was written _after the original autobiography was burned_.
+
+We may see the zeal and enthusiasm of the Byron party,--copying
+seventy-eight folio sheets, as of old Christians copied the Gospels.
+How widely, fully, and thoroughly, thus, by this secret process, was
+society saturated with Byron's own versions of the story that related
+to himself and wife! Against her there was only the complaint of an
+absolute silence. She put forth no statements, no documents; had no
+party, sealed the lips of her counsel, and even of her servants; yet
+she could not but have known, from time to time, how thoroughly and
+strongly this web of mingled truth and lies was being meshed around her
+steps.
+
+From the time that Byron first saw the importance of securing Wilson on
+his side, and wrote to have his partisans attend to him, we may date
+an entire revolution in the 'Blackwood.' It became Byron's warmest
+supporter,--is to this day the bitterest accuser of his wife.
+
+Why was this wonderful silence? It appears by Dr. Lushington's
+statements, that, when Lady Byron did speak, she had a story to tell
+that powerfully affected both him and Romilly,--a story supported by
+evidence on which they were willing to have gone to public trial.
+Supposing, now, she had imitated Lord Byron's example, and, avoiding
+public trial, had put her story into private circulation; as he sent
+'Don Juan' to fifty confidential friends, suppose she had sent a
+written statement of her story to fifty judges as intelligent as the
+two that had heard it; or suppose she had confronted his autobiography
+with her own,--what would have been the result?
+
+The first result might have been Mrs. Leigh's utter ruin. The world may
+finally forgive the man of genius anything; but for a woman there is no
+mercy and no redemption.
+
+This ruin Lady Byron prevented by her utter silence and great
+self-command. Mrs. Leigh never lost position. Lady Byron never so
+varied in her manner towards her as to excite the suspicions even of
+her confidential old servant.
+
+To protect Mrs. Leigh effectually, it must have been necessary to
+continue to exclude even her own mother from the secret, as we are
+assured she did at first; for, had she told Lady Milbanke, it is
+not possible that so high-spirited a woman could have restrained
+herself from such outward expressions as would at least have awakened
+suspicion. There was no resource but this absolute silence.
+
+Lady Blessington, in her last conversation with Lord Byron, thus
+describes the life Lady Byron was leading. She speaks of her as
+'wearing away her youth in almost monastic seclusion, questioned by
+some, appreciated by few, seeking consolation alone in the discharge of
+her duties, and avoiding all external demonstrations of a grief that
+her pale cheek and solitary existence alone were vouchers for.'[16]
+
+[Footnote 16: 'Conversations,' p. 108.]
+
+The main object of all this silence may be imagined, if we remember
+that if Lord Byron had not died,--had he truly and deeply repented,
+and become a thoroughly good man, and returned to England to pursue a
+course worthy of his powers, there was on record neither word nor deed
+from his wife to stand in his way.
+
+HIS PLACE WAS KEPT IN SOCIETY, ready for him to return to
+whenever he came clothed and in his right mind. He might have had the
+heart and confidence of his daughter unshadowed by a suspicion. He
+might have won the reverence of the great and good in his own lands and
+all lands. That hope, which was the strong support, the prayer of the
+silent wife, it did not please God to fulfil.
+
+Lord Byron died a worn-out man at thirty-six. But the bitter seeds he
+had sown came up, after his death, in a harvest of thorns over his
+grave; and there were not wanting hands to use them as instruments of
+torture on the heart of his widow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+RESUME OF THE CONSPIRACY.
+
+
+We have traced the conspiracy of Lord Byron against his wife up to its
+latest device. That the reader's mind may be clear on the points of the
+process, we shall now briefly recapitulate the documents in the order
+of time.
+
+I. March 17, 1816.--While negotiations for separation were
+pending,--'_Fare thee well, and if for ever_.'
+
+While writing these pages, we have received from England the testimony
+of one who has seen the original draught of that 'Fare thee well.' This
+original copy had evidently been subjected to the most careful and
+acute revision. Scarcely two lines that were not interlined, scarcely
+an adjective that was not exchanged for a better; showing that the
+noble lord was not so far overcome by grief as to have forgotten his
+reputation. (Found its way to the public prints through the imprudence
+of _a friend_.)
+
+II. March 29, 1816.--An attack on Lady Byron's old governess for having
+been born poor, for being homely, and for having unduly influenced his
+wife against him; promising that her grave should be a fiery bed,
+&c.; also praising his wife's perfect and remarkable truthfulness and
+discernment, that made it impossible for flattery to fool, or baseness
+blind her; but ascribing all his woes to her being fooled and blinded
+by this same governess. (Found its way to the prints by the imprudence
+of _a friend_.)
+
+III. September 1816.--Lines on hearing that Lady Byron is ill. Calls
+her a Clytemnestra, who has secretly set assassins on her lord; says
+she is a mean, treacherous, deceitful liar, and has entirely departed
+from her early truth, and become the most unscrupulous and unprincipled
+of women. (Never printed till after Lord Byron's death, but circulated
+_privately_ among the '_initiated_.')
+
+IV. Aug. 9, 1817.--Gives to M. G. Lewis a paper for circulation
+among friends in England, stating that what he most wants is _public
+investigation_, which has always been denied him; and daring Lady Byron
+and her counsel to come out publicly. (Found in M. G. Lewis's portfolio
+after his death; never heard of before, except among the 'initiated.')
+
+Having given M. G. Lewis's document time to work,--
+
+January 1818.--Gives the Fourth Canto of 'Childe Harold'[17] to the
+public.
+
+[Footnote 17: Murray's edition of 'Byron's Works,' Vol. ii. p. 189;
+date of dedication to Hobhouse, Jan. 2, 1818.]
+
+Jan. 25, 1819.--Sends to Murray to print for private circulation among
+the 'initiated' the First Canto of 'Don Juan.'
+
+Is nobly and severely rebuked for this insult to his wife by the
+'Blackwood,' August 1819.
+
+October 1819.--Gives Moore the manuscript 'Autobiography,' with leave
+to show it to whom he pleases, and print it after his death.
+
+Oct. 29, 1819, Vol. IV. Letter 344.--Writes to Murray, that he may read
+all this 'Autobiography,' and show it to anybody he likes.
+
+Dec. 10, 1819.--Writes to Murray on this article in 'Blackwood'
+against 'Don Juan' and himself, which he supposes written by Wilson;
+sends a complimentary message to Wilson, and asks him to read his
+'Autobiography' sent by Moore. (Letter 350.)
+
+March 15, 1820.--Writes and dedicates to I. Disraeli, Esq., a
+vindication of himself in reply to the 'Blackwood' on 'Don Juan,'
+containing an indignant defence of his own conduct in relation to his
+wife, and maintaining that he never yet has had an opportunity of
+knowing whereof he has been accused; accusing Sir S. Romilly of taking
+his retainer, and then going over to the adverse party, &c. (Printed
+for _private circulation_; to be found in the standard English edition
+of Murray, vol. ix. p. 57.)
+
+To this condensed account of Byron's strategy we must add the crowning
+stroke of policy which transmitted this warfare to his friends, to be
+continued after his death.
+
+During the last visit Moore made him in Italy, and just before Byron
+presented to him his 'Autobiography,' the following scene occurred, as
+narrated by Moore (vol. iv. p. 221):--
+
+ 'The chief subject of conversation, when alone, was his marriage, and
+ the load of obloquy which it had brought upon him. He was most anxious
+ to know _the worst_ that had been alleged of his conduct; and, as this
+ was our first opportunity of speaking together on the subject, I did
+ not hesitate to put his candour most searchingly to the proof, not
+ only by enumerating the various charges I had heard brought against
+ him by others, but by specifying such portions of these charges as I
+ had been inclined to think not incredible myself.
+
+ 'To all this he listened with patience, and answered with the most
+ unhesitating frankness; laughing to scorn the tales of unmanly outrage
+ related of him, but at the same time acknowledging that there had
+ been in his conduct but too much to blame and regret, and stating one
+ or two occasions during his domestic life when he had been irritated
+ into letting the "breath of bitter words" escape him, ... which he now
+ evidently remembered with a degree of remorse and pain which might
+ well have entitled them to be forgotten by others.
+
+ 'It was, at the same time, manifest, that, whatever admissions he
+ might be inclined to make respecting his own delinquencies, _the
+ inordinate measure of the punishment dealt out to him had sunk deeply
+ into his mind, and, with the usual effect of such injustice, drove him
+ also to be unjust himself; so much so, indeed, as to impute to the
+ quarter to which he now traced all his ill fate a feeling of fixed
+ hostility to himself, which would not rest, he thought, even at his
+ grave, but continue to persecute his memory as it was now embittering
+ his life_. So strong was this impression upon him, that, during one of
+ our few intervals of seriousness, he conjured me by our friendship,
+ if, as he both felt and hoped, I should survive him, not to let
+ unmerited censure settle upon his name.'
+
+In this same account, page 218, Moore testifies that
+
+ 'Lord Byron disliked his countrymen, but only because he knew that his
+ morals were held in contempt by them. The English, themselves rigid
+ observers of family duties, could not pardon him the neglect of his,
+ nor his trampling on principles; therefore, neither did he like being
+ presented to them, nor did they, especially when they had wives with
+ them, like to cultivate his acquaintance. Still there was a strong
+ desire in all of them to see him; and the women in particular, who did
+ not dare to look at him but by stealth, said in an under-voice, "What
+ a pity it is!" If, however, any of his compatriots of exalted rank and
+ high reputation came forward to treat him with courtesy, he showed
+ himself obviously flattered by it. It seemed that, to the wound which
+ remained open in his ulcerated heart, such soothing attentions were as
+ drops of healing balm, which comforted him.'
+
+When in society, we are further informed by a lady quoted by Mr.
+Moore, he was in the habit of speaking of his wife with much respect
+and affection, as an illustrious lady, distinguished for her qualities
+of heart and understanding; saying that all the fault of their
+cruel separation lay with himself. Mr. Moore seems at times to be
+somewhat puzzled by these contradictory statements of his idol, and
+speculates not a little on what could be Lord Byron's object in using
+such language in public; mentally comparing it, we suppose, with
+the free handling which he gave to the same subject in his private
+correspondence.
+
+The innocence with which Moore gives himself up to be manipulated by
+Lord Byron, the _naivete_ with which he shows all the process, let
+us a little into the secret of the marvellous powers of charming and
+blinding which this great actor possessed.
+
+Lord Byron had the beauty, the wit, the genius, the dramatic talent,
+which have constituted the strength of some wonderfully fascinating
+women.
+
+There have been women able to lead their leashes of blinded adorers; to
+make them swear that black was white, or white black, at their word;
+to smile away their senses, or weep away their reason. No matter what
+these sirens may say, no matter what they may do, though caught in a
+thousand transparent lies, and doing a thousand deeds which would have
+ruined others, still men madly rave after them in life, and tear their
+hair over their graves. Such an enchanter in man's shape was Lord Byron.
+
+He led captive Moore and Murray by being beautiful, a genius, and a
+lord; calling them 'Dear Tom' and 'Dear Murray,' while they were only
+commoners. He first insulted Sir Walter Scott, and then witched his
+heart out of him by ingenuous confessions and poetical compliments; he
+took Wilson's heart by flattering messages and a beautifully-written
+letter; he corresponded familiarly with Hogg; and, before his death,
+had made fast friends, in one way or another, of the whole 'Noctes
+Ambrosianae' Club.
+
+We thus have given the historical _resume_ of Lord Byron's attacks
+on his wife's reputation: we shall add, that they were based on
+philosophic principles, showing a deep knowledge of mankind. An
+analysis will show that they can be philosophically classified:--
+
+1st. Those which addressed the sympathetic nature of man, representing
+her as cold, methodical, severe, strict, unforgiving.
+
+2nd. Those addressed to the faculty of association, connecting her with
+ludicrous and licentious images; taking from her the usual protection
+of womanly delicacy and sacredness.
+
+3rd. Those addressed to the moral faculties, accusing her as artful,
+treacherous, untruthful, malignant.
+
+All these various devices he held in his hand, shuffling and dealing
+them as a careful gamester his pack of cards according to the
+exigencies of the game. He played adroitly, skilfully, with blinding
+flatteries and seductive wiles, that made his victims willing dupes.
+
+Nothing can more clearly show the power and perfectness of his
+enchantments than the masterly way in which he turned back the moral
+force of the whole English nation, which had risen at first in its
+strength against him. The victory was complete.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+RESULTS AFTER LORD BYRON'S DEATH.
+
+
+At the time of Lord Byron's death, the English public had been so
+skilfully manipulated by the Byron propaganda, that the sympathy of
+the whole world was with him. A tide of emotion was now aroused in
+England by his early death--dying in the cause of Greece and liberty.
+There arose a general wail for him, as for a lost pleiad, not only
+in England, but over the whole world; a great rush of enthusiasm for
+his memory, to which the greatest literary men of England freely gave
+voice. By general consent, Lady Byron seems to have been looked upon as
+the only cold-hearted unsympathetic person in this general mourning.
+
+From that time the literary world of England apparently regarded Lady
+Byron as a woman to whom none of the decorums, nor courtesies of
+ordinary womanhood, nor even the consideration belonging to common
+humanity, were due.
+
+'She that is a widow indeed, and desolate,' has been regarded in all
+Christian countries as an object made sacred by the touch of God's
+afflicting hand, sacred in her very helplessness; and the old Hebrew
+Scriptures give to the Supreme Father no dearer title than 'the widow's
+God.' But, on Lord Byron's death, men not devoid of tenderness, men
+otherwise generous and of fine feeling, acquiesced in insults to his
+widow with an obtuseness that seems, on review, quite incredible.
+
+Lady Byron was not only a widow, but an orphan. She had no sister for
+confidante; no father and mother to whom to go in her sorrows--sorrows
+so much deeper and darker to her than they could be to any other human
+being. She had neither son nor brother to uphold and protect her. On
+all hands it was acknowledged that, so far, there was no fault to be
+found in her but her utter silence. Her life was confessed to be pure,
+useful, charitable; and yet, in this time of her sorrow, the writers
+of England issued article upon article not only devoid of delicacy,
+but apparently injurious and insulting towards her, with a blind
+unconsciousness which seems astonishing.
+
+One of the greatest literary powers of that time was the 'Blackwood:'
+the reigning monarch on that literary throne was Wilson, the
+lion-hearted, the brave, generous, tender poet, and, with some sad
+exceptions, the noble man. But Wilson had believed the story of Byron,
+and, by his very generosity and tenderness and pity, was betrayed into
+injustice.
+
+In 'The Noctes' of November 1824 there is a conversation of the Noctes
+Club, in which North says, 'Byron and I knew each other pretty well;
+and I suppose there's no harm in adding, that we appreciated each
+other pretty tolerably. Did you ever see his letter to me?'
+
+The footnote to this says, '_This letter, which was PRINTED in Byron's
+lifetime, was not published till_ 1830, when it appeared in Moore's
+"Life of Byron." It is one of the most vigorous prose compositions in
+the language. Byron had the highest opinion of Wilson's genius and
+noble spirit.'
+
+In the first place, with our present ideas of propriety and good taste,
+we should reckon it an indecorum to make the private affairs of a
+pure and good woman, whose circumstances under any point of view were
+trying, and who evidently shunned publicity, the subject of public
+discussion in magazines which were read all over the world.
+
+Lady Byron, as they all knew, had on her hands a most delicate and
+onerous task, in bringing up an only daughter, necessarily inheriting
+peculiarities of genius and great sensitiveness; and the many
+mortifications and embarrassments which such intermeddling with her
+private matters must have given, certainly should have been considered
+by men with any pretensions to refinement or good feeling.
+
+But the literati of England allowed her no consideration, no rest, no
+privacy.
+
+In 'The Noctes' of November 1825 there is the record of a free
+conversation upon Lord and Lady Byron's affairs, interlarded with
+exhortations to push the bottle, and remarks on whisky-toddy. Medwin's
+'Conversations with Lord Byron' is discussed, which, we are told in a
+note, appeared a few months after the _noble_ poet's death.
+
+There is a rather bold and free discussion of Lord Byron's
+character--his fondness for gin and water, on which stimulus he wrote
+'Don Juan;' and James Hogg says pleasantly to Mullion, 'O Mullion! it's
+a pity you and Byron could na ha' been acquaint. There would ha' been
+brave sparring to see who could say the wildest and the dreadfullest
+things; for he had neither fear of man or woman, and would ha' his joke
+or jeer, cost what it might.' And then follows a specimen of one of
+his jokes with an actress, that, in indecency, certainly justifies the
+assertion. From the other stories which follow, and the parenthesis
+that occurs frequently ('Mind your glass, James, a little more!'), it
+seems evident that the party are progressing in their peculiar kind of
+_civilisation_.
+
+It is in this same circle and paper that Lady Byron's private affairs
+come up for discussion. The discussion is thus elegantly introduced:--
+
+ _Hogg._--'Reach me the black bottle. I say, Christopher, what, after
+ all, is your opinion o' Lord and Leddy Byron's quarrel? Do you
+ yoursel' take part with him, or with her? I wad like to hear your real
+ opinion.'
+
+ _North._--'Oh, dear! Well, Hogg, since you will have it, I think
+ Douglas Kinnard and Hobhouse are bound to tell us whether there be any
+ truth, and how much, in this story about the _declaration_, signed by
+ Sir Ralph' [Milbanke].
+
+The note here tells us that this refers to a statement that appeared
+in 'Blackwood' immediately after Byron's death, to the effect that,
+previous to the formal separation from his wife, Byron required and
+obtained from Sir Ralph Milbanke, Lady Byron's father, a statement to
+the effect that Lady Byron had no charge of moral delinquency to bring
+against him.[18]
+
+[Footnote 18: Recently, Lord Lindsay has published another version of
+this story, which makes it appear that he has conversed with a lady who
+conversed with Hobhouse during his lifetime, in which this story is
+differently reported. In the last version, it is made to appear that
+Hobhouse had this declaration from Lady Byron herself.]
+
+North continues:--
+
+ 'And I think Lady Byron's letter--the "Dearest Duck" one I
+ mean--should really be forthcoming, if her ladyship's friends wish to
+ stand fair before the public. At present we have nothing but loose
+ talk of society to go upon; and certainly, _if the things that are
+ said be true, there must be thorough explanation from some quarter,
+ or the tide will continue, as it has assuredly begun, to flow in a
+ direction very opposite to what we were for years accustomed_. Sir,
+ they must _explain this business of the letter_. You have, of course,
+ heard about the invitation it contained, the warm, affectionate
+ invitation, to Kirkby Mallory'----
+
+Hogg interposes,--
+
+ 'I dinna like to be interruptin' ye, Mr. North; but I must inquire, Is
+ the _jug_ to stand still while ye're going on at that rate?'
+
+ _North._--'There, Porker! These things are part and parcel of
+ the chatter of every bookseller's shop; _a fortiori_, of every
+ drawing-room in May Fair. _Can_ the matter stop here? Can a great
+ man's memory be permitted to incur damnation while these saving
+ clauses are afloat anywhere uncontradicted?'
+
+And from this the conversation branches off into strong, emphatic
+praise of Byron's conduct in Greece during the last part of his life.
+
+The silent widow is thus delicately and considerately reminded in the
+'Blackwood' that she is the talk, not only over the whisky-jug of the
+Noctes, but in every drawing-room in London; and that she _must_ speak
+out and explain matters, or the whole world will set against her.
+
+But she does not speak yet. The public persecution, therefore,
+proceeds. Medwin's book being insufficient, another biographer is to
+be selected. Now, the person in the Noctes Club who was held to have
+the most complete information of the Byron affairs, and was, on that
+account, first thought of by Murray to execute this very delicate task
+of writing a memoir which should include the most sacred domestic
+affairs of a noble lady and her orphan daughter, was _Maginn_. Maginn,
+the author of the pleasant joke, that 'man never reaches the apex of
+civilisation till he is too drunk to pronounce the word,' was the first
+person in whose hands the 'Autobiography,' Memoirs, and Journals of
+Lord Byron were placed with this view.
+
+The following note from Shelton Mackenzie, in the June number of 'The
+Noctes,' 1824, says,--
+
+ 'At that time, had he been so minded, Maginn (Odoherty) could have got
+ up a popular Life of Byron as well as most men in England. Immediately
+ on the account of Byron's death being received in London, John Murray
+ proposed that Maginn should bring out Memoirs, Journals, and Letters
+ of Lord Byron, and, with this intent, placed in his hand every line
+ that he (Murray) possessed in Byron's handwriting.... The strong
+ desire of _Byron's family and executors_ that the "Autobiography"
+ should be burned, to which desire Murray foolishly yielded, made such
+ an hiatus in the materials, that Murray and Maginn agreed it would not
+ answer to bring out the work then. Eventually Moore executed it.'
+
+The character of the times in which this work was to be undertaken will
+appear from the following note of Mackenzie's to 'The Noctes' of August
+1824, which we copy, with the _author's own Italics_:--
+
+ 'In the "Blackwood" of July 1824 was a poetical epistle by the
+ renowned Timothy Tickler to the editor of the "John Bull" magazine,
+ on an article in his first number. This article ... _professed_ to
+ be a portion of the veritable "Autobiography" of Byron which was
+ burned, and was called "My Wedding Night." It appeared to relate
+ in detail _everything_ that occurred in the twenty-four hours
+ immediately succeeding that in which Byron was married. It had plenty
+ of coarseness, and some to spare. It went into particulars such as
+ hitherto had been given only by Faublas; and it had, notwithstanding,
+ many phrases and some facts which evidently did not belong to a mere
+ fabricator. Some years after, I compared this "Wedding Night" with
+ what I had all assurance of having been transcribed from the actual
+ manuscripts of Byron, and was persuaded that the magazine-writer must
+ have had the _actual_ statement before him, or have had a perusal of
+ it. The writer in "Blackwood" declared his conviction that it really
+ was Byron's own writing.'
+
+The reader must remember that Lord Byron died April 1824; so that,
+according to this, his 'Autobiography' was made the means of this gross
+insult to his widow three months after his death.
+
+If some powerful cause had not paralysed all feelings of gentlemanly
+honour, and of womanly delicacy, and of common humanity, towards Lady
+Byron, throughout the whole British nation, no editor would have dared
+to open a periodical with such an article; or, if he had, he would have
+been overwhelmed with a storm of popular indignation, which, like the
+fire upon Sodom, would have made a pillar of salt of him for a warning
+to all future generations.
+
+'Blackwood' reproves the 'John Bull' in a poetical epistle, recognising
+the article as coming from Byron, and says to the _author_,--
+
+  'But that _you_, sir, a wit and a scholar like you,
+  Should not blush to produce what he blushed not to do,--
+  Take your compliment, youngster; this doubles, almost,
+  The sorrow that rose when his honour was lost.'
+
+We may not wonder that the 'Autobiography' was burned, as Murray says
+in a recent account, by a committee of Byron's _friends_, including
+Hobhouse, his sister, and Murray himself.
+
+Now, the 'Blackwood' of July 1824 thus declares its conviction that
+this outrage on every sentiment of human decency came from Lord Byron,
+and that his honour was lost. Maginn does not undertake the memoir. No
+memoir at all is undertaken; till finally Moore is selected, as, like
+Demetrius of old, a well-skilled gilder and 'maker of silver shrines,'
+though _not_ for Diana. To Moore is committed the task of doing his
+best for this battered image, in which even the worshippers recognise
+foul sulphurous cracks, but which they none the less stand ready to
+worship as a genuine article that 'fell down from Jupiter.'
+
+Moore was a man of no particular nicety as to moralities, but in that
+matter seems not very much below what this record shows his average
+associates to be. He is so far superior to Maginn, that his vice is
+rose-coloured and refined. He does not burst out with such heroic
+stanzas as Maginn's frank invitation to Jeremy Bentham:--
+
+  'Jeremy, throw your pen aside,
+    And come get drunk with me;
+  And we'll go where Bacchus sits astride,
+    Perched high on barrels three.'
+
+Moore's vice is cautious, soft, seductive, slippery, and covered at
+times with a thin, tremulous veil of religious sentimentalism.
+
+In regard to Byron, he was an unscrupulous, committed partisan: he was
+as much bewitched by him as ever man has been by woman; and therefore
+to him, at last, the task of editing Byron's 'Memoirs' was given.
+
+This Byron, whom they all knew to be obscene beyond what even their
+most drunken tolerance could at first endure; this man, whose foul
+license _spoke out_ what most men conceal from mere respect to the
+decent instincts of humanity; whose 'honour was lost,'--was submitted
+to this careful manipulator, to be turned out a perfected idol for a
+world longing for an idol, as the Israelites longed for the calf in
+Horeb.
+
+The image was to be invested with deceitful glories and shifting
+haloes,--admitted faults spoken of as peculiarities of sacred
+origin,--and the world given to understand that no common rule or
+measure could apply to such an undoubtedly divine production; and so
+the hearts of men were to be wrung with pity for his sorrows as the
+yearning pain of a god, and with anger at his injuries as sacrilege on
+the sacredness of genius, till they were ready to cast themselves at
+his feet, and adore.
+
+Then he was to be set up on a pedestal, like Nebuchadnezzar's image on
+the plains of Dura; and what time the world heard the sound of cornet,
+sackbut, and dulcimer, in his enchanting verse, they were to fall down
+and worship.
+
+For Lady Byron, Moore had simply the respect that a commoner has for
+a lady of rank, and a good deal of the feeling that seems to underlie
+all English literature,--that it is no matter what becomes of the woman
+when the man's story is to be told. But, with all his faults, Moore was
+not a cruel man; and we cannot conceive such outrageous cruelty and
+ungentlemanly indelicacy towards an unoffending woman, as he shows in
+these 'Memoirs,' without referring them to Lord Byron's own influence
+in making him an unscrupulous, committed partisan on his side.
+
+So little pity, so little sympathy, did he suppose Lady Byron to be
+worthy of, that he laid before her, in the sight of all the world,
+selections from her husband's letters and journals, in which the
+privacies of her courtship and married life were jested upon with a
+vulgar levity; letters filled, from the time of the act of separation,
+with a constant succession of sarcasms, stabs, stings, epigrams, and
+vindictive allusions to herself, bringing her into direct and insulting
+comparison with his various mistresses, and implying their superiority
+over her. There, too, were gross attacks on her father and mother, as
+having been the instigators of the separation; and poor Lady Milbanke,
+in particular, is sometimes mentioned with epithets so offensive, that
+the editor prudently covers the terms with stars, as intending language
+too gross to be printed.
+
+The last mistress of Lord Byron is uniformly brought forward in
+terms of such respect and consideration, that one would suppose that
+the usual moral laws that regulate English family life had been
+specially repealed in his favour. Moore quotes with approval letters
+from Shelley, stating that Lord Byron's connection with La Guiccioli
+has been of inestimable benefit to him; and that he is now becoming
+what he should be, 'a virtuous man.' Moore goes on to speak of the
+connection as one, though somewhat reprehensible, yet as having all
+those advantages of marriage and settled domestic ties that Byron's
+affectionate spirit had long sighed for, but never before found; and in
+his last _resume_ of the poet's character, at the end of the volume, he
+brings the mistress into direct comparison with the wife in a single
+sentence: 'The woman to whom he gave the love of his maturer years
+idolises his name; and, _with a single unhappy exception_, scarce an
+instance is to be found of one brought ... into relations of amity with
+him who did not retain a kind regard for him in life, and a fondness
+for his memory.'
+
+Literature has never yet seen the instance of a person, of Lady Byron's
+rank in life, placed before the world in a position more humiliating to
+womanly dignity, or wounding to womanly delicacy.
+
+The direct implication is, that she has no feelings to be hurt, no
+heart to be broken, and is not worthy even of the consideration which
+in ordinary life is to be accorded to a widow who has received those
+awful tidings which generally must awaken many emotions, and call for
+some consideration, even in the most callous hearts.
+
+The woman who we are told walked the room, vainly striving to control
+the sobs that shook her frame, while she sought to draw from the
+servant that last message of her husband which she was never to hear,
+was not thought worthy even of the rights of common humanity.
+
+The first volume of the 'Memoir' came out in 1830. Then for the first
+time came one flash of lightning from the silent cloud; and she who
+had never spoken before spoke out. The libels on the memory of her
+dead parents drew from her what her own wrongs never did. During all
+this time, while her husband had been keeping her effigy dangling
+before the public as a mark for solemn curses, and filthy lampoons,
+and _secretly_-circulated disclosures, that spared no sacredness
+and violated every decorum, she had not uttered a word. She had
+been subjected to nameless insults, discussed in the assemblies of
+drunkards, and challenged to speak for herself. Like the chaste lady
+in 'Comus,' whom the vile wizard had bound in the enchanted seat to
+be 'grinned at and chattered at' by all the filthy rabble of his
+dehumanised rout, she had remained pure, lofty, and undefiled; and the
+stains of mud and mire thrown upon her had fallen from her spotless
+garments.
+
+Now that she is dead, a recent writer in 'The London Quarterly' dares
+give voice to an insinuation which even Byron gave only a _suggestion_
+of when he called his wife Clytemnestra; and hints that she tried the
+power of youth and beauty to win to her the young solicitor Lushington,
+and a handsome young officer of high rank.
+
+At this time, _such_ insinuations had not been thought of; and the only
+and chief allegation against Lady Byron had been a cruel severity of
+virtue.
+
+At all events, when Lady Byron spoke, the world listened with respect,
+and believed what she said.
+
+Here let us, too, read her statement, and give it the careful attention
+she solicits (Moore's 'Life of Byron,' vol. vi. p. 275):--
+
+ 'I have disregarded various publications in which facts within my
+ own knowledge have been grossly misrepresented; but I am called upon
+ to notice some of the erroneous statements proceeding from one who
+ claims to be considered as Lord Byron's confidential and authorised
+ friend. Domestic details ought not to be intruded on the public
+ attention: if, however, they _are_ so intruded, the persons affected
+ by them have a right to refute injurious charges. Mr. Moore has
+ promulgated his own impressions of private events in which I was most
+ nearly concerned, as if he possessed a competent knowledge of the
+ subject. Having survived Lord Byron, I feel increased reluctance to
+ advert to any circumstances connected with the period of my marriage;
+ nor is it now my intention to disclose them further than may be
+ indispensably requisite for the end I have in view. Self-vindication
+ is not the motive which actuates me to make this appeal, and the
+ spirit of accusation is unmingled with it; but when the conduct of
+ my parents is brought forward in a disgraceful light by the passages
+ selected from Lord Byron's letters, and by the remarks of his
+ biographer, I feel bound to justify their characters from imputations
+ which I _know_ to be false. The passages from Lord Byron's letters, to
+ which I refer, are,--the aspersion on my mother's character (p. 648,
+ l. 4):[19] "My child is very well and flourishing, I hear; but I must
+ see also. I feel no disposition to resign it to the _contagion of its
+ grandmother's society_." The assertion of her dishonourable conduct
+ in employing a spy (p. 645, l. 7, &c.): "A Mrs. C. (now a kind of
+ housekeeper and _spy of Lady N.'s_), who, in her better days, was a
+ washerwoman, is supposed to be--by the learned--very much the occult
+ cause of our domestic discrepancies." The seeming exculpation of
+ myself in the extract (p. 646), with the words immediately following
+ it, "Her nearest relations are a----;" where the blank clearly implies
+ something too offensive for publication. These passages tend to throw
+ suspicion on my parents, and give reason to ascribe the separation
+ either to their direct agency, or to that of "officious spies"
+ employed by them.[20] From the following part of the narrative (p.
+ 642), it must also be inferred that an undue influence was exercised
+ by them for the accomplishment of this purpose: "It was in a few
+ weeks after the latter communication between us (Lord Byron and Mr.
+ Moore) that Lady Byron adopted the determination of parting from him.
+ She had left London at the latter end of January, on a visit to her
+ father's house in Leicestershire; and Lord Byron was in a short time
+ to follow her. They had parted in the utmost kindness,--she wrote
+ him a letter, full of playfulness and affection, on the road; and,
+ immediately on her arrival at Kirkby Mallory, her father wrote to
+ acquaint Lord Byron that she would return to him no more."
+
+ [Footnote 19: The references are to the first volume of the first
+ edition of Moore's Life', originally published by itself.]
+
+ [Footnote 20: 'The officious spies of his privacy,' p. 650.]
+
+ 'In my observations upon this statement, I shall, as far as possible,
+ avoid touching on any matters relating personally to Lord Byron
+ and myself. The facts are,--I left London for Kirkby Mallory, the
+ residence of my father and mother, on the 15th of January, 1816.
+ Lord Byron had signified to me in writing (Jan. 6) his absolute
+ desire that I should leave London on the earliest day that I could
+ conveniently fix. It was not safe for me to undertake the fatigue of a
+ journey sooner than the 15th. Previously to my departure, it had been
+ strongly impressed on my mind that Lord Byron was under the influence
+ of insanity. This opinion was derived in a great measure from the
+ communications made to me by his nearest relatives and personal
+ attendant, who had more opportunities than myself of observing him
+ during the latter part of my stay in town. It was even represented to
+ me that he was in danger of destroying himself. _With the concurrence
+ of his family_, I had consulted Dr. Baillie, as a friend (Jan. 8),
+ respecting this supposed malady. On acquainting him with the state of
+ the case, and with Lord Byron's desire that I should leave London, Dr.
+ Baillie thought that my absence might be advisable as an experiment,
+ _assuming_ the fact of mental derangement; for Dr. Baillie, not
+ having had access to Lord Byron, could not pronounce a positive
+ opinion on that point. He enjoined that, in correspondence with Lord
+ Byron, I should avoid all but light and soothing topics. Under these
+ impressions I left London, determined to follow the advice given by
+ Dr. Baillie. Whatever might have been the nature of Lord Byron's
+ conduct towards me from the time of my marriage, yet, supposing him
+ to be in a state of mental alienation, it was not for _me_, nor for
+ any person of common humanity, to manifest at that moment a sense
+ of injury. On the day of my departure, and again on my arrival at
+ Kirkby (Jan. 16), I wrote to Lord Byron in a kind and cheerful tone,
+ according to those medical directions.
+
+ 'The last letter was circulated, and employed as a pretext for the
+ charge of my having been subsequently _influenced_ to "desert"[21] my
+ husband. It has been argued that I parted from Lord Byron in perfect
+ harmony; that feelings incompatible with any deep sense of injury had
+ dictated the letter which I addressed to him; and that my sentiments
+ must have been changed by persuasion and interference when I was
+ under the roof of my parents. These assertions and inferences are
+ wholly destitute of foundation. When I arrived at Kirkby Mallory, my
+ parents were unacquainted with the existence of any causes likely to
+ destroy my prospects of happiness; and, when I communicated to them
+ the opinion which had been formed concerning Lord Byron's state of
+ mind, they were most anxious to promote his restoration by every means
+ in their power. They assured those relations who were with him in
+ London, that "they would devote their whole care and attention to the
+ alleviation of his malady;" and hoped to make the best arrangements
+ for his comfort if he could be induced to visit them.
+
+ [Footnote 21: 'The deserted husband,' p. 651.]
+
+ 'With these intentions, my mother wrote on the 17th to Lord Byron,
+ inviting him to Kirkby Mallory. She had always treated him with an
+ affectionate consideration and indulgence, which extended to every
+ little peculiarity of his feelings. Never did an irritating word
+ escape her lips in her whole intercourse with him. The accounts given
+ me after I left Lord Byron, by the persons in constant intercourse
+ with him, added to those doubts which had before transiently occurred
+ to my mind as to the reality of the alleged disease; and the reports
+ of his medical attendant were far from establishing the existence of
+ anything like lunacy. Under this uncertainty, I deemed it right to
+ communicate to my parents, that, if I were to consider Lord Byron's
+ past conduct as that of a person of sound mind, nothing could induce
+ me to return to him. It therefore appeared expedient, both to them and
+ myself, to consult the ablest advisers. For that object, and also
+ to obtain still further information respecting the appearances which
+ seemed to indicate mental derangement, my mother determined to go to
+ London. She was empowered by me to take legal opinions on a written
+ statement of mine, though I had then reasons for reserving a part
+ of the case from the knowledge even of my father and mother. Being
+ convinced by the result of these inquiries, and by the tenor of Lord
+ Byron's proceedings, that the notion of insanity was an illusion, I no
+ longer hesitated to authorise such measures as were necessary in order
+ to secure me from being ever again placed in his power. Conformably
+ with this resolution, my father wrote to him on the 2nd of February
+ to propose an amicable separation. Lord Byron at first rejected this
+ proposal; but when it was distinctly notified to him that, if he
+ persisted in his refusal, recourse must be had to legal measures, he
+ agreed to sign a deed of separation. Upon applying to Dr. Lushington,
+ who was intimately acquainted with all the circumstances, to state in
+ writing what he recollected upon this subject, I received from him the
+ following letter, by which it will be manifest that my mother cannot
+ have been actuated by any hostile or ungenerous motives towards Lord
+ Byron:--
+
+ '"MY DEAR LADY BYRON,--I can rely upon the accuracy of
+ my memory for the following statement. I was originally consulted
+ by Lady Noel, on your behalf, whilst you were in the country. The
+ circumstances detailed by her were such as justified a separation;
+ but they were not of that aggravated description as to render such
+ a measure indispensable. On Lady Noel's representation, I deemed a
+ reconciliation with Lord Byron practicable, and felt most sincerely
+ a wish to aid in effecting it. There was not on Lady Noel's part
+ any exaggeration of the facts; nor, so far as I could perceive, any
+ determination to prevent a return to Lord Byron: certainly none was
+ expressed when I spoke of a reconciliation. When you came to town,
+ in about a fortnight, or perhaps more, after my first interview with
+ Lady Noel, I was for the first time informed by you of facts utterly
+ unknown, as I have no doubt, to Sir Ralph and Lady Noel. On receiving
+ this additional information, my opinion was entirely changed: I
+ considered a reconciliation impossible. I declared my opinion, and
+ added, that, if such an idea should be entertained, I could not,
+ either professionally or otherwise, take any part towards effecting it.
+
+  '"Believe me, very faithfully yours,
+
+  '"STEPH. LUSHINGTON.
+
+  '"Great George Street, Jan. 31, 1830."
+
+ 'I have only to observe, that, if the statements on which my legal
+ advisers (the late Sir Samuel Romilly and Dr. Lushington) formed
+ their opinions were false, the responsibility and the odium should
+ rest with _me only_. I trust that the facts which I have here briefly
+ recapitulated will absolve my father and mother from all accusations
+ with regard to the part they took in the separation between Lord Byron
+ and myself.
+
+ 'They neither originated, instigated, nor advised that separation;
+ and they cannot be condemned for having afforded to their daughter
+ the assistance and protection which she claimed. There is no other
+ near relative to vindicate their memory from insult. I am therefore
+ compelled to break the silence which I had hoped always to observe,
+ and to solicit from the readers of Lord Byron's "Life" an impartial
+ consideration of the testimony extorted from me.
+
+  'A. I. NOEL BYRON.
+
+  'Hanger Hill, Feb. 19, 1830.'
+
+The effect of this statement on the literary world may be best judged
+by the discussion of it by Christopher North (Wilson) in the succeeding
+May number of 'The Noctes,' where the bravest and most generous of
+literary men that then were--himself the husband of a gentle wife--thus
+gives sentence: the conversation is between North and the Shepherd:--
+
+ _North._--'God forbid I should wound the feelings of Lady Byron, of
+ whose character, known to me but by the high estimation in which
+ it is held by all who have enjoyed her friendship, I have always
+ spoken with respect!... But may I, without harshness or indelicacy,
+ say, here among ourselves, James, that, by marrying Byron, she took
+ upon herself, with eyes wide open and conscience clearly convinced,
+ duties very different from those of which, even in common cases, the
+ presaging foresight shadows ... the light of the first nuptial moon?'
+
+ _Shepherd._--'She did that, sir; by my troth, she did that.'
+
+ _North._--'Miss Milbanke knew that he was reckoned a rake and a
+ _roue_; and although his genius wiped off, by impassioned eloquence
+ in love-letters that were felt to be irresistible, or hid the worst
+ stain of, that reproach, still Miss Milbanke must have believed it a
+ perilous thing to be the wife of Lord Byron.... But still, by joining
+ her life to his in marriage, she pledged her troth and her faith and
+ her love, under probabilities of severe, disturbing, perhaps fearful
+ trials, in the future....
+
+ 'But I think Lady Byron ought not to have printed that Narrative.
+ Death abrogates not the rights of a husband to his wife's silence
+ when speech is fatal ... to his character as a man. Has she not
+ flung suspicion over his bones interred, that they are the bones of
+ a--monster?... If Byron's sins or crimes--for we are driven to use
+ terrible terms--were unendurable and unforgivable as if against the
+ Holy Ghost, ought the wheel, the rack, or the stake to have extorted
+ that confession from his widow's breast.... But there was no such
+ pain here, James: the declaration was voluntary, and it was calm.
+ Self-collected, and gathering up all her faculties and feelings
+ into unshrinking strength, she denounced before all the world--and
+ throughout all space and all time--her husband, as excommunicated by
+ his vices from woman's bosom.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+ ''Twas to vindicate the character of her parents that Lady Byron
+ wrote,--a holy purpose and devout, nor do I doubt sincere. But filial
+ affection and reverence, sacred as they are, may be blamelessly, nay,
+ righteously, subordinate to conjugal duties, which die not with the
+ dead, are extinguished not even by the sins of the dead, were they as
+ foul as the grave's corruption.'
+
+Here is what John Stuart Mill calls the literature of slavery for
+woman, in length and breadth; and, that all women may understand the
+doctrine, the Shepherd now takes up his parable, and expounds the true
+position of the wife. We render his Scotch into English:--
+
+ 'Not a few such widows do I know, whom brutal, profligate, and savage
+ husbands have brought to the brink of the grave,--as good, as bright,
+ as innocent as, and far more forgiving than, Lady Byron. There
+ they sit in their obscure, rarely-visited dwellings; for sympathy
+ instructed by suffering knows well that the deepest and most hopeless
+ misery is least given to complaint.'
+
+Then follows a pathetic picture of one such widow, trembling and
+fainting for hunger, obliged, on her way to the well for a can of
+water, her only drink, to sit down on a '_knowe_' and say a prayer.
+
+ 'Yet she's decently, yea, tidily dressed, poor creature! in sair worn
+ widow's clothes, a single suit for Saturday and Sunday; her hair,
+ untimely gray, is neatly braided under her crape cap; and sometimes,
+ when all is still and solitary in the fields, and all labour has
+ disappeared into the house, you may see her stealing by herself, or
+ leading one wee orphan by the hand, with another at her breast, to the
+ kirkyard, where the love of her youth and the husband of her prime is
+ buried.
+
+ 'Yet,' says the Shepherd, 'he was a brute, a ruffian, a monster. When
+ drunk, how he raged and cursed and swore! Often did she dread that, in
+ his fits of inhuman passion, he would have murdered the baby at her
+ breast; for she had seen him dash their only little boy, a child of
+ eight years old, on the floor, till the blood gushed from his ears;
+ and then the madman threw himself down on the body, and howled for
+ the gallows. Limmers haunted his door, and he theirs; and it was hers
+ to lie, not sleep, in a cold, forsaken bed, once the bed of peace,
+ affection, and perfect happiness. Often he struck her; and once when
+ she was pregnant with that very orphan now smiling on her breast,
+ reaching out his wee fingers to touch the flowers on his father's
+ grave....
+
+ 'But she tries to smile among the neighbours, and speaks of her boy's
+ likeness to its father; nor, when the conversation turns on bygone
+ times, does she fear to let his name escape her white lips, "My
+ Robert; the bairn's not ill-favoured, but he will never look like his
+ father,"--and such sayings, uttered in a calm, sweet voice. Nay, I
+ remember once how her pale countenance reddened with a sudden flush
+ of pride, when a gossiping crone alluded to their wedding; and the
+ widow's eye brightened through her tears to hear how the bridegroom,
+ sitting that sabbath in his front seat beside his bonny bride, had
+ not his equal for strength, stature, and all that is beauty in man,
+ in all the congregation. That, I say, sir, whether right or wrong,
+ _was--forgiveness_.'
+
+Here is a specimen of how even generous men had been so perverted by
+the enchantment of Lord Byron's genius, as to turn all the pathos and
+power of the strongest literature of that day against the persecuted,
+pure woman, and for the strong, wicked man. These 'Blackwood' writers
+knew, by Byron's own filthy, ghastly writings, which had gone sorely
+against their own moral stomachs, that he was foul to the bone. They
+could see, in Moore's 'Memoirs' right before them, how he had caught an
+innocent girl's heart by sending a love-letter, and offer of marriage,
+at the end of a long friendly correspondence,--a letter that had been
+written to _show_ to his libertine set, and sent on the toss-up of a
+copper, because he cared nothing for it one way or the other.
+
+They admit that, having won this poor girl, he had been savage, brutal,
+drunken, cruel. They had read the filthy taunts in 'Don Juan,' and the
+nameless abominations in the 'Autobiography.' They had admitted among
+themselves that his honour was lost; but still this abused, desecrated
+woman must _reverence_ her brutal master's memory, and not speak, even
+to defend the grave of her own kind father and mother.
+
+That there was _no_ lover of her youth, that the marriage-vow had been
+a hideous, shameless cheat, is on the face of Moore's account; yet
+the 'Blackwood' does not see it nor feel it, and brings up against
+Lady Byron this touching story of a poor widow, who really had had a
+true lover once,--a lover maddened, imbruted, lost, through that very
+drunkenness in which the Noctes Club were always glorying.
+
+It is because of such transgressors as Byron, such supporters as
+Moore and the Noctes Club, that there are so many helpless, cowering,
+broken-hearted, abject women, given over to the animal love which they
+share alike with the poor dog,--the dog, who, beaten, kicked, starved,
+and cuffed, still lies by his drunken master with great anxious eyes
+of love and sorrow, and with sweet, brute forgiveness nestles upon his
+bosom, as he lies in his filth in the snowy ditch, to keep the warmth
+of life in him. Great is the mystery of this fidelity in the poor,
+loving brute,--most mournful and most sacred!
+
+But, oh that a noble man should have no higher ideal of the love of a
+high-souled, heroic woman! Oh that men should teach women that they
+owe no higher duties, and are capable of no higher tenderness, than
+this loving, unquestioning animal fidelity! The dog is ever-loving,
+ever-forgiving, because God has given him no high range of moral
+faculties, no sense of justice, no consequent horror at impurity and
+vileness.
+
+Much of the beautiful patience and forgiveness of women is made
+possible to them by that utter _deadness to the sense of justice_ which
+the laws, literature, and misunderstood religion of England have sought
+to induce in woman as a special grace and virtue.
+
+The lesson to woman in this pathetic piece of special pleading is,
+that man may sink himself below the brute, may wallow in filth like
+the swine, may turn his home into a hell, beat and torture his
+children, forsake the marriage-bed for foul rivals; yet all this does
+not dissolve the marriage-vow on her part, nor free his bounden serf
+from her obligation to honour his memory,--nay, to sacrifice to it
+the honour due to a kind father and mother, slandered in their silent
+graves.
+
+Such was the sympathy, and such the advice, that the best literature
+of England could give to a young widow, a peeress of England, whose
+husband, as they verily believed and admitted, might have done
+_worse_ than all this; whose crimes might have been 'foul, monstrous,
+unforgivable as the sin against the Holy Ghost.' If these things be
+done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry? If the peeress
+_as a wife_ has no rights, what is the state of the cotter's wife?
+
+But, in the same paper, North again blames Lady Byron for not
+having come out with the whole story before the world at the time
+she separated from her husband. He says of the time when she first
+consulted counsel through her mother, keeping back one item,--
+
+ 'How weak, and worse than weak, at such a juncture, on which hung her
+ whole fate, to ask legal advice on an imperfect document! Give the
+ delicacy of a virtuous woman its due; but at such a crisis, when the
+ question was whether her conscience was to be free from the oath of
+ oaths, delicacy should have died, and nature was privileged to show
+ unashamed--if such there were--the records of uttermost pollution.'
+
+ _Shepherd._--'And what think ye, sir, that a' this pollution could hae
+ been, that sae electrified Dr. Lushington?'
+
+ _North._--'Bad--bad--bad, James. Nameless, it is horrible; named,
+ it might leave Byron's memory yet within the range of pity and
+ forgiveness; and, where they are, their sister affections will not be
+ far; though, like weeping seraphs, standing aloof, and veiling their
+ wings.'
+
+ _Shepherd._--'She should indeed hae been silent--till the grave had
+ closed on her sorrows as on his sins.'
+
+ _North._--'_Even now she should speak_,--or some one else for her,--
+ ... and a few words will suffice. _Worse_ the condition of the dead
+ man's name cannot be--far, far better it might--I believe it would
+ be--were _all_ the truth somehow or other declared; and declared it
+ must be, not for Byron's sake only, but for the sake of humanity
+ itself; and then a mitigated sentence, or eternal silence.'
+
+We have another discussion of Lady Byron's duties in a further number
+of 'Blackwood.'
+
+The 'Memoir' being out, it was proposed that there should be a complete
+annotation of Byron's works gotten up, and adorned, for the further
+glorification of his memory, with portraits of the various women whom
+he had delighted to honour.
+
+Murray applied to Lady Byron for her portrait, and was met with a cold,
+decided negative. After reading all the particulars of Byron's harem of
+mistresses, and Moore's comparisons between herself and La Guiccioli,
+one might _imagine_ reasons why a lady, with proper self-respect,
+should object to appearing in this manner. One would suppose there
+might have been gentlemen who could well appreciate the _motive_ of
+that refusal; but it was only considered a new evidence that she was
+indifferent to her conjugal duties, and wanting in that _respect_ which
+Christopher North had told her she owed a husband's memory, though his
+crimes were foul as the rottenness of the grave.
+
+Never, since Queen Vashti refused to come at the command of a drunken
+husband to show herself to his drunken lords, was there a clearer case
+of disrespect to the marital dignity on the part of a wife. It was a
+plain act of insubordination, rebellion against law and order; and
+how shocking in Lady Byron, who ought to feel herself but too much
+flattered to be exhibited to the public as the head wife of a man of
+genius!
+
+Means were at once adopted to subdue her contumacy, of which one may
+read in a note to the 'Blackwood' (Noctes), September 1832. An artist
+was sent down to Ealing to take her picture by stealth as she sat in
+church. Two sittings were thus obtained without her knowledge. In the
+third one, the artist placed himself boldly before her, and sketched,
+so that she could not but observe him. We shall give the rest in
+Mackenzie's own words, as a remarkable specimen of the obtuseness,
+not to say indelicacy of feeling, which seemed to pervade the literary
+circles of England at the time:--
+
+ 'After prayers, Wright and his friend (the artist) were visited by
+ an ambassador from her ladyship to inquire the meaning of what she
+ had seen. The reply was, that Mr. Murray _must_ have her portrait,
+ and was compelled to take what she refused to give. The result was,
+ Wright was requested to visit her, which he did; taking with him,
+ not _the_ sketch, which was very good, but another, in which there
+ was a strong touch of caricature. Rather than allow _that_ to appear
+ as her likeness (a very natural and womanly feeling by the way), she
+ consented to sit for the portrait to W. J. Newton, which was engraved,
+ and is here alluded to.'
+
+The artless barbarism of this note is too good to be lost; but it
+is quite borne out by the conversation in the Noctes Club, which it
+illustrates.
+
+It would appear from this conversation that these Byron beauties
+appeared successively in pamphlet form; and the picture of Lady Byron
+is thus discussed:--
+
+ _Mullion._--'I don't know if you have seen the last brochure. It has a
+ charming head of Lady Byron, who, it seems, sat on purpose: and that's
+ very agreeable to hear of; for it shows her ladyship has got over any
+ little soreness that Moore's "Life" occasioned, and is now willing
+ to contribute anything in her power to the real monument of Byron's
+ genius.'
+
+ _North._--'I am delighted to hear of this: 'tis really very noble in
+ the unfortunate lady. I never saw her. Is the face a striking one?'
+
+ _Mullion._--'Eminently so,--a most calm, pensive, melancholy style of
+ native beauty,--and a most touching contrast to the maids of Athens,
+ Annesley, and all the rest of them. I'm sure you'll have the proof
+ Finden has sent you framed for the Boudoir at the Lodge.'
+
+ _North._--'By all means. I mean to do that for all the Byron Beauties.'
+
+But it may be asked, Was there not a man in all England with delicacy
+enough to feel for Lady Byron, and chivalry enough to speak a bold word
+for her? Yes: there was one. Thomas Campbell the poet, when he read
+Lady Byron's statement, believed it, as did Christopher North; but it
+affected him differently. It appears he did not believe it a wife's
+duty to burn herself on her husband's funeral-pile, as did Christopher
+North; and held the singular idea, that a wife had _some_ rights as a
+human being as well as a husband.
+
+Lady Byron's own statement appeared in pamphlet form in 1830: at
+least, such is the date at the foot of the document. Thomas Campbell,
+in 'The New Monthly Magazine,' shortly after, printed a spirited,
+gentlemanly defence of Lady Byron, and administered a pointed rebuke to
+Moore for the rudeness and indelicacy he had shown in selecting from
+Byron's letters the coarsest against herself, her parents, and her
+old governess Mrs. Clermont, and by the indecent comparisons he had
+instituted between Lady Byron and Lord Byron's last mistress.
+
+It is refreshing to hear, at last, from somebody who is not altogether
+on his knees at the feet of the popular idol, and who has some chivalry
+for woman, and some idea of common humanity. He says,--
+
+ 'I found my right to speak on this painful subject on its now
+ _irrevocable publicity_, brought up afresh as it has been by Mr.
+ Moore, to be the theme of discourse to millions, and, if I err not
+ much, the cause of misconception to innumerable minds. I claim to
+ speak of Lady Byron in the right of a man, and of a friend to the
+ rights of woman, and to liberty, and to natural religion. I claim a
+ right, more especially, as one of the many friends of Lady Byron,
+ who, one and all, feel aggrieved by this production. It has virtually
+ dragged her forward from the shade of retirement, where she had hid
+ her sorrows, and compelled her to defend the heads of her friends and
+ her parents from being crushed under the tombstone of Byron. Nay, in a
+ general view, it has forced her to defend _herself_; though, with her
+ true sense and her pure taste, she stands above all special pleading.
+ To plenary explanation she _ought_ not--she never _shall_ be driven.
+ Mr. Moore is too much a gentleman not to shudder at the thought of
+ that; but if other Byronists, of a far different stamp, were to force
+ the savage ordeal, it is her enemies, and not she, that would have to
+ dread the burning plough-shares.
+
+ 'We, her friends, have no wish to prolong the discussion: but a few
+ words we _must_ add, even to her admirable statement; for hers is a
+ cause not only dear to her friends, but having become, from Mr. Moore
+ and her misfortunes, a publicly-agitated cause, it concerns morality,
+ and the most sacred rights of the sex, that she should (and that,
+ too, without more special explanations) be acquitted out and out, and
+ honourably acquitted, in this business, of all share in the blame,
+ which is one and indivisible. Mr. Moore, on further reflection, may
+ see this; and his return to candour will surprise us less than his
+ momentary deviation from its path.
+
+ 'For the tact of Mr. Moore's conduct in this affair, I have not to
+ answer; but, if indelicacy be charged upon me, I scorn the charge.
+ Neither will I submit to be called Lord Byron's accuser; because a
+ word against him I wish not to say beyond what is painfully wrung
+ from me by the necessity of owning or illustrating Lady Byron's
+ unblamableness, and of repelling certain misconceptions respecting
+ her, which are now walking the fashionable world, and which have been
+ fostered (though Heaven knows where they were born) most delicately
+ and warily by the Christian godfathership of Mr. Moore.
+
+ 'I write not at Lady Byron's bidding. I have never humiliated either
+ her or myself by asking _if_ I should write, or _what_ I should write;
+ that is to say, I never applied to her for information against Lord
+ Byron, though I was justified, as one intending to criticise Mr.
+ Moore, in inquiring into the truth of some of his statements. Neither
+ will I suffer myself to be called her champion, if by that word be
+ meant the advocate of her mere legal innocence; for that, I take it,
+ nobody questions.
+
+ 'Still less is it from the sorry impulse of pity that I speak of
+ this noble woman; for I look with wonder and even envy at the proud
+ purity of her sense and conscience, that have carried her exquisite
+ sensibilities in triumph through such poignant tribulations. But
+ I am proud to be called her friend, the humble illustrator of her
+ cause, and the advocate of those principles which make it to me more
+ interesting than Lord Byron's. Lady Byron (if the subject must be
+ discussed) belongs to sentiment and morality (at least as much as Lord
+ Byron); nor is she to be suffered, when compelled to speak, to raise
+ her voice as in a desert, with no friendly voice to respond to her.
+ Lady Byron could not have outlived her sufferings if she had not wound
+ up her fortitude to the high point of trusting mainly for consolation,
+ not to the opinion of the world, but to her own inward peace; and,
+ having said what ought to convince the world, I verily believe that
+ she has less care about the fashionable opinion respecting her than
+ any of her friends can have. But we, her friends, mix with the world;
+ and we hear offensive absurdities about her, which we have a right to
+ put down.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+ 'I proceed to deal more generally with Mr. Moore's book. You speak,
+ Mr. Moore, against Lord Byron's censurers in a tone of indignation
+ which is perfectly lawful towards calumnious traducers, but which will
+ not terrify me, or any other man of courage who is no calumniator,
+ from uttering his mind freely with regard to this part of your hero's
+ conduct. I question your philosophy in assuming that all that is
+ noble in Byron's poetry was inconsistent with the possibility of his
+ being devoted to a pure and good woman; and I repudiate your morality
+ for canting too complacently about "the lava of his imagination,"
+ and the unsettled fever of his passions, being any excuses for his
+ planting the _tic douloureux_ of domestic suffering in a meek woman's
+ bosom.
+
+ 'These are hard words, Mr. Moore; but you have brought them on
+ yourself by your voluntary ignorance of facts known to me; for you
+ might and ought to have known both sides of the question; and, if the
+ subject was too delicate for you to consult Lady Byron's confidential
+ friends, you ought to have had nothing to do with the subject. But you
+ cannot have submitted your book even to Lord Byron's sister, otherwise
+ she would have set you right about the imaginary spy, Mrs. Clermont.'
+
+Campbell now goes on to print, at his own peril, he says, and without
+time to ask leave, the following note from Lady Byron in reply to an
+application he made to her, when he was about to review Moore's book,
+for an 'estimate as to the correctness of Moore's statements.'
+
+The following is Lady Byron's reply:--
+
+ 'DEAR MR. CAMPBELL,--In taking up my pen to point out
+ for your private information[22] those passages in Mr. Moore's
+ representation of my part of the story which were open to
+ contradiction, I find them of still greater extent than I had
+ supposed; and to deny an assertion _here and there_ would virtually
+ admit the truth of the rest. If, on the contrary, I were to enter into
+ a full exposure of the falsehood of the views taken by Mr. Moore, I
+ must detail various matters, which, consistently with my principles
+ and feelings, I cannot under the existing circumstances disclose. I
+ may, perhaps, convince you better of the difficulty of the case by
+ an example: It is not true that pecuniary embarrassments were the
+ cause of the disturbed state of Lord Byron's mind, or formed the
+ chief reason for the arrangements made by him at that time. But is it
+ reasonable for me to expect that you or any one else should believe
+ this, unless I show you what were the causes in question? and this I
+ cannot do. 'I am, &c.,
+
+  'A. I. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+[Footnote 22: 'I (Campbell) had not time to ask Lady Byron's permission
+to print this private letter; but it seemed to me important, and I have
+published it _meo periculo_.']
+
+Campbell then goes on to reprove Moore for his injustice to Mrs.
+Clermont, whom Lord Byron had denounced as a spy, but whose
+respectability and innocence were vouched for by Lord Byron's own
+family; and then he pointedly rebukes one false statement of great
+indelicacy and cruelty concerning Lady Byron's courtship, as follows:--
+
+ 'It is a further mistake on Mr. Moore's part, and I can prove it to be
+ so, if proof be necessary, to represent Lady Byron, in the course of
+ their courtship, as one inviting her future husband to correspondence
+ by letters after she had at first refused him. She never proposed a
+ correspondence. On the contrary, he sent her a message after that
+ first refusal, stating that he meant to go abroad, and to travel for
+ some years in the East; that he should depart with a heart aching,
+ but not angry; and that he only begged a verbal assurance that she
+ had still some interest in his happiness. Could Miss Milbanke, as a
+ well-bred woman, refuse a courteous answer to such a message? She sent
+ him a verbal answer, which was merely kind and becoming, but which
+ signified no encouragement that he should renew his offer of marriage.
+
+ 'After that message, he wrote to her a most interesting letter about
+ himself,--about his views, personal, moral, and religious,--to which
+ it would have been uncharitable not to have replied. The result was
+ an insensibly increasing correspondence, which ended in her being
+ devotedly attached to him. About that time, I occasionally saw Lord
+ Byron; and though I knew less of him than Mr. Moore, yet I suspect I
+ knew as much of him as Miss Milbanke then knew. At that time, he was
+ so pleasing, that, if I had had a daughter with ample fortune and
+ beauty, I should have trusted her in marriage with Lord Byron.
+
+ 'Mr. Moore at that period evidently understood Lord Byron better than
+ either his future bride or myself; but this speaks more for Moore's
+ shrewdness than for Byron's ingenuousness of character.
+
+ 'It is more for Lord Byron's sake than for his widow's that I resort
+ not to a more special examination of Mr. Moore's misconceptions. The
+ subject would lead me insensibly into hateful disclosures against poor
+ Lord Byron, who is more unfortunate in his rash defenders than in
+ his reluctant accusers. Happily, his own candour turns our hostility
+ from himself against his defenders. It was only in wayward and bitter
+ remarks that he misrepresented Lady Byron. He would have defended
+ himself irresistibly if Mr. Moore had left only his acknowledging
+ passages. But Mr. Moore has produced a "Life" of him which reflects
+ blame on Lady Byron so dexterously, that "more is meant than meets
+ the ear." The almost universal impression produced by his book is,
+ that Lady Byron must be a precise and a wan, unwarming spirit, a
+ blue-stocking of chilblained learning, a piece of insensitive goodness.
+
+ 'Who that knows Lady Byron will not pronounce her to be everything the
+ reverse? Will it be believed that this person, so unsuitably matched
+ to her moody lord, has written verses that would do no discredit to
+ Byron himself; that her sensitiveness is surpassed and bounded only by
+ her good sense; and that she is
+
+  '"Blest with a temper, whose unclouded ray
+  Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day"?
+
+ 'She brought to Lord Byron beauty, manners, fortune, meekness,
+ romantic affection, and everything that ought to have made her to
+ the most transcendent man of genius--_had he been what he should
+ have been_--his pride and his idol. I speak not of Lady Byron in the
+ commonplace manner of attesting character: I appeal to the gifted Mrs.
+ Siddons and Joanna Baillie, to Lady Charlemont, and to other ornaments
+ of their sex, whether I am exaggerating in the least when I say, that,
+ in their whole lives, they have seen few beings so intellectual and
+ well-tempered as Lady Byron.
+
+ 'I wish to be as ingenuous as possible in speaking of her. Her manner,
+ I have no hesitation to say, is cool at the first interview, but is
+ modestly, and not insolently, cool: she contracted it, I believe, from
+ being exposed by her beauty and large fortune, in youth, to numbers
+ of suitors, whom she could not have otherwise kept at a distance.
+ But this manner could have had no influence with Lord Byron; for
+ it vanishes on nearer acquaintance, and has no origin in coldness.
+ All her friends like her frankness the better for being preceded by
+ this reserve. This manner, however, though not the slightest apology
+ for Lord Byron, has been inimical to Lady Byron in her misfortunes.
+ It endears her to her friends; but it piques the indifferent. Most
+ odiously unjust, therefore, is Mr. Moore's assertion, that she has had
+ the advantage of Lord Byron in public opinion. She is, comparatively
+ speaking, unknown to the world; for though she has many friends, that
+ is, a friend in everyone who knows her, yet her pride and purity and
+ misfortunes naturally contract the circle of her acquaintance.
+
+ 'There is something exquisitely unjust in Mr. Moore comparing her
+ chance of popularity with Lord Byron's, the poet who can command
+ men of talents,--putting even Mr. Moore into the livery of his
+ service,--and who has suborned the favour of almost all women by the
+ beauty of his person and the voluptuousness of his verses. Lady Byron
+ has nothing to oppose to these fascinations but the truth and justice
+ of her cause.
+
+ 'You said, Mr. Moore, that Lady Byron was unsuitable to her lord: the
+ word is cunningly insidious, and may mean as much or as little as may
+ suit your convenience. But, if she was unsuitable, I remark that it
+ tells all the worse against Lord Byron. I have not read it in your
+ book (for I hate to wade through it); but they tell me that you have
+ not only warily depreciated Lady Byron, but that you have described a
+ lady that would have suited him. If this be true, "it is the unkindest
+ cut of all,"--to hold up a florid description of a woman suitable to
+ Lord Byron, as if in mockery over the forlorn flower of virtue that
+ was drooping in the solitude of sorrow.
+
+ 'But I trust there is no such passage in your book. Surely you must be
+ conscious of your woman, with her "_virtue loose about her, who would
+ have suited Lord Byron_," to be as imaginary a being as the woman
+ without a head. A woman to suit Lord Byron! Poo, poo! I could paint to
+ you the woman that could have _matched_ him, if I had not bargained to
+ say as little as possible against him.
+
+ 'If Lady Byron was not suitable to Lord Byron, so much the worse
+ for his lordship; for let me tell you, Mr. Moore, that neither your
+ poetry, nor Lord Byron's, nor all our poetry put together, ever
+ delineated a more interesting being than the woman whom you have so
+ coldly treated. This was not kicking the dead lion, but wounding
+ the living lamb, who was already bleeding and shorn, even unto the
+ quick. I know, that, collectively speaking, the world is in Lady
+ Byron's favour; but it is coldly favourable, and you have not warmed
+ its breath. Time, however, cures everything; and even your book,
+ Mr. Moore, may be the means of Lady Byron's character being better
+ appreciated.
+
+  'THOMAS CAMPBELL.'
+
+Here is what seems to be a gentlemanly, high-spirited, chivalric man,
+throwing down his glove in the lists for a pure woman.
+
+What was the consequence? Campbell was crowded back, thrust down,
+overwhelmed, his eyes filled with dust, his mouth with ashes.
+
+There was a general confusion and outcry, which reacted both on him
+and on Lady Byron. Her friends were angry with him for having caused
+this re-action upon her; and he found himself at once attacked by
+Lady Byron's enemies, and deserted by her friends. All the literary
+authorities of his day took up against him with energy. Christopher
+North, professor of moral philosophy in the Edinburgh University,
+in a fatherly talk in 'The Noctes,' condemns Campbell, and justifies
+Moore, and heartily recommends his 'Biography,' as containing nothing
+materially objectionable on the score either of manners or morals. Thus
+we have it in 'The Noctes' of May 1830:--
+
+ 'Mr. Moore's biographical book I admired; and I said so to my little
+ world, in two somewhat lengthy articles, which many approved, and
+ some, I am sorry to know, condemned.'
+
+On the point in question between Moore and Campbell, North goes on
+to justify Moore altogether, only admitting that 'it would have been
+better had he not printed any coarse expression of Byron's about the
+old people;' and, finally, he closes by saying,--
+
+ 'I do not think that, under the circumstances, Mr. Campbell himself,
+ had he written Byron's "Life," could have spoken, with the sentiments
+ he then held, in a better, more manly, and more gentlemanly spirit, in
+ so far as regards Lady Byron, than Mr. Moore did: and I am sorry he
+ has been deterred from "swimming" through Mr. Moore's work by the fear
+ of "wading;" for the waters are clear and deep; nor is there any mud,
+ either at the bottom or round the margin.'
+
+Of the conduct of Lady Byron's so-called friends on this occasion it is
+more difficult to speak.
+
+There has always been in England, as John Stuart Mill says, a class
+of women who glory in the utter self-abnegation of the wife to the
+husband, as the special crown of womanhood. Their patron saint is
+the Griselda of Chaucer, who, when her husband humiliates her, and
+treats her as a brute, still accepts all with meek, unquestioning,
+uncomplaining devotion. He tears her from her children; he treats her
+with personal abuse; he repudiates her,--sends her out to nakedness
+and poverty; he installs another mistress in his house, and sends for
+the first to be her handmaid and his own: and all this the meek saint
+accepts in the words of Milton,--
+
+                  'My guide and head,
+  What thou hast said is just and right.'
+
+Accordingly, Miss Martineau tells us that when Campbell's defence came
+out, coupled with a note from Lady Byron,--
+
+ 'The first obvious remark was, that there was no real disclosure; and
+ the whole affair had the appearance of a desire, on the part of Lady
+ Byron, to exculpate herself, while yet no adequate information was
+ given. Many, who had regarded her with favour till then, gave her up
+ so far as to believe that feminine weakness had prevailed at last.'
+
+The saint had fallen from her pedestal! She had shown a human frailty!
+Quite evidently she is not a Griselda, but possessed with a shocking
+desire to exculpate herself and her friends.
+
+Is it, then, only to slandered _men_ that the privilege belongs of
+desiring to exculpate themselves and their families and their friends
+from unjust censure?
+
+Lord Byron had made it a life-long object to vilify and defame his
+wife. He had used for that one particular purpose every talent that
+he possessed. He had left it as a last charge to Moore to pursue
+the warfare after death, which Moore had done to some purpose; and
+Christopher North had informed Lady Byron that her private affairs
+were discussed, not only with the whisky-toddy of the Noctes Club,
+but in every drawing-room in May Fair; and declared that the 'Dear
+Duck' letter, and various other matters, must be explained, and urged
+somebody to speak; and then, when Campbell does speak with all the
+energy of a real gentleman, a general outcry and an indiscriminate
+_melee_ is the result.
+
+The world, with its usual injustice, insisted on attributing Campbell's
+defence to Lady Byron.
+
+The reasons for this seemed to be, first, that Campbell states that he
+did _not_ ask Lady Byron's leave, and that she did _not_ authorise him
+to defend her; and, second, that, having asked some explanations from
+her, he prints a note in which she declines to give any.
+
+We know not how a lady could more gently yet firmly decline to make
+a gentleman her confidant than in this published note of Lady Byron;
+and yet, to this day, Campbell is spoken of by the world as having
+been Lady Byron's confidant at this time. This simply shows how very
+trustworthy are the general assertions about Lady Byron's confidants.
+
+The final result of the matter, so far as Campbell was concerned, is
+given in Miss Martineau's sketch, in the following paragraph:--
+
+ 'The whole transaction was one of poor Campbell's freaks. He excused
+ himself by saying it was a mistake of his; that he did not know what
+ he was about when he published the paper.'
+
+It is the saddest of all sad things to see a man, who has spoken from
+moral convictions, in advance of his day, and who has taken a stand for
+which he ought to honour himself, thus forced down and humiliated, made
+to doubt his own better nature and his own honourable feelings, by the
+voice of a wicked world.
+
+Campbell had no steadiness to stand by the truth he saw. His whole
+story is told incidentally in a note to 'The Noctes,' in which it is
+stated, that in an article in 'Blackwood,' January 1825, on Scotch
+poets, the palm was given to Hogg over Campbell; 'one ground being,
+that _he_ could drink "eight and twenty tumblers of punch, while
+Campbell is hazy upon seven."'
+
+There is evidence in 'The Noctes,' that in due time Campbell was
+reconciled to Moore, and was always suitably ashamed of having tried to
+be any more generous or just than the men of his generation.
+
+And so it was settled as a law to Jacob, and an ordinance in Israel,
+that the Byron worship should proceed, and that all the earth should
+keep silence before him. 'Don Juan,' that, years before, had been
+printed by stealth, without Murray's name on the title-page, that had
+been denounced as a book which no woman should read, and had been given
+up as a desperate enterprise, now came forth in triumph, with banners
+flying and drums beating. Every great periodical in England that had
+fired moral volleys of artillery against it in its early days, now
+humbly marched in the glorious procession of admirers to salute this
+edifying work of genius.
+
+'Blackwood,' which in the beginning had been the most indignantly
+virtuous of the whole, now grovelled and ate dust as the serpent in
+the very abjectness of submission. Odoherty (Maginn) declares that he
+would rather have written a page of 'Don Juan' than a ton of 'Childe
+Harold.'[23] Timothy Tickler informs Christopher North that he means
+to tender Murray, as Emperor of the North, an interleaved copy[24] of
+'Don Juan,' with illustrations, as the _only_ work of Byron's he cares
+much about; and Christopher North, professor of _moral_ philosophy in
+Edinburgh, smiles approval! We are not, after this, surprised to see
+the assertion, by a recent much-aggrieved writer in 'The London Era,'
+that 'Lord Byron has been, more than any other man of the age, the
+_teacher_ of the _youth_ of England;' and that he has 'seen his works
+on the bookshelves of _bishops'_ palaces, no less than on the tables of
+university undergraduates.'
+
+[Footnote 23: 'Noctes,' July 1822.]
+
+[Footnote 24: 'Noctes,' September 1832.]
+
+A note to 'The Noctes' of July 1822 informs us of another instance of
+Lord Byron's triumph over English morals:--
+
+ 'The mention of this' (Byron's going to Greece) reminds me, by the by,
+ of what the Guiccioli said in her visit to London, where she was so
+ lionised as having been the lady-love of Byron. She was rather fond
+ of speaking on the subject, designating herself by some Venetian pet
+ phrase, which she interpreted as meaning "Love-Wife."'
+
+What was Lady Byron to do in such a world? She retired to the
+deepest privacy, and devoted herself to works of charity, and the
+education of her only child,--that brilliant daughter, to whose eager,
+opening mind the whole course of current literature must bring so
+many trying questions in regard to the position of her father and
+mother,--questions that the mother might not answer. That the cruel
+inconsiderateness of the literary world added thorns to the intricacies
+of the path trodden by every mother who seeks to guide, restrain, and
+educate a strong, acute, and precociously intelligent child, must
+easily be seen.
+
+What remains to be said of Lady Byron's life shall be said in the words
+of Miss Martineau, published in 'The Atlantic Monthly:'--
+
+ 'Her life, thenceforth, was one of unremitting bounty to society
+ administered with as much skill and prudence as benevolence. She lived
+ in retirement, changing her abode frequently; partly for the benefit
+ of her child's education and the promotion of her benevolent schemes,
+ and partly from a restlessness which was one of the few signs of
+ injury received from the spoiling of associations with _home_.
+
+ 'She felt a satisfaction which her friends rejoiced in when her
+ daughter married Lord King, at present the Earl of Lovelace, in 1835
+ and when grief upon grief followed, in the appearance of mortal
+ disease in her only child, her quiet patience stood her in good stead
+ as before. She even found strength to appropriate the blessings of the
+ occasion, and took comfort, as did her dying daughter, in the intimate
+ friendship, which grew closer as the time of parting drew nigh.
+
+ 'Lady Lovelace died in 1852; and, for her few remaining years, Lady
+ Byron was devoted to her grandchildren. But nearer calls never
+ lessened her interest in remoter objects. Her mind was of the large
+ and clear quality which could comprehend remote interests in their
+ true proportions, and achieve each aim as perfectly as if it were the
+ only one. Her agents used to say that it was impossible to mistake her
+ directions; and thus her business was usually well done. There was no
+ room, in her case, for the ordinary doubts, censures, and sneers about
+ the misapplication of bounty.
+
+ 'Her taste did not lie in the "Charity-Ball" direction; her funds
+ were not lavished in encouraging hypocrisy and improvidence among
+ the idle and worthless; and the quality of her charity was, in fact,
+ as admirable as its quantity. Her chief aim was the extension and
+ improvement of popular education; but there was no kind of misery that
+ she heard of that she did not palliate to the utmost, and no kind of
+ solace that her quick imagination and sympathy could devise that she
+ did not administer.
+
+ 'In her methods, she united consideration and frankness with singular
+ success. For one instance among a thousand: A lady with whom she had
+ had friendly relations some time before, and who became impoverished
+ in a quiet way by hopeless sickness, preferred poverty with an easy
+ conscience to a competency attended by some uncertainty about the
+ perfect rectitude of the resource. Lady Byron wrote to an intermediate
+ person exactly what she thought of the case. Whether the judgment
+ of the sufferer was right or mistaken was nobody's business but her
+ own: this was the first point. Next, a voluntary poverty could never
+ be pitied by anybody: that was the second. But it was painful to
+ others to think of the mortification to benevolent feelings which
+ attends poverty; and there could be no objection to arresting that
+ pain. Therefore she, Lady Byron, had lodged in a neighbouring bank
+ the sum of one hundred pounds, to be used for benevolent purposes;
+ and, in order to preclude all outside speculation, she had made the
+ money payable to the order of the intermediate person, so that the
+ sufferer's name need not appear at all.
+
+ 'Five and thirty years of unremitting secret bounty like this must
+ make up a great amount of human happiness; but this was only one of
+ a wide variety of methods of doing good. It was the unconcealable
+ magnitude of her beneficence, and its wise quality, which made her a
+ second time the theme of English conversation in all honest households
+ within the four seas. Years ago, it was said far and wide that Lady
+ Byron was doing more good than anybody else in England; and it was
+ difficult to imagine how anybody could do more.
+
+ 'Lord Byron spent every shilling that the law allowed him out of
+ her property while he lived, and left away from her every shilling
+ that he could deprive her of by his will; yet she had, eventually, a
+ large income at her command. In the management of it, she showed the
+ same wise consideration that marked all her practical decisions. She
+ resolved to spend her whole income, seeing how much the world needed
+ help at the moment. Her care was for the existing generation, rather
+ than for a future one, which would have its own friends. She usually
+ declined trammelling herself with annual subscriptions to charities;
+ preferring to keep her freedom from year to year, and to achieve
+ definite objects by liberal bounty, rather than to extend partial help
+ over a large surface which she could not herself superintend.
+
+ 'It was her first industrial school that awakened the admiration of
+ the public, which had never ceased to take an interest in her, while
+ sorely misjudging her character. We hear much now--and everybody hears
+ it with pleasure--of the spread of education in "common things;" but
+ long before Miss Coutts inherited her wealth, long before a name was
+ found for such a method of training, Lady Byron had instituted the
+ thing, and put it in the way of making its own name.
+
+ 'She was living at Ealing, in Middlesex, in 1834; and there she
+ opened one of the first industrial schools in England, if not the
+ very first. She sent out a master to Switzerland, to be instructed
+ in De Fellenburgh's method. She took, on lease, five acres of land,
+ and spent several hundred pounds in rendering the buildings upon it
+ fit for the purposes of the school. A liberal education was afforded
+ to the children of artisans and labourers during the half of the day
+ when they were not employed in the field or garden. The allotments
+ were rented by the boys, who raised and sold produce, which afforded
+ them a considerable yearly profit if they were good workmen. Those who
+ worked in the field earned wages; their labour being paid by the hour,
+ according to the capability of the young labourer. They kept their
+ accounts of expenditure and receipts, and acquired good habits of
+ business while learning the occupation of their lives. Some mechanical
+ trades were taught, as well as the arts of agriculture.
+
+ 'Part of the wisdom of the management lay in making the pupils pay.
+ Of one hundred pupils, half were boarders. They paid little more than
+ half the expenses of their maintenance, and the day-scholars paid
+ threepence per week. Of course, a large part of the expense was borne
+ by Lady Byron, besides the payments she made for children who could
+ not otherwise have entered the school. The establishment flourished
+ steadily till 1852, when the owner of the land required it back for
+ building purposes. During the eighteen years that the Ealing schools
+ were in action, they did a world of good in the way of incitement
+ and example. The poor-law commissioners pointed out their merits.
+ Land-owners and other wealthy persons visited them, and went home and
+ set up similar establishments. During those years, too, Lady Byron had
+ herself been at work in various directions to the same purpose.
+
+ 'A more extensive industrial scheme was instituted on her
+ Leicestershire property, and not far off she opened a girls' school
+ and an infant school; and when a season of distress came, as such
+ seasons are apt to befall the poor Leicestershire stocking-weavers,
+ Lady Byron fed the children for months together, till they could
+ resume their payments. These schools were opened in 1840. The next
+ year, she built a schoolhouse on her Warwickshire property; and, five
+ years later, she set up an iron schoolhouse on another Leicestershire
+ estate.
+
+ 'By this time, her educational efforts were costing her several
+ hundred pounds a year in the mere maintenance of existing
+ establishments; but this is the smallest consideration in the case.
+ She has sent out tribes of boys and girls into life fit to do their
+ part there with skill and credit and comfort. Perhaps it is a still
+ more important consideration, that scores of teachers and trainers
+ have been led into their vocation, and duly prepared for it, by what
+ they saw and learned in her schools. As for the best and the worst of
+ the Ealing boys, the best have, in a few cases, been received into the
+ Battersea Training School, whence they could enter on their career as
+ teachers to the greatest advantage; and the worst found their school
+ a true reformatory, before reformatory schools were heard of. At
+ Bristol, she bought a house for a reformatory for girls; and there her
+ friend, Miss Carpenter, faithfully and energetically carries out her
+ own and Lady Byron's aims, which were one and the same.
+
+ 'There would be no end if I were to catalogue the schemes of which
+ these are a specimen. It is of more consequence to observe that her
+ mind was never narrowed by her own acts, as the minds of benevolent
+ people are so apt to be. To the last, her interest in great political
+ movements, at home and abroad, was as vivid as ever. She watched every
+ step won in philosophy, every discovery in science, every token of
+ social change and progress in every shape. Her mind was as liberal
+ as her heart and hand. No diversity of opinion troubled her: she
+ was respectful to every sort of individuality, and indulgent to all
+ constitutional peculiarities. It must have puzzled those who kept up
+ the notion of her being "strait-laced" to see how indulgent she was
+ even to Epicurean tendencies,--the remotest of all from her own.
+
+ 'But I must stop; for I do not wish my honest memorial to degenerate
+ into panegyric. Among her latest known acts were her gifts to the
+ Sicilian cause, and her manifestations on behalf of the antislavery
+ cause in the United States. Her kindness to William and Ellen Craft
+ must be well known there; and it is also related in the newspapers,
+ that she bequeathed a legacy to a young American to assist him under
+ any disadvantages he might suffer as an abolitionist.
+
+ 'All these deeds were done under a heavy burden of ill health. Before
+ she had passed middle life, her lungs were believed to be irreparably
+ injured by partial ossification. She was subject to attacks so
+ serious, that each one, for many years, was expected to be the last.
+ She arranged her affairs in correspondence with her liabilities: so
+ that the same order would have been found, whether she died suddenly
+ or after long warning.
+
+ 'She was to receive one more accession of outward greatness before she
+ departed. She became Baroness Wentworth in November, 1856. This is one
+ of the facts of her history; but it is the least interesting to us, as
+ probably to her. We care more to know that her last days were bright
+ in honour, and cheered by the attachment of old friends worthy to pay
+ the duty she deserved. Above all, it is consoling to know that she who
+ so long outlived her only child was blessed with the unremitting and
+ tender care of her grand-daughter. She died on the 16th of May, 1860.
+
+ 'The portrait of Lady Byron as she was at the time of her marriage
+ is probably remembered by some of my readers. It is very engaging.
+ Her countenance afterwards became much worn; but its expression of
+ thoughtfulness and composure was very interesting. Her handwriting
+ accorded well with the character of her mind. It was clear, elegant,
+ and womanly. Her manners differed with circumstances. Her shrinking
+ sensitiveness might embarrass one visitor; while another would be
+ charmed with her easy, significant, and vivacious conversation. It
+ depended much on whom she talked with. The abiding certainty was, that
+ she had strength for the hardest of human trials, and the composure
+ which belongs to strength. For the rest, it is enough to point to her
+ deeds, and to the mourning of her friends round the chasm which her
+ departure has made in their life, and in the society in which it is
+ spent. All that could be done in the way of personal love and honour
+ was done while she lived: it only remains now to see that her name and
+ fame are permitted to shine forth at last in their proper light.'
+
+We have simply to ask the reader whether a life like this was not the
+best, the noblest answer that a woman could make to a doubting world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE ATTACK ON LADY BYRON'S GRAVE.
+
+
+We have now brought the review of the antagonism against Lady Byron
+down to the period of her death. During all this time, let the candid
+reader ask himself which of these two parties seems to be plotting
+against the other.
+
+_Which_ has been active, aggressive, unscrupulous? which has been
+silent, quiet, unoffending? Which of the two has laboured to make a
+party, and to make that party active, watchful, enthusiastic?
+
+Have we not proved that Lady Byron remained perfectly silent during
+Lord Byron's life, patiently looking out from her retirement to see
+the waves of popular sympathy, that once bore her up, day by day
+retreating, while his accusations against her were resounding in his
+poems over the whole earth? And after Lord Byron's death, when all
+the world with one consent began to give their memorials of him, and
+made it appear, by their various 'recollections of conversations,' how
+incessantly he had obtruded his own version of the separation upon
+every listener, did she manifest any similar eagerness?
+
+Lady Byron had seen the 'Blackwood' coming forward, on the first
+appearance of 'Don Juan,' to rebuke the cowardly lampoon in words
+eloquent with all the unperverted vigour of an honest Englishman. Under
+the power of the great conspirator, she had seen _that_ 'Blackwood'
+become the very eager recipient and chief reporter of the stories
+against her, and the blind admirer of her adversary.
+
+All this time, she lost sympathy daily by being silent. The world
+will embrace those who court it; it will patronise those who seek its
+favour; it will make parties for those who seek to make parties: but
+for the often accused who do not speak, who make no confidants and no
+parties, the world soon loses sympathy.
+
+When at last she spoke, Christopher North says '_she astonished
+the world_.' Calm, clear, courageous, exact as to time, date, and
+circumstance, was that first testimony, backed by the equally clear
+testimony of Dr. Lushington.
+
+It showed that her secret had been kept even from her parents. In words
+precise, firm, and fearless, she says, 'If these statements on which
+Dr. Lushington and Sir Samuel Romilly formed their opinion were false,
+the responsibility and the odium should rest with me only.' Christopher
+North did not pretend to disbelieve this statement. He breathed not a
+doubt of Lady Byron's word. He spoke of the crime indicated, as one
+which might have been foul as the grave's corruption, unforgivable as
+the sin against the Holy Ghost. He rebuked the wife for bearing this
+testimony, even to save the memory of her dead father and mother, and,
+in the same breath, declared that she ought now to go farther, and
+speak fully the one awful word, and then--'a mitigated sentence, or
+eternal silence!'
+
+But Lady Byron took no counsel with the world, nor with the literary
+men of her age. One knight, with some small remnant of England's old
+chivalry, set lance in rest for her: she saw him beaten back unhorsed,
+rolled in the dust, and ingloriously vanquished, and perceived that
+henceforth nothing but injury could come to any one who attempted to
+speak for her.
+
+She turned from the judgments of man and the fond and natural hopes of
+human nature, to lose herself in sacred ministries to the downcast and
+suffering. What nobler record for woman could there be than that which
+Miss Martineau has given?
+
+Particularly to be noted in Lady Byron was her peculiar interest in
+reclaiming fallen women. Among her letters to Mrs. Prof. Follen, of
+Cambridge, was one addressed to a society of ladies who had undertaken
+this difficult work. It was full of heavenly wisdom and of a large and
+tolerant charity. Fenelon truly says, it is only perfection that can
+tolerate imperfection; and the very purity of Lady Byron's nature made
+her most forbearing and most tender towards the weak and the guilty.
+This letter, with all the rest of Lady Byron's, was returned to the
+hands of her executors after her death. Its publication would greatly
+assist the world in understanding the peculiarities of its writer's
+character.
+
+Lady Byron passed to a higher life in 1860.[25] After her death, I
+looked for the publication of her Memoir and Letters as the event that
+should give her the same opportunity of being known and judged by her
+life and writings that had been so freely accorded to Lord Byron.
+
+[Footnote 25: Miss Martineau's Biographical Sketches.]
+
+She was, in her husband's estimation, a woman of genius. She was
+the friend of many of the first men and women of her times, and
+corresponded with them on topics of literature, morals, religion,
+and, above all, on the benevolent and philanthropic movements of the
+day, whose principles she had studied with acute observation, and in
+connection with which she had acquired a large experience.
+
+The knowledge of her, necessarily diffused by such a series of letters,
+would have created in America a comprehension of her character, of
+itself sufficient to wither a thousand slanders.
+
+Such a Memoir was contemplated. Lady Byron's letters to Mrs. Follen
+were asked for from Boston; and I was applied to by a person in
+England, who I have recently learned is one of the existing trustees
+of Lady Byron's papers, to furnish copies of her letters to me for the
+purpose of a Memoir. Before I had time to have copies made, another
+letter came, stating that the trustees had concluded that it was best
+not to publish any Memoir of Lady Byron at all.
+
+This left the character of Lady Byron in our American world precisely
+where the slanders of her husband, the literature of the Noctes Club,
+and the unanimous verdict of May Fair as recorded by 'Blackwood,' had
+placed it.
+
+True, Lady Byron had nobly and quietly lived down these slanders in
+England by deeds that made her name revered as a saint among all those
+who valued saintliness.
+
+But in France and Italy, and in these United States, I have had
+abundant opportunity to know that Lady Byron stood judged and condemned
+on the testimony of her brilliant husband, and that the feeling against
+her had a vivacity and intensity not to be overcome by mere allusions
+to a virtuous life in distant England.
+
+This is strikingly shown by one fact. In the American edition of
+Moore's 'Life of Byron,' by Claxton, Remsen, and Haffelfinger,
+Philadelphia, 1869, which I have been consulting, Lady Byron's
+statement, which is found in the Appendix of Murray's standard edition,
+_is entirely omitted_. Every other paper is carefully preserved. This
+one incident showed how the tide of sympathy was setting in this New
+World. Of course, there is no stronger power than a virtuous life; but,
+for a virtuous life to bear testimony to the world, its details must be
+_told_, so that the world may know them.
+
+Suppose the memoirs of Clarkson and Wilberforce had been suppressed
+after their death, how soon might the coming tide have wiped out the
+record of their bravery and philanthropy! Suppose the lives of Francis
+Xavier and Henry Martyn had never been written, and we had lost the
+remembrance of what holy men could do and dare in the divine enthusiasm
+of Christian faith! Suppose we had no Fenelon, no Book of Martyrs!
+
+Would there not be an outcry through all the literary and artistic
+world if a perfect statue were allowed to remain buried for ever
+because some painful individual history was connected with its burial
+and its recovery? But is not a noble life a greater treasure to mankind
+than any work of art?
+
+We have heard much mourning over the burned Autobiography of Lord
+Byron, and seen it treated of in a magazine as 'the lost chapter in
+history.' The lost chapter in history is _Lady_ Byron's Autobiography
+in her life and letters; and the suppression of them is the root of
+this whole mischief.
+
+We do not in this intend to censure the parties who came to this
+decision.
+
+The descendants of Lady Byron revere her memory, as they have every
+reason to do. That it was _their_ desire to have a Memoir of her
+published, I have been informed by an individual of the highest
+character in England, who obtained the information directly from Lady
+Byron's grandchildren.
+
+But the trustees in whose care the papers were placed drew back on
+examination of them, and declared, that, as Lady Byron's papers could
+not be fully published, they should regret anything that should call
+public attention once more to the discussion of her history.
+
+Reviewing this long history of the way in which the literary world
+had treated Lady Byron, we cannot wonder that her friends should have
+doubted whether there was left on earth any justice, or sense that
+anything is due to woman as a human being with human rights. Evidently
+this lesson had taken from them all faith in the moral sense of the
+world. Rather than re-awaken the discussion, so unsparing, so painful,
+and so indelicate, which had been carried on so many years around
+that loved form, now sanctified by death, they sacrificed the dear
+pleasure of the memorials, and the interests of mankind, who have an
+indefeasible right to all the help that can be got from the truth of
+history as to the living power of virtue, and the reality of that great
+victory that overcometh the world.
+
+There are thousands of poor victims suffering in sadness,
+discouragement, and poverty; heart-broken wives of brutal, drunken
+husbands; women enduring nameless wrongs and horrors which the delicacy
+of their sex forbids them to utter,--to whom the lovely letters lying
+hidden away under those seals might bring courage and hope from springs
+not of this world.
+
+But though the friends of Lady Byron, perhaps from despair of their
+kind, from weariness of the utter injustice done her, wished to cherish
+her name in silence, and to confine the story of her virtues to that
+circle who knew her too well to ask a proof, or utter a doubt, the
+partisans of Lord Byron were embarrassed with no such scruple.
+
+Lord Byron had artfully contrived during his life to place his wife in
+such an antagonistic position with regard to himself, that his intimate
+friends were forced to believe that one of the two had deliberately
+and wantonly injured the other. The published statement of Lady Byron
+contradicted boldly and point-blank all the statement of her husband
+concerning the separation; so that, unless _she_ was convicted as a
+false witness, _he_ certainly was.
+
+The best evidence of this is Christopher North's own shocked,
+astonished statement, and the words of the Noctes Club.
+
+The noble life that Lady Byron lived after this hushed every voice,
+and silenced even the most desperate calumny, _while she was in the
+world_. In the face of Lady Byron as the world saw her, of what use was
+the talk of Clytemnestra, and the assertion that she had been a mean,
+deceitful conspirator against her husband's honour in life, and stabbed
+his memory after death?
+
+But when she was in her grave, when her voice and presence and good
+deeds no more spoke for her, and a new generation was growing up that
+knew her not, _then_ was the time selected to revive the assault on her
+memory, and to say over her grave what none would ever have dared to
+say of her while living.
+
+During these last two years, I have been gradually awakening to the
+evidence of a new crusade against the memory of Lady Byron, which
+respected no sanctity,--not even that last and most awful one of death.
+
+Nine years after her death, when it was fully understood that no
+story on her side or that of her friends was to be forthcoming, then
+her calumniators raked out from the ashes of her husband's sepulchre
+all his bitter charges, to state them over in even stronger and more
+indecent forms.
+
+There seems to be reason to think that the materials supplied by Lord
+Byron for such a campaign yet exist in society.
+
+To 'The Noctes' of November 1824, there is the following note _apropos_
+to a discussion of the Byron question:--
+
+ 'Byron's Memoirs, given by him to Moore, were burned, as everybody
+ knows. But, before this, Moore had lent them to several persons. Mrs.
+ Home Purvis, afterwards Viscountess of Canterbury, is _known_ to have
+ sat up all one night, in which, aided by her daughter, she had a
+ copy made. I have the strongest reason for believing that one other
+ person made a copy; for the description of the first twenty-four hours
+ after the marriage ceremonial has been in my hands. _Not until after
+ the death of Lady Byron, and Hobhouse_, who was the poet's literary
+ executor, can the poet's Autobiography see the light; _but I am
+ certain it will be published_.'
+
+Thus speaks Mackenzie in a note to a volume of 'The Noctes,' published
+in America in 1854. Lady Byron died in 1860.
+
+Nine years after Lady Byron's death, when it was ascertained that her
+story was not to see the light, when there were no means of judging
+her character by her own writings, commenced a well-planned set of
+operations to turn the public attention once more to Lord Byron, and
+to represent him as an injured man, whose testimony had been unjustly
+suppressed.
+
+It was quite possible, supposing copies of the Autobiography to exist,
+that this might occasion a call from the generation of to-day, in
+answer to which the suppressed work might appear. This was a rather
+delicate operation to commence; but the instrument was not wanting.
+It was necessary that the subject should be first opened by some
+irresponsible party, whom more powerful parties might, as by accident,
+recognise and patronise, and on whose weakness they might build
+something stronger.
+
+Just such an instrument was to be found in Paris. The mistress of Lord
+Byron could easily be stirred up and flattered to come before the world
+with a book which should re-open the whole controversy; and she proved
+a facile tool. At first, the work appeared prudently in French, and was
+called 'Lord Byron juge par les Temoins de sa Vie,' and was rather a
+failure. Then it was translated into English, and published by Bentley.
+
+The book was inartistic, and helplessly, childishly stupid as to any
+literary merits,--a mere mass of gossip and twaddle; but after all,
+when one remembers the taste of the thousands of circulating-library
+readers, it must not be considered the less likely to be widely read
+on that account. It is only once in a century that a writer of real
+genius has the art to tell his story so as to take both the cultivated
+few and the average many. De Foe and John Bunyan are almost the only
+examples. But there is a certain class of reading that sells and
+spreads, and exerts a vast influence, which the upper circles of
+literature despise too much ever to fairly estimate its power.
+
+However, the Guiccioli book did not want for patrons in the high places
+of literature. The 'Blackwood'--the old classic magazine of England;
+the defender of conservatism and aristocracy; the paper of Lockhart,
+Wilson, Hogg, Walter Scott, and a host of departed grandeurs--was
+deputed to usher into the world this book, and to recommend it and its
+author to the Christian public of the nineteenth century.
+
+The following is the manner in which 'Blackwood' calls attention to
+it:--
+
+ 'One of the most beautiful of the songs of Beranger is that addressed
+ to his Lisette, in which he pictures her, in old age, narrating to a
+ younger generation the loves of their youth; decking his portrait with
+ flowers at each returning spring, and reciting the verses that had
+ been inspired by her vanished charms:--
+
+  'Lorsque les yeux chercheront sous vos rides
+  Les traits charmants qui m'auront inspire,
+  Des doux recits les jeunes gens avides,
+  Diront: Quel fut cet ami tant pleure?
+  De mon amour peignez, s'il est possible,
+  L'ardeur, l'ivresse, et meme les soupcons,
+  Et benne vieille, au coin d'un feu paisible
+  De votre ami repetez les chansons.
+
+  "On vous dira: Savait-il etre aimable?
+  Et sans rougir vous direz: Je l'aimais.
+  D'un trait mechant se montra-t-il capable?
+  Avec orgueil vous repondrez: Jamais!"'
+
+ 'This charming picture,' 'Blackwood' goes on to say, 'has been
+ realised in the case of a poet greater than Beranger, and by a
+ mistress more famous than Lisette. The Countess Guiccioli has at
+ length given to the world her "Recollections of Lord Byron." The
+ book first appeared in France under the title of "Lord Byron juge
+ par les Temoins de sa Vie," without the name of the countess. A
+ more unfortunate designation could hardly have been selected. The
+ "witnesses of his life" told us nothing but what had been told before
+ over and over again; and the uniform and exaggerated tone of eulogy
+ which pervaded the whole book was fatal to any claim on the part of
+ the writer to be considered an impartial judge of the wonderfully
+ mixed character of Byron.
+
+ '_When, however, the book is regarded as the avowed production of
+ the Countess Guiccioli, it derives value and interest from its very
+ faults._[26] There is something inexpressibly touching in the picture
+ of the old lady calling up the phantoms of half a century ago; not
+ faded and stricken by the hand of time, but brilliant and gorgeous as
+ they were when Byron, in his manly prime of genius and beauty, first
+ flashed upon her enraptured sight, and she gave her whole soul up to
+ an absorbing passion, the embers of which still glow in her heart.
+
+ [Footnote 26: The italics are mine.--H. B. S.]
+
+ 'To her there has been no change, no decay. The god whom she
+ worshipped with all the ardour of her Italian nature at seventeen is
+ still the "Pythian of the age" to her at seventy. To try such a book
+ by the ordinary canons of criticism would be as absurd as to arraign
+ the authoress before a jury of British matrons, or to prefer a bill of
+ indictment against the Sultan for bigamy to a Middlesex grand jury.'
+
+This, then, is the introduction which one of the oldest and most
+classical periodicals of Great Britain gives to a very stupid book,
+simply because it was written by Lord Byron's mistress. _That fact_, we
+are assured, lends grace even to its faults.
+
+Having brought the authoress upon the stage, the review now goes on to
+define her position, and assure the Christian world that
+
+ 'The Countess Guiccioli was the daughter of an impoverished noble. At
+ the age of sixteen, she was taken from a convent, and sold as third
+ wife to the Count Guiccioli, who was old, rich, and profligate. A
+ fouler prostitution never profaned the name of marriage. A short time
+ afterwards, she accidentally met Lord Byron. Outraged and rebellious
+ nature vindicated itself in the deep and devoted passion with which
+ he inspired her. With the full assent of husband, father, and
+ brother, and in compliance with the usages of Italian society, he was
+ shortly afterwards installed in the office, and invested with all the
+ privileges, of her "Cavalier Servente."'
+
+It has been asserted that the Marquis de Boissy, the late husband of
+this Guiccioli lady, was in the habit of introducing her in fashionable
+circles as 'the Marquise de Boissy, my wife, formerly mistress to Lord
+Byron'! We do not give the story as a verity; yet, in the review of
+this whole history, we may be pardoned for thinking it quite possible.
+
+The mistress, being thus vouched for and presented as worthy of
+sympathy and attention by one of the oldest and most classic organs
+of English literature, may now proceed in her work of glorifying the
+popular idol, and casting abuse on the grave of the dead wife.
+
+Her attacks on Lady Byron are, to be sure, less skilful and adroit
+than those of Lord Byron. They want his literary polish and tact; but
+what of that? 'Blackwood' assures us that even the faults of manner
+derive a peculiar grace from the fact that the narrator is Lord Byron's
+mistress; and so we suppose the literary world must find grace in
+things like this:--
+
+ 'She has been called, after his words, the moral Clytemnestra of
+ her husband. Such a surname is severe: but the repugnance we feel
+ to condemning a woman cannot prevent our listening to the voice of
+ justice, which tells us that the comparison is still in favour of
+ the guilty one of antiquity; for _she_, driven to crime by fierce
+ passion overpowering reason, at least only deprived her husband of
+ physical life, and, in committing the deed, exposed herself to all its
+ consequences; while Lady Byron left her husband at the very moment
+ that she saw him struggling amid a thousand shoals in the stormy sea
+ of embarrassments created by his marriage, and precisely when he more
+ than ever required a friendly, tender, and indulgent hand to save him.
+
+ 'Besides, she shut herself up in silence a thousand times more cruel
+ than Clytemnestra's poniard: _that_ only killed the body; whereas
+ Lady Byron's silence was destined to kill the soul,--and such a
+ soul!--leaving the door open to calumny, and making it to be supposed
+ that her silence was magnanimity destined to cover over frightful
+ wrongs, perhaps even depravity. In vain did he, feeling his conscience
+ at ease, implore some inquiry and examination. She refused; and the
+ only favour she granted was to send him, one fine day, two persons to
+ see whether he were not mad.
+
+ 'And, why, then, had she believed him mad? Because she, a methodical,
+ inflexible woman, with that unbendingness which a profound moralist
+ calls the worship rendered to pride by a feelingless soul,--because
+ she could not understand the possibility of tastes and habits
+ different to those of ordinary routine, or of her own starched life.
+ Not to be hungry when she was; not to sleep at night, but to write
+ while she was sleeping, and to sleep when she was up; in short, to
+ gratify the requirements of material and intellectual life at hours
+ different to hers,--all that was not merely annoying for her, but it
+ must be _madness_; or, if not, it betokened depravity that she could
+ neither submit to nor tolerate without perilling her own morality.
+
+ 'Such was the grand secret of the cruel silence which exposed Lord
+ Byron to the most malignant interpretations, to all the calumny and
+ revenge of his enemies.
+
+ 'She was, perhaps, the only woman in the world so strangely
+ organised,--the only one, perhaps, capable of not feeling happy and
+ proud at belonging to a man superior to the rest of humanity; and
+ fatally was it decreed that this woman _alone_ of her species should
+ be Lord Byron's wife!'
+
+In a note is added,--
+
+ 'If an imaginary fear, and even an unreasonable jealousy, may be her
+ excuse (just as one excuses a monomania), can one equally forgive her
+ silence? Such a silence is morally what are physically the poisons
+ which kill at once, and defy all remedies; thus insuring the culprit's
+ safety. This silence it is which will ever be her crime; for by it she
+ poisoned the life of her husband.'
+
+The book has several chapters devoted to Lord Byron's peculiar virtues;
+and under the one devoted to magnanimity and heroism, his _forgiving_
+disposition receives special attention. The climax of all is stated to
+be that he forgave Lady Byron. All the world knew that, since he had
+declared this fact in a very noisy and impassioned manner in the fourth
+canto of 'Childe Harold,' together with a statement of the wrongs which
+he forgave; but the Guiccioli thinks his virtue, at this period, has
+not been enough appreciated. In her view, it rose to the sublime. She
+says of Lady Byron,--
+
+ 'An absolute moral monstrosity, an anomaly in the history of types
+ of female hideousness, had succeeded in showing itself in the light
+ of magnanimity. But false as was this high quality in Lady Byron, so
+ did it shine out in him true and admirable. The position in which
+ Lady Byron had placed him, and where she continued to keep him by
+ her harshness, silence, and strange refusals, was one of those which
+ cause such suffering, that the highest degree of self-control seldom
+ suffices to quiet the promptings of human weakness, and to cause
+ persons of even slight sensibility to preserve moderation. Yet, with
+ his sensibility and the knowledge of his worth, how did he act? what
+ did he say? I will not speak of his "farewell;" of the care he took
+ to shield her from blame by throwing it on others, by taking much too
+ large a share to himself.'
+
+With like vivacity and earnestness does the narrator now proceed to
+make an incarnate angel of her subject by the simple process of denying
+everything that he himself ever confessed,--everything that has ever
+been confessed in regard to him by his best friends. He has been in
+the world as an angel unawares from his cradle. His guardian did not
+properly appreciate him, and is consequently mentioned as that _wicked_
+Lord Carlisle. Thomas Moore is never to be sufficiently condemned
+for the facts told in his biography. Byron's own frank and lawless
+admissions of evil are set down to a peculiar inability he had for
+speaking the truth about himself,--sometimes about his near relations;
+all which does not in the least discourage the authoress from giving a
+separate chapter on 'Lord Byron's Love of Truth.'
+
+In the matter of his relations with women, she complacently repeats
+(what sounds rather oddly as coming from her) Lord Byron's own
+assurance, that he _never_ seduced a woman; and also the equally
+convincing statement, that he had told _her_ (the Guiccioli) that his
+married fidelity to his wife was perfect. She discusses Moore's account
+of the mistress in boy's clothes who used to share Byron's apartments
+in college, and ride with him to races, and whom he presented to
+_ladies_ as his brother.
+
+She has her own view of this matter. The disguised boy was a lady
+of rank and fashion, who sought Lord Byron's chambers, as, we are
+informed, noble ladies everywhere, both in Italy and England, were
+constantly in the habit of doing; throwing themselves at his feet, and
+imploring permission to become his handmaids.
+
+In the authoress's own words, 'Feminine overtures still continued
+to be made to Lord Byron; but the fumes of incense never hid from
+his sight his IDEAL.' We are told that in the case of
+these poor ladies, generally 'disenchantment took place on his side
+without a corresponding result on the other: THENCE many
+heart-breakings.' Nevertheless, we are informed that there followed the
+indiscretions of these ladies 'none of those proceedings that the world
+readily forgives, but which his feelings as a man of honour would have
+condemned.'
+
+As to drunkenness, and all that, we are informed he was an anchorite.
+Pages are given to an account of the biscuits and soda-water that on
+this and that occasion were found to be the sole means of sustenance to
+this ethereal creature.
+
+As to the story of using his wife's money, the lady gives, directly in
+the face of his own Letters and Journal, the same account given before
+by Medwin, and which caused such merriment when talked over in the
+Noctes Club,--that he had with her only a marriage portion of L10,000;
+and that, on the separation, he not only paid it back, but doubled
+it.[27]
+
+[Footnote 27: In 'The Noctes' of November, 1824 Christopher North says,
+'I don't call Medwin a liar.... Whether Byron bammed him, or he, by
+virtue of his own stupidity, was the sole and sufficient bammifier of
+himself, I know not.' A note says that Murray had been much shocked by
+Byron's misstatements to Medwin as to money-matters with him. The note
+goes on to say, 'Medwin could not have invented them, for they were
+mixed up with acknowledged facts; and the presumption is that Byron
+mystified his gallant acquaintance. He was fond of such tricks.']
+
+So on the authoress goes, sowing right and left the most transparent
+absurdities and misstatements with what Carlyle well calls 'a composed
+stupidity, and a cheerful infinitude of ignorance.' Who _should_ know,
+if not she, to be sure? Had not Byron told her all about it? and was
+not his family motto _Crede Byron_?
+
+The 'Blackwood,' having a dim suspicion that this confused style of
+attack and defence in reference to the two parties under consideration
+may not have great weight, itself proceeds to make the book an occasion
+for re-opening the controversy of Lord Byron with his wife.
+
+The rest of the review is devoted to a powerful attack on Lady Byron's
+character,--the most fearful attack on the memory of a dead woman we
+have ever seen made by living man. The author proceeds, like a lawyer,
+to gather up, arrange, and restate, in a most workmanlike manner, the
+confused accusations of the book.
+
+Anticipating the objection, that such a re-opening of the inquiry was
+a violation of the privacy due to womanhood and to the feelings of a
+surviving family, he says, that though marriage usually is a private
+matter which the world has no right to intermeddle with or discuss,
+yet--
+
+ 'Lord Byron's was an exceptional case. It is not too much to say,
+ that, had his marriage been a happy one, the course of events of the
+ present century might have been materially changed; that the genius
+ which poured itself forth in "Don Juan" and "Cain" might have flowed
+ in far different channels; that the ardent love of freedom which sent
+ him to perish at six and thirty at Missolonghi might have inspired
+ a long career at home; and that we might at this moment have been
+ appealing to the counsels of his experience and wisdom at an age
+ not exceeding that which was attained by Wellington, Lyndhurst, and
+ Brougham.
+
+ 'Whether the world would have been a gainer or a loser by the exchange
+ is a question which every man must answer for himself, according to
+ his own tastes and opinions; but the possibility of such a change in
+ the course of events warrants us in treating what would otherwise be a
+ strictly private matter as one of public interest.
+
+ 'More than half a century has elapsed, the actors have departed from
+ the stage, the curtain has fallen; and whether it will ever again be
+ raised so as to reveal the real facts of the drama, may, as we have
+ already observed, be well doubted. But the time has arrived when we
+ may fairly gather up the fragments of evidence, clear them as far as
+ possible from the incrustations of passion, prejudice, and malice, and
+ place them in such order, as, if possible, to enable us to arrive
+ at some probable conjecture as to what the skeleton of the drama
+ originally was.'
+
+Here the writer proceeds to put together all the facts of Lady Byron's
+case, just as an adverse lawyer would put them as against her, and
+for her husband. The plea is made vigorously and ably, and with an
+air of indignant severity, as of an honest advocate who is thoroughly
+convinced that he is pleading the cause of a wronged man who has been
+ruined in name, ship-wrecked in life, and driven to an early grave, by
+the arts of a bad woman,--a woman all the more horrible that her malice
+was disguised under the cloak of religion.
+
+Having made an able statement of facts, adroitly leaving out
+ONE,[28] of which he could not have been ignorant had he
+studied the case carefully enough to know all the others, he proceeds
+to sum up against the criminal thus:--
+
+[Footnote 28: This one fact is, that Lord Byron might have had an open
+examination in court, if he had only persisted in refusing the deed of
+separation.]
+
+ 'We would deal tenderly with the memory of Lady Byron. Few women have
+ been juster objects of compassion. It would seem as if Nature and
+ Fortune had vied with each other which should be most lavish of her
+ gifts, and yet that some malignant power had rendered all their bounty
+ of no effect. Rank, beauty, wealth, and mental powers of no common
+ order, were hers; yet they were of no avail to secure her happiness.
+ The spoilt child of seclusion, restraint, and parental idolatry,
+ a fate (alike evil for both) cast her into the arms of the spoilt
+ child of genius, passion, and the world. What real or fancied wrongs
+ she suffered, we may never know; but those which she inflicted are
+ sufficiently apparent.
+
+ 'It is said that there are some poisons so subtle that they will
+ destroy life, and yet leave no trace of their action. The murderer
+ who uses them may escape the vengeance of the law; but he is not the
+ less guilty. So the slanderer who makes no charge; who deals in hints
+ and insinuations: who knows melancholy facts he would not willingly
+ divulge,--things too painful to state; who forbears, expresses pity,
+ sometimes even affection, for his victim, shrugs his shoulders, looks
+ with
+
+        "The significant eye,
+  Which learns to lie with silence,--"
+
+ is far more guilty than he who tells the bold falsehood which may be
+ met and answered, and who braves the punishment which must follow upon
+ detection.
+
+ 'Lady Byron has been called
+
+  "The moral Clytemnestra of her lord."
+
+ The "moral Brinvilliers" would have been a truer designation.
+
+ 'The conclusion at which we arrive is, that there is no proof whatever
+ that Lord Byron was guilty of any act that need have caused a
+ separation, or prevented a re-union, and that the imputations upon him
+ rest on the vaguest conjecture; that whatever real or fancied wrongs
+ Lady Byron may have endured are shrouded in an impenetrable mist of
+ her own creation,--a poisonous miasma in which she enveloped the
+ character of her husband, raised by her breath, and which her breath
+ only could have dispersed.
+
+  "She dies and makes no sign. O God! forgive her."'
+
+As we have been obliged to review accusations on Lady Byron founded
+on old Greek tragedy, so now we are forced to abridge a passage from
+a modern conversations-lexicon, that we may understand what sort of
+comparisons are deemed in good taste in a conservative English review,
+when speaking of ladies of rank in their graves.
+
+Under the article 'Brinvilliers,' we find as follows:--
+
+ 'MARGUERITE D'AUBRAI, MARCHIONESS OF BRINVILLIERS.--The
+ singular atrocity of this woman gives her a sort of infamous claim to
+ notice. She was horn in Paris in 1651; being daughter of D'Aubrai,
+ lieutenant-civil of Paris, who married her to the Marquis of
+ Brinvilliers. Although possessed of attractions to captivate lovers,
+ she was for some time much attached to her husband, but at length
+ became madly in love with a Gascon officer. Her father imprisoned
+ the officer in the Bastille; and, while there, he learned the art of
+ compounding subtle and most mortal poisons; and, when he was released,
+ he taught it to the lady, who exercised it with such success, that,
+ in one year, her father, sister, and two brothers became her victims.
+ She professed the utmost tenderness for her victims, and nursed them
+ assiduously. On her father she is said to have made eight attempts
+ before she succeeded. She was _very religious_, and devoted to works
+ of charity; and visited the hospitals a great deal, where it is said
+ she tried her poisons on the sick.'
+
+People have made loud outcries lately, both in America and England,
+about violating the repose of the dead. We should like to know what
+they call this. Is this, then, what they mean by _respecting_ the dead?
+
+Let any man imagine a leading review coming out with language equally
+brutal about his own mother, or any dear and revered friend.
+
+Men of America, men of England, what do you think of this?
+
+When Lady Byron was publicly branded with the names of the foulest
+ancient and foulest modern assassins, and Lord Byron's mistress was
+publicly taken by the hand, and encouraged to go on and prosper in her
+slanders, by one of the oldest and most influential British reviews,
+what was said and what was done in England?
+
+That is a question we should be glad to have answered. Nothing was done
+that ever reached us across the water.
+
+And why was nothing done? Is this language of a kind to be passed over
+in silence?
+
+Was it no offence to the house of Wentworth to attack the pure
+character of its late venerable head, and to brand her in her sacred
+grave with the name of one of the vilest of criminals?
+
+Might there not properly have been an indignant protest of family
+solicitors against this insult to the person and character of the
+Baroness Wentworth?
+
+If virtue went for nothing, benevolence for nothing, a long life of
+service to humanity for nothing, one would at least have thought, that,
+in aristocratic countries, rank might have had its rights to decent
+consideration, and its guardians to rebuke the violation of those
+rights.
+
+We Americans understand little of the advantages of rank; but we did
+understand that it secured certain decorums to people, both while
+living and when in their graves. From Lady Byron's whole history, in
+life and in death, it would appear that we were mistaken.
+
+What a life was hers! Was ever a woman more evidently desirous of
+the delicate and secluded privileges of womanhood, of the sacredness
+of individual privacy? Was ever a woman so rudely dragged forth,
+and exposed to the hardened, vulgar, and unfeeling gaze of mere
+curiosity?--her maiden secrets of love thrown open to be handled by
+_roues_; the sanctities of her marriage-chamber desecrated by leering
+satyrs; her parents and best friends traduced and slandered, till one
+indignant public protest was extorted from her, as by the rack,--a
+protest which seems yet to quiver in every word with the indignation of
+outraged womanly delicacy!
+
+Then followed coarse blame and coarser comment,--blame for speaking
+at all, and blame for not speaking more. One manly voice, raised for
+her in honourable protest, was silenced and overborne by the universal
+roar of ridicule and reprobation; and henceforth what refuge? Only this
+remained: 'Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the
+keeping of their souls to him as to a faithful Creator.'
+
+Lady Byron turned to this refuge in silence, and filled up her life
+with a noble record of charities and humanities. So pure was she, so
+childlike, so artless, so loving, that those who knew her best, feel,
+to this day, that a memorial of her is like the relic of a saint. And
+could not all this preserve her grave from insult? O England, England!
+
+I speak in sorrow of heart to those who must have known, loved, and
+revered Lady Byron, and ask them, Of what were you thinking when you
+allowed a paper of so established literary rank as the 'Blackwood,' to
+present and earnestly recommend to our New World such a compendium of
+lies as the Guiccioli book?
+
+Is the great English-speaking community, whose waves toss from Maine
+to California, and whose literature is yet to come back in a thousand
+voices to you, a thing to be so despised?
+
+If, as the solicitors of the Wentworth family observe, you might be
+entitled to treat with silent contempt the slanders of a mistress
+against a wife, was it safe to treat with equal contempt the
+indorsement and recommendation of those slanders by one of your oldest
+and most powerful literary authorities?
+
+No European magazine has ever had the weight and circulation in America
+that the 'Blackwood' has held. In the days of my youth, when New
+England was a comparatively secluded section of the earth, the wit
+and genius of the 'Noctes Ambrosianae' were in the mouths of men and
+maidens, even in our most quiet mountain-towns. There, years ago, we
+saw all Lady Byron's private affairs discussed, and felt the weight of
+Christopher North's decisions against her. Shelton Mackenzie, in his
+American edition, speaks of the American circulation of 'Blackwood'
+being greater than that in England.[29] It was and is now reprinted
+monthly; and, besides that, 'Littell's Magazine' reproduces all its
+striking articles, and they come with the weight of long established
+position. From the very fact that it has long been considered the Tory
+organ, and the supporter of aristocratic orders, all its admissions
+against the character of individuals in the privileged classes have a
+double force.
+
+[Footnote 29: In the history of 'Blackwood's Magazine,' prefaced to
+the American edition of 1854, Mackenzie says of the 'Noctes' papers,
+'Great as was their popularity in England it was peculiarly in
+America that their high merit and undoubted originality received the
+heartiest recognition and appreciation. Nor is this wonderful when it
+is considered that for one reader of "Blackwood's Magazine" in the old
+country there cannot be less than fifty in the new.']
+
+When 'Blackwood,' therefore, boldly denounces a lady of high rank as a
+modern Brinvilliers, and no sensation is produced, and no remonstrance
+follows, what can people in the New World suppose, but that Lady
+Byron's character was a point entirely given up; that her depravity was
+so well established and so fully conceded, that nothing was to be said,
+and that even the defenders of aristocracy were forced to admit it?
+
+I have been blamed for speaking on this subject without consulting Lady
+Byron's friends, trustees, and family. More than ten years had elapsed
+since I had had any intercourse with England, and I knew none of them.
+How was I to know that any of them were living? I was astonished to
+learn, for the first time, by the solicitors' letters, that there were
+trustees, who held in their hands all Lady Byron's carefully prepared
+proofs and documents, by which this falsehood might immediately have
+been refuted.
+
+If they had spoken, they might have saved all this confusion. Even
+if bound by restrictions for a certain period of time, they still
+might have called on a Christian public to frown down such a cruel
+and indecent attack on the character of a noble lady who had been a
+benefactress to so many in England. They might have stated that the
+means of wholly refuting the slanders of the 'Blackwood' were in their
+hands, and only delayed in coming forth from regard to the feelings
+of some in this generation. Then might they not have announced her
+Life and Letters, that the public might have the same opportunity as
+themselves for knowing and judging Lady Byron by her own writings?
+
+Had this been done, I had been most happy to have remained silent. I
+have been astonished that any one should have supposed this speaking
+on my part to be anything less than it is,--the severest act of
+self-sacrifice that one friend can perform for another, and the most
+solemn and difficult tribute to justice that a human being can be
+called upon to render.
+
+I have been informed that the course I have taken would be contrary to
+the wishes of my friend. I think otherwise. I know her strong sense
+of justice, and her reverence for truth. Nothing ever moved her to
+speak to the public but an attack upon the honour of the dead. In her
+statement, she says of her parents, 'There is no other near relative to
+vindicate their memory from insult: I am therefore compelled to break
+the silence I had hoped always to have observed.'
+
+If there was any near relative to vindicate Lady Byron's memory, I
+had no evidence of the fact; and I considered the utter silence to
+be strong evidence to the contrary. In all the storm of obloquy and
+rebuke that has raged in consequence of my speaking, I have had two
+unspeakable sources of joy; first, that they could not touch _her_;
+and, second, that they could not blind the all-seeing God. It is worth
+being in darkness to see the stars.
+
+It has been said that _I_ have drawn on Lady Byron's name greater
+obloquy than ever before. I deny the charge. Nothing fouler has been
+asserted of her than the charges in the 'Blackwood,' because nothing
+fouler _could_ be asserted. No satyr's hoof has ever crushed this pearl
+deeper in the mire than the hoof of the 'Blackwood,' but none of them
+have defiled it or trodden it so deep that God cannot find it in the
+day 'when he maketh up his jewels.'
+
+I have another word, as an American, to say about the contempt shown
+to our great people in thus suffering the materials of history to be
+falsified to subserve the temporary purposes of family feeling in
+England.
+
+Lord Byron belongs not properly either to the Byrons or the Wentworths.
+He is not one of their family jewels to be locked up in their cases.
+He belongs to the world for which he wrote, to which he appealed, and
+before which he dragged his reluctant, delicate wife to a publicity
+equal with his own: the world has, therefore, a right to judge him.
+
+We Americans have been made accessories, after the fact, to every
+insult and injury that Lord Byron and the literary men of his day have
+heaped upon Lady Byron. We have been betrayed into injustice and a
+complicity with villany. After Lady Byron had nobly lived down slanders
+in England, and died full of years and honours, the 'Blackwood' takes
+occasion to re-open the controversy by recommending a book full of
+slanders to a rising generation who knew nothing of the past. What
+was the consequence in America? My attention was first called to the
+result, not by reading the 'Blackwood' article, but by finding in a
+popular monthly magazine two long articles,--the one an enthusiastic
+recommendation of the Guiccioli book, and the other a lamentation over
+the burning of the Autobiography as a lost chapter in history.
+
+Both articles represented Lady Byron as a cold, malignant, mean,
+persecuting woman, who had been her husband's ruin. They were so full
+of falsehoods and misstatements as to astonish me. Not long after, a
+literary friend wrote to me, '_Will_ you, _can_ you, reconcile it to
+your conscience to sit still and allow that mistress so to slander that
+wife,--you, perhaps, the only one knowing the real facts, and able to
+set them forth?'
+
+Upon this, I immediately began collecting and reading the various
+articles and the book, and perceived that the public of this generation
+were in a way of having false history created, uncontradicted, under
+their own eyes.
+
+I claim for my country, men and women, our right to _true_ history.
+For years, the popular literature has held up publicly before our eyes
+the facts as to this man and this woman, and called on us to praise or
+condemn. Let us have _truth_ when we are called on to judge. It is our
+_right_.
+
+There is no conceivable obligation on a human being greater than
+that of _absolute justice_. It is the deepest personal injury to an
+honourable mind to be made, through misrepresentation, an accomplice
+in injustice. When a noble name is accused, any person who possesses
+truth which might clear it, and withholds that truth, is guilty of a
+sin against human nature and the inalienable rights of justice. I claim
+that I have not only a right, but an obligation, to bring in my solemn
+testimony upon this subject.
+
+For years and years, the silence-policy has been tried; and what has it
+brought forth? As neither word nor deed could be proved against Lady
+Byron, her silence has been spoken of as a monstrous, unnatural crime,
+'a poisonous miasma,' in which she enveloped the name of her husband.
+
+Very well; since silence is the crime, I thought I would tell the world
+that Lady Byron had spoken.
+
+Christopher North, years ago, when he condemned her for speaking, said
+that she should speak further,--
+
+'She should speak, or some one for her. One word would suffice.'
+
+That one word has been spoken.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+LADY BYRON AS I KNEW HER.
+
+
+An editorial in 'The London Times' of Sept. 18 says:--
+
+ 'The perplexing feature in this "True Story" is, that it is impossible
+ to distinguish what part in it is the editress's, and what Lady
+ Byron's own. We are given the _impression_ made on Mrs. Stowe's mind
+ by Lady Byron's statements; but it would have been more satisfactory
+ if the statement itself had been reproduced as bare as possible, and
+ been left to make its own impression on the public.'
+
+In reply to this, I will say, that in my article I gave a brief
+synopsis of the subject-matter of Lady Byron's communications;
+and I think it must be quite evident to the world that the _main
+fact_ on which the story turns was one which could not possibly be
+misunderstood, and the remembrance of which no lapse of time could ever
+weaken.
+
+Lady Byron's communications were made to me in language clear, precise,
+terrible; and many of her phrases and sentences I could repeat at this
+day, word for word. But if I had reproduced them at first, as 'The
+Times' suggests, word for word, the public horror and incredulity would
+have been doubled. It was necessary that the brutality of the story
+should, in some degree, be veiled and softened.
+
+The publication, by Lord Lindsay, of Lady Anne Barnard's communication,
+makes it now possible to tell fully, and in Lady Byron's own words,
+certain incidents that yet remain untold. To me, who know the whole
+history, the revelations in Lady Anne's account, and the story related
+by Lady Byron, are like fragments of a dissected map: they fit
+together, piece by piece, and form one connected whole.
+
+In confirmation of the general facts of this interview, I have the
+testimony of a sister who accompanied me on this visit, and to whom,
+immediately after it, I recounted the story.
+
+Her testimony on the subject is as follows:--
+
+ 'MY DEAR SISTER,--I have a perfect recollection of going
+ with you to visit Lady Byron at the time spoken of in your published
+ article. We arrived at her house in the morning; and, after lunch,
+ Lady Byron and yourself spent the whole time till evening alone
+ together.
+
+ 'After we retired to our apartment that night, you related to me
+ the story given in your published account, though with many more
+ particulars than you have yet thought fit to give to the public.
+
+ 'You stated to me that Lady Byron was strongly impressed with the idea
+ that it might be her duty to publish a statement during her lifetime,
+ and also the reasons which induced her to think so. You appeared at
+ that time quite disposed to think that justice required this step, and
+ asked my opinion. We passed most of the night in conversation on the
+ subject,--a conversation often resumed, from time to time, during
+ several weeks in which you were considering what opinion to give.
+
+ 'I was strongly of opinion that justice required the publication of
+ the truth, but felt exceedingly averse to its being done by Lady Byron
+ herself during her own lifetime, when she personally would be subject
+ to the comments and misconceptions of motives which would certainly
+ follow such a communication.
+
+  'Your sister,
+
+  'M. F. PERKINS.'
+
+I am now about to complete the account of my conversation with Lady
+Byron; but as the credibility of a history depends greatly on the
+character of its narrator, and as especial pains have been taken
+to destroy the belief in this story by representing it to be the
+wanderings of a broken-down mind in a state of dotage and mental
+hallucination, I shall preface the narrative with some account of
+Lady Byron as she was during the time of our mutual acquaintance and
+friendship.
+
+This account may, perhaps, be deemed superfluous in England, where so
+many knew her; but in America, where, from Maine to California, her
+character has been discussed and traduced, it is of importance to give
+interested thousands an opportunity of learning what kind of a woman
+Lady Byron was.
+
+Her character as given by Lord Byron in his Journal, after her first
+refusal of him, is this:--
+
+ 'She is a very superior woman, and very little spoiled; which is
+ strange in an heiress, a girl of twenty, a peeress that is to be in
+ her own right, an only child, and a savante, who has always had her
+ own way. She is a poetess, a mathematician, a metaphysician; yet,
+ withal, very kind, generous, and gentle, with very little pretension.
+ Any other head would be turned with half her acquisitions and a tenth
+ of her advantages.'
+
+Such was Lady Byron at twenty. I formed her acquaintance in the year
+1853, during my first visit in England. I met her at a lunch-party in
+the house of one of her friends.
+
+The party had many notables; but, among them all, my attention was
+fixed principally on Lady Byron. She was at this time sixty-one years
+of age, but still had, to a remarkable degree, that personal attraction
+which is commonly considered to belong only to youth and beauty.
+
+Her form was slight, giving an impression of fragility; her motions
+were both graceful and decided; her eyes bright, and full of interest
+and quick observation. Her silvery-white hair seemed to lend a grace
+to the transparent purity of her complexion, and her small hands
+had a pearly whiteness. I recollect she wore a plain widow's cap of
+a transparent material; and was dressed in some delicate shade of
+lavender, which harmonised well with her complexion.
+
+When I was introduced to her, I felt in a moment the words of her
+husband:--
+
+  'There was awe in the homage that she drew;
+  Her spirit seemed as seated on a throne.'
+
+Calm, self-poised, and thoughtful, she seemed to me rather to resemble
+an interested spectator of the world's affairs, than an actor involved
+in its trials; yet the sweetness of her smile, and a certain very
+delicate sense of humour in her remarks, made the way of acquaintance
+easy.
+
+Her first remarks were a little playful; but in a few moments we were
+speaking on what every one in those days was talking to me about,--the
+slavery question in America.
+
+It need not be remarked, that, when any one subject especially occupies
+the public mind, those known to be interested in it are compelled to
+listen to many weary platitudes. Lady Byron's remarks, however, caught
+my ear and arrested my attention by their peculiar incisive quality,
+their originality, and the evidence they gave that she was as well
+informed on all our matters as the best American statesman could be.
+I had no wearisome course to go over with her as to the difference
+between the General Government and State Governments, nor explanations
+of the United States Constitution; for she had the whole before her
+mind with a perfect clearness. Her morality upon the slavery question,
+too, impressed me as something far higher and deeper than the common
+sentimentalism of the day. Many of her words surprised me greatly, and
+gave me new material for thought.
+
+I found I was in company with a commanding mind, and hastened to
+gain instruction from her on another point where my interest had
+been aroused. I had recently been much excited by Kingsley's novels,
+'Alton Locke' and 'Yeast,' on the position of religious thought in
+England. From these works I had gathered, that under the apparent
+placid uniformity of the Established Church of England, and of 'good
+society' as founded on it, there was moving a secret current of
+speculative enquiry, doubt, and dissent; but I had met, as yet, with
+no person among my various acquaintances in England who seemed either
+aware of this fact, or able to guide my mind respecting it. The moment
+I mentioned the subject to Lady Byron, I received an answer which
+showed me that the whole ground was familiar to her, and that she was
+capable of giving me full information. She had studied with careful
+thoughtfulness all the social and religious tendencies of England
+during her generation. One of her remarks has often since occurred to
+me. Speaking of the Oxford movement, she said the time had come when
+the English Church could no longer remain as it was. It must either
+_restore the past, or create a future_. The Oxford movement attempted
+the former; and of the future she was beginning to speak, when our
+conversation was interrupted by the presentation of other parties.
+
+Subsequently, in reply to a note from her on some benevolent business,
+I alluded to that conversation, and expressed a wish that she would
+finish giving me her views of the religious state of England. A portion
+of the letter that she wrote me in reply I insert, as being very
+characteristic in many respects:--
+
+ 'Various causes have been assigned for the decaying state of the
+ English Church; which seems the more strange, because the clergy have
+ improved, morally and intellectually, in the last twenty years. Then
+ why should their influence be diminished? I think it is owing to the
+ diffusion of a spirit of free enquiry.
+
+ 'Doubts have arisen in the minds of many who are unhappily bound by
+ subscription _not_ to doubt; and, in consequence, they are habitually
+ _pretending_ either to believe or to disbelieve. The state of Denmark
+ cannot but be rotten, when _to seem_ is the first object of the
+ witnesses of truth.
+
+ 'They may lead better lives, and bring forward abler arguments; but
+ their efforts are paralysed by that unsoundness. I see the High
+ Churchman professing to believe in the existence of a church, when the
+ most palpable facts must show him that no _such_ church exists; the
+ "Low" Churchman professing to believe in exceptional interpositions
+ which his philosophy secretly questions; the "Broad" Churchman
+ professing as absolute an attachment to the Established Church as the
+ narrowest could feel, while he is preaching such principles as will at
+ last pull it down.
+
+ 'I ask you, my friend, whether there would not be more faith, as
+ well as earnestness, if _all_ would speak out. There would be more
+ unanimity too, because they would all agree in a certain basis. Would
+ not a wider love supersede the _creed-bound_ charity of sects?
+
+ 'I am aware that I have touched on a point of difference between
+ us, and I will not regret it; for I think the differences of mind
+ are analogous to those differences of nature, which, in the most
+ comprehensive survey, are the very elements of harmony.
+
+ 'I am not at all prone to put forth my own opinions; but the tone in
+ which you have written to me claims an unusual degree of openness
+ on my part. I look upon creeds of all kinds as chains,--far worse
+ chains than those you would break,--as the causes of much hypocrisy
+ and infidelity. I hold it to be a sin to _make_ a child say, "_I
+ believe_." Lead it to utter that belief spontaneously. I also consider
+ the institution of an exclusive priesthood, though having been of
+ service in some respects, as retarding the progress of Christianity at
+ present. I desire to see a _lay_ ministry.
+
+ 'I will not give you more of my heterodoxy at present: perhaps I need
+ your pardon, connected as you are with the Church, for having said so
+ much.
+
+ 'There are causes of decay known to be at work in my frame, which lead
+ me to believe I may not have time to grow wiser; and I must therefore
+ leave it to others to correct the conclusions I have now formed from
+ my life's experience. I should feel happy to discuss them personally
+ with you; for it would be _soul to soul_. In that confidence I am
+ yours most truly,
+
+ 'A. I. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+It is not necessary to prove to the reader that this letter is not in
+the style of a broken-down old woman subject to mental hallucinations.
+It shows Lady Byron's habits of clear, searching analysis, her
+thoughtfulness, and, above all, that peculiar reverence for _truth_ and
+sincerity which was a leading characteristic of her moral nature.[30]
+It also shows her views of the probable shortness of her stay on earth,
+derived from the opinion of physicians about her disease, which was a
+gradual ossification of the lungs. It has been asserted that pulmonary
+diseases, while they slowly and surely sap the physical life, often
+appear to give added vigour to the play of the moral and intellectual
+powers.
+
+[Footnote 30: The reader is here referred to Lady Byron's other
+letters, in Part III.; which also show the peculiarly active and
+philosophical character of her mind, and the class of subjects on which
+it habitually dwelt.]
+
+I parted from Lady Byron, feeling richer in that I had found one more
+pearl of great price on the shore of life.
+
+Three years after this, I visited England to obtain a copyright for the
+issue of my novel of 'Dred.'
+
+The hope of once more seeing Lady Byron was one of the brightest
+anticipations held out to me in this journey. I found London quite
+deserted; but, hearing that Lady Byron was still in town, I sent to
+her, saying in my note, that, in case she was not well enough to call,
+I would visit her. Her reply I give:--
+
+ 'MY DEAR FRIEND,--I _will_ be indebted to you for our
+ meeting, as I am barely able to leave my room. It is not a time for
+ small personalities, if they could ever exist with _you_; and, dressed
+ or undressed, I shall hope to see you after two o'clock.
+
+  'Yours very truly,
+  'A. I. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+I found Lady Byron in her sick-room,--that place which she made so
+different from the chamber of ordinary invalids. Her sick-room seemed
+only a telegraphic station whence her vivid mind was flashing out all
+over the world.
+
+By her bedside stood a table covered with books, pamphlets, and files
+of letters, all arranged with exquisite order, and each expressing some
+of her varied interests. From that sick-bed she still directed, with
+systematic care, her various works of benevolence, and watched with
+intelligent attention the course of science, literature, and religion;
+and the versatility and activity of her mind, the flow of brilliant
+and penetrating thought on all the topics of the day, gave to the
+conversations of her retired room a peculiar charm. You forgot that
+she was an invalid; for she rarely had a word of her own personalities,
+and the charm of her conversation carried you invariably from herself
+to the subjects of which she was thinking. All the new books, the
+literature of the hour, were lighted up by her keen, searching, yet
+always kindly criticism; and it was charming to get her fresh, genuine,
+clear-cut modes of expression, so different from the world-worn phrases
+of what is called good society. Her opinions were always perfectly
+clear and positive, and given with the freedom of one who has long
+stood in a position to judge the world and its ways from her own
+standpoint. But it was not merely in general literature and science
+that her heart lay; it was following always with eager interest the
+progress of humanity over the whole world.
+
+This was the period of the great battle for liberty in Kansas. The
+English papers were daily filled with the thrilling particulars of that
+desperate struggle, and Lady Byron entered with heart and soul into it.
+
+Her first letter to me, at this time, is on this subject. It was while
+'Dred' was going through the press.
+
+ 'CAMBRIDGE TERRACE, Aug. 15.
+
+ 'MY DEAR MRS. STOWE,--Messrs. Chambers liked the proposal to
+ publish the Kansas Letters. The more the public know of these matters,
+ the better prepared they will be for your book. The moment for its
+ publication seems well chosen. There is always in England a floating
+ fund of sympathy for what is above the everyday sordid cares of life;
+ and these better feelings, so nobly invested for the last two years in
+ Florence Nightingale's career, are just set free. To what will they
+ next be attached? If you can lay hold of them, they may bring about
+ a deeper abolition than any legislative one,--the abolition of the
+ heart-heresy that man's worth comes, not from God, but from man.
+
+ 'I have been obliged to give up exertion again, but hope soon to be
+ able to call and make the acquaintance of your daughters. In case you
+ wish to consult H. Martineau's pamphlets, I send more copies. Do not
+ think of answering: I have occupied too much of your time in reading.
+
+  'Yours affectionately,
+
+  'A. I. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+As soon as a copy of 'Dred' was through the press, I sent it to
+her, saying that I had been reproved by some excellent people for
+representing too faithfully the profane language of some of the wicked
+characters. To this she sent the following reply:--
+
+ 'Your book, dear Mrs. Stowe, is of the little leaven kind, and must
+ prove a great moral force; perhaps not manifestly so much as secretly.
+ And yet I can hardly conceive so much power without immediate and
+ sensible effects: only there will be a strong disposition to resist
+ on the part of all hollow-hearted professors of religion, whose
+ heathenisms you so unsparingly expose. They have a class feeling like
+ others.
+
+ 'To the young, and to those who do not reflect much on what is offered
+ to their belief, you will do great good by showing how spiritual food
+ is often adulterated. The bread from heaven is in the same case as
+ bakers' bread.
+
+ 'If there is truth in what I heard Lord Byron say, that works of
+ fiction live only by the amount _of truth_ which they contain, your
+ story is sure of a long life. Of the few critiques I have seen, the
+ best is in "The Examiner." I find an obtuseness as to the spirit and
+ aim of the book, as if you had designed to make the best novel of the
+ season, or to keep up the reputation of one. You are reproached, as
+ Walter Scott was, with too much scriptural quotation; not, that I
+ have heard, with phrases of an opposite character.
+
+ 'The effects of such reading till a late hour one evening appeared to
+ influence me very singularly in a dream. The most horrible spectres
+ presented themselves, and I woke in an agony of fear; but a faith
+ still stronger arose, and I became courageous from trust in God, and
+ felt calm. Did you do this? It is very insignificant among the many
+ things you certainly will do unknown to yourself. I know more than
+ ever before how to value communion with you. I have sent Robertson's
+ Sermons for you; and, with kind regards to your family, am
+
+  'Yours affectionately,
+
+  'A. I. NOEL BYRON.
+
+I was struck in this note with the mention of Lord Byron, and, the next
+time I saw her, alluded to it, and remarked upon the peculiar qualities
+of his mind as shown in some of his more serious conversations with Dr.
+Kennedy.
+
+She seemed pleased to continue the subject, and went on to say many
+things of his singular character and genius, more penetrating and more
+appreciative than is often met with among critics.
+
+I told her that I had been from childhood powerfully influenced by
+him; and began to tell her how much, as a child, I had been affected
+by the news of his death,--giving up all my plays, and going off to
+a lonely hillside, where I spent the afternoon thinking of him. She
+interrupted me before I had quite finished, with a quick, impulsive
+movement. 'I know all that,' she said: 'I heard it all from Mrs. ----;
+and it was one of the things that made me wish to _know_ you. I think
+_you_ could understand him.' We talked for some time of him then; she,
+with her pale face slightly flushed, speaking, as any other great
+man's widow might, only of what was purest and best in his works, and
+what were his undeniable virtues and good traits, especially in early
+life. She told me many pleasant little speeches made by him to herself;
+and, though there was running through all this a shade of melancholy,
+one could never have conjectured that there were under all any deeper
+recollections than the circumstances of an ordinary separation might
+bring.
+
+Not many days after, with the unselfishness which was so marked a
+trait with her, she chose a day when she could be out of her room,
+and invited our family party, consisting of my husband, sister, and
+children, to lunch with her.
+
+What showed itself especially in this interview was her tenderness
+for all young people. She had often enquired after mine; asked about
+their characters, habits, and tastes; and on this occasion she found an
+opportunity to talk with each one separately, and to make them all feel
+at ease, so that they were able to talk with her. She seemed interested
+to point out to them what they should see and study in London; and
+the charm of her conversation left on their minds an impression that
+subsequent years have never effaced. I record this incident, because it
+shows how little Lady Byron assumed the privileges or had the character
+of an invalid absorbed in herself, and likely to brood over her own
+woes and wrongs.
+
+Here was a family of strangers stranded in a dull season in London, and
+there was no manner of obligation upon her to exert herself to show
+them attention. Her state of health would have been an all-sufficient
+reason why she should not do it; and her doing it was simply a specimen
+of that unselfish care for others, even down to the least detail, of
+which her life was full.
+
+A little while after, at her request, I went, with my husband and son,
+to pass an evening at her house.
+
+There were a few persons present whom she thought I should be
+interested to know,--a Miss Goldsmid, daughter of Baron Goldsmid, and
+Lord Ockham, her grandson, eldest son and heir of the Earl of Lovelace,
+to whom she introduced my son.
+
+I had heard much of the eccentricities of this young nobleman, and
+was exceedingly struck with his personal appearance. His bodily frame
+was of the order of the Farnese Hercules,--a wonderful development of
+physical and muscular strength. His hands were those of a blacksmith.
+He was broadly and squarely made, with a finely-shaped head, and dark
+eyes of surpassing brilliancy. I have seldom seen a more interesting
+combination than his whole appearance presented.
+
+When all were engaged in talking, Lady Byron came and sat down by
+me, and glancing across to Lord Ockham and my son, who were talking
+together, she looked at me, and smiled. I immediately expressed my
+admiration of his fine eyes and the intellectual expression of his
+countenance, and my wonder at the uncommon muscular development of his
+frame.
+
+She said that _that_ of itself would account for many of Ockham's
+eccentricities. He had a body that required a more vigorous animal life
+than his station gave scope for, and this had often led him to seek
+it in what the world calls low society; that he had been to sea as a
+sailor, and was now working as a mechanic on the iron work of 'The
+Great Eastern.' He had laid aside his title, and went in daily with the
+other workmen, requesting them to call him simply Ockham.
+
+I said that there was something to my mind very fine about this, even
+though it might show some want of proper balance.
+
+She said he had noble traits, and that she felt assured he would
+yet accomplish something worthy of himself. 'The great difficulty
+with our nobility is apt to be, that they do not _understand_ the
+working-classes, so as to feel for them properly; and Ockham is now
+going through an experience which may yet fit him to do great good when
+he comes to the peerage. I am trying to influence him to do good among
+the workmen, and to interest himself in schools for their children. I
+think,' she added, 'I have great influence over Ockham,--the greater,
+perhaps, that I never make any claim to authority.'
+
+This conversation is very characteristic of Lady Byron as showing her
+benevolent analysis of character, and the peculiar hopefulness she
+always had in regard to the future of every one brought in connection
+with her. Her moral hopefulness was something very singular; and in
+this respect she was so different from the rest of the world, that it
+would be difficult to make her understood. Her tolerance of wrong-doing
+would have seemed to many quite latitudinarian, and impressed them
+as if she had lost all just horror of what was morally wrong in
+transgression; but it seemed her fixed habit to see faults only as
+diseases and immaturities, and to expect them to fall away with time.
+
+She saw the germs of good in what others regarded as only evil. She
+expected valuable results to come from what the world looked on only
+as eccentricities;[31] and she incessantly devoted herself to the task
+of guarding those whom the world condemned, and guiding them to those
+higher results of which she often thought that even their faults were
+prophetic.
+
+[Footnote 31: See her character of Dr. King, Part III.]
+
+Before I quit this sketch of Lady Byron as I knew her, I will give one
+more of her letters. My return from that visit in Europe was met by the
+sudden death of the son mentioned in the foregoing account. At the time
+of this sorrow, Lady Byron was too unwell to write to me. The letter
+given alludes to this event, and speaks also of two coloured persons
+of remarkable talent, in whose career in England she had taken a deep
+interest. One of them is the 'friend' she speaks of.
+
+  'LONDON, Feb. 6, 1859.
+
+ 'DEAR MRS. STOWE,--I seem to feel our friend as a bridge,
+ over which our broken _outward_ communication can be renewed without
+ effort. Why broken? The words I would have uttered _at one time_ were
+ like drops of blood from my heart. Now I sympathise with the calmness
+ you have gained, and can speak of your loss as I do of my own. Loss
+ and restoration are more and more linked in my mind, but "to the
+ _present_ live." As long as _they_ are in God's world they are in
+ ours. I ask no other consolation.
+
+ 'Mrs. W----'s recovery has astonished me, and her husband's prospects
+ give me great satisfaction. They have achieved a benefit to their
+ coloured people. She had a mission which her burning soul has worked
+ out, almost in defiance of death. But who is "called" without being
+ "crucified," man or woman? I know of none.
+
+ 'I fear that H. Martineau was too sanguine in her persuasion that the
+ slave power had received a serious check from the ruin of so many of
+ your Mammon-worshippers. With the return of commercial facilities,
+ _that_ article of commerce will again find purchasers enough to raise
+ its value. Not that way is the iniquity to be overthrown. A deeper
+ moral earthquake is needed.[32] We English had ours in India; and
+ though the cases are far from being alike, yet a consciousness of what
+ we ought to have been and ought to be toward the natives could not
+ have been awakened by less than the reddened waters of the Ganges. So
+ I fear you will have to look on a day of judgment worse than has been
+ painted.
+
+ [Footnote 32: Alluding to the financial crisis in the United States in
+ 1857.]
+
+ 'As to all the frauds and impositions which have been disclosed by
+ the failures, what a want of the sense of personal responsibility
+ they show. It seems to be thought that "association" will "cover a
+ multitude of sins;" as if "and Co." could enter heaven. A firm may be
+ described as a partnership for lowering the standard of morals. Even
+ ecclesiastical bodies are not free from the "and Co.;" very different
+ from "the goodly fellowship of the apostles."
+
+ 'The better class of young gentlemen in England are seized with
+ a mediaeval mania, to which Ruskin has contributed much. The
+ chief reason for regretting it is that taste is made to supersede
+ benevolence. The money that would save thousands from perishing or
+ suffering must be applied to raise the Gothic edifice where their last
+ prayer may be uttered. Charity may be dead, while Art has glorified
+ her. This is worse than Catholicism, which cultivates heart and eye
+ together. The first cathedral was Truth, at the beginning of the
+ fourth century, just as Christianity was exchanging a heavenly for an
+ earthly crown. True religion may have to cast away the symbol for the
+ spirit before "the kingdom" can come.
+
+ 'While I am speculating to little purpose, perhaps you are
+ _doing_--what? Might not a biography from your pen bring forth again
+ some great, half-obscured soul to act on the world? Even Sir Philip
+ Sidney ought to be superseded by a still nobler type.
+
+ 'This must go immediately, to be in time for the bearer, of whose
+ meeting with you I shall think as the friend of both. May it be happy!
+
+  'Your affectionate
+  A. I. N. B.'
+
+One letter more from Lady Byron I give,--the last I received from her:--
+
+  LONDON, May 3, 1859.
+
+ 'DEAR FRIEND,--I have found, particularly as to yourself,
+ that, if I did not answer from the first impulse, all had evaporated.
+ Your letter came by 'The Niagara' which brought Fanny Kemble to learn
+ the loss of her best friend, the Miss F---- whom you saw at my house.
+
+ 'Her death, after an illness in which she was to the last a minister
+ of good to others, is a soul-loss to me also; and your remarks are
+ most appropriate to my feelings. I have been taught, however, to
+ accept survivorship; even to feel it, in some cases, Heaven's best
+ blessing.
+
+ 'I have an intense interest in your new novel.[33] More power in
+ these few numbers than in any of your former writings, relating, at
+ least, to my own mind. It would amuse you to hear my grand-daughter
+ and myself attempting to foresee the future of the love-story; being,
+ for the moment, quite persuaded that James is at sea, and the minister
+ about to ruin himself. We think that Mary will labour to be in love
+ with the self-devoted man, under her mother's influence, and from that
+ hyper-conscientiousness so common with good girls; but we don't wish
+ her to succeed. Then what is to become of her older lover? Time will
+ show.
+
+ [Footnote 33: 'The Minister's Wooing.']
+
+ 'The lady you desired to introduce to me will be welcomed as of you.
+ She has been misled with respect to my having any house in Yorkshire
+ (New Leeds). I am in London now to be of a little use to A----; not
+ ostensibly, for I can neither go out, nor give parties: but I am the
+ confidential friend to whom she likes to bring her social gatherings,
+ as she can see something of the world with others. Age and infirmity
+ seem to be overlooked in what she calls the harmony between us,--not
+ perfect agreement of opinion (which I should regret, with almost fifty
+ years of difference), but the spirit-union: can you say what it is?
+
+ 'I am interrupted by a note from Mrs. K----. She says that she cannot
+ write of our lost friend yet, though she is less sad than she will
+ be. Mrs. F---- may like to hear of her arrival, should you be in
+ communication with our friend. She is the type of youth in age.
+
+ 'I often converse with Miss S----, a judicious friend of the W----s,
+ about what is likely to await them. She would not succeed here as well
+ as where she was a novelty. The character of our climate this year has
+ been injurious to the respiratory organs; but I hope still to serve
+ them.
+
+ 'I have just missed Dale Owen, with whom I wished to have conversed on
+ spiritualism.[34] Harris is lecturing here on religion. I do not hear
+ him praised.
+
+ [Footnote 34: See her letter on spiritualistic phenomena, Part III.]
+
+ 'People are looking for helps to believe, everywhere but in life,--in
+ music, in architecture, in antiquity, in ceremony; and upon all
+ these is written, "Thou shalt _not_ believe." At least, if this be
+ faith, happier the unbeliever. I am willing to see _through_ that
+ materialism; but, if I am to rest there, I would rend the veil.
+
+        *       *       *       *       *
+
+  'June 1.
+
+ 'The day of the packet's sailing. I shall hope to be visited by you
+ here. The best flowers sent me have been placed in your little vases,
+ giving life to the remembrance of you, though not, like them, to pass
+ away.
+
+  'Ever yours,
+  'A. I. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+Shortly after, I was in England again, and had one more opportunity of
+resuming our personal intercourse. The first time that I called on Lady
+Byron, I saw her in one of those periods of utter physical exhaustion
+to which she was subject on account of the constant pressure of cares
+beyond her strength. All who knew her will testify, that, in a state of
+health which would lead most persons to become helpless absorbents of
+service from others, she was assuming burdens, and making outlays of
+her vital powers in acts of love and service, with a generosity that
+often reduced her to utter exhaustion. But none who knew or loved her
+ever misinterpreted the coldness of those seasons of exhaustion. We
+knew that it was _not_ the spirit that was chilled, but only the frail
+mortal tabernacle. When I called on her at this time, she could not see
+me at first; and when, at last, she came, it was evident that she was
+in a state of utter prostration. Her hands were like ice; her face was
+deadly pale; and she conversed with a restraint and difficulty which
+showed what exertion it was for her to keep up at all. I left as soon
+as possible, with an appointment for another interview. That interview
+was my last on earth with her, and is still beautiful in memory. It was
+a long, still summer afternoon, spent alone with her in a garden, where
+we walked together. She was enjoying one of those bright intervals
+of freedom from pain and languor, in which her spirits always rose
+so buoyant and youthful; and her eye brightened, and her step became
+elastic.
+
+One last little incident is cherished as most expressive of her. When
+it became time for me to leave, she took me in her carriage to the
+station. As we were almost there, I missed my gloves, and said, 'I must
+have left them; but there is not time to go back.'
+
+With one of those quick, impulsive motions which were so natural to her
+in doing a kindness, she drew off her own and said, 'Take mine if they
+will serve you.'
+
+I hesitated a moment; and then the thought, that I might never see
+her again, came over me, and I said, 'Oh, yes! thanks.' That was the
+last earthly word of love between us. But, thank God, those who love
+worthily never meet for the _last_ time: there is always a future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+LADY BYRON'S STORY AS TOLD TO ME.
+
+
+I now come to the particulars of that most painful interview which has
+been the cause of all this controversy. My sister and myself were going
+from London to Eversley to visit the Rev. C. Kingsley. On our way, we
+stopped, by Lady Byron's invitation, to lunch with her at her summer
+residence on Ham Common, near Richmond; and it was then arranged, that
+on our return, we should make her a short visit, as she said she had a
+subject of importance on which she wished to converse with me alone.
+
+On our return from Eversley, we arrived at her house in the morning.
+
+It appeared to be one of Lady Byron's _well_ days. She was up and
+dressed, and moved about her house with her usual air of quiet
+simplicity; as full of little acts of consideration for all about her
+as if they were the habitual invalids, and she the well person.
+
+There were with her two ladies of her most intimate friends, by whom
+she seemed to be regarded with a sort of worship. When she left the
+room for a moment, they looked after her with a singular expression of
+respect and affection, and expressed freely their admiration of her
+character, and their fears that her unselfishness might be leading her
+to over-exertion.
+
+After lunch, I retired with Lady Byron; and my sister remained with
+her friends. I should here remark, that the chief subject of the
+conversation which ensued was not entirely new to me. In the interval
+between my first and second visits to England, a lady who for many
+years had enjoyed Lady Byron's friendship and confidence, had, with her
+consent, stated the case generally to me, giving some of the incidents:
+so that I was in a manner prepared for what followed.
+
+Those who accuse Lady Byron of being a person fond of talking upon this
+subject, and apt to make unconsidered confidences, can have known very
+little of her, of her reserve, and of the apparent difficulty she had
+in speaking on subjects nearest her heart.
+
+Her habitual calmness and composure of manner, her collected dignity
+on all occasions, are often mentioned by her husband, sometimes with
+bitterness, sometimes with admiration. He says, 'Though I accuse Lady
+Byron of an excess of self-respect, I must in candour admit that, if
+ever a person had excuse for an extraordinary portion of it, she has;
+as, in all her thoughts, words, and deeds, she is the most decorous
+woman that ever existed, and must appear, what few I fancy could, a
+perfectly refined gentlewoman, even to her _femme de chambre_.
+
+This calmness and dignity were never more manifested than in this
+interview. In recalling the conversation at this distance of time, I
+cannot remember all the language used. Some particular words and forms
+of expression I do remember, and those I give; and in other cases I
+give my recollection of the substance of what was said.
+
+There was something awful to me in the intensity of repressed emotion
+which she showed as she proceeded. The great fact upon which all turned
+was stated in words that were unmistakable:--
+
+'He was guilty of incest with his sister!'
+
+She here became so deathly pale, that I feared she would faint; and
+hastened to say, 'My dear friend, I have heard that.' She asked
+quickly, 'From whom? and I answered, 'From Mrs. ----;' when she
+replied, 'Oh, yes!' as if recollecting herself.
+
+I then asked her some questions; in reply to which she said, 'I will
+tell you.'
+
+She then spoke of her first acquaintance with Lord Byron; from which I
+gathered that she, an only child, brought up in retirement, and living
+much within herself, had been, as deep natures often were, intensely
+stirred by his poetry; and had felt a deep interest in him personally,
+as one that had the germs of all that is glorious and noble.
+
+When she was introduced to him, and perceived his admiration of
+herself, and at last received his offer, although deeply moved, she
+doubted her own power to be to him all that a wife should be. She
+declined his offer, therefore, but desired to retain his friendship.
+After this, as she said, a correspondence ensued, mostly on moral and
+literary subjects; and, by this correspondence, her interest in him was
+constantly increased.
+
+At last, she said, he sent her a very beautiful letter, offering
+himself again. 'I thought,' she added, 'that it was sincere, and that I
+might now show him all I felt. I wrote just what was in my heart.
+
+'Afterwards,' she said, 'I found in one of his journals this notice of
+my letter: "A letter from Bell,--never rains but it pours."'
+
+There was through her habitual calm a shade of womanly indignation as
+she spoke these words; but it was gone in a moment. I said, 'And did he
+not love you, then?' She answered, 'No, my dear: he did not love me.'
+
+'Why, then, did he wish to marry you?' She laid her hand on mine, and
+said in a low voice, 'You will see.'
+
+She then told me, that, shortly after the declared engagement, he came
+to her father's house to visit her as an accepted suitor. The visit was
+to her full of disappointment. His appearance was so strange, moody,
+and unaccountable, and his treatment of her so peculiar, that she came
+to the conclusion that he did not love her, and sought an opportunity
+to converse with him alone.
+
+She told him that she saw from his manner that their engagement did not
+give him pleasure; that she should never blame him if he wished to
+dissolve it; that his nature was exceptional; and if, on a nearer view
+of the situation, he shrank from it, she would release him, and remain
+no less than ever his friend.
+
+Upon this, she said, he fainted entirely away.
+
+She stopped a moment, and then, as if speaking with great effort,
+added, '_Then_ I was _sure_ he must love me.'
+
+'And did he not?' said I. 'What other cause could have led to this
+emotion?'
+
+She looked at me very sadly, and said, '_Fear of detection_.'
+
+'What!' said I, 'did _that cause_ then exist?'
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'it did.' And she explained that she _now_ attributed
+Lord Byron's great agitation to fear, that, in some way, suspicion of
+the crime had been aroused in her mind, and that on this account she
+was seeking to break the engagement. She said, that, from that moment,
+her sympathies were aroused for him, to soothe the remorse and anguish
+which seemed preying on his mind, and which she then regarded as the
+sensibility of an unusually exacting moral nature, which judged itself
+by higher standards, and condemned itself unsparingly for what most
+young men of his times regarded as venial faults. She had every hope
+for his future, and all the enthusiasm of belief that so many men and
+women of those times and ours have had in his intrinsic nobleness. She
+said the gloom, however, seemed to be even deeper when he came to the
+marriage; but she looked at it as the suffering of a peculiar being,
+to whom she was called to minister. I said to her, that, even in the
+days of my childhood, I had heard of something very painful that had
+passed as they were in the carriage, immediately after marriage. She
+then said that it was so; that almost his first words, when they were
+alone, were, that she _might_ once have saved him; that, if she had
+accepted him when he first offered, she might have made him anything
+she pleased; but that, as it was, she would find she had married a
+devil.
+
+The conversation, as recorded in Lady Anne Barnard's Diary, seems only
+a continuation of the foregoing, and just what might have followed upon
+it.
+
+I then asked how she became certain of the true cause.
+
+She said, that, from the outset of their married life, his conduct
+towards her was strange and unaccountable, even during the first
+weeks after the wedding, while they were visiting her friends, and
+outwardly on good terms. He seemed resolved to shake and combat both
+her religious principles and her views of the family state. He tried
+to undermine her faith in Christianity as a rule of life by argument
+and by ridicule. He set before her the Continental idea of the liberty
+of marriage; it being a simple partnership of friendship and property,
+the parties to which were allowed by one another to pursue their own
+separate individual tastes. He told her, that, as he could not be
+expected to confine himself to her, neither should he expect or wish
+that she should confine herself to him; that she was young and pretty,
+and could have her lovers, and he should never object; and that she
+must allow him the same freedom.
+
+She said that she did not comprehend to what this was tending till
+after they came to London, and his sister came to stay with them.
+
+At what precise time the idea of an improper connection between her
+husband and his sister was first forced upon her, she did not say;
+but she told me _how_ it was done. She said that one night, in her
+presence, he treated his sister with a liberty which both shocked and
+astonished her. Seeing her amazement and alarm, he came up to her, and
+said, in a sneering tone, 'I suppose you perceive _you_ are not wanted
+here. Go to your own room, and leave us alone. We can amuse ourselves
+better without you.'
+
+She said, 'I went to my room, trembling. I fell down on my knees, and
+prayed to my heavenly Father to have mercy on them. I thought, "What
+shall I do?"'
+
+I remember, after this, a pause in the conversation, during which she
+seemed struggling with thoughts and emotions; and, for my part, I was
+unable to utter a word, or ask a question.
+
+She did not tell me what followed immediately upon this, nor how soon
+after she spoke on the subject with either of the parties. She first
+began to speak of conversations afterwards held with Lord Byron, in
+which he boldly avowed the connection as having existed in time past,
+and as one that was to continue in time to come; and implied that she
+must submit to it. She put it to his conscience as concerning his
+sister's soul, and he said that it was no sin; that it was the way
+the world was first peopled: the Scriptures taught that all the world
+descended from one pair; and how could that be unless brothers married
+their sisters? that, if not a sin then, it could not be a sin now.
+
+I immediately said, 'Why, Lady Byron, those are the very arguments
+given in the drama of "Cain."'
+
+'The very same,' was her reply. 'He could reason very speciously on
+this subject.' She went on to say, that, when she pressed him hard with
+the universal sentiment of mankind as to the horror and the crime, he
+took another turn, and said that the horror and crime were the very
+attraction; that he had worn out all _ordinary_ forms of sin, and that
+he '_longed for the stimulus of a new kind of vice_.' She set before
+him the dread of detection; and then he became furious. _She_ should
+never be the means of his detection, he said. She should leave him;
+_that_ he was resolved upon: but she should always bear all the blame
+of the separation. In the sneering tone which was common with him,
+he said, 'The world will believe me, and it will _not_ believe you.
+The world has made up its mind that "By" is a glorious boy; and the
+world will go for "By," right or wrong. Besides, I shall make it my
+life's object to discredit you: I shall use all my powers. Read "Caleb
+Williams,"[35] and you will see that I shall do by you just as Falkland
+did by Caleb.'
+
+[Footnote 35: This novel of Godwin's is a remarkably powerful story. It
+is related in the first person by the supposed hero, Caleb Williams. He
+represents himself as private secretary to a gentleman of high family
+named Falkland. Caleb accidentally discovers that his patron has, in a
+moment of passion, committed a murder. Falkland confesses the crime to
+Caleb, and tells him that henceforth he shall always suspect him, and
+keep watch over him. Caleb finds this watchfulness insupportable, and
+tries to escape, but without success. He writes a touching letter to
+his patron, imploring him to let him go, and promising never to betray
+him. The scene where Falkland refuses this is the most highly wrought
+in the book. He says to him, "Do not imagine that I am afraid of you;
+I wear an armour against which all your weapons are impotent. I have
+dug a pit for you: and whichever way you move, backward or forward, to
+the right or the left, it is ready to swallow you. Be still! If once
+you fall, call as loud as you will, no man on earth shall hear your
+cries: prepare a tale however plausible or however true, the whole
+world shall execrate you for an impostor. Your innocence shall be of no
+service to you. I laugh at so feeble a defence. It is I that say it:
+you may believe what I tell you. Do you know, miserable wretch!" added
+he, stamping on the ground with fury, "that I have sworn to preserve
+my reputation, whatever be the expense; that I love it more than the
+whole world and its inhabitants taken together? and do you think that
+you shall wound it?" The rest of the book shows how this threat was
+executed.]
+
+I said that all this seemed to me like insanity. She said that she was
+for a time led to think that it was insanity, and excused and pitied
+him; that his treatment of her expressed such hatred and malignity,
+that she knew not what else to think of it: that he seemed resolved to
+drive her out of the house at all hazards, and threatened her, if she
+should remain, in a way to alarm the heart of any woman: yet, thinking
+him insane, she left him at last with the sorrow with which anyone
+might leave a dear friend whose reason was wholly overthrown, and to
+whom in this desolation she was no longer permitted to minister.
+
+I inquired in one of the pauses of the conversation whether Mrs. Leigh
+was a peculiarly beautiful or attractive woman.
+
+'No, my dear: she was plain.'
+
+'Was she, then, distinguished for genius or talent of any kind?'
+
+'Oh, no! Poor woman! she was weak, relatively to him, and wholly under
+his control.'
+
+'And what became of her?' I said.
+
+'She afterwards repented, and became a truly good woman.' I think it
+was here she mentioned that she had frequently seen and conversed with
+Mrs. Leigh in the latter part of her life; and she seemed to derive
+comfort from the recollection.
+
+I asked, 'Was there a child?' I had been told by Mrs. ---- that there
+was a daughter, who had lived some years.
+
+She said there was one, a daughter, who made her friends much trouble,
+being of a very difficult nature to manage. I had understood that at
+one time this daughter escaped from her friends to the Continent, and
+that Lady Byron assisted in efforts to recover her. Of Lady Byron's
+kindness both to Mrs. Leigh and the child, I had before heard from Mrs.
+----, who gave me my first information.
+
+It is also strongly impressed on my mind, that Lady Byron, in answer
+to some question of mine as to whether there was ever any meeting
+between Lord Byron and his sister after he left England, answered,
+that she had insisted upon it, or made it a condition, that Mrs. Leigh
+should not go abroad to him.
+
+When the conversation as to events was over, as I stood musing, I said,
+'Have you no evidence that he repented?' and alluded to the mystery of
+his death, and the message he endeavoured to utter.
+
+She answered quickly, and with great decision, that whatever might have
+been his meaning at that hour, she felt sure he had finally repented;
+and added with great earnestness, 'I do not believe that _any_ child of
+the heavenly Father is ever left to eternal sin.'
+
+I said that such a hope was most delightful to my feelings, but that I
+had always regarded the indulgence of it as a dangerous one.
+
+Her look, voice, and manner, at that moment, are indelibly fixed in my
+mind. She looked at me so sadly, so firmly, and said,--
+
+'Danger, Mrs. Stowe! What danger can come from indulging that hope,
+like the danger that comes from not having it?'
+
+I said in my turn, 'What danger comes from not having it?'
+
+'The danger of losing all faith in God,' she said, 'all hope for
+others, all strength to try and save them. I once knew a lady,' she
+added, 'who was in a state of scepticism and despair from belief in
+that doctrine. I think I saved her by giving her my faith.'
+
+I was silent; and she continued: 'Lord Byron believed in eternal
+punishment fully: for though he reasoned against Christianity as it is
+commonly received, he could not reason himself out of it; and I think
+it made him desperate. He used to say, "The worst of it is I _do_
+believe." Had he seen God as I see him, I am sure his heart would have
+relented.'
+
+She went on to say, that his sins, great as they were, admitted of
+much palliation and excuse; that he was the child of singular and
+ill-matched parents; that he had an organisation originally fine, but
+one capable equally of great good or great evil; that in his childhood
+he had only the worst and most fatal influences; that he grew up into
+manhood with no guide; that there was everything in the classical
+course of the schools to develop an unhealthy growth of passion, and no
+moral influence of any kind to restrain it; that the manners of his day
+were corrupt; that what were now considered vices in society were then
+spoken of as matters of course among young noblemen; that drinking,
+gaming, and licentiousness everywhere abounded: and that, up to a
+certain time, he was no worse than multitudes of other young men of his
+day,--only that the vices of his day were worse for him. The excesses
+of passion, the disregard of physical laws in eating, drinking, and
+living, wrought effects on him that they did not on less sensitively
+organised frames, and prepared him for the evil hour when he fell
+into the sin which shaded his whole life. All the rest was a struggle
+with its consequences,--sinning more and more to conceal the sin of
+the past. But she believed he never outlived remorse; that he always
+suffered; and that this showed that God had not utterly forsaken him.
+Remorse, she said, always showed moral sensibility, and, while _that_
+remained, there was always hope.
+
+She now began to speak of her grounds for thinking it might be her duty
+fully to publish this story before she left the world.
+
+First she said that, through the whole course of her life, she had
+felt the eternal value of truth, and seen how dreadful a thing was
+falsehood, and how fearful it was to be an accomplice in it, even by
+silence. Lord Byron had demoralised the moral sense of England, and he
+had done it in a great degree by the sympathy excited by falsehood.
+This had been pleaded in extenuation of all his crimes and vices, and
+led to a lowering of the standard of morals in the literary world. Now
+it was proposed to print cheap editions of his works, and sell them
+among the common people, and interest them in him by the circulation of
+this same story.
+
+She then said in effect, that she believed in retribution and suffering
+in the future life, and that the consequences of sins _here_ follow us
+_there_; and it was strongly impressed upon her mind that Lord Byron
+must suffer in looking on the evil consequences of what he had done in
+this life, and in seeing the further extension of that evil.
+
+'It has sometimes strongly appeared to me,' she said, 'that he cannot
+be at peace until this injustice has been righted. Such is the strong
+feeling that I have when I think of going where he is.'
+
+These things, she said, had led her to inquire whether it might not be
+her duty to make a full and clear disclosure before she left the world.
+
+Of course, I did not listen to this story as one who was investigating
+its worth. I received it as truth. And the purpose for which it was
+communicated was not to enable me to prove it to the world, but to ask
+my opinion whether _she_ should show it to the world before leaving
+it. The whole consultation was upon the assumption that she had at her
+command such proofs as could not be questioned.
+
+Concerning what they were I did not minutely inquire: only, in answer
+to a general question, she said that she had letters and documents
+in proof of her story. Knowing Lady Byron's strength of mind, her
+clear-headedness, her accurate habits, and her perfect knowledge of the
+matter, I considered her judgment on this point decisive.
+
+I told her that I would take the subject into consideration, and give
+my opinion in a few days. That night, after my sister and myself had
+retired to our own apartment, I related to her the whole history, and
+we spent the night in talking of it. I was powerfully impressed with
+the justice and propriety of an immediate disclosure; while she, on the
+contrary, represented the painful consequences that would probably come
+upon Lady Byron from taking such a step.
+
+Before we parted the next day, I requested Lady Byron to give me some
+memoranda of such dates and outlines of the general story as would
+enable me better to keep it in its connection; which she did.
+
+On giving me the paper, Lady Byron requested me to return it to her
+when it had ceased to be of use to me for the purpose indicated.
+
+Accordingly, a day or two after, I enclosed it to her in a hasty note,
+as I was then leaving London for Paris, and had not yet had time fully
+to consider the subject.
+
+On reviewing my note, I can recall that then the whole history appeared
+to me like one of those singular cases where unnatural impulses to
+vice are the result of a taint of constitutional insanity. This has
+always seemed to me the only way of accounting for instances of
+utterly motiveless and abnormal wickedness and cruelty. These my first
+impressions were expressed in the hasty note written at the time:--
+
+  'LONDON, Nov. 5, 1856.
+
+ 'DEAREST FRIEND,--I return these. They have held mine eyes
+ waking! How strange! how unaccountable! Have you ever subjected the
+ facts to the judgment of a medical man learned in nervous pathology?
+
+ '_Is_ it not insanity?
+
+  "Great wits to madness nearly are allied,
+  And thin partitions do their bounds divide."
+
+ 'But my purpose to-night is not to write you fully what I think of
+ this matter. I am going to write to you from Paris more at leisure.'
+
+The rest of the letter was taken up in the final details of a
+charity in which Lady Byron had been engaged with me in assisting an
+unfortunate artist. It concludes thus:--
+
+ 'I write now in all haste, _en route_ for Paris. As to America, all
+ is not lost yet.[36] Farewell! I love you, my dear friend, as never
+ before, with an intense feeling I cannot easily express. God bless you!
+
+  'H. B. S.'
+
+The next letter is as follows:--
+
+  'PARIS, Dec. 17, 1856.
+
+ [Footnote 36: Alluding to Buchanan's election.]
+
+ 'DEAR LADY BYRON,--The Kansas Committee have written me a
+ letter desiring me to express to Miss ---- their gratitude for the
+ five pounds she sent them. I am not personally acquainted with her,
+ and must return these acknowledgments through you.
+
+ 'I wrote you a day or two since, enclosing the reply of the Kansas
+ Committee to you.
+
+ 'On _that subject_ on which you spoke to me the last time we were
+ together, I have thought often and deeply.
+
+ 'I have changed my mind somewhat. Considering the peculiar
+ circumstances of the case, I could wish that the sacred veil of
+ silence, so bravely thrown over the past, should never be withdrawn
+ during the time that you remain with us.
+
+ 'I would say, then, Leave all with some discreet friends, who, after
+ _both_ have passed from earth, shall say what was due to _justice_.
+
+ 'I am led to think this by seeing how low, how unjust, how unworthy,
+ the judgments of this world are; and I would not that what I so much
+ respect, love, and revere should be placed within reach of its harpy
+ claw, which pollutes what it touches.
+
+ 'The day will yet come which will bring to light every hidden thing.
+ "There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that
+ shall not be known;" and so _justice will not fail_.
+
+ 'Such, my dear friend, are my thoughts; different from what they were
+ since first I heard that strange, sad history. Meanwhile, _I love you
+ ever_, whether we meet again on earth or not.
+
+  'Affectionately yours,
+
+  'H. B. S.'
+
+The following letter will here be inserted as confirming a part of Lady
+Byron's story:--
+
+
+ TO THE EDITOR OF 'MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE.'
+
+ 'SIR,--I trust that you will hold me excused from any desire
+ to be troublesome, or to rush into print. Both these things are far
+ from my wish. But the publication of a book having for its object the
+ vindication of Lord Byron's character, and the subsequent appearance
+ in your magazine of Mrs. Stowe's article in defence of Lady Byron,
+ having led to so much controversy in the various newspapers of the
+ day, I feel constrained to put in a few words among the rest.
+
+ 'My father was intimately acquainted with Lady Byron's family for many
+ years, both before and after her marriage; being, in fact, steward to
+ Sir Ralph Milbanke at Seaham, where the marriage took place; and, from
+ all my recollections of what he told me of the affair (and he used
+ often to talk of it, up to the time of his death, eight years ago), I
+ fully agree with Mrs. Stowe's view of the case, and desire to add my
+ humble testimony to the truth of what she has stated.
+
+ 'Whilst Byron was staying at Seaham, previous to his marriage, he
+ spent most of his time pistol-shooting in the plantations adjoining
+ the hall, often making use of his glove as a mark; his servant being
+ with him to load for him.
+
+ 'When all was in readiness for the wedding-ceremony (which took place
+ in the drawing-room of the hall), Byron had to be sought for in the
+ grounds, where he was walking in his usual surly mood.
+
+ 'After the marriage, they posted to Halnaby Lodge in Yorkshire, a
+ distance of about forty miles; to which place my father accompanied
+ them, and he always spoke strongly of Lady Byron's apparent distress
+ during and at the end of the journey.
+
+ 'The insulting words mentioned by Mrs. Stowe were spoken by Byron
+ before leaving the park at Seaham; after which he appeared to sit
+ in moody silence, reading a book, for the rest of the journey. At
+ Halnaby, a number of persons, tenants and others, were met to cheer
+ them on their arrival. Of these he took not the slightest notice, but
+ jumped out of the carriage, and walked away, leaving his bride to
+ alight by herself. She shook hands with my father, and begged that he
+ would see that some refreshment was supplied to those who had thus
+ come to welcome them.
+
+ 'I have in my possession several letters (which I should be glad to
+ show to anyone interested in the matter) both from Lady Byron, and her
+ mother, Lady Milbanke, to my father, all showing the deep and kind
+ interest which they took in the welfare of all connected with them,
+ and directing the distribution of various charities, &c. Pensions were
+ allowed both to the old servants of the Milbankes and to several poor
+ persons in the village and neighbourhood for the rest of their lives;
+ and Lady Byron never ceased to take a lively interest in all that
+ concerned them.
+
+ 'I desire to tender my humble thanks to Mrs. Stowe for having
+ come forward in defence of one whose character has been much
+ misrepresented; and to you, sir, for having published the same in your
+ pages.
+
+  'I have the honour to be, sir, yours obediently,
+
+  'G. H. AIRD.
+
+  'DAOURTY, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, Sept. 29, 1869.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY OF EVENTS.
+
+
+I have now fulfilled as conscientiously as possible the requests of
+those who feel that they have a right to know exactly what was said in
+this interview.
+
+It has been my object, in doing this, to place myself just where I
+should stand were I giving evidence under oath before a legal tribunal.
+In my first published account, there were given some smaller details of
+the story, of no particular value to the main purpose of it, which I
+received _not_ from Lady Byron, but from her confidential friend. One
+of these was the account of her seeing Lord Byron's favourite spaniel
+lying at his door, and the other was the scene of the parting.
+
+The first was communicated to me before I ever saw Lady Byron, and
+under these circumstances:--I was invited to meet her, and had
+expressed my desire to do so, because Lord Byron had been all my life
+an object of great interest to me. I inquired what sort of a person
+Lady Byron was. My friend spoke of her with enthusiasm. I then said,
+'but of course she never _loved_ Lord Byron, or she would not have left
+him.' The lady answered, 'I can show you with what feelings she left
+him by relating this story;' and then followed the anecdote.
+
+Subsequently, she also related to me the other story of the
+parting-scene between Lord and Lady Byron. In regard to these two
+incidents, my recollection is clear.
+
+It will be observed by the reader that Lady Byron's conversation with
+me was simply for consultation _on one point_, and that point whether
+_she herself_ should publish the story before her death. It was not,
+therefore, a complete history of all the events in their order, but
+specimens of a few incidents and facts. Her object was, not to prove
+her story to me, nor to put me in possession of it with a view to _my_
+proving it, but simply and briefly to show me _what it was_, that I
+might judge as to the probable results of its publication at that time.
+
+It therefore comprised primarily these points:--
+
+1. An exact statement, in so many words, of the crime.
+
+2. A statement of the manner in which it was first forced on her
+attention by Lord Byron's words and actions, including: his admissions
+and defences of it.
+
+3. The admission of a period when she had ascribed his whole conduct to
+insanity.
+
+4. A reference to later positive evidences of guilt,--the existence of
+a child, and Mrs. Leigh's subsequent repentance.
+
+And here I have a word to say in reference to the alleged inaccuracies
+of my true story.
+
+The dates that Lady Byron gave me on the memoranda did not relate
+either to the time of the first disclosure, or the period when her
+doubts became certainties; nor did her conversation touch either of
+these points: and, on a careful review of the latter, I see clearly
+that it omitted dwelling upon anything which I might be supposed to
+have learned from her already published statement.
+
+I re-enclosed that paper to her from London, and have never seen it
+since.
+
+In writing my account, which I designed to do in the most general
+terms, I took for my guide Miss Martineau's published Memoir of Lady
+Byron, which has long stood uncontradicted before the public, of which
+Macmillan's London edition is now before me. The reader is referred to
+page 316, which reads thus:--
+
+'She was born 1792; married in January 1814; returned to her father's
+house in 1816; died on May 16, 1860.' This makes her married life two
+years; but we need not say that the date is inaccurate, as Lady Byron
+was married in 1815.
+
+Supposing Lady Byron's married life to have covered two years, I
+could only reconcile its continuance for that length of time to her
+uncertainty as to his sanity; to deceptions practised on her, making
+her doubt at one time, and believe at another; and his keeping her in a
+general state of turmoil and confusion, till at last he took the step
+of banishing her.
+
+Various other points taken from Miss Martineau have also been attacked
+as inaccuracies; for example, the number of executions in the house:
+but these points, though of no importance, are substantially borne out
+by Moore's statements.
+
+This controversy, unfortunately, cannot be managed with the accuracy of
+a legal trial. Its course, hitherto, has rather resembled the course of
+a drawing-room scandal, where everyone freely throws in an assertion,
+with or without proof. In making out my narrative, however, I shall use
+only certain authentic sources, some of which have for a long time been
+before the public, and some of which have floated up from the waves of
+the recent controversy. I consider as authentic sources,--
+
+Moore's Life of Byron;
+
+Lady Byron's own account of the separation, published in 1830;
+
+Lady Byron's statements to me in 1856;
+
+Lord Lindsay's communication, giving an extract from Lady Anne
+Barnard's diary, and a copy of a letter from Lady Byron dated 1818,
+about three years after her marriage;
+
+Mrs. Mimms' testimony, as given in a daily paper published at
+Newcastle, England;
+
+And Lady Byron's letters, as given recently in the late 'London
+Quarterly.'
+
+All which documents appear to arrange themselves into a connected
+series.
+
+From these, then, let us construct the story.
+
+According to Mrs. Mimms' account, which is likely to be accurate, the
+time spent by Lord and Lady Byron in bridal-visiting was three weeks at
+Halnaby Hall, and six weeks at Seaham, when Mrs. Mimms quitted their
+service.
+
+During this first period of three weeks, Lord Byron's treatment of his
+wife, as testified to by the servant, was such that she advised her
+young mistress to return to her parents; and, at one time, Lady Byron
+had almost resolved to do so.
+
+What the particulars of his conduct were, the servant refuses to state;
+being bound by a promise of silence to her mistress. She, however,
+testifies to a warm friendship existing between Lady Byron and Mrs.
+Leigh, in a manner which would lead us to feel that Lady Byron received
+and was received by Lord Byron's sister with the greatest affection.
+Lady Byron herself says to Lady Anne Barnard, 'I had heard that he was
+the best of brothers;' and the inference is, that she, at an early
+period of her married life, felt the greatest confidence in his sister,
+and wished to have her with them as much as possible. In Lady Anne's
+account, this wish to have the sister with her was increased by Lady
+Byron's distress at her husband's attempts to corrupt her principles
+with regard to religion and marriage.
+
+In Moore's Life, vol. iii., letter 217, Lord Byron writes from Seaham
+to Moore, under date of March 8, sending a copy of his verses in Lady
+Byron's handwriting, and saying, 'We shall leave this place to-morrow,
+and shall stop on our way to town, in the interval of taking a house
+there, at Colonel Leigh's, near Newmarket, where any epistle of yours
+will find its welcome way. I have been very comfortable here, listening
+to that d----d monologue which elderly gentlemen call conversation, in
+which my pious father-in-law repeats himself every evening, save one,
+when he played upon the fiddle. However, they have been vastly kind and
+hospitable, and I like them and the place vastly; and I hope they will
+live many happy months. Bell is in health and unvaried good-humour and
+behaviour; but we are in all the agonies of packing and parting.'
+
+Nine days after this, under date of March 17, Lord Byron says, 'We
+mean to metropolize to-morrow, and you will address your next to
+Piccadilly.' The inference is, that the days intermediate were spent
+at Colonel Leigh's. The next letters, and all subsequent ones for six
+months, are dated from Piccadilly.
+
+As we have shown, there is every reason to believe that a warm
+friendship had thus arisen between Mrs. Leigh and Lady Byron, and that,
+during all this time, Lady Byron desired as much of the society of her
+sister-in-law as possible. She was a married woman and a mother, her
+husband's nearest relative; and Lady Byron could with more propriety
+ask, from her, counsel or aid in respect to his peculiarities than she
+could from her own parents. If we consider the character of Lady Byron
+as given by Mrs. Mimms,--that of a young person of warm but repressed
+feeling, without sister or brother, longing for human sympathy,
+and having so far found no relief but in talking with a faithful
+dependant,--we may easily see that the acquisition of a sister through
+Lord Byron might have been all in all to her, and that the feelings
+which he checked and rejected for himself might have flowed out towards
+his sister with enthusiasm. The date of Mrs. Leigh's visit does not
+appear.
+
+The first domestic indication in Lord Byron's letters from London is
+the announcement of the death of Lady Byron's uncle, Lord Wentworth,
+from whom came large expectations of property. Lord Byron had mentioned
+him before in his letters as so kind to Bell and himself that he
+could not find it in his heart to wish him in heaven if he preferred
+staying here. In his letter of April 23, he mentions going to the play
+immediately after hearing this news, 'although,' as he says, 'he ought
+to have stayed at home in sackcloth for "unc."'
+
+On June 12, he writes that Lady Byron is more than three months
+advanced in her progress towards maternity; and that they have been out
+very little, as he wishes to keep her quiet. We are informed by Moore
+that Lord Byron was at this time a member of the Drury-Lane Theatre
+Committee; and that, in this unlucky connection, one of the fatalities
+of the first year of trial as a husband lay. From the strain of Byron's
+letters, as given in Moore, it is apparent, that, while he thinks it
+best for his wife to remain at home, he does not propose to share the
+retirement, but prefers running his own separate career with such
+persons as thronged the greenroom of the theatre in those days.
+
+In commenting on Lord Byron's course, we must not by any means be
+supposed to indicate that he was doing any more or worse than most gay
+young men of his time. The licence of the day as to getting drunk at
+dinner-parties, and leading, generally, what would, in these days, be
+called a disorderly life, was great. We should infer that none of the
+literary men of Byron's time would have been ashamed of being drunk
+occasionally. The Noctes Ambrosianae Club of 'Blackwood' is full of
+songs glorying, in the broadest terms, in out-and-out drunkenness, and
+inviting to it as the highest condition of a civilised being.[37]
+
+[Footnote 37: Shelton Mackenzie, in a note to the 'Noctes' of July
+1822, gives the following saying of Maginn, one of the principal lights
+of the club: 'No man, however much he might tend to civilisation,
+was to be regarded as having absolutely reached its apex until he
+was drunk.' He also records it as a further joke of the club, that a
+man's having reached this apex was to be tested by his inability to
+pronounce the word 'civilisation,' which, he says, after ten o'clock at
+night ought to be abridged to _civilation_, 'by syncope, or vigorously
+speaking by hic-cup.']
+
+But drunkenness upon Lord Byron had a peculiar and specific effect,
+which he notices afterwards, in his Journal, at Venice: 'The effect
+of all wines and spirits upon me is, however, strange. It settles,
+but makes me gloomy--gloomy at the very moment of their effect: it
+composes, however, though _sullenly_.'[38] And, again, in another
+place, he says, 'Wine and spirits make me sullen, and savage to
+ferocity.'
+
+[Footnote 38: Vol. v. pp. 61, 75.]
+
+It is well known that the effects of alcoholic excitement are various
+as the natures of the subjects. But by far the worst effects, and the
+most destructive to domestic peace, are those that occur in cases where
+spirits, instead of acting on the nerves of motion, and depriving
+the subject of power in that direction, stimulate the brain so as to
+produce there the ferocity, the steadiness, the utter deadness to
+compassion or conscience, which characterise a madman. How fearful
+to a sensitive young mother in the period of pregnancy might be the
+return of such a madman to the domestic roof! Nor can we account for
+those scenes described in Lady Anne Barnard's letters, where Lord Byron
+returned from his evening parties to try torturing experiments on his
+wife, otherwise than by his own statement, that spirits, while they
+_steadied_ him, made him 'gloomy, and savage to ferocity.'
+
+Take for example this:--
+
+ 'One night, coming home from one of his lawless parties, he saw me
+ (Lady B.) so indignantly collected, and bearing all with such a
+ determined calmness, that a rush of remorse seemed to come over him.
+ He called himself a monster, and, though his sister was present, threw
+ himself in agony at my feet. "I could not, no, I could not, forgive
+ him such injuries! He had lost me for ever!" Astonished at this return
+ to virtue, my tears, I believe, flowed over his face; and I said,
+ "Byron, all is forgotten; _never_, never shall you hear of it more."
+
+ 'He started up, and folding his arms while he looked at me, burst
+ out into laughter. "What do you mean?" said I. "Only a philosophical
+ experiment; that's all," said he. "I wished to ascertain the value of
+ your resolutions."'
+
+To ascribe such deliberate cruelty as this to the effect of drink upon
+Lord Byron, is the most charitable construction that can be put upon
+his conduct.
+
+Yet the manners of the period were such, that Lord Byron must have
+often come to this condition while only doing what many of his
+acquaintances did freely, and without fear of consequences.
+
+Mr. Moore, with his usual artlessness, gives us an idea of a private
+supper between himself and Lord Byron. We give it, with our own
+italics, as a specimen of many others:--
+
+ 'Having taken upon me to order the repast, and knowing that Lord Byron
+ for the last two days had done nothing towards sustenance beyond
+ eating a few biscuits and (to appease appetite) chewing mastic, I
+ desired that we should have a good supply of at least two kinds of
+ fish. My companion, however, confined himself to lobsters; and of
+ these finished two or three, to his own share, interposing, sometimes,
+ a small liqueur-glass of strong white brandy, sometimes a tumbler of
+ very hot water, and then pure brandy again, to the amount of near half
+ a dozen small glasses of the latter, without which, alternately with
+ the hot water, he appeared to think the lobster could not be digested.
+ After this, we had claret, of which, having despatched two bottles
+ between us, at about four o'clock in the morning we parted.
+
+ 'As Pope has thought his "delicious lobster-nights" worth
+ commemorating, these particulars of one in which Lord Byron was
+ concerned may also have some interest.
+
+ 'Among _other nights of the same description which I had the happiness
+ of passing with him_, I remember once, in returning home from some
+ assembly at rather a late hour, we saw lights in the windows of his
+ old haunt, Stevens's in Bond Street, and agreed to stop there and
+ sup. On entering, we found an old friend of his, Sir G---- W----, who
+ joined our party; and, the _lobsters and brandy and water being put
+ in requisition, it was (as usual on such occasions) broad daylight
+ before we separated_.'--Vol. iii. p. 83.
+
+During the latter part of Lady Byron's pregnancy, it appears from Moore
+that Byron was, night after night, engaged out at dinner parties,
+in which getting drunk was considered as of course the _finale_, as
+appears from the following letters:--
+
+
+(LETTER 228.)
+
+TO MR. MOORE.
+
+  TERRACE, PICCADILLY, Oct. 31, 1815.
+
+ 'I have not been able to ascertain precisely the time of duration of
+ the stock-market; but I believe it is a good time for selling out, and
+ I hope so. First, because I shall see you; and, next, because I shall
+ receive certain moneys on behalf of Lady B., the which will materially
+ conduce to my comfort; I wanting (as the duns say) "to make up a sum."
+
+ 'Yesterday I dined out with a large-ish party, where were Sheridan
+ and Colman, Harry Harris, of C. G., and his brother, Sir Gilbert
+ Heathcote, Ds. Kinnaird, and others of note and notoriety. _Like
+ other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then
+ argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible,[39] then
+ altogethery, then inarticulate, and then drunk._ When we had reached
+ the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down
+ again without stumbling; and, to crown all, Kinnaird and I had
+ to conduct Sheridan down a d----d corkscrew staircase, which had
+ certainly been constructed before the discovery of fermented liquors,
+ and to which no legs, however crooked, could possibly accommodate
+ themselves. We deposited him safe at home, where his man, _evidently
+ used to the business_,[40] waited to receive him in the hall.
+
+ [Footnote 39: These italics are ours.]
+
+ [Footnote 40: These italics are ours.]
+
+ 'Both he and Colman were, as usual, very good; but I carried away much
+ wine, and the wine had previously carried away my memory: so that
+ all was hiccough and happiness for the last hour or so, and I am
+ not impregnated with any of the conversation. Perhaps you heard of a
+ late answer of Sheridan to the watchman who found him bereft of that
+ "divine particle of air" called reason.... He (the watchman) found
+ Sherry in the street fuddled and bewildered, and almost insensible.
+ "Who are _you_, sir?"--No answer. "What's your name?"--A hiccough.
+ "What's your name?"--Answer, in a slow, deliberate, and impassive
+ tone, "Wilberforce!" Is not that Sherry all over?--and, to my mind,
+ excellent. Poor fellow, _his_ very dregs are better than the "first
+ sprightly runnings" of others.
+
+ 'My paper is full, and I have a grievous headache.
+
+ 'P.S.--Lady B. is in full progress. Next month will bring to light
+ (with the aid of "Juno Lucina, _fer opem_," or rather _opes_, for the
+ last are most wanted) the tenth wonder of the world; Gil Blas being
+ the eighth, and he (my son's father) the ninth.'
+
+Here we have a picture of the whole story,--Lady Byron within a month
+of her confinement; her money being used to settle debts; her husband
+out at a dinner-party, going through the _usual course_ of such
+parties, able to keep his legs and help Sheridan downstairs, and going
+home 'gloomy, and savage to ferocity,' to his wife.
+
+Four days after this (letter 229), we find that this dinner-party is
+not an exceptional one, but one of a series: for he says, 'To-day I
+dine with Kinnaird,--we are to have Sheridan and Colman again; and
+to-morrow, once more, at Sir Gilbert Heathcote's.'
+
+Afterward, in Venice, he reviews the state of his health, at this
+period in London; and his account shows that his excesses in the
+vices of his times had wrought effects on his sensitive, nervous
+organisation, very different from what they might on the more
+phlegmatic constitutions of ordinary Englishmen. In his journal, dated
+Venice, Feb. 2, 1821, he says,--
+
+ 'I have been considering what can be the reason why I always wake at
+ a certain hour in the morning, and always in very bad spirits,--I may
+ say, in actual despair and despondency, in all respects, even of that
+ which pleased me over night. In about an hour or two this goes off,
+ and I compose either to sleep again, or at least to quiet. In England,
+ five years ago, I had the same kind of hypochondria, but accompanied
+ with so violent a thirst, that I have drunk as many as fifteen bottles
+ of soda-water in one night, after going to bed, and been still
+ thirsty,--calculating, however, some lost from the bursting-out and
+ effervescence and overflowing of the soda-water in drawing the corks,
+ or striking off the necks of the bottles from mere thirsty impatience.
+ At present, I have _not_ the thirst; but the depression of spirits is
+ no less violent.'--Vol. v. p. 96.
+
+These extracts go to show what _must_ have been the condition of the
+man whom Lady Byron was called to receive at the intervals when he
+came back from his various social excitements and pleasures. That his
+nerves were exacerbated by violent extremes of abstinence and reckless
+indulgence; that he was often day after day drunk, and that drunkenness
+made him savage and ferocious,--such are the facts clearly shown by Mr.
+Moore's narrative. Of the natural peculiarities of Lord Byron's temper,
+he thus speaks to the Countess of Blessington:--
+
+ 'I often think that I inherit my violence and bad temper from my poor
+ mother,--not that my father, from all I could ever learn, had a much
+ better; so that it is no wonder I have such a very bad one. As long
+ as I can remember anything, I recollect being subject to violent
+ paroxysms of rage, so disproportioned to the cause as to surprise me
+ when they were over; and this still continues. I cannot coolly view
+ any thing which excites my feelings; and, once the lurking devil in
+ me is roused, I lose all command of myself. I do not recover a good
+ fit of rage for days after. Mind, I do not by this mean that the
+ ill humour continues, as, on the contrary, that quickly subsides,
+ exhausted by its own violence; but it shakes me terribly, and leaves
+ me low and nervous after.'--_Lady Blessington's Conversations_, p. 142.
+
+That during this time also his irritation and ill temper were increased
+by the mortification of duns, debts, and executions, is on the face of
+Moore's story. Moore himself relates one incident, which gives some
+idea of the many which may have occurred at these times, in a note
+on p. 215, vol. iv., where he speaks of Lord Byron's destroying a
+favourite old watch that had been his companion from boyhood, and gone
+with him to Greece. 'In a fit of vexation and rage, brought upon him by
+some of these humiliating embarrassments, to which he was now almost
+daily a prey, he furiously dashed this watch on the hearth, and ground
+it to pieces with the poker among the ashes.'
+
+It is no wonder, that, with a man of this kind to manage, Lady Byron
+should have clung to the only female companionship she could dare to
+trust in the case, and earnestly desired to retain with her the sister,
+who seemed, more than herself, to have influence over him.
+
+The first letter given by 'The Quarterly,' from Lady Byron to Mrs.
+Leigh, without a date, evidently belongs to this period, when the
+sister's society presented itself as a refuge in her approaching
+confinement. Mrs. Leigh speaks of leaving. The young wife conscious
+that the house presents no attractions, and that soon she herself shall
+be laid by, cannot urge Mrs. Leigh's stay as likely to give her any
+pleasure, but only as a comfort to herself.
+
+ 'You will think me very foolish; but I have tried two or three times,
+ and cannot _talk_ to you of your departure with a decent visage: so
+ let me say one word in this way to spare my philosophy. With the
+ expectations which I have, I never will nor can ask you to stay one
+ moment longer than you are inclined to do. It would [be] the worst
+ return for all I ever received from you. But in this at least I _am_
+ "truth itself," when I say, that whatever the situation may be, there
+ is no one whose society is dearer to me, or can contribute more to my
+ happiness. These feelings will not change under any circumstances,
+ and I should be grieved if you did not understand them. Should you
+ hereafter condemn me, I shall not love you less. I will say no more.
+ Judge for yourself about going or staying. I wish you to consider
+ _yourself_, if you could be wise enough to do that, for the first time
+ in your life.
+
+  'Thine,
+
+  'A. I. B.'
+
+  Addressed on the cover, 'To The Hon. Mrs. Leigh.'
+
+This letter not being dated, we have no clue but what we obtain from
+its own internal evidence. It certainly is not written in Lady Byron's
+usual clear and elegant style; and is, in this respect, in striking
+contrast to all her letters that I have ever seen.
+
+But the notes written by a young woman under such peculiar and
+distressing circumstances must not be judged by the standard of calmer
+hours.
+
+Subsequently to this letter, and during that stormy, irrational period
+when Lord Byron's conduct became daily more and more unaccountable, may
+have come that startling scene in which Lord Byron took every pains to
+convince his wife of improper relations subsisting between himself and
+his sister.
+
+What an _utter_ desolation this must have been to the wife, tearing
+from her the last hold of friendship, and the last refuge to which she
+had clung in her sorrows, may easily be conceived.
+
+In this crisis, it appears that the _sister_ convinced Lady Byron that
+the whole was to be attributed to insanity. It would be a conviction
+gladly accepted, and bringing infinite relief, although still
+surrounding her path with fearful difficulties.
+
+That such was the case is plainly asserted by Lady Byron in her
+statement published in 1830. Speaking of her separation, Lady Byron
+says:--
+
+ 'The facts are, I left London for Kirkby Mallory, the residence of
+ my father and mother, on the 15th of January, 1816. Lord Byron had
+ signified to me in writing, Jan. 6, his _absolute desire_ that I
+ should leave London on the earliest day that I could conveniently fix.
+ It was not safe for me to encounter the fatigues of a journey sooner
+ than the 15th. _Previously to my departure, it had been strongly
+ impressed on my mind that Lord Byron was under the influence of
+ insanity._
+
+ 'This opinion was in a great measure derived from the communications
+ made to me by his _nearest relatives_ and personal attendant.'
+
+Now there was no nearer relative than Mrs. Leigh; and the personal
+attendant was Fletcher. It was therefore presumably Mrs. Leigh who
+convinced Lady Byron of her husband's insanity.
+
+Lady Byron says, 'It was even represented to me that he was in danger
+of destroying himself.
+
+'_With the concurrence_ of his family, I had consulted with Dr.
+Baillie, as a friend, on Jan. 8, as to his supposed malady.' Now, Lord
+Byron's written order for her to leave came on Jan. 6. It appears,
+then, that Lady Byron, acting in concurrence with Mrs. Leigh and
+others of her husband's family, consulted Dr. Baillie, on Jan. 8, as
+to what she should do; the symptoms presented to Dr. Baillie being,
+evidently, insane hatred of his wife on the part of Lord Byron, and a
+determination to get her out of the house. Lady Byron goes on:--
+
+ 'On acquainting him with the state of the case, and with Lord
+ Byron's desire that I should leave London, Dr. Baillie thought my
+ absence might be advisable as an experiment, _assuming_ the fact of
+ mental derangement; for Dr. Baillie, not having had access to Lord
+ Byron, could not pronounce an opinion on that point. He enjoined,
+ that, in correspondence with Lord Byron, I should avoid all but
+ light and soothing topics. Under these impressions, I left London,
+ determined to follow the advice given me by Dr. Baillie. Whatever
+ might have been the nature of Lord Byron's treatment of me from the
+ time of my marriage, yet, supposing him to have been in a state of
+ mental alienation, it was not for _me_, nor for any person of common
+ humanity, to manifest at that moment a sense of injury.'
+
+It appears, then, that the domestic situation in Byron's house at the
+time of his wife's expulsion was one so grave as to call for family
+counsel; for Lady Byron, generally accurate, speaks in the plural
+number. 'His _nearest_ relatives' certainly includes Mrs. Leigh. 'His
+family' includes more. That some of Lord Byron's own relatives were
+cognisant of facts at this time, and that they took Lady Byron's side,
+is shown by one of his own chance admissions. In vol. vi. p. 394, in a
+letter on Bowles, he says, speaking of this time, '_All my relations_,
+save one, fell from me like leaves from a tree in autumn.' And in
+Medwin's Conversations he says, 'Even my cousin George Byron, who had
+been brought up with me, and whom I loved as a brother, took my wife's
+part.' The conduct must have been marked in the extreme that led to
+this result.
+
+We cannot help stopping here to say that Lady Byron's situation at
+this time has been discussed in our days with a want of ordinary human
+feeling that is surprising. Let any father and mother, reading this,
+look on their own daughter, and try to make the case their own.
+
+After a few short months of married life,--months full of patient
+endurance of the strangest and most unaccountable treatment,--she comes
+to them, expelled from her husband's house, an object of hatred and
+aversion to him, and having to settle for herself the awful question,
+whether he is a dangerous madman or a determined villain.
+
+Such was this young wife's situation.
+
+With a heart at times wrung with compassion for her husband as a
+helpless maniac, and fearful that all may end in suicide, yet compelled
+to leave him, she writes on the road the much-quoted letter, beginning
+'Dear Duck.' This is an exaggerated and unnatural letter, it is
+true, but of precisely the character that might be expected from an
+inexperienced young wife when dealing with a husband supposed to be
+insane.
+
+The next day, she addressed to Augusta this letter:--
+
+ 'MY DEAREST A.,--It is my great comfort that _you_ are still
+ in Piccadilly.'
+
+And again, on the 23rd:--
+
+ 'DEAREST A.,--I know you feel for me, as 1 do for you; and
+ perhaps I am better understood than I think. You have been, ever since
+ I knew you, my best comforter; and will so remain, unless you grow
+ tired of the office,--which may well be.'
+
+We can see here how self-denying and heroic appears to Lady Byron the
+conduct of the sister, who patiently remains to soothe and guide and
+restrain the moody madman, whose madness takes a form, at times, so
+repulsive to every womanly feeling. She intimates that she should not
+wonder should Augusta grow weary of the office.
+
+Lady Byron continues her statement thus:--
+
+ 'When I arrived at Kirkby Mallory, my parents were unacquainted
+ with the existence of any causes likely to destroy my prospects of
+ happiness; and, when I communicated to them the opinion that had been
+ formed concerning Lord Byron's state of mind, they were most anxious
+ to promote his restoration by every means in their power. They assured
+ those relations that were with him in London that "they would devote
+ their whole care and attention to the alleviation of his malady."'
+
+Here we have a _quotation_[41] from a letter written by Lady Milbanke
+to the anxious 'relations' who are taking counsel about Lord Byron in
+town. Lady Byron also adds, in justification of her mother from Lord
+Byron's slanders, 'She had always treated him with an affectionate
+consideration and indulgence, which extended to every little
+peculiarity of his feelings. Never did an irritating word escape her
+lips in her whole intercourse with him.'
+
+[Footnote 41: This little incident shows the characteristic carefulness
+and accuracy of Lady Byron's habits. This statement was written
+_fourteen_ years after the events spoken of; but Lady Byron carefully
+quotes a passage from her mother's letter written at that time. This
+shows that a copy of Lady Milbanke's letter had been preserved, and
+makes it appear probable that copies of the whole correspondence of
+that period were also kept. Great light could be thrown on the whole
+transaction, could these documents be consulted.]
+
+Now comes a remarkable part of Lady Byron's statement:--
+
+ 'The accounts given me after I left Lord Byron, by those in constant
+ intercourse with him,[42] _added_ to those doubts which had before
+ transiently occurred to my mind as to the reality of the alleged
+ disease; and the reports of his medical attendants were far from
+ establishing anything like lunacy.'
+
+[Footnote 42: Here, again, Lady Byron's sealed papers might furnish
+light. The letters addressed to her at this time by those in constant
+intercourse with Lord Byron are doubtless preserved, and would show her
+ground of action.]
+
+When these doubts arose in her mind, it is not natural to suppose
+that they should, at first, involve Mrs. Leigh. She still appears to
+Lady Byron as the devoted, believing sister, fully convinced of her
+brother's insanity, and endeavouring to restrain and control him.
+
+But if Lord Byron were sane, if the purposes he had avowed to his wife
+were real, he must have lied about his sister in the past, and perhaps
+have the worst intentions for the future.
+
+The horrors of that state of vacillation between the conviction of
+insanity and the commencing conviction of something worse can scarcely
+be told.
+
+At all events, the wife's doubts extend so far that she speaks out to
+her parents. 'UNDER THIS UNCERTAINTY,' says the statement,
+'I deemed it right to communicate to my parents, that, if I were to
+consider Lord Byron's past conduct as that of a person of sound mind,
+_nothing could induce me to return to him_. It therefore appeared
+expedient, both to them and to myself, to consult the ablest advisers.
+For that object, and also to obtain still further information
+respecting appearances which indicated mental derangement, my mother
+determined to go to London. She was empowered by me to take legal
+opinion on a written statement of mine; though I then had reasons for
+reserving a _part of the case from the knowledge even of my father and
+mother_.'
+
+It is during this time of uncertainty that the next letter to Mrs.
+Leigh may be placed. It seems to be rather a fragment of a letter
+than a whole one: perhaps it is an extract; in which case it would be
+desirable, if possible, to view it in connection with the remaining
+text:--
+
+  'Jan. 25, 1816.
+
+ 'MY DEAREST AUGUSTA,--Shall I still be your sister? I must
+ resign my right to be so considered; but I don't think that will make
+ any difference in the kindness I have so uniformly experienced from
+ you.'
+
+This fragment is not signed, nor finished in any way, but indicates
+that the writer is about to take a decisive step.
+
+On the 17th, as we have seen, Lady Milbanke had written, inviting
+Lord Byron. Subsequently she went to London to make more particular
+inquiries into his state. This fragment seems part of a letter from
+Lady Byron, called forth in view of some evidence resulting from her
+mother's observations.[43]
+
+[Footnote 43: Probably Lady Milbanke's letters are among the sealed
+papers, and would more fully explain the situation.]
+
+Lady Byron now adds:--
+
+ 'Being convinced by the result of these inquiries, and by the tenour
+ of Lord Byron's proceedings, that the notion of insanity was an
+ illusion, I no longer hesitated to authorize such measures as were
+ necessary in order to secure me from ever being again placed in his
+ power.
+
+ 'Conformably with this resolution, my father wrote to him, on the 2nd
+ of February, to request an amicable separation.'
+
+The following letter to Mrs. Leigh is dated the day after this
+application, and is in many respects a noticeable one:--
+
+  'KIRKBY MALLORY, Feb. 3, 1816.
+
+ 'MY DEAREST AUGUSTA,--You are desired by your brother to ask
+ if my father has acted with my concurrence in proposing a separation.
+ He has. It cannot be supposed, that, in my present distressing
+ situation, I am capable of stating in a detailed manner the reasons
+ which will not only justify this measure, but compel me to take it;
+ and it never can be my wish to remember _unnecessarily_ [_sic_]
+ those injuries for which, however deep, I feel no resentment. I will
+ now only recall to Lord Byron's mind his avowed and insurmountable
+ aversion to the married state, and the desire and determination
+ he has expressed ever since its commencement to free himself from
+ that bondage, as finding it quite insupportable, though candidly
+ acknowledging that no effort of duty or affection has been wanting on
+ my part. He has too painfully convinced me that all these attempts
+ to contribute towards his happiness were wholly useless, and most
+ unwelcome to him. I enclose this letter to my father, wishing it to
+ receive his sanction.
+
+  'Ever yours most affectionately,
+
+  'A. I. BYRON.'
+
+We observe in this letter that it is written to _be shown_ to Lady
+Byron's father, and receive his sanction; and, as that father was
+in ignorance of all the deeper causes of trouble in the case, it
+will be seen that the letter must necessarily be a reserved one.
+This sufficiently accounts for the guarded character of the language
+when speaking of the causes of separation. One part of the letter
+incidentally overthrows Lord Byron's statement, which he always
+repeated during his life, and which is repeated for him now; namely,
+that his wife _forsook_ him, instead of being, as she claims,
+_expelled_ by him.
+
+She recalls to Lord Byron's mind the 'desire and _determination_ he has
+expressed ever since his marriage to free himself from its bondage.'
+
+This is in perfect keeping with the '_absolute_ desire,' signified
+by writing, that she should leave his house on the earliest day
+possible; and she places the cause of the separation on his having 'too
+painfully' convinced her that he does not want her--as a wife.
+
+It appears that Augusta hesitates to show this note to her brother. It
+is bringing on a crisis which she, above all others, would most wish to
+avoid.
+
+In the meantime, Lady Byron receives a letter from Lord Byron, which
+makes her feel it more than ever essential to make the decision final.
+I have reason to believe that this letter is preserved in Lady Byron's
+papers:--
+
+  'Feb. 4, 1816.
+
+ 'I hope, my dear A., that you would on no account withhold from your
+ brother the letter which I sent yesterday in answer to yours written
+ by his desire, particularly as one which I have received from himself
+ to-day renders it still more important that he should know the
+ contents of that addressed to you, I am, in haste and not very well,
+
+  'Yours most affectionately,
+
+  'A. I. BYRON.'
+
+The last of this series of letters is less like the style of Lady Byron
+than any of them. We cannot judge whether it is a whole consecutive
+letter, or fragments from a letter, selected and united. There is a
+great want of that clearness and precision which usually characterised
+Lady Byron's style. It shows, however, that the decision is made,--a
+decision which she regrets on account of the sister who has tried so
+long to prevent it.
+
+  'KIRKBY MALLORY, Feb. 14, 1816.
+
+ 'The present sufferings of all may yet be repaid in blessings. Do
+ not despair absolutely, dearest; and leave me but enough of your
+ interest to afford you any consolation by partaking of that sorrow
+ which I am most unhappy to cause thus unintentionally. _You will_ be
+ of my opinion hereafter; and at present your bitterest reproach would
+ be forgiven, though Heaven knows you have considered me more than a
+ thousand would have done,--more than anything but my affection for
+ B., one most dear to you, could deserve. I must not remember these
+ feelings. Farewell! God bless you from the bottom of my heart!
+
+  'A. I. B.'
+
+We are here to consider that Mrs. Leigh has stood to Lady Byron in
+all this long agony as her only confidante and friend; that she has
+denied the charges her brother has made, and referred them to insanity,
+admitting insane _attempts_ upon herself which she has been obliged to
+watch over and control.
+
+Lady Byron has come to the conclusion that Augusta is mistaken as to
+insanity; that there is a real wicked _purpose_ and desire on the part
+of the brother, not as yet believed in by the sister. She regards the
+sister as one, who, though deceived and blinded, is still worthy of
+confidence and consideration; and so says to her, '_You will be of my
+opinion hereafter_.'
+
+She says, 'You have considered me more than a thousand would have
+done.' Mrs. Leigh is, in Lady Byron's eyes, a most abused and innocent
+woman, who, to spare her sister in her delicate situation, has taken on
+herself the whole charge of a maniacal brother, although suffering from
+him language and actions of the most injurious kind. That Mrs. Leigh
+did not flee the house at once under such circumstances, and wholly
+decline the management of the case, seems to Lady Byron consideration
+and self-sacrifice greater than she can acknowledge.
+
+The knowledge of the _whole extent of the truth_ came to Lady Byron's
+mind at a later period.
+
+We now take up the history from Lushington's letter to Lady Byron,
+published at the close of her statement.
+
+The application to Lord Byron for an act of separation was positively
+refused at first; it being an important part of his policy that all the
+responsibility and insistance should come from his wife, and that he
+should appear forced into it contrary to his will.
+
+Dr. Lushington, however, says to Lady Byron,--
+
+ 'I was originally consulted by Lady Noel on your behalf while you
+ were in the country. The circumstances detailed by her were such
+ as justified a separation; but they were not of that aggravated
+ description as to render such a measure indispensable. On Lady
+ Noel's representations, I deemed a reconciliation with Lord Byron
+ practicable, and felt most sincerely a wish to aid in effecting it.
+ There was not, on Lady Noel's part, any exaggeration of the facts,
+ nor, so far as I could perceive, any determination to prevent a
+ return to Lord Byron: certainly none was expressed when I spoke of a
+ reconciliation.'
+
+In this crisis, with Lord Byron refusing the separation, with
+Lushington expressing a wish to aid in a reconciliation, and Lady Noel
+not expressing any aversion to it, the whole strain of the dreadful
+responsibility comes upon the wife.
+
+She resolves to ask counsel of her lawyer, in view of a statement of
+the _whole_ case.
+
+Lady Byron is spoken of by Lord Byron (letter 233) as being in town
+with her father on the 29th of February; viz., fifteen days after the
+date of the last letter to Mrs. Leigh. It must have been about this
+time, then, that she laid her whole case before Lushington; and he gave
+it a thorough examination.
+
+The result was, that Lushington expressed in the most decided terms his
+conviction that reconciliation was impossible. The language he uses is
+very striking:--
+
+ 'When you came to town in about a fortnight, or perhaps more, after my
+ first interview with Lady Noel, I was, for the first time, informed
+ by you of facts utterly unknown, as I have no doubt, to Sir Ralph and
+ Lady Noel. On receiving this additional information, my opinion was
+ entirely changed. I considered a reconciliation impossible. I declared
+ my opinion, and added, that, if such an idea should be entertained, I
+ could not, either professionally or otherwise, take any part towards
+ effecting it.'
+
+It does not appear in this note what effect the lawyer's examination
+of the case had on Lady Byron's mind. By the expressions he uses, we
+should infer that she may still have been hesitating as to whether a
+reconciliation might not be her duty.
+
+This hesitancy he does away with most decisively, saying, 'A
+reconciliation is impossible;' and, supposing Lady Byron or her
+friends desirous of one, he declares positively that he cannot, either
+professionally as a lawyer or privately as a friend, have anything to
+do with effecting it.
+
+The lawyer, it appears, has drawn, from the facts of the case,
+inferences deeper and stronger than those which presented themselves to
+the mind of the young woman; and he instructs her in the most absolute
+terms.
+
+Fourteen years after, in 1830, for the first time the world was
+astonished by this declaration from Dr. Lushington, in language so
+pronounced and positive that there could be no mistake.
+
+Lady Byron had stood all these fourteen years slandered by her husband,
+and misunderstood by his friends, when, had she so chosen, this opinion
+of Dr. Lushington's could have been at once made public, which fully
+justified her conduct.
+
+If, as the 'Blackwood' of July insinuates, the story told to Lushington
+was a malignant slander, meant to injure Lord Byron, why did she
+suppress the judgment of her counsel at a time when all the world
+was on her side, and this decision would have been the decisive blow
+against her husband? Why, by sealing the lips of counsel, and of all
+whom she could influence, did she deprive herself finally of the very
+advantage for which it has been assumed she fabricated the story?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE CHARACTER OF THE TWO WITNESSES COMPARED.
+
+
+It will be observed, that, in this controversy, we are confronting two
+opposing stories,--one of Lord and the other of Lady Byron; and the
+statements from each are in point-blank contradiction.
+
+Lord Byron states that his wife deserted him. Lady Byron states that he
+expelled her, and reminds him, in her letter to Augusta Leigh, that the
+expulsion was a deliberate one, and that he had purposed it from the
+beginning of their marriage.
+
+Lord Byron always stated that he was ignorant why his wife left him,
+and was desirous of her return. Lady Byron states that he told her that
+he would force her to leave him, and to leave him in such a way that
+the whole blame of the separation should always rest on her, and not on
+him.
+
+To say nothing of any deeper or darker accusations on either side,
+here, in the very outworks of the story, the two meet point-blank.
+
+In considering two opposing stories, we always, as a matter of fact,
+take into account the character of the witnesses.
+
+If a person be literal and exact in his usual modes of speech,
+reserved, careful, conscientious, and in the habit of observing
+minutely the minor details of time, place, and circumstances, we give
+weight to his testimony from these considerations. But if a person
+be proved to have singular and exceptional principles with regard to
+truth; if he be universally held by society to be so in the habit of
+mystification, that large allowances must be made for his statements;
+if his assertions at one time contradict those made at another; and if
+his statements, also, sometimes come in collision with those of his
+best friends, so that, when his language is reported, difficulties
+follow, and explanations are made necessary,--all this certainly
+disqualifies him from being considered a trustworthy witness.
+
+All these disqualifications belong in a remarkable degree to Lord
+Byron, on the oft-repeated testimony of his best friends.
+
+We shall first cite the following testimony, given in an article from
+'Under the Crown,' which is written by an early friend and ardent
+admirer of Lord Byron:--
+
+ 'Byron had one pre-eminent fault,--a fault which must be considered as
+ deeply criminal by everyone who does not, as I do, believe it to have
+ resulted from monomania. He had a morbid love of a bad reputation.
+ There was hardly an offence of which he would not, with perfect
+ indifference, accuse himself. An old schoolfellow who met him on the
+ Continent told me that he would continually write paragraphs against
+ himself in the foreign journals, and delight in their republication
+ by the English newspapers as in the success of a practical joke.
+ Whenever anybody has related anything discreditable of Byron, assuring
+ me that it must be true, for he heard it from himself, I always felt
+ that he could not have spoken upon worse authority; and that, in all
+ probability, the tale was a pure invention. If I could remember,
+ and were willing to repeat, the various misdoings which I have from
+ time to time heard him attribute to himself, I could fill a volume.
+ But I never believed them. I very soon became aware of this strange
+ idiosyncrasy: it puzzled me to account for it; but there it was, a
+ sort of diseased and distorted vanity. The same eccentric spirit
+ would induce him to report things which were false with regard to his
+ family, which anybody else would have concealed, though true. He told
+ me more than once that his father was insane, and killed himself. I
+ shall never forget the manner in which he first told me this. While
+ washing his hands, and singing a gay Neapolitan air, he stopped,
+ looked round at me, and said, "There always was madness in the
+ family." Then, after continuing his washing and his song, he added, as
+ if speaking of a matter of the slightest indifference, "My father cut
+ his throat." The contrast between the tenour of the subject and the
+ levity of the expression was fearfully painful: it was like a stanza
+ of "Don Juan." In this instance, I had no doubt that the fact was as
+ he related it; but in speaking of it, only a few years since, to an
+ old lady in whom I had perfect confidence, she assured me that it was
+ not so. Mr. Byron, who was her cousin, had been extremely wild, but
+ was quite sane, and had died very quietly in his bed. What Byron's
+ reason could have been for thus calumniating not only himself but
+ the blood which was flowing in his veins, who can divine? But, for
+ some reason or other, it seemed to be his determined purpose to keep
+ himself unknown to the great body of his fellow-creatures; to present
+ himself to their view in moral masquerade.'
+
+Certainly the character of Lord Byron here given by his friend is
+not the kind to make him a trustworthy witness in any case: on the
+contrary, it seems to show either a subtle delight in falsehood for
+falsehood's sake, or else the wary artifices of a man who, having a
+deadly secret to conceal, employs many turnings and windings to throw
+the world off the scent. What intriguer, having a crime to cover, could
+devise a more artful course than to send half a dozen absurd stories to
+the press, which should, after a while, be traced back to himself, till
+the public should gradually look on all it heard from him as the result
+of this eccentric humour?
+
+The easy, trifling air with which Lord Byron made to this friend a
+false statement in regard to his father would lead naturally to the
+inquiry, on what _other_ subjects, equally important to the good name
+of others, he might give false testimony with equal indifference.
+
+When Medwin's 'Conversations with Lord Byron' were first published,
+they contained a number of declarations of the noble lord affecting the
+honour and honesty of his friend and publisher Murray. These appear
+to have been made in the same way as those about his father, and with
+equal indifference. So serious were the charges, that Mr. Murray's
+friends felt that he ought, in justice to himself, to come forward and
+confront them with the facts as stated in Byron's letters to himself;
+and in vol. x., p. 143, of Murray's standard edition, accordingly
+these false statements are confronted with the letters of Lord Byron.
+The statements, as reported, are of a most material and vital nature,
+relating to Murray's financial honour and honesty, and to his general
+truthfulness and sincerity. In reply, Murray opposes to them the
+accounts of sums paid for different works, and letters from Byron
+exactly contradicting his own statements as to Murray's character.
+
+The subject, as we have seen, was discussed in 'The Noctes.' No doubt
+appears to be entertained that Byron made the statements to Medwin; and
+the theory of accounting for them is, that 'Byron was "bamming" him.'
+
+It seems never to have occurred to any of these credulous gentlemen,
+who laughed at others for being 'bammed,' that Byron might be doing the
+very same thing by themselves. How many of his so-called packages sent
+to Lady Byron were _real_ packages, and how many were mystifications?
+We find, in two places at least in his Memoir, letters to Lady Byron,
+written and shown to others, which, he says, were never sent by him.
+He told Lady Blessington that he was in the habit of writing to her
+_constantly_. Was this 'bamming'? Was he 'bamming,' also, when he told
+the world that Lady Byron suddenly deserted him, quite to his surprise,
+and that he never, to his dying day, could find out why?
+
+Lady Blessington relates, that, in one of his conversations with her,
+he entertained her by repeating epigrams and lampoons, in which many
+of his friends were treated with severity. She inquired of him, in
+case he should die, and such proofs of his friendship come before the
+public, what would be the feelings of these friends, who had supposed
+themselves to stand so high in his good graces. She says,
+
+ '"That," said Byron, "is precisely one of the ideas that most amuses
+ me. I often fancy the rage and humiliation of my quondam friends in
+ hearing the truth, at least from me, for the first time, and when I
+ am beyond the reach of their malice.... What grief," continued Byron,
+ laughing, "could resist the charges of ugliness, dulness, or any of
+ the thousand nameless defects, personal or mental, 'that flesh is heir
+ to,' when reprisal or recantation was impossible?... People are in
+ such daily habits of commenting on the defects of friends, that they
+ are unconscious of the unkindness of it.... Now, I write down as well
+ as speak my sentiments of those who think they have gulled me; and I
+ only wish, in case I die before them, that I might return to witness
+ the effects my posthumous opinions of them are likely to produce in
+ their minds. What good fun this would be!... You don't seem to value
+ this as you ought," said Byron with one of his sardonic smiles, seeing
+ I looked, as I really felt, surprised at his avowed insincerity. I
+ feel the same pleasure in anticipating the rage and mortification of
+ my _soi-disant_ friends at the discovery of my real sentiments of
+ them, that a miser may be supposed to feel while making a will that
+ will disappoint all the expectants that have been toadying him for
+ years. Then how amusing it will be to compare my posthumous with my
+ previously given opinions, the one throwing ridicule on the other!"'
+
+It is asserted, in a note to 'The Noctes,' that Byron, besides his
+Autobiography, prepared a voluminous dictionary of all his friends and
+acquaintances, in which brief notes of their persons and character
+were given, with his opinion of them. It was not considered that the
+publication of this would add to the noble lord's popularity; and it
+has never appeared.
+
+In Hunt's Life of Byron, there is similar testimony. Speaking of
+Byron's carelessness in exposing his friends' secrets, and showing or
+giving away their letters, he says:--
+
+ 'If his five hundred confidants, by a reticence as remarkable as his
+ laxity, had not kept his secrets better than he did himself, the
+ very devil might have been played with I don't know how many people.
+ But there was always this saving reflection to be made, that the man
+ who could be guilty of such extravagances for the sake of making
+ an impression might be guilty of exaggeration, or inventing what
+ astonished you; and indeed, though he was a speaker of the truth on
+ ordinary occasions,--that is to say, he did not tell you he had seen
+ a dozen horses when he had seen only two,--yet, as he professed not
+ to value the truth when in the way of his advantage (and there was
+ nothing he thought more to his advantage than making you stare at
+ him), the persons who were liable to suffer from his inconsistency had
+ all the right in the world to the benefit of this consideration.'[44]
+
+[Footnote 44: Hunt's Byron, p. 77. Philadelphia, 1828.]
+
+With a person of such mental and moral habits as to truth, the inquiry
+always must be, _Where_ does mystification end, and truth begin?
+
+If a man is careless about his father's reputation for sanity, and
+reports him a crazy suicide; if he gaily accuses his publisher and
+good friend of double-dealing, shuffling, and dishonesty; if he tells
+stories about Mrs. Clermont,[45] to which his sister offers a public
+refutation,--is it to be supposed that he will always tell the truth
+about his wife, when the world is pressing him hard, and every instinct
+of self-defence is on the alert?
+
+[Footnote 45: From the Temple Bar article, October 1869. 'Mrs. Leigh,
+Lord Byron's sister, had other thoughts of Mrs. Clermont, and wrote
+to her offering public testimony to her tenderness and forbearance
+under circumstances which must have been trying to any friend of Lady
+Byron.'--_Campbell, in the New Monthly Magazine_, 1830, p. 380.]
+
+And then the ingenuity that could write and publish false documents
+about himself, that they might re-appear in London papers,--to what
+other accounts might it not be turned? Might it not create documents,
+invent statements, about his wife as well as himself?
+
+The document so ostentatiously given to M. G. Lewis 'for circulation
+among friends in England' was a specimen of what the Noctes Club would
+call 'bamming.'
+
+If Byron wanted a legal investigation, why did he not take it in the
+first place, instead of signing the separation? If he wanted to cancel
+it, as he said in this document, why did he not go to London, and enter
+a suit for the restitution of conjugal rights, or a suit in chancery to
+get possession of his daughter? That this was in his mind, passages in
+Medwin's 'Conversations' show. He told Lady Blessington also that he
+might claim his daughter in chancery at any time.
+
+Why did he not do it? Either of these two steps would have brought on
+that public investigation he so longed for. Can it be possible that all
+the friends who passed this private document from hand to hand never
+suspected that they were being 'bammed' by it?
+
+But it has been universally assumed, that, though Byron was thus
+remarkably given to mystification, yet _all_ his statements in regard
+to this story are to be accepted, simply because he makes them. _Why_
+must we accept them, any more than his statements as to Murray or his
+own father?
+
+So we constantly find Lord Byron's incidental statements coming in
+collision with those of others: for example, in his account of his
+marriage, he tells Medwin that Lady Byron's maid was put between his
+bride and himself, on the same seat, in the wedding-journey. The lady's
+maid herself, Mrs. Mimms, says she was sent before them to Halnaby, and
+was there to receive them when they alighted.
+
+He said of Lady Byron's mother, 'She always detested me, and had not
+the decency to conceal it in her own house. Dining with her one day, I
+broke a tooth, and was in great pain; which I could not help showing.
+"It will do you good," said Lady Noel; "I am glad of it!"'
+
+Lady Byron says, speaking of her mother, 'She always treated him with
+an affectionate consideration and indulgence, which extended to every
+little peculiarity of his feelings. Never did an irritating word escape
+her.'
+
+Lord Byron states that the correspondence between him and Lady Byron,
+after his refusal, was first opened by her. Lady Byron's friends deny
+the statement, and assert that the direct contrary is the fact.
+
+Thus we see that Lord Byron's statements are directly opposed to
+those of his family in relation to his father; directly against
+Murray's accounts, and his own admission to Murray; directly against
+the statement of the lady's maid as to her position in the journey;
+directly against Mrs. Leigh's as to Mrs. Clermont, and against Lady
+Byron as to her mother.
+
+We can see, also, that these misstatements were so fully perceived by
+the men of his times, that Medwin's 'Conversations' were simply laughed
+at as an amusing instance of how far a man might be made the victim of
+a mystification. Christopher North thus sentences the book:--
+
+ 'I don't mean to call Medwin a liar.... The captain _lies_, sir, but
+ it is under a thousand mistakes. Whether Byron bammed him, or he, by
+ virtue of his own egregious stupidity, was the sole and sufficient
+ bammifier of himself, I know not; neither greatly do I care. This much
+ is certain, ... that the book throughout is full of things that were
+ not, and most resplendently deficient _quoad_ the things that were.'
+
+Yet it is on Medwin's 'Conversations' alone that many of the magazine
+assertions in regard to Lady Byron are founded.
+
+It is on that authority that Lady Byron is accused of breaking open
+her husband's writing-desk in his absence, and sending the letters
+she found there to the husband of a lady compromised by them; and
+likewise that Lord Byron is declared to have paid back his wife's
+ten-thousand-pound wedding portion, and doubled it. Moore makes no such
+statements; and his remarks about Lord Byron's use of his wife's money
+are unmistakable evidence to the contrary. Moore, although Byron's
+ardent partisan, was too well informed to make assertions with regard
+to him, which, at that time, it would have been perfectly easy to
+refute.
+
+All these facts go to show that Lord Byron's character for accuracy
+or veracity was not such as to entitle him to ordinary confidence as a
+witness, especially in a case where he had the strongest motives for
+misstatement.
+
+And if we consider that the celebrated Autobiography was the finished,
+careful work of such a practised 'mystifier,' who can wonder that it
+presented a web of such intermingled truth and lies that there was no
+such thing as disentangling it, and pointing out where falsehood ended
+and truth began?
+
+But in regard to Lady Byron, what has been the universal impression
+of the world? It has been alleged against her that she was a precise,
+straight-forward woman, so accustomed to plain, literal dealings, that
+she could not understand the various mystifications of her husband; and
+from that cause arose her unhappiness. Byron speaks, in 'The Sketch,'
+of her _peculiar_ truthfulness; and even in the 'Clytemnestra' poem,
+when accusing her of lying, he speaks of her as departing from
+
+  'The _early_ truth that was her proper praise.'
+
+Lady Byron's careful accuracy as to dates, to time, place, and
+circumstances, will probably be vouched for by all the very large
+number of persons whom the management of her extended property and
+her works of benevolence brought to act as co-operators or agents
+with her. She was not a person in the habit of making exaggerated or
+ill-considered statements. Her published statement of 1830 is clear,
+exact, accurate, and perfectly intelligible. The dates are carefully
+ascertained and stated, the expressions are moderate, and all the
+assertions firm and perfectly definite.
+
+It therefore seems remarkable that the whole reasoning on this Byron
+matter has generally been conducted by assuming all Lord Byron's
+statements to be true, and requiring all Lady Byron's statements to be
+sustained by other evidence.
+
+If Lord Byron asserts that his wife deserted him, the assertion is
+accepted without proof; but, if Lady Byron asserts that he ordered
+her to leave, that requires proof. Lady Byron asserts that she
+took counsel, on this order of Lord Byron, with his family friends
+and physician, under the idea that it originated in insanity. The
+'Blackwood' asks, '_What_ family friends?' says it doesn't know of any;
+and asks proof.
+
+If Lord Byron asserts that he always longed for a public investigation
+of the charges against him, the 'Quarterly' and 'Blackwood' quote
+the saying with ingenuous confidence. They are obliged to admit
+that he refused to stand that public test; that he signed the deed
+of separation rather than meet it. They know, also, that he could
+have at any time instituted suits against Lady Byron that would have
+brought the whole matter into court, and that he did not? Why did he
+not? The 'Quarterly' simply intimates that such suits would have been
+unpleasant. Why? On account of personal delicacy? The man that wrote
+'Don Juan', and furnished the details of his wedding-night, held
+back from clearing his name by delicacy! It is astonishing to what
+extent this controversy has consisted in simply repeating Lord Byron's
+assertions over and over again, and calling the result proof.
+
+Now, we propose a different course. As Lady Byron is not stated by
+her warm admirers to have had _any_ monomania for speaking untruths
+on any subject, we rank her value as a witness at a higher rate than
+Lord Byron's. She never accused her parents of madness or suicide,
+merely to make a sensation; never 'bammed' an acquaintance by false
+statements concerning the commercial honour of anyone with whom she
+was in business relations; never wrote and sent to the press as a
+clever jest false statements about herself; and never, in any other
+ingenious way, tampered with truth. We therefore hold it to be a mere
+dictate of reason and common sense, that, in all cases where her
+statements conflict with her husband's, hers are to be taken as the
+more trustworthy.
+
+The 'London Quarterly,' in a late article, distinctly repudiates Lady
+Byron's statements as sources of evidence, and throughout quotes
+statements of Lord Byron as if they had the force of self-evident
+propositions. We consider such a course contrary to common sense as
+well as common good manners.
+
+The state of the case is just this: If Lord Byron did not make false
+statements on this subject it was certainly an exception to his usual
+course. He certainly did make such on a great variety of other
+subjects. By his own showing, he had a peculiar pleasure in falsifying
+language, and in misleading and betraying even his friends.
+
+But, if Lady Byron gave false witness upon this subject, it was an
+exception to the whole course of her life.
+
+The habits of her mind, the government of her conduct, her life-long
+reputation, all were those of a literal, exact truthfulness.
+
+The accusation of her being untruthful was first brought forward by
+her husband in the 'Clytemnestra' poem, in the autumn of 1816; but it
+never was publicly circulated till after his death, and it was first
+formally made the basis of a published attack on Lady Byron in the
+July 'Blackwood' of 1869. Up to that time, we look in vain through
+current literature for any indications that the world regarded Lady
+Byron otherwise than as a cold, careful, prudent woman, who made no
+assertions, and had no confidants. When she spoke in 1830, it is
+perfectly evident that Christopher North and his circle believed what
+she said, though reproving her for saying it at all.
+
+The 'Quarterly' goes on to heap up a number of vague assertions,--that
+Lady Byron, about the time of her separation, made a confidant of a
+young officer; that she told the clergyman of Ham of some trials with
+Lord Ockham; and that she told stories of different things at different
+times.
+
+All this is not proof: it is mere assertion, and assertion made to
+produce prejudice. It is like raising a whirlwind of sand to blind
+the eyes that are looking for landmarks. It is quite probable Lady
+Byron told different stories about Lord Byron at various times. No
+woman could have a greater variety of stories to tell; and no woman
+ever was so persecuted and pursued and harassed, both by public
+literature and private friendship, to say _something_. She had plenty
+of causes for a separation, without the fatal and final one. In her
+conversations with Lady Anne Barnard, for example, she gives reasons
+enough for a separation, though none of them are the chief one. It is
+not _different_ stories, but _contradictory_ stories, that must be
+relied on to disprove the credibility of a witness. The 'Quarterly'
+has certainly told a great number of different stories,--stories which
+may prove as irreconcilable with each other as any attributed to Lady
+Byron; but its denial of all weight to her testimony is simply begging
+the whole question under consideration.
+
+A man gives testimony about the causes of a railroad accident, being
+the only eye-witness.
+
+The opposing counsel begs, whatever else you do, you will not admit
+that man's testimony. You ask, 'Why? Has he ever been accused of want
+of veracity on other subjects?'--'No: he has stood high as a man of
+probity and honour for years.'--'Why, then, throw out his testimony?'
+
+'Because he lies in this instance,' says the adversary: 'his testimony
+does not agree with this and that.'--'Pardon me, that is the very point
+in question,' say you: 'we expect to prove that it does agree with this
+and that.'
+
+Because certain letters of Lady Byron's do not agree with the
+'Quarterly's' theory of the facts of the separation, it at once assumes
+that she is an untruthful witness, and proposes to throw out her
+evidence altogether.
+
+We propose, on the contrary, to regard Lady Byron's evidence with all
+the attention due to the statement of a high-minded conscientious
+person, never in any other case accused of violation of truth;
+we also propose to show it to be in strict agreement with all
+well-authenticated facts and documents; and we propose to treat
+Lord Byron's evidence as that of a man of great subtlety, versed in
+mystification and delighting in it, and who, on many other subjects,
+not only deceived, but gloried in deception; and then we propose to
+show that it contradicts well-established facts and received documents.
+
+One thing more we have to say concerning the laws of evidence in regard
+to documents presented in this investigation.
+
+This is not a London West-End affair, but a grave historical inquiry,
+in which the whole English-speaking world are interested to know the
+truth.
+
+As it is now too late to have the securities of a legal trial,
+certainly the rules of historical evidence should be strictly
+observed. All important documents should be presented in an entire
+state, with a plain and open account of their history,--who had them,
+where they were found, and how preserved.
+
+There have been most excellent, credible, and authentic documents
+produced in this case; and, as a specimen of them, we shall mention
+Lord Lindsay's letter, and the journal and letter it authenticates.
+Lord Lindsay at once comes forward, gives his name boldly, gives the
+history of the papers he produces, shows how they came to be in his
+hands, why never produced before, and why now. We feel confidence at
+once.
+
+But in regard to the important series of letters presented as Lady
+Byron's, this obviously proper course has not been pursued. Though
+assumed to be of the most critical importance, no such distinct history
+of them was given in the first instance. The want of such evidence
+being noticed by other papers, the 'Quarterly' appears hurt that the
+high character of the magazine has not been a sufficient guarantee;
+and still deals in vague statements that the letters have been freely
+circulated, and that two noblemen of the highest character would vouch
+for them if necessary.
+
+In our view, _it is necessary_. These noblemen should imitate Lord
+Lindsay's example,--give a fair account of these letters, under
+their own names; and then, we would add, it is needful for complete
+satisfaction to have the letters _entire_, and not in fragments.
+
+The 'Quarterly' gave these letters with the evident implication that
+they are entirely destructive to Lady Byron's character as a witness.
+Now, has that magazine much reason to be hurt at even an insinuation on
+its own character when making such deadly assaults on that of another?
+The individuals who bring forth documents that they suppose to be
+deadly to the character of a noble person, always in her generation
+held to be eminent for virtue, certainly should not murmur at being
+called upon to substantiate these documents in the manner usually
+expected in historical investigations.
+
+We have shown that these letters do not contradict, but that they
+perfectly confirm the facts, and agree with the dates in Lady Byron's
+published statements of 1830; and this is our reason for deeming them
+authentic.
+
+These considerations with regard to the manner of conducting the
+inquiry seem so obviously proper, that we cannot but believe that they
+will command a serious attention.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE DIRECT ARGUMENT TO PROVE THE CRIME.
+
+
+We shall now proceed to state the argument against Lord Byron.
+
+1st, There is direct evidence that Lord Byron was guilty of some
+unusual immorality.
+
+The evidence is not, as the 'Blackwood' says, that Lushington yielded
+assent to the _ex parte_ statement of a client; nor, as the 'Quarterly'
+intimates, that he was affected by the charms of an attractive young
+woman.
+
+The first evidence of it is the fact that Lushington and Romilly
+_offered to take the case into court, and make there a public
+exhibition of the proofs_ on which their convictions were founded.
+
+2nd, It is very strong evidence of this fact, that Lord Byron, while
+loudly declaring that he wished to know with what he was charged,
+_declined_ this open investigation, and, rather than meet it, signed a
+paper which he had before refused to sign.
+
+3rd, It is also strong evidence of this fact, that although secretly
+declaring to all his intimate friends that he still wished open
+investigation in a court of justice, and affirming his belief that his
+character was being ruined for want of it, he never afterwards took
+the means to get it. Instead of writing a private handbill, he might
+have come to England and entered a suit; and he did not do it.
+
+That Lord Byron was conscious of a great crime is further made probable
+by the peculiar malice he seemed to bear to his wife's legal counsel.
+
+If there had been nothing to fear in that legal investigation wherewith
+they threatened him, why did he not only flee from it, but regard
+with a peculiar bitterness those who advised and proposed it? To an
+innocent man falsely accused, the certainties of law are a blessing
+and a refuge. Female charms cannot mislead in a court of justice; and
+the atrocities of rumour are there sifted, and deprived of power. A
+trial is not a threat to an innocent man: it is an invitation, an
+opportunity. Why, then, did he hate Sir Samuel Romilly, so that he
+exulted like a fiend over his tragical death? The letter in which he
+pours forth this malignity was so brutal, that Moore was obliged, by
+the general outcry of society, to suppress it. Is this the language of
+an innocent man who has been offered a fair trial under his country's
+laws? or of a guilty man, to whom the very idea of public trial means
+public exposure?
+
+4th, It is probable that the crime was the one now alleged, because
+that was the most important crime charged against him by rumour at the
+period. This appears by the following extract of a letter from Shelley,
+furnished by the 'Quarterly,' dated Bath, Sept. 29, 1816:--
+
+ 'I saw Kinnaird, and had a long talk with him. He informed me that
+ Lady Byron was now in perfect health; that she was living with your
+ sister. I felt much pleasure from this intelligence. I consider the
+ latter part of it as affording a decisive contradiction to the only
+ important calumny that ever was advanced against you. On this ground,
+ at least, it will become the world hereafter to be silent.'
+
+It appears evident here that the charge of improper intimacy with his
+sister was, in the mind of Shelley, the only important one that had yet
+been made against Lord Byron.
+
+It is fairly inferable, from Lord Byron's own statements, that his
+family friends believed this charge. Lady Byron speaks, in her
+statement, of 'nearest relatives' and family friends who were cognizant
+of Lord Byron's strange conduct at the time of the separation; and
+Lord Byron, in the letter to Bowles, before quoted, says that every
+one of his relations, except his sister, fell from him in this crisis
+like leaves from a tree in autumn. There was, therefore, not only
+this report, but such appearances in support of it as convinced those
+nearest to the scene, and best apprised of the facts; so that they
+fell from him entirely, notwithstanding the strong influence of family
+feeling. The Guiccioli book also mentions this same allegation as
+having arisen from peculiarities in Lord Byron's manner of treating his
+sister:---
+
+ 'This deep, fraternal affection assumed at times, under the influence
+ of his powerful genius, and under exceptional circumstances, an
+ almost too passionate expression, which opened a fresh field to his
+ enemies.'[46]
+
+[Footnote 46: 'My Recollections,' p. 238.]
+
+It appears, then, that there was nothing in the character of Lord
+Byron and of his sister, as they appeared before their generation,
+that prevented such a report from arising: on the contrary, there was
+something in their relations that made it seem probable. And it appears
+that his own family friends were so affected by it, that they, with
+one accord, deserted him. The 'Quarterly' presents the fact that Lady
+Byron went to visit Mrs. Leigh at this time, as triumphant proof that
+_she_ did not then believe it. Can the 'Quarterly' show just what Lady
+Byron's state of mind was, or what her motives were, in making that
+visit?
+
+The 'Quarterly' seems to assume, that no woman, without gross
+hypocrisy, can stand by a sister proven to have been guilty. We can
+appeal on this subject to all women. We fearlessly ask any wife,
+'Supposing your husband and sister were involved together in an
+infamous crime, and that you were the mother of a young daughter whose
+life would be tainted by a knowledge of that crime, what would be
+your wish? Would you wish to proclaim it forthwith? or would you wish
+quietly to separate from your husband, and to cover the crime from the
+eye of man?'
+
+It has been proved that Lady Byron did not reveal this even to her
+nearest relatives. It is proved that she sealed the mouths of her
+counsel, and even of servants, so effectually, that they remain sealed
+even to this day. This is evidence that she did not wish the thing
+known. It is proved also, that, in spite of her secrecy with her
+parents and friends, the rumour got out, and was spoken of by Shelley
+as the _only_ important one.
+
+Now, let us see how this note, cited by the 'Quarterly,' confirms one
+of Lady Byron's own statements. She says to Lady Anne Barnard,--
+
+ 'I trust you understand my wishes, which never were to injure Lord
+ Byron in any way; for, _though he would not suffer me to remain his
+ wife, he cannot prevent me from continuing his friend; and it was from
+ considering myself as such that I silenced the accusations by which my
+ own conduct might have been more fully justified_.'
+
+How did Lady Byron _silence accusations_? First, by keeping silence
+to her nearest relatives; second, by shutting the mouths of servants;
+third, by imposing silence on her friends,--as Lady Anne Barnard;
+fourth, by silencing her legal counsel; fifth, and most entirely, by
+treating Mrs. Leigh, before the world, with unaltered kindness. In the
+midst of the rumours, Lady Byron went to visit her; and Shelley says
+that the movement was effectual. Can the 'Quarterly' prove that, at
+this time, Mrs. Leigh had not confessed all, and thrown herself on Lady
+Byron's mercy?
+
+It is not necessary to suppose great horror and indignation on the
+part of Lady Byron. She may have regarded her sister as the victim
+of a most singularly powerful tempter. Lord Byron, as she knew, had
+tried to corrupt her own morals and faith. He had obtained a power
+over some women, even in the highest circles in England, which had
+led them to forego the usual decorums of their sex, and had given rise
+to great scandals. He was a being of wonderful personal attractions.
+He had not only strong poetical, but also strong logical power. He was
+daring in speculation, and vigorous in sophistical argument; beautiful,
+dazzling, and possessed of magnetic power of fascination. His sister
+had been kind and considerate to Lady Byron when Lord Byron was brutal
+and cruel. She had been overcome by him, as a weaker nature sometimes
+sinks under the force of a stronger one; and Lady Byron may really have
+considered her to be more sinned against than sinning.
+
+Lord Byron, if we look at it rightly, did not corrupt Mrs. Leigh
+any more than he did the whole British public. They rebelled at the
+immorality of his conduct and the obscenity of his writings; and he
+resolved that they should accept both. And he made them do it. At
+first, they execrated 'Don Juan.' Murray was afraid to publish it.
+Women were determined not to read it. In 1819, Dr. William Maginn of
+the Noctes wrote a song against it in the following virtuous strain:
+
+  'Be "Juan," then, unseen, unknown;
+    It must, or we shall rue it.
+  We may have virtue of our own:
+    Ah! why should we undo it?
+  The treasured faith of days long past
+    We still would prize o'er any,
+  And grieve to hear the ribald jeer
+    Of scamps like Don Giovanni.'
+
+Lord Byron determined to conquer the virtuous scruples of the Noctes
+Club; and so we find this same Dr. William Maginn, who in 1819 wrote
+so valiantly, in 1822 declaring that he would rather have written a
+page of 'Don Juan' than a ton of 'Childe Harold.' All English morals
+were, in like manner, formally surrendered to Lord Byron. Moore details
+his adulteries in Venice with unabashed particularity: artists send
+for pictures of his principal mistresses; the literary world call for
+biographical sketches of their points; Moore compares his wife and his
+last mistress in a neatly-turned sentence; and yet the professor of
+morals in Edinburgh University recommends the biography as _pure_, and
+having no mud in it. The mistress is lionized in London, and in 1869 is
+introduced to the world of letters by 'Blackwood,' and bid, 'without a
+blush, to say she loved'--
+
+This much being done to all England, it is quite possible that a woman
+like Lady Byron, standing silently aside and surveying the course of
+things, may have thought that Mrs. Leigh was no more seduced than all
+the rest of the world, and have said as we feel disposed to say of that
+generation, and of a good many in this, 'Let him that is without sin
+among you cast the first stone.'
+
+The peculiar bitterness of remorse expressed in his works by Lord
+Byron is a further evidence that he had committed an unusual crime.
+We are aware that evidence cannot be drawn in this manner from an
+author's works merely, if unsupported by any external probability.
+For example, the subject most frequently and powerfully treated by
+Hawthorne is the influence of a secret, unconfessed crime on the soul:
+nevertheless, as Hawthorne is well known to have always lived a pure
+and regular life, nobody has ever suspected him of any greater sin
+than a vigorous imagination. But here is a man believed guilty of an
+uncommon immorality by the two best lawyers in England, and threatened
+with an open exposure, which he does not dare to meet. The crime is
+named in society; his own relations fall away from him on account of
+it; it is only set at rest by the heroic conduct of his wife. Now, this
+man is stated by many of his friends to have had all the appearance of
+a man secretly labouring under the consciousness of crime. Moore speaks
+of this propensity in the following language:--
+
+ 'I have known him more than once, as we sat together after dinner,
+ and he was a little under the influence of wine, to fall seriously
+ into this dark, self-accusing mood, and throw out hints of his past
+ life with an air of gloom and mystery designed evidently to awaken
+ curiosity and interest.'
+
+Moore says that it was his own custom to dispel these appearances by
+ridicule, to which his friend was keenly alive. And he goes on to say,--
+
+ 'It has sometimes occurred to me, that the occult causes of his lady's
+ separation from him, round which herself and her legal advisers have
+ thrown such formidable mystery, may have been nothing more than some
+ imposture of this kind, some dimly-hinted confession of undefined
+ horror, which, though intended by the relater to mystify and surprise,
+ the hearer so little understood as to take in sober seriousness.'[47]
+
+[Footnote 47: Vol. vi. p. 212.]
+
+All we have to say is, that Lord Byron's conduct in this respect
+is exactly what might have been expected if he had a crime on his
+conscience.
+
+The energy of remorse and despair expressed in 'Manfred' were so
+appalling and so vividly _personal_, that the belief was universal on
+the Continent that the experience was wrought out of some actual crime.
+Goethe expressed this idea, and had heard a murder imputed to Byron as
+the cause.
+
+The allusion to the crime and consequences of incest is so plain in
+'Manfred,' that it is astonishing that any one can pretend, as Galt
+does, that it had any other application.
+
+The hero speaks of the love between himself and the imaginary being
+whose spirit haunts him as having been the _deadliest sin_, and one
+that has, perhaps, caused her eternal destruction.
+
+  'What is she now? A sufferer for my sins;
+  A thing I dare not think upon.'
+
+He speaks of her blood as haunting him, and as being
+
+            '_My_ blood,--the pure, warm stream
+  That ran in the veins of _my_ fathers, and in _ours_
+  When we were in our youth, and had one heart,
+  And loved each other as we should not love.'
+
+This work was conceived in the commotion of mind immediately following
+his separation. The scenery of it was sketched in a journal sent to his
+sister at the time.
+
+In letter 377, defending the originality of the conception, and showing
+that it did not arise from reading 'Faust,' he says,--
+
+ 'It was the Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else, more than
+ Faustus, that made me write "Manfred."'
+
+In letter 288, speaking of the various accounts given by critics of the
+origin of the story, he says,--
+
+ 'The conjecturer is out, and knows nothing of the matter. I had a
+ better origin than he could devise or divine for the soul of him.'
+
+In letter 299, he says:--
+
+ 'As to the germs of "Manfred," they may be found in the journal I sent
+ to Mrs. Leigh, part of which you saw.'
+
+It may be said, plausibly, that Lord Byron, if conscious of this crime,
+would not have expressed it in his poetry. But his nature was such
+that he could not help it. Whatever he wrote that had any real power
+was generally wrought out of self; and, when in a tumult of emotion,
+he could not help giving glimpses of the cause. It appears that he
+did know that he had been accused of incest, and that Shelley thought
+_that_ accusation the only really important one; and yet, sensitive as
+he was to blame and reprobation, he ran upon this very subject most
+likely to re-awaken scandal.
+
+But Lord Byron's strategy was always of the bold kind. It was the
+plan of the fugitive, who, instead of running away, stations himself
+so near to danger, that nobody would ever think of looking for him
+there. He published passionate verses to his sister on this principle.
+He imitated the security of an innocent man in every thing but the
+unconscious energy of the agony which seized him when he gave vent to
+his nature in poetry. The boldness of his strategy is evident through
+all his life. He began by charging his wife with the very cruelty and
+deception which he was himself practising. He had spread a net for her
+feet, and he accused her of spreading a net for his. He had placed
+her in a position where she could not speak, and then leisurely shot
+arrows at her; and he represented her as having done the same by him.
+When he attacked her in 'Don Juan,' and strove to take from her the
+very protection[48] of womanly sacredness by putting her name into the
+mouth of every ribald, he did a bold thing, and he knew it. He meant to
+do a bold thing. There was a general outcry against it; and he fought
+it down, and gained his point. By sheer boldness and perseverance,
+he turned the public _from_ his wife, and _to_ himself, in the face
+of their very groans and protests. His 'Manfred' and his 'Cain' were
+parts of the same game. But the involuntary cry of remorse and despair
+pierced even through his own artifices, in a manner that produced a
+conviction of reality.
+
+[Footnote 48: The reader is here referred to the remarks of 'Blackwood'
+on 'Don Juan' in Part III.]
+
+His evident fear and hatred of his wife were other symptoms of crime.
+There was no apparent occasion for him to hate her. He admitted that
+she had been bright, amiable, good, agreeable; that her marriage had
+been a very uncomfortable one; and he said to Madame de Stael, that
+he did not doubt she thought him deranged. Why, then, did he hate her
+for wanting to live peaceably by herself? Why did he so fear her, that
+not one year of his life passed without his concocting and circulating
+some public or private accusation against her? She, by his own showing,
+published none against him. It is remarkable, that, in all his zeal to
+represent himself injured, he nowhere quotes a single remark from Lady
+Byron, nor a story coming either directly or indirectly from her or her
+family. He is in a fever in Venice, not from what she has spoken, but
+because she has sealed the lips of her counsel, and because she and her
+family do not speak: so that he professes himself utterly ignorant what
+form her allegations against him may take. He had heard from Shelley
+that his wife silenced the most important calumny by going to make Mrs.
+Leigh a visit; and yet he is afraid of her,--so afraid, that he tells
+Moore he expects she will attack him after death, and charges him to
+defend his grave.
+
+Now, if Lord Byron knew that his wife had a deadly secret that she
+could tell, all this conduct is explicable: it is in the ordinary
+course of human nature. Men always distrust those who hold facts
+by which they can be ruined. They fear them; they are antagonistic
+to them; they cannot trust them. The feeling of Falkland to Caleb
+Williams, as portrayed in Godwin's masterly sketch, is perfectly
+natural, and it is exactly illustrative of what Byron felt for his
+wife. He hated her for having his secret; and, so far as a human being
+could do it, he tried to destroy her character before the world, that
+she might not have the power to testify against him. If we admit this
+solution, Byron's conduct is at least that of a man who is acting as
+men ordinarily would act under such circumstances: if we do not, he
+is acting like a fiend. Let us look at admitted facts. He married his
+wife without love, in a gloomy, melancholy, morose state of mind. The
+servants testify to strange, unaccountable treatment of her immediately
+after marriage; such that her confidential maid advises her return to
+her parents. In Lady Byron's letter to Mrs. Leigh, she reminds Lord
+Byron that he always expressed a desire and determination to free
+himself from the marriage. Lord Byron himself admits to Madame de
+Stael that his behaviour was such, that his wife must have thought him
+insane. Now we are asked to believe, that simply because, under these
+circumstances, Lady Byron wished to live separate from her husband, he
+hated and feared her so that he could never let her alone afterwards;
+that he charged her with malice, slander, deceit, and deadly intentions
+against himself, merely out of spite, because she preferred not to live
+with him. This last view of the case certainly makes Lord Byron more
+unaccountably wicked than the other.
+
+The first supposition shows him to us as a man in an agony of
+self-preservation; the second as a fiend, delighting in gratuitous
+deceit and cruelty.
+
+Again: a presumption of this crime appears in Lord Byron's admission,
+in a letter to Moore, that he had an illegitimate child born before he
+left England, and still living at the time.
+
+In letter 307, to Mr. Moore, under date Venice, Feb. 2, 1818, Byron
+says, speaking of Moore's loss of a child,--
+
+ 'I know how to feel with you, because I am quite wrapped up in my own
+ children. Besides my little legitimate, I have made unto myself an
+ illegitimate since [since Ada's birth] _to say nothing of one before_;
+ and I look forward to one of these as the pillar of my old age,
+ supposing that I ever reach, as I hope I never shall, that desolating
+ period.'
+
+The illegitimate child that he had made to himself since Ada's birth
+was Allegra, born about nine or ten months after the separation. The
+other illegitimate alluded to was born before, and, as the reader sees,
+was spoken of as still living.
+
+Moore appears to be puzzled to know who this child can be, and
+conjectures that it may possibly be the child referred to in an early
+poem, written, while a schoolboy of nineteen, at Harrow.
+
+On turning back to the note referred to, we find two things: first,
+that the child there mentioned was not claimed by Lord Byron as his
+own, but that he asked his mother to care for it as belonging to a
+schoolmate now dead; second, that the infant died shortly after, and,
+consequently, could not be the child mentioned in this letter.
+
+Now, besides this fact, that Lord Byron admitted a living illegitimate
+child born before Ada, we place this other fact, that there was a
+child in England which was believed to be his by those who had every
+opportunity of knowing.
+
+On this subject we shall cite a passage from a letter recently received
+by us from England, and written by a person who appears well informed
+on the subject of his letter:--
+
+ 'The fact is, the incest was first committed, and the child of it born
+ _before_, shortly before, the Byron marriage. The child (a daughter)
+ must not be confounded with the natural daughter of Lord Byron, born
+ about a year after his separation.
+
+ 'The history, more or less, of that child of incest, is known to many;
+ for in Lady Byron's attempts to watch over her, and rescue her from
+ ruin, she was compelled to employ various agents at different times.'
+
+This letter contains a full recognition, by an intelligent person in
+England, of a child corresponding well with Lord Byron's declaration of
+an illegitimate, born before he left England.
+
+Up to this point, we have, then, the circumstantial evidence against
+Lord Byron as follows:--
+
+A good and amiable woman, who had married him from love, determined to
+separate from him.
+
+Two of the greatest lawyers of England confirmed her in this decision,
+and threatened Lord Byron, that, unless he consented to this, they
+would expose the evidence against him in a suit for divorce. He fled
+from this exposure, and never afterwards sought public investigation.
+
+He was angry with and malicious towards the counsel who supported his
+wife; he was angry at and afraid of a wife who did nothing to injure
+him, and he made it a special object to defame and degrade her. He gave
+such evidence of remorse and fear in his writings as to lead eminent
+literary men to believe he had committed a great crime. The public
+rumour of his day specified what the crime was. His relations, by his
+own showing, joined against him. The report was silenced by his wife's
+efforts only. Lord Byron subsequently declares the existence of an
+illegitimate child, born before he left England. Corresponding to this,
+there is the history, known in England, of a child believed to be his,
+in whom his wife took an interest.
+
+All these presumptions exist independently of any direct testimony from
+Lady Byron. They are to be admitted as true, whether she says a word
+one way or the other.
+
+From this background of proof, I come forward, and testify to an
+interview with Lady Byron, in which she gave me specific information
+of the facts in the case. That I report the facts just as I received
+them from her, not altered or misremembered, is shown by the testimony
+of my sister, to whom I related them at the time. It cannot, then, be
+denied that I had this interview, and that this communication was made.
+I therefore testify that Lady Byron, for a proper purpose, and at a
+proper time, stated to me the following things:--
+
+1. That the crime which separated her from Lord Byron was incest. 2.
+That she first discovered it by improper actions towards his sister,
+which, he _meant_ to make her understand, indicated the guilty
+relation. 3. That he admitted it, reasoned on it, defended it, tried to
+make her an accomplice, and, failing in that, hated her and expelled
+her. 4. That he threatened her that he would make it his life's object
+to destroy her character. 5. That for a period she was led to regard
+this conduct as insanity, and to consider him only as a diseased
+person. 6. That she had subsequent proof that the facts were really as
+she suspected; that there had been a child born of the crime, whose
+history she knew; that Mrs. Leigh had repented.
+
+The purpose for which this was stated to me was to ask, Was it her duty
+to make the truth fully known during her lifetime?
+
+Here, then, is a man believed guilty of an unusual crime by two
+lawyers, the best in England, who have seen the evidence,--a man who
+dares not meet legal investigation. The crime is named in society, and
+deemed so far probable to the men of his generation as to be spoken
+of by Shelley as the only important allegation against him. He acts
+through life exactly like a man struggling with remorse, and afraid
+of detection; he has all the restlessness and hatred and fear that a
+man has who feels that there is evidence which might destroy him. He
+admits an illegitimate child besides Allegra. A child believed to have
+been his is known to many in England. Added to all this, his widow,
+now advanced in years, and standing on the borders of eternity, being,
+as appears by her writings and conversation, of perfectly sound mind
+at the time, testifies to me the facts before named, which exactly
+correspond to probabilities.
+
+I publish the statement; and the solicitors who hold Lady Byron's
+private papers do not deny the truth of the story. They try to cast
+discredit on me for speaking; but they do not say that I have spoken
+falsely, or that the story is not true. The lawyer who knew Lady
+Byron's story in 1816 does not now deny that this is the true one.
+Several persons in England testify that, at various times, and for
+various purposes, the same story has been told to them. Moreover, it
+appears from my last letter addressed to Lady Byron on this subject,
+that I recommended her to leave _all necessary papers_ in the hands
+of some discreet persons, who, after _both_ had passed away, should
+see that justice was done. The solicitors admit that Lady Byron _has_
+left sealed papers of great importance in the hands of trustees, with
+discretionary power. I have been informed very directly that the nature
+of these documents was such as to lead to the suppression of Lady
+Byron's life and writings. This is all exactly as it would be, if the
+story related by Lady Byron were the true one.
+
+The evidence under this point of view is so strong, that a great effort
+has been made to throw out Lady Byron's testimony.
+
+This attempt has been made on two grounds. 1st, That she was under a
+mental hallucination. This theory has been most ably refuted by the
+very first authority in England upon the subject. He says,--
+
+ 'No person practically acquainted with the true characteristics of
+ insanity would affirm, that, had this idea of "incest" been an insane
+ hallucination, Lady Byron could, from the lengthened period which
+ intervened between her unhappy marriage and death, have refrained
+ from exhibiting it, not only to legal advisers and trustees (assuming
+ that she revealed to them the fact), but to others, exacting no
+ pledge of secrecy from them as to her mental impressions. Lunatics
+ do for a time, and for some special purpose, most cunningly conceal
+ their delusions; but they have not the capacity to struggle for
+ thirty-six years, as Lady Byron must have done, with so frightful an
+ hallucination, without the insane state of mind becoming obvious to
+ those with whom they are daily associating. Neither is it consistent
+ with experience to suppose, that, if Lady Byron had been a monomaniac,
+ her state of disordered understanding would have been restricted to
+ one hallucination. Her diseased brain, affecting the normal action of
+ thought, would, in all probability, have manifested other symptoms
+ besides those referred to of aberration of intellect.
+
+ 'During the last thirty years, I have not met with a case of insanity
+ (assuming the hypothesis of hallucination) at all parallel with that
+ of Lady Byron. In my experience, it is unique. I never saw a patient
+ with such a delusion.'
+
+We refer our readers to a careful study of Dr. Forbes Winslow's
+consideration of this subject given in Part III. Anyone who has been
+familiar with the delicacy and acuteness of Dr. Winslow, as shown in
+his work on obscure diseases of the brain and nerves, must feel that
+his positive assertion on this ground is the best possible evidence.
+We here gratefully acknowledge our obligations to Dr. Winslow for
+the corrected proof of his valuable letter, which he has done us the
+honour to send for this work. We shall consider that his argument,
+in connection with what the reader may observe of Lady Byron's own
+writings, closes that issue of the case completely.
+
+The other alternative is, that Lady Byron deliberately committed false
+witness. This was the ground assumed by the 'Blackwood,' when in July,
+1869, it took upon itself the responsibility of re-opening the Byron
+controversy. It is also the ground assumed by 'The London Quarterly' of
+to-day.
+
+Both say, in so many words, that no crime was imputed to Lord Byron;
+that the representations made to Lushington in the beginning were false
+ones; and that the story told to Lady Byron's confidential friends in
+later days was also false.
+
+Let us examine this theory. In the first place, it requires us to
+believe in the existence of a moral monster of whom Madame Brinvilliers
+is cited as the type. The 'Blackwood,' let it be remembered, opens
+the controversy with the statement that Lady Byron was a Madame
+Brinvilliers. The 'Quarterly' does not shrink from the same assumption.
+
+Let us consider the probability of this question.
+
+If Lady Byron were such a woman, and wished to ruin her husband's
+reputation in order to save her own, and, being perfectly unscrupulous,
+had circulated against him a story of unnatural crime which had no
+proofs, how came two of the first lawyers of England to assume the
+responsibility of offering to present her case in open court? How
+came her husband, if he knew himself guiltless, to shrink from that
+public investigation which must have demonstrated his innocence? Most
+astonishing of all, when he fled from trial, and the report got abroad
+against him in England, and was believed even by his own relations,
+why did not his wife avail herself of the moment to complete her
+victory? If at that moment she had publicly broken with Mrs. Leigh,
+she might have confirmed every rumour. Did she do it? and why not?
+According to the 'Blackwood,' we have here a woman who has made up a
+frightful story to ruin her husband's reputation, yet who takes every
+pains afterwards to prevent its being ruined. She fails to do the very
+thing she undertakes; and for years after, rather than injure him, she
+loses public sympathy, and, by sealing the lips of her legal counsel,
+deprives herself of the advantage of their testimony.
+
+Moreover, if a desire for revenge could have been excited in her,
+it would have been provoked by the first publication of the fourth
+canto of 'Childe Harold,' when she felt that Byron was attacking her
+before the world. Yet we have Lady Anne Barnard's testimony, that,
+at this time, she was so far from wishing to injure him, that all her
+communications were guarded by cautious secrecy. At this time, also,
+she had a strong party in England, to whom she could have appealed.
+Again: when 'Don Juan' was first printed, it excited a violent
+re-action against Lord Byron. Had his wife chosen _then_ to accuse
+him, and display the evidence she had shown to her counsel, there is
+little doubt that all the world would have stood with her; but she did
+not. After his death, when she spoke at last, there seems little doubt
+from the strength of Dr. Lushington's language, that Lady Byron had a
+very strong case, and that, had she been willing, her counsel could
+have told much more than he did. She might _then_ have told her whole
+story, and been believed. Her word was believed by Christopher North,
+and accepted as proof that Byron had been a great criminal. Had revenge
+been her motive, she could have spoken the ONE WORD more that
+North called for.
+
+The 'Quarterly' asks why she waited till everybody concerned was dead.
+There is an obvious answer. Because, while there was anybody living
+to whom the testimony would have been utterly destructive, there were
+the best reasons for withholding it. When all were gone from earth,
+and she herself was in constant expectation of passing away, there
+_was_ a reason, and a proper one, why she should speak. By nature and
+principle truthful, she had had the opportunity of silently watching
+the operation of a permitted lie upon a whole generation. She had been
+placed in a position in which it was necessary, by silence, to allow
+the spread and propagation through society of a radical falsehood. Lord
+Byron's life, fame, and genius had all struck their roots into this
+lie, been nourished by it, and had derived thence a poisonous power.
+
+In reading this history, it will be remarked that he pleaded his
+personal misfortunes in his marriage as excuses for every offence
+against morality, and that the literary world of England accepted
+the plea, and tolerated and justified the crimes. Never before, in
+England, had adultery been spoken of in so respectful a manner, and
+an adulteress openly praised and _feted_, and obscene language and
+licentious images publicly tolerated; and all on the plea of a man's
+private misfortunes.
+
+There was, therefore, great force in the suggestion made to Lady
+Byron, that she owed a testimony in this case to truth and justice,
+irrespective of any personal considerations. There is no more real
+reason for allowing the spread of a hurtful falsehood that affects
+ourselves than for allowing one that affects our neighbour. This
+falsehood had corrupted the literature and morals of both England and
+America, and led to the public toleration, by respectable authorities,
+of forms of vice at first indignantly rejected. The question was,
+Was this falsehood to go on corrupting literature as long as history
+lasted? Had the world no right to true history? Had she who possessed
+the truth no responsibility to the world? Was not a final silence a
+confirmation of a lie with all its consequences?
+
+This testimony of Lady Byron, so far from being thrown out altogether,
+as the 'Quarterly' proposes, has a peculiar and specific value from the
+great forbearance and reticence which characterised the greater part of
+her life.
+
+The testimony of a person who has shown in every action perfect
+friendliness to another comes with the more weight on that account.
+Testimony extorted by conscience from a parent against a child, or a
+wife against a husband, where all the other actions of the life prove
+the existence of kind feeling, is held to be the strongest form of
+evidence.
+
+The fact that Lady Byron, under the severest temptations and the
+bitterest insults and injuries, withheld every word by which Lord
+Byron could be criminated, so long as he and his sister were living,
+is strong evidence, that, when she did speak, it was not under the
+influence of ill-will, but of pure conscientious convictions; and the
+fullest weight ought, therefore, to be given to her testimony.
+
+We are asked now why she ever spoke at all. The fact that her story
+is known to several persons in England is brought up as if it were a
+crime. To this we answer, Lady Byron had an undoubted moral right to
+have exposed the whole story in a public court in 1816, and thus cut
+herself loose from her husband by a divorce. For the sake of saving
+her husband and sister from destruction, she waived this right to
+self-justification, and stood for years a silent sufferer under calumny
+and misrepresentation. She desired nothing but to retire from the
+whole subject; to be permitted to enjoy with her child the peace and
+seclusion that belong to her sex. Her husband made her, through his
+life and after his death, a subject of such constant discussion, that
+she must either abandon the current literature of her day, or run the
+risk of reading more or less about herself in almost every magazine
+of her time. Conversations with Lord Byron, notes of interviews with
+Lord Byron, journals of time spent with Lord Byron, were constantly
+spread before the public. Leigh Hunt, Galt, Medwin, Trelawney, Lady
+Blessington, Dr. Kennedy, and Thomas Moore, all poured forth their
+memorials; and in all she figured prominently. All these had their
+tribes of reviewers and critics, who also discussed her. The profound
+mystery of her silence seemed constantly to provoke inquiry. People
+could not forgive her for not speaking. Her privacy, retirement,
+and silence were set down as coldness, haughtiness, and contempt
+of human sympathy. She was constantly challenged to say something:
+as, for example, in the 'Noctes' of November 1825, six months after
+Byron's death, Christopher North says, speaking of the burning of the
+Autobiography,--
+
+ 'I think, since the Memoir was burned by these people, these people
+ are bound to put us in possession of the best evidence they still
+ have the power of producing, in order that we may come to a just
+ conclusion as to a subject upon which, by their act, at least, as much
+ as by any other people's act, we are compelled to consider it our duty
+ to make up our deliberate opinion,--deliberate and decisive. Woe be
+ to those who provoke this curiosity, and will not allay it! Woe be to
+ them! say I. Woe to them! says the world.'
+
+When Lady Byron published her statement, which certainly seemed called
+for by this language, Christopher North blamed her for doing it, and
+then again said that she ought to go on and tell the whole story. If
+she was thus adjured to speak, blamed for speaking, and adjured to
+speak further, all in one breath, by public prints, there is reason to
+think that there could not have come less solicitation from private
+sources,--from friends who had access to her at all hours, whom she
+loved, by whom she was beloved, and to whom her refusal to explain
+might seem a breach of friendship. Yet there is no evidence on record,
+that we have seen, that she ever had other confidant than her legal
+counsel, till after all the actors in the events were in their graves,
+and the daughter, for whose sake largely the secret was guarded, had
+followed them.
+
+Now, does anyone claim, that, because a woman has sacrificed for twenty
+years all cravings for human sympathy, and all possibility of perfectly
+free and unconstrained intercourse with her friends, that she is
+obliged to go on bearing this same lonely burden to the end of her days?
+
+Let anyone imagine the frightful constraint and solitude implied in
+this sentence. Let anyone, too, think of its painful complications in
+life. The roots of a falsehood are far-reaching. Conduct that can only
+be explained by criminating another must often seem unreasonable and
+unaccountable; and the most truthful person, who feels bound to keep
+silence regarding a radical lie of another, must often be placed in
+positions most trying to conscientiousness. The great merit of 'Caleb
+Williams' as a novel consists in its philosophical analysis of the
+utter helplessness of an innocent person who agrees to keep the secret
+of a guilty one. One sees there how that necessity of silence produces
+all the effect of falsehood on his part, and deprives him of the
+confidence and sympathy of those with whom he would take refuge.
+
+For years, this unnatural life was forced on Lady Byron, involving her
+as in a network, even in her dearest family relations.
+
+That, when all the parties were dead, Lady Byron should allow herself
+the sympathy of a circle of intimate friends, is something so perfectly
+proper and natural, that we cannot but wonder that her conduct in this
+respect has ever been called in question. If it was her right to have
+had a public _expose_ in 1816, it was certainly her right to show to
+her own intimate circle the secret of her life when all the principal
+actors were passed from earth.
+
+The 'Quarterly' speaks as if, by thus waiting, she deprived Lord Byron
+of the testimony of living witnesses. But there were as many witnesses
+and partisans dead on her side as on his. Lady Milbanke and Sir Ralph,
+Sir Samuel Romilly and Lady Anne Barnard were as much dead as Hobhouse,
+Moore, and others of Byron's partisans.
+
+The 'Quarterly' speaks of Lady Byron as 'running round, and repeating
+her story to people mostly below her own rank in life.'
+
+To those who know the personal dignity of Lady Byron's manners,
+represented and dwelt on by her husband in his conversations with Lady
+Blessington, this coarse and vulgar attack only proves the poverty of a
+cause which can defend itself by no better weapons.
+
+Lord Byron speaks of his wife as 'highly cultivated;' as having 'a
+degree of self-control I never saw equalled.'
+
+ 'I am certain,' he says, 'that Lady Byron's first idea is what is due
+ to herself: I mean that it is the undeviating rule of her conduct....
+ Now, my besetting sin is a want of that self-respect which she
+ has in excess.... But, though I accuse Lady Byron of an excess of
+ self-respect, I must, in candour, admit, that, if any person ever had
+ excuse for an extraordinary portion of it, she has; as, in all her
+ thoughts, words, and actions, she is the most decorous woman that ever
+ existed.'
+
+This is the kind of woman who has lately been accused in the public
+prints as a babbler of secrets and a gossip in regard to her private
+difficulties with children, grandchildren, and servants. It is a fair
+specimen of the justice that has generally been meted out to Lady Byron.
+
+In 1836, she was accused of having made a confidant of Campbell, on
+the strength of having written him a note _declining_ to give him any
+information, or answer any questions. In July, 1869, she was denounced
+by 'Blackwood' as a Madame Brinvilliers for keeping such perfect
+silence on the matter of her husband's character; and in the last
+'Quarterly' she is spoken of as a gossip 'running round, and repeating
+her story to people below her in rank.'
+
+While we are upon this subject, we have a suggestion to make. John
+Stuart Mill says that utter self-abnegation has been preached to women
+as a peculiarly feminine virtue. It is true; but there is a moral limit
+to the value of self-abnegation.
+
+It is a fair question for the moralist, whether it is right and proper
+wholly to ignore one's personal claims to justice. The teachings of
+the Saviour give us warrant for submitting to personal injuries; but
+both the Saviour and St. Paul manifested bravery in denying false
+accusations, and asserting innocence.
+
+Lady Byron was falsely accused of having ruined _the_ man of his
+generation, and caused all his vices and crimes, and all their evil
+effects on society. She submitted to the accusation for a certain
+number of years for reasons which commended themselves to her
+conscience; but when all the personal considerations were removed, and
+she was about passing from life, it was right, it was just, it was
+strictly in accordance with the philosophical and ethical character
+of her mind, and with her habit of considering all things in their
+widest relations to the good of mankind, that she should give serious
+attention and consideration to the last duty which she might owe to
+abstract truth and justice in her generation.
+
+In her letter on the religious state of England, we find her advocating
+an absolute frankness in all religious parties. She would have all
+openly confess those doubts, which, from the best of motives, are
+usually suppressed; and believed, that, as a result of such perfect
+truthfulness, a wider love would prevail among Christians. This shows
+the strength of her conviction of the power and the importance of
+absolute truth; and shows, therefore, that her doubts and conscientious
+inquiries respecting her duty on this subject are exactly what might
+have been expected from a person of her character and principles.
+
+Having thus shown that Lady Byron's testimony is the testimony of a
+woman of strong and sound mind, that it was not given from malice nor
+ill-will, that it was given at a proper time and in a proper manner,
+and for a purpose in accordance with the most elevated moral views, and
+that it is coincident with all the established facts of this history,
+and furnishes a perfect solution of every mystery of the case, we think
+we shall carry the reader with us in saying that it is to be received
+as absolute truth.
+
+This conviction we arrive at while as yet we are deprived of the
+statement prepared by Lady Byron, and the proof by which she expected
+to sustain it; both which, as we understand, are now in the hands of
+her trustees.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+PHYSIOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.
+
+
+The credibility of the accusation of the unnatural crime charged to
+Lord Byron is greater than if charged to most men. He was born of
+parents both of whom were remarkable for perfectly ungoverned passions.
+There appears to be historical evidence that he was speaking literal
+truth when he says to Medwin of his father,--
+
+ 'He would have made a bad hero for Hannah More. He ran out three
+ fortunes, and married or ran away with three women.... He seemed born
+ for his own ruin and that of the other sex. He began by seducing
+ Lady Carmarthen, and spent her four thousand pounds; and, not
+ content with one adventure of this kind, afterwards eloped with Miss
+ Gordon.'--_Medwin's Conversations_, p. 31.
+
+Lady Carmarthen here spoken of was the mother of Mrs. Leigh. Miss
+Gordon became Lord Byron's mother.
+
+By his own account, and that of Moore, she was a passionate,
+ungoverned, though affectionate woman. Lord Byron says to Medwin,--
+
+ 'I lost my father when I was only six years of age. My mother, when
+ she was in a passion with me (and I gave her cause enough), used to
+ say, "O you little dog! you are a Byron all over, you are as bad as
+ your father!"'--_Ibid._, p. 31.
+
+By all the accounts of his childhood and early youth, it is made
+apparent that ancestral causes had sent him into the world with a most
+perilous and exceptional sensitiveness of brain and nervous system,
+which it would have required the most judicious course of education to
+direct safely and happily.
+
+Lord Byron often speaks as if he deemed himself subject to tendencies
+which might terminate in insanity. The idea is so often mentioned
+and dwelt upon in his letters, journals, and conversations, that we
+cannot but ascribe it to some very peculiar experience, and not to mere
+affectation.
+
+But, in the history of his early childhood and youth, we see no
+evidence of any original malformation of nature. We see only evidence
+of one of those organisations, full of hope and full of peril,
+which adverse influences might easily drive to insanity, but wise
+physiological training and judicious moral culture might have guided
+to the most splendid results. But of these he had neither. He was
+alternately the pet and victim of his mother's tumultuous nature,
+and equally injured both by her love and her anger. A Scotch maid of
+religious character gave him early serious impressions of religion, and
+thus added the element of an awakened conscience to the conflicting
+ones of his character.
+
+Education, in the proper sense of the word, did not exist in England in
+those days. Physiological considerations of the influence of the body
+on the soul, of the power of brain and nerve over moral development,
+had then not even entered the general thought of society. The school
+and college education literally taught him nothing but the ancient
+classics, of whose power in exciting and developing the animal passions
+Byron often speaks.
+
+The morality of the times is strikingly exemplified even in its
+literary criticism.
+
+For example: One of Byron's poems, written while a schoolboy at Harrow,
+is addressed to 'My Son.' Mr. Moore, and the annotator of the standard
+edition of Byron's poems, gravely give the public their speculations on
+the point, whether Lord Byron first became a father while a schoolboy
+at Harrow; and go into particulars in relation to a certain infant, the
+claim to which lay between Lord Byron and another schoolfellow. It is
+not the nature of the event itself, so much as the cool, unembarrassed
+manner in which it is discussed, that gives the impression of the
+state of public morals. There is no intimation of anything unusual, or
+discreditable to the school, in the event, and no apparent suspicion
+that it will be regarded as a serious imputation on Lord Byron's
+character.
+
+Modern physiological developments would lead any person versed in
+the study of the reciprocal influence of physical and moral laws to
+anticipate the most serious danger to such an organisation as Lord
+Byron's, from a precocious development of the passions. Alcoholic and
+narcotic stimulants, in the case of such a person, would be regarded as
+little less than suicidal, and an early course of combined drinking
+and licentiousness as tending directly to establish those unsound
+conditions which lead towards moral insanity. Yet not only Lord Byron's
+testimony, but every probability from the licence of society, goes to
+show that this was exactly what did take place.
+
+Neither restrained by education, nor warned by any correct
+physiological knowledge, nor held in check by any public sentiment, he
+drifted directly upon the fatal rock.
+
+Here we give Mr. Moore full credit for all his abatements in regard
+to Lord Byron's excesses in his early days. Moore makes the point
+very strongly that he was not, _de facto_, even so bad as many of his
+associates; and we agree with him. Byron's physical organisation was
+originally as fine and sensitive as that of the most delicate woman.
+He possessed the faculty of moral ideality in a high degree; and
+he had not, in the earlier part of his life, an attraction towards
+mere brutal vice. His physical sensitiveness was so remarkable that
+he says of himself, 'A dose of salts has the effect of a temporary
+inebriation, like light champagne, upon me.' Yet this exceptionally
+delicately-organised boy and youth was in a circle where not to conform
+to the coarse drinking-customs of his day was to incur censure and
+ridicule. That he early acquired the power of bearing large quantities
+of liquor is manifested by the record in his Journal, that, on the day
+when he read the severe 'Edinburgh' article upon his schoolboy poems,
+he drank three bottles of claret at a sitting.
+
+Yet Byron was so far superior to his times, that some vague impulses to
+physiological prudence seem to have suggested themselves to him, and
+been acted upon with great vigour. He never could have lived so long
+as he did, under the exhaustive process of every kind of excess, if he
+had not re-enforced his physical nature by an assiduous care of his
+muscular system. He took boxing-lessons, and distinguished himself in
+all athletic exercises.
+
+He also had periods in which he seemed to try vaguely to retrieve
+himself from dissipation, and to acquire self-mastery by what he called
+temperance.
+
+But, ignorant and excessive in all his movements, his very efforts
+at temperance were intemperate. From violent excesses in eating
+and drinking, he would pass to no less unnatural periods of utter
+abstinence. Thus the very conservative power which Nature has of
+adapting herself to any _settled_ course was lost. The extreme
+sensitiveness produced by long periods of utter abstinence made the
+succeeding debauch more maddening and fatal. He was like a fine musical
+instrument, whose strings were every day alternating between extreme
+tension and perfect laxity. We have in his Journal many passages, of
+which the following is a specimen:--
+
+ 'I have dined regularly to-day, for the first time since Sunday last;
+ this being Sabbath too,--all the rest, tea and dry biscuits, six _per
+ diem_. I wish to God I had not dined, now! It kills me with heaviness,
+ stupor, and horrible dreams; and yet it was but a pint of bucellas,
+ and fish. Meat I never touch, nor much vegetable diet. I wish I were
+ in the country, to take exercise, instead of being obliged to _cool_
+ by abstinence, in lieu of it. I should not so much mind a little
+ accession of flesh: my bones can well bear it. But the worst is, the
+ Devil always came with it, till I starved him out; and I will _not_
+ be the slave of _any_ appetite. If I do err, it shall be my heart, at
+ least, that heralds the way. O my head! how it aches! The horrors of
+ digestion! I wonder how Bonaparte's dinner agrees with him.'--_Moore's
+ Life_, vol. ii. p. 264.
+
+From all the contemporary history and literature of the times,
+therefore, we have reason to believe that Lord Byron spoke the exact
+truth when he said to Medwin,--
+
+ 'My own master at an age when I most required a guide, left to the
+ dominion of my passions when they were the strongest, with a fortune
+ anticipated before I came into possession of it, and a constitution
+ impaired by early excesses, I commenced my travels, in 1809,
+ with a joyless indifference to the world and all that was before
+ me.'--_Medwin's Conversations_, p. 42.
+
+Utter prostration of the whole physical man from intemperate excess,
+the deadness to temptation which comes from utter exhaustion, was his
+condition, according to himself and Moore, when he first left England,
+at twenty-one years of age.
+
+In considering his subsequent history, we are to take into account
+that it was upon the brain and nerve-power, thus exhausted by early
+excess, that the draughts of sudden and rapid literary composition
+began to be made. There was something unnatural and unhealthy in the
+rapidity, clearness, and vigour with which his various works followed
+each other. Subsequently to the first two cantos of 'Childe Harold,'
+'The Bride of Abydos,' 'The Corsair,' 'The Giaour,' 'Lara,' 'Parisina,'
+and 'The Siege of Corinth,' all followed close upon each other, in a
+space of less than three years, and those the three most critical years
+of his life. 'The Bride of Abydos' came out in the autumn of 1813,
+and was written in a week; and 'The Corsair' was composed in thirteen
+days. A few months more than a year before his marriage, and the brief
+space of his married life, was the period in which all this literary
+labour was performed, while yet he was running the wild career of
+intrigue and fashionable folly. He speaks of 'Lara' as being tossed
+off in the intervals between masquerades and balls, &c. It is with the
+physical results of such unnatural efforts that we have now chiefly
+to do. Every physiologist would say that the demands of such poems on
+a healthy brain, in that given space, must have been exhausting; but
+when we consider that they were cheques drawn on a bank broken by early
+extravagance, and that the subject was prodigally spending vital forces
+in every other direction at the same time, one can scarcely estimate
+the physiological madness of such a course as Lord Byron's.
+
+It is evident from his Journal, and Moore's account, that any amount
+of physical force which was for the time restored by his first foreign
+travel was recklessly spent in this period, when he threw himself with
+a mad recklessness into London society in the time just preceding
+his marriage. The revelations made in Moore's Memoir of this period
+are sad enough: those to Medwin are so appalling as to the state of
+contemporary society in England, as to require, at least, the benefit
+of the doubt for which Lord Byron's habitual carelessness of truth gave
+scope. His adventures with ladies of the highest rank in England are
+there paraded with a freedom of detail that respect for womanhood must
+lead every woman to question. The only thing that is unquestionable
+is, that Lord Byron made these assertions to Medwin, not as remorseful
+confessions, but as relations of his _bonnes fortunes_, and that Medwin
+published them in the very face of the society to which they related.
+
+When Lord Byron says, 'I have seen a great deal of Italian society, and
+swum in a gondola; but nothing could equal the profligacy of high life
+in England ... when I knew it,' he makes certainly strong assertions,
+if we remember what Mr. Moore reveals of the harem kept in Venice.
+
+But when Lord Byron intimates that three married women in his own
+rank in life, who had once held illicit relations with him, made
+wedding-visits to his wife at one time, we must hope that he drew on
+his active imagination, as he often did, in his statements in regard to
+women.
+
+When he relates at large his amour with Lord Melbourne's wife, and
+represents her as pursuing him with an insane passion, to which he with
+difficulty responded; and when he says that she tracked a rival lady
+to his lodgings, and came into them herself, disguised as a carman--one
+_hopes_ that he exaggerates. And what are we to make of passages like
+this?--
+
+ 'There was a lady at that time, double my own age, the mother of
+ several children who were perfect angels, with whom I formed a
+ _liaison_ that continued without interruption for eight months. She
+ told me she was never in love till she was thirty, and I thought
+ myself so with her when she was forty. I never felt a stronger
+ passion, which she returned with equal ardour....
+
+ 'Strange as it may seem, she gained, as all women do, an influence
+ over me so strong that I had great difficulty in breaking with her.'
+
+Unfortunately, these statements, though probably exaggerated, are, for
+substance, borne out in the history of the times. With every possible
+abatement for exaggeration in these statements, there remains still
+undoubted evidence from other sources that Lord Byron exercised a most
+peculiar and fatal power over the moral sense of the women with whom he
+was brought in relation; and that love for him, in many women, became
+a sort of insanity, depriving them of the just use of their faculties.
+All this makes his fatal history both possible and probable.
+
+Even the article in 'Blackwood,' written in 1825 for the express
+purpose of vindicating his character, admits that his name had been
+coupled with those of three, four, or more women of rank, whom it
+speaks of as 'licentious, unprincipled, characterless women.'
+
+That such a course, in connection with alternate extremes of excess
+and abstinence in eating and drinking, and the immense draughts on
+the brain-power of rapid and brilliant composition, should have ended
+in that abnormal state in which cravings for unnatural vice give
+indications of approaching brain-disease, seems only too probable.
+
+This symptom of exhausted vitality becomes often a frequent type in
+periods of very corrupt society. The dregs of the old Greek and Roman
+civilisation were foul with it; and the apostle speaks of the turning
+of the use of the natural into that which is against nature, as the
+last step in abandonment.
+
+The very literature of such periods marks their want of physical and
+moral soundness. Having lost all sense of what is simple and natural
+and pure, the mind delights to dwell on horrible ideas, which give a
+shuddering sense of guilt and crime. All the writings of this fatal
+period of Lord Byron's life are more or less intense histories of
+unrepentant guilt and remorse or of unnatural crime. A recent writer
+in 'Temple Bar' brings to light the fact, that 'The Bride of Abydos,'
+the first of the brilliant and rapid series of poems which began in
+the period immediately preceding his marriage, was, in its first
+composition, an intense story of love between a brother and sister in
+a Turkish harem; that Lord Byron declared, in a letter to Galt, that
+it was drawn from _real life_; that, in compliance with the prejudices
+of the age, he altered the relationship to that of cousins before
+publication.
+
+This same writer goes on to show, by a series of extracts from Lord
+Byron's published letters and journals, that his mind about this
+time was in a fearfully unnatural state, and suffering singular and
+inexplicable agonies of remorse; that, though he was accustomed
+fearlessly to confide to his friends immoralities which would be looked
+upon as damning, there was now a secret to which he could not help
+alluding in his letters, but which he told Moore he could not tell now,
+but 'some day or other when we are _veterans_.' He speaks of his heart
+as eating itself out; of a mysterious _person_, whom he says, 'God
+knows I love too well, and the Devil probably too.' He wrote a song,
+and sent it to Moore, addressed to a partner in some awful guilt, whose
+very name he dares not mention, because
+
+ 'There is grief in the sound, there is guilt in the fame.'
+
+He speaks of struggles of remorse, of efforts at repentance, and
+returns to guilt, with a sort of horror very different from the
+well-pleased air with which he relates to Medwin his common intrigues
+and adulteries. He speaks of himself generally as oppressed by a
+frightful, unnatural gloom and horror, and, when occasionally happy,
+'not in a way that _can_ or _ought_ to last.'
+
+'The Giaour,' 'The Corsair,' 'Lara,' 'Parisina,' 'The Siege of
+Corinth,' and 'Manfred,' all written or conceived about this period
+of his life, give one picture of a desperate, despairing, unrepentant
+soul, whom suffering maddens, but cannot reclaim.
+
+In all these he paints only the one woman, of concentrated,
+unconsidering passion, ready to sacrifice heaven and defy hell for a
+guilty man, beloved in spite of religion or reason. In this unnatural
+literature, the stimulus of crime is represented as intensifying love.
+Medora, Gulnare, the Page in 'Lara,' Parisina, and the lost sister
+of Manfred, love the more intensely because the object of the love
+is a criminal, out-lawed by God and man. The next step beyond this
+is--_madness_.
+
+The work of Dr. Forbes Winslow on 'Obscure Diseases of the Brain and
+Nerves'[49] contains a passage so very descriptive of the case of
+Lord Byron, that it might seem to have been written for it. The sixth
+chapter of his work, on 'Anomalous and Masked Affections of the Mind,'
+contains, in our view, the only clue that can unravel the sad tragedy
+of Byron's life. He says, p. 87:--
+
+[Footnote 49: The article in question is worth a careful reading. Its
+industry and accuracy in amassing evidence are worthy attention.]
+
+ 'These forms of unrecognised mental disorder are not always
+ accompanied by any well-marked disturbance of the bodily health
+ requiring medical attention, or any obvious departure from a normal
+ state of thought and conduct such as to justify legal interference;
+ neither do these affections always incapacitate the party from
+ engaging in the ordinary business of life.... The change may have
+ progressed insidiously and stealthily, having slowly and almost
+ imperceptibly induced important molecular modifications in the
+ delicate vesicular neurine of the brain, ultimately resulting in some
+ aberration of the ideas, alteration of the affections, or perversion
+ of the propensities or instincts....
+
+ 'Mental disorder of a dangerous character has been known for years
+ to be stealthily advancing, without exciting the slightest notion of
+ its presence, until some sad and terrible catastrophe, homicide, or
+ suicide, has painfully awakened attention to its existence. Persons
+ suffering from latent insanity often affect singularity of dress,
+ gait, conversation, and phraseology. The most trifling circumstances
+ stimulate their excitability. They are martyrs to ungovernable
+ paroxysms of passion, are inflamed to a state of demoniacal fury
+ by the most insignificant of causes, and occasionally lose all
+ sense of delicacy of feeling, sentiment, refinement of manners and
+ conversation. Such manifestations of undetected mental disorder may be
+ seen associated with intellectual and moral qualities of the highest
+ order.'
+
+In another place, Dr. Winslow again adverts to this latter symptom,
+which was strikingly marked in the case of Lord Byron:--
+
+ 'All delicacy and decency of thought are occasionally banished from
+ the mind, so effectually does the principle of thought in these
+ attacks succumb to the animal instincts and passions....
+
+ 'Such cases will commonly be found associated with organic
+ predisposition to insanity or cerebral disease.... Modifications of
+ the malady are seen allied with genius. The biographies of Cowper,
+ Burns, Byron, Johnson, Pope, and Haydon establish that the most
+ exalted intellectual conditions do not escape unscathed.
+
+ 'In early childhood, this form of mental disturbance may, in many
+ cases, be detected. To its existence is often to be traced the
+ _motiveless_ crimes of the young.'
+
+No one can compare this passage of Dr. Forbes Winslow with the
+incidents we have already cited as occurring in that fatal period
+before the separation of Lord and Lady Byron, and not feel that the
+hapless young wife was indeed struggling with those inflexible natural
+laws, which, at some stages of retribution, involve in their awful
+sweep the guilty with the innocent. She longed to save; but he was gone
+past redemption. Alcoholic stimulants and licentious excesses, without
+doubt, had produced those unseen changes in the brain, of which Dr.
+Forbes Winslow speaks; and the results were terrible in proportion to
+the peculiar fineness and delicacy of the organism deranged.
+
+Alas! the history of Lady Byron is the history of too many women in
+every rank of life who are called, in agonies of perplexity and fear,
+to watch that gradual process by which physical excesses change the
+organism of the brain, till slow, creeping, moral insanity comes on.
+The woman who is the helpless victim of cruelties which only unnatural
+states of the brain could invent, who is heart-sick to-day and dreads
+to-morrow,--looks in hopeless horror on the fatal process by which a
+lover and a protector changes under her eyes, from day to day, to a
+brute and a fiend.
+
+Lady Byron's married life--alas! it is lived over in many a cottage and
+tenement-house, with no understanding on either side of the cause of
+the woful misery.
+
+Dr. Winslow truly says, 'The science of these brain-affections is yet
+in its infancy in England.' At that time, it had not even begun to be.
+Madness was a fixed point; and the inquiries into it had no nicety.
+Its treatment, if established, had no redeeming power. Insanity simply
+locked a man up as a dangerous being; and the very suggestion of it,
+therefore, was resented as an injury.
+
+A most peculiar and affecting feature of that form of brain disease
+which hurries its victim, as by an overpowering mania, into crime, is,
+that often the moral faculties and the affections remain to a degree
+unimpaired, and protest with all their strength against the outrage.
+Hence come conflicts and agonies of remorse proportioned to the
+strength of the moral nature. Byron, more than any other one writer,
+may be called the poet of remorse. His passionate pictures of this
+feeling seem to give new power to the English language:--
+
+  'There is a war, a chaos of the mind,
+  When all its elements convulsed--combined,
+  Lie dark and jarring with perturbed force,
+  And gnashing with impenitent remorse,
+  That juggling fiend, who never spake before,
+  But cries, "I warned thee!" when the deed is o'er.'
+
+It was this remorse that formed the only redeeming feature of the case.
+Its eloquence, its agonies, won from all hearts the interest that we
+give to a powerful nature in a state of danger and ruin; and it may
+be hoped that this feeling, which tempers the stern justice of human
+judgments, may prove only a faint image of the wider charity of Him
+whose thoughts are as far above ours as the heaven is above the earth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+HOW COULD SHE LOVE HIM?
+
+
+It has seemed, to some, wholly inconsistent, that Lady Byron, if this
+story were true, could retain any kindly feeling for Lord Byron, or
+any tenderness for his memory; that the profession implied a certain
+hypocrisy: but, in this sad review, we may see how the woman who once
+had loved him, might, in spite of every wrong he had heaped upon her,
+still have looked on this awful wreck and ruin chiefly with pity. While
+she stood afar, and refused to justify or join in the polluted idolatry
+which defended his vices, there is evidence in her writings that her
+mind often went back mournfully, as a mother's would, to the early days
+when he might have been saved.
+
+One of her letters in Robinson's Memoirs, in regard to his religious
+opinions, shows with what intense earnestness she dwelt upon the
+unhappy influences of his childhood and youth, and those early
+theologies which led him to regard himself as one of the reprobate. She
+says,--
+
+ 'Not merely from casual expressions, but from the whole tenor of Lord
+ Byron's feelings, I could not but conclude that he was a believer
+ in the inspiration of the Bible, and had the gloomiest Calvinistic
+ tenets. To that unhappy view of the relation of the creature to the
+ Creator I have always ascribed the misery of his life.
+
+ 'It is enough for me to know that he who thinks his transgression
+ beyond forgiveness ... has righteousness beyond that of the
+ self-satisfied sinner. It is impossible for me to doubt, that, could
+ he once have been assured of pardon, his living faith in moral duty,
+ and love of virtue ("I love the virtues that I cannot claim"), would
+ have conquered every temptation. Judge, then, how I must hate the
+ creed that made him see God as an Avenger, and not as a Father! My own
+ impressions were just the reverse, but could have but little weight;
+ and it was in vain to seek to turn his thoughts from that fixed idea
+ with which he connected his personal peculiarity as a stamp. Instead
+ of being made happier by any apparent good, he felt convinced that
+ every blessing would be turned into a curse to him.... "The worst of
+ it is, I do believe," he said. _I_, like all connected with him, was
+ broken against the rock of predestination. I may be pardoned for my
+ frequent reference to the sentiment (expressed by him), that I was
+ only sent to show him the happiness he was forbidden to enjoy.'
+
+In this letter we have the heart, not of the wife, but of the
+mother,--the love that searches everywhere for extenuations of the
+guilt it is forced to confess.
+
+That Lady Byron was not alone in ascribing such results to the
+doctrines of Calvinism, in certain cases, appears from the language of
+the Thirty-nine Articles, which says:--
+
+ 'As the godly consideration of predestination, and our election in
+ Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly
+ persons, and such as feel in themselves the workings of the spirit of
+ Christ; ... so, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the spirit of
+ Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's
+ predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the Devil doth
+ thrust them either into desperation, or into recklessness of most
+ unclean living,--no less perilous than desperation.'
+
+Lord Byron's life is an exact commentary on these words, which passed
+under the revision of Calvin himself.
+
+The whole tone of this letter shows not only that Lady Byron never lost
+her deep interest in her husband, but that it was by this experience
+that all her religious ideas were modified. There is another of
+these letters in which she thus speaks of her husband's writings and
+character:--
+
+ 'The author of the article on "Goethe" appears to me to have the
+ mind which could dispel the illusion about _another_ poet, without
+ depreciating his claims ... to the truest inspiration.
+
+ 'Who has sought to distinguish between the holy and the unholy in that
+ spirit? to prove, by the very degradation of the one, how high the
+ other was. A character is never done justice to by extenuating its
+ faults: so I do not agree to _nisi bonum_. It is kinder to read the
+ blotted page.'
+
+These letters show that Lady Byron's idea was that, even were the
+whole mournful truth about Lord Byron fully told, there was still a
+foundation left for pity and mercy. She seems to have remembered,
+that if his sins were peculiar, so also were his temptations; and to
+have schooled herself for years to gather up, and set in order in her
+memory, all that yet remained precious in this great ruin. Probably no
+English writer that ever has made the attempt could have done this more
+perfectly. Though Lady Byron was not a poet _par excellence_, yet she
+belonged to an order of souls fully equal to Lord Byron. Hers was more
+the analytical mind of the philosopher than the creative mind of the
+poet; and it was, for that reason, the one mind in our day capable of
+estimating him fully both with justice and mercy. No person in England
+had a more intense sensibility to genius, in its loftier acceptation,
+than Lady Byron; and none more completely sympathised with what was
+pure and exalted in her husband's writings.
+
+There is this peculiarity in Lord Byron, that the pure and the impure
+in his poetry often run side by side without mixing,--as one may see
+at Geneva the muddy stream of the Arve and the blue waters of the
+Rhone flowing together unmingled. What, for example, can be nobler,
+and in a higher and tenderer moral strain than his lines on the dying
+gladiator, in 'Childe Harold'? What is more like the vigour of the old
+Hebrew Scriptures than his thunderstorm in the Alps? What can more
+perfectly express moral ideality of the highest kind than the exquisite
+descriptions of Aurora Raby,--pure and high in thought and language,
+occurring, as they do, in a work full of the most utter vileness?
+
+Lady Byron's hopes for her husband fastened themselves on all the noble
+fragments yet remaining in that shattered temple of his mind which lay
+blackened and thunder-riven; and she looked forward to a sphere beyond
+this earth, where infinite mercy should bring all again to symmetry and
+order. If the strict theologian must regret this as an undue latitude
+of charity, let it at least he remembered that it was a charity which
+sprang from a Christian virtue, and which she extended to every human
+being, however lost, however low. In her view, the mercy which took
+_him_ was mercy that could restore all.
+
+In my recollections of the interview with Lady Byron, when this whole
+history was presented, I can remember that it was with a softened and
+saddened feeling that I contemplated the story, as one looks on some
+awful, inexplicable ruin.
+
+The last letter which I addressed to Lady Byron upon this subject will
+show that such was the impression of the whole interview. It was in
+reply to the one written on the death of my son:--
+
+  'Jan. 30, 1858.
+
+ 'MY DEAR FRIEND,--I _did_ long to hear from you at a time
+ when few knew how to speak, because I knew that _you_ had known
+ everything that sorrow can teach,--you, whose whole life has been a
+ crucifixion, a long ordeal.
+
+ 'But I believe that the Lamb, who stands for ever "in the midst of the
+ throne, as it had been slain," has everywhere His followers,--those
+ who seem sent into the world, as He was, to suffer for the redemption
+ of others; and, like Him, they must look to the joy set before
+ them,--of redeeming others.
+
+ 'I often think that God called you to this beautiful and terrible
+ ministry when He suffered you to link your destiny with one so
+ strangely gifted and so fearfully tempted. Perhaps the reward that is
+ to meet you when you enter within the veil where you must so soon pass
+ will be to see _that_ spirit, once chained and defiled, set free and
+ purified; and to know that to you it has been given, by your life of
+ love and faith, to accomplish this glorious change.
+
+ 'I think increasingly on the subject on which you conversed with me
+ once,--the future state of retribution. It is evident to me that the
+ spirit of Christianity has produced in the human spirit a tenderness
+ of love which wholly revolts from the old doctrine on this subject;
+ and I observe, that, the more Christ-like anyone becomes, the more
+ difficult it seems for them to accept it as hitherto presented. And
+ yet, on the contrary, it was _Christ_ who said, "Fear Him that is
+ able to destroy both soul and body in hell;" and the most appalling
+ language is that of Christ himself.
+
+ 'Certain ideas, once prevalent, certainly must be thrown off. An
+ endless _infliction_ for past sins was once the doctrine: _that_ we
+ now generally reject. The doctrine now generally taught is, that an
+ eternal persistence in evil necessitates everlasting suffering, since
+ evil induces misery by the eternal nature of things; and this, I fear,
+ is inferable from the analogies of Nature, and confirmed by the whole
+ implication of the Bible.
+
+ 'What attention have you given to this subject? and is there any fair
+ way of disposing of the current of assertion, and the still deeper
+ _under_-current of implication, on this subject, without admitting
+ one which loosens all faith in revelation, and throws us on pure
+ naturalism? But of one thing I always feel sure: probation does not
+ end with this present life; and the number of the saved may therefore
+ be infinitely greater than the world's history leads us to suppose.
+
+ 'I think the Bible implies a great crisis, a struggle, an agony, in
+ which God and Christ and all the good are engaged in redeeming from
+ sin; and we are not to suppose that the little portion that is done
+ for souls as they pass between the two doors of birth and death is all.
+
+ 'The Bible is certainly silent there. The primitive Church believed in
+ the mercies of an intermediate state; and it was only the abuse of it
+ by Romanism that drove the Church into its present position, which,
+ I think, is wholly indefensible, and wholly irreconcilable with the
+ spirit of Christ. For if it were the case, that probation in all cases
+ begins and ends here, God's example would surely be one that could not
+ be followed, and He would seem to be far less persevering than even
+ human beings in efforts to save.
+
+ 'Nothing is plainer than that it would be wrong to give up any mind to
+ eternal sin till every possible thing had been done for its recovery;
+ and that is so clearly _not_ the case here, that I can see that, with
+ thoughtful minds, this belief would cut the very roots of religious
+ faith in God: for there is a difference between facts that we do not
+ understand, and facts which we _do_ understand, and perceive to be
+ wholly irreconcilable with a certain character professed by God.
+
+ 'If God says He is love, and certain ways of explaining Scripture
+ make Him _less_ loving and patient than man, then we make Scripture
+ contradict itself. Now, as no passage of Scripture limits probation to
+ this life, and as one passage in Peter certainly unequivocally asserts
+ that Christ preached to the spirits in prison while His body lay in
+ the grave, I am clear upon this point.
+
+ 'But it is also clear, that if there be those who persist in refusing
+ God's love, who choose to dash themselves for ever against the
+ inflexible laws of the universe, such souls must for ever suffer.
+
+ 'There may be souls who hate purity because it reveals their vileness;
+ who refuse God's love, and prefer eternal conflict with it. For such
+ there can be no peace. Even in this life, we see those whom the purest
+ self-devoting love only inflames to madness; and we have only to
+ suppose an eternal persistence in this to suppose eternal misery.
+
+ 'But on this subject we can only leave all reverently in the hands
+ of that Being whose almighty power is "declared chiefly in showing
+ mercy."'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+In leaving this subject, I have an appeal to make to the men, and more
+especially to the women, who have been my readers.
+
+In justice to Lady Byron, it must be remembered that this publication
+of her story is not her act, but mine. I trust you have already
+conceded, that, in so severe and peculiar a trial, she had a right to
+be understood fully by her immediate circle of friends, and to seek
+of them counsel in view of the moral questions to which such very
+exceptional circumstances must have given rise. Her communication to me
+was not an address to the public: it was a statement of the case for
+advice. True, by leaving the whole, unguarded by pledge or promise, it
+left discretionary power with me to use it if needful.
+
+You, my sisters, are to judge whether the accusation laid against Lady
+Byron by the 'Blackwood,' in 1869, was not of so barbarous a nature as
+to justify my producing the truth I held in my hands in reply.
+
+The 'Blackwood' claimed a right to re-open the subject because it was
+_not_ a private but a public matter. It claimed that Lord Byron's
+unfortunate marriage might have changed not only his own destiny, but
+that of all England. It suggested, that, but for this, instead of
+wearing out his life in vice, and corrupting society by impure poetry,
+he might, at this day, have been leading the counsels of the State, and
+helping the onward movements of the world. Then it directly charged
+Lady Byron with meanly forsaking her husband in a time of worldly
+misfortune; with fabricating a destructive accusation of crime against
+him, and confirming this accusation by years of persistent silence more
+guilty than open assertion.
+
+It has been alleged, that, even admitting that Lady Byron's story were
+true, it never ought to have been told.
+
+Is it true, then, that a woman has not the same right to individual
+justice that a man has? If the cases were reversed, would it have been
+thought just that Lord Byron should go down in history loaded with
+accusations of crime because he could be only vindicated by exposing
+the crime of his wife?
+
+It has been said that the crime charged on Lady Byron was comparatively
+unimportant, and the one against Lord Byron was deadly.
+
+But the 'Blackwood,' in opening the controversy, called Lady Byron by
+the name of an unnatural female criminal, whose singular atrocities
+alone entitle her to infamous notoriety; and the crime charged upon her
+was sufficient to warrant the comparison.
+
+Both crimes are foul, unnatural, horrible; and there is no middle
+ground between the admission of the one or the other.
+
+You must either conclude that a woman, all whose other works, words,
+and deeds were generous, just, and gentle, committed this one monstrous
+exceptional crime, without a motive, and against all the analogies of
+her character, and all the analogies of her treatment of others; or you
+must suppose that a man known by all testimony to have been boundlessly
+licentious, who took the very course which, by every physiological law,
+would have led to unnatural results, did, at last, commit an unnatural
+crime.
+
+The question, whether I did right, when Lady Byron was thus held up as
+an abandoned criminal by the 'Blackwood,' to interpose my knowledge
+of the real truth in her defence, is a serious one; but it is one for
+which I must account to God alone, and in which, without any contempt
+of the opinions of my fellow-creatures, I must say, that it is a small
+thing to be judged of man's judgment.
+
+I had in the case a responsibility very different from that of many
+others. I had been consulted in relation to the publication of this
+story by Lady Byron, at a time when she had it in her power to have
+exhibited it with all its proofs, and commanded an instant conviction.
+I have reason to think that my advice had some weight in suppressing
+that disclosure. I gave that advice under the impression that the Byron
+controversy was a thing for ever passed, and never likely to return.
+
+It had never occurred to me, that, nine years after Lady Byron's death,
+a standard English periodical would declare itself free to re-open this
+controversy, when all the generation who were her witnesses had passed
+from earth; and that it would re-open it in the most savage form of
+accusation, and with the indorsement and commendation of a hook of the
+vilest slanders, edited by Lord Byron's mistress.
+
+Let the reader mark the retributions of justice. The accusations of the
+'Blackwood,' in 1869, were simply an intensified form of those first
+concocted by Lord Byron in his 'Clytemnestra' poem of 1816. He forged
+that weapon, and bequeathed it to his party. The 'Blackwood' took it
+up, gave it a sharper edge, and drove it to the heart of Lady Byron's
+fame. The result has been the disclosure of this history. It is,
+then, Lord Byron himself, who, by his network of wiles, his ceaseless
+persecutions of his wife, his efforts to extend his partisanship beyond
+the grave, has brought on this tumultuous exposure. He, and he alone,
+is the cause of this revelation.
+
+And now I have one word to say to those in England who, with all the
+facts and documents in their hands which could at once have cleared
+Lady Byron's fame, allowed the barbarous assault of the 'Blackwood'
+to go over the civilised world without a reply. I speak to those who,
+knowing that I am speaking the truth, stand silent; to those who have
+now the ability to produce the facts and documents by which this cause
+might be instantly settled, and who do not produce them.
+
+I do not judge them; but I remind them that a day is coming when they
+and I must stand side by side at the great judgment-seat,--I to give an
+account for my speaking, they for their silence.
+
+In that day, all earthly considerations will have vanished like morning
+mists, and truth or falsehood, justice or injustice, will be the only
+realities.
+
+In that day, God, who will judge the secrets of all men, will judge
+between this man and this woman. Then, if never before, the full truth
+shall be told both of the depraved and dissolute man who made it his
+life's object to defame the innocent, and the silent, the self-denying
+woman who made it her life's object to give space for repentance to the
+guilty.
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+MISCELLANEOUS DOCUMENTS.
+
+THE TRUE STORY OF LADY BYRON'S LIFE,
+
+AS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 'THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.'
+
+
+The reading world of America has lately been presented with a book
+which is said to sell rapidly, and which appears to meet with universal
+favour.
+
+The subject of the book may be thus briefly stated: The mistress of
+Lord Byron comes before the world for the sake of vindicating his fame
+from slanders and aspersions cast on him by his wife. The story of the
+mistress _versus_ wife may be summed up as follows:--
+
+Lord Byron, the hero of the story, is represented as a human being
+endowed with every natural charm, gift, and grace, who, by the one
+false step of an unsuitable marriage, wrecked his whole life. A
+narrow-minded, cold-hearted precisian, without sufficient intellect to
+comprehend his genius, or heart to feel for his temptations, formed
+with him one of those mere worldly marriages common in high life; and,
+finding that she could not reduce him to the mathematical proprieties
+and conventional rules of her own mode of life, suddenly, and without
+warning, abandoned him in the most cruel and inexplicable manner.
+
+It is alleged that she parted from him in apparent affection and
+good-humour, wrote him a playful, confiding letter upon the way, but,
+after reaching her father's house, suddenly, and without explanation,
+announced to him that she would never see him again; that this sudden
+abandonment drew down upon him a perfect storm of scandalous stories,
+which his wife never contradicted; that she never in any way or shape
+stated what the exact reasons for her departure had been, and thus
+silently gave scope to all the malice of thousands of enemies. The
+sensitive victim was actually driven from England, his home broken up,
+and be doomed to be a lonely wanderer on foreign shores.
+
+In Italy, under bluer skies, and among a gentler people, with more
+tolerant modes of judgment, the authoress intimates that he found
+peace and consolation. A lovely young Italian countess falls in love
+with him, and, breaking her family ties for his sake, devotes herself
+to him; and, in blissful retirement with her, he finds at last that
+domestic life for which he was so fitted.
+
+Soothed, calmed, and refreshed, he writes 'Don Juan,' which the world
+is at this late hour informed was a poem with a high moral purpose,
+designed to be a practical illustration of the doctrine of total
+depravity among young gentlemen in high life.
+
+Under the elevating influence of love, he rises at last to higher
+realms of moral excellence, and resolves to devote the rest of his life
+to some noble and heroic purpose; becomes the saviour of Greece; and
+dies untimely, leaving a nation to mourn his loss.
+
+The authoress dwells with a peculiar bitterness on Lady Byron's entire
+_silence_ during all these years, as the most aggravated form of
+persecution and injury. She informs the world that Lord Byron wrote his
+Autobiography with the purpose of giving a fair statement of the exact
+truth in the whole matter; and that Lady Byron bought up the manuscript
+of the publisher, and insisted on its being destroyed, unread; thus
+inflexibly depriving her husband of his last chance of a hearing before
+the tribunal of the public.
+
+As a result of this silent persistent cruelty on the part of a cold,
+correct, narrow-minded woman, the character of Lord Byron has been
+misunderstood, and his name transmitted to after-ages clouded with
+aspersions and accusations which it is the object of this book to
+remove.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such is the story of Lord Byron's mistress,--a story which is going
+the length of this American continent, and rousing up new sympathy
+with the poet, and doing its best to bring the youth of America once
+more under the power of that brilliant, seductive genius, from which
+it was hoped they had escaped. Already we are seeing it revamped in
+magazine-articles, which take up the slanders of the paramour and
+enlarge on them, and wax eloquent in denunciation of the marble-hearted
+insensible wife.
+
+All this while, it does not appear to occur to the thousands of
+unreflecting readers that they are listening merely to the story of
+Lord Byron's mistress, and of Lord Byron; and that, even by their own
+showing, their heaviest accusation against Lady Byron is that _she has
+not spoken at all_. Her story has never been told.
+
+For many years after the rupture between Lord Byron and his wife, that
+poet's personality, fate, and happiness had an interest for the whole
+civilized world, which, we will venture to say, was unparalleled. It
+is within the writer's recollection, how, in the obscure mountain-town
+where she spent her early days, Lord Byron's separation from his wife
+was, for a season, the all-engrossing topic.
+
+She remembers hearing her father recount at the breakfast-table the
+facts as they were given in the public papers, together with his own
+suppositions and theories of the causes.
+
+Lord Byron's 'Fare thee well,' addressed to Lady Byron, was set to
+music, and sung with tears by young school-girls, even in this distant
+America.
+
+Madame de Stael said of this appeal, that she was sure it would have
+drawn her at once to his heart and his arms; _she_ could have forgiven
+everything: and so said all the young ladies all over the world, not
+only in England but in France and Germany, wherever Byron's poetry
+appeared in translation.
+
+Lady Byron's obdurate cold-heartedness in refusing even to listen to
+his prayers, or to have any intercourse with him which might lead to
+reconciliation, was the one point conceded on all sides.
+
+The stricter moralists defended her; but gentler hearts throughout all
+the world regarded her as a marble-hearted monster of correctness and
+morality, a personification of the law unmitigated by the gospel.
+
+Literature in its highest walks busied itself with Lady Byron. Hogg,
+in the character of the Ettrick Shepherd, devotes several eloquent
+passages to expatiating on the conjugal fidelity of a poor Highland
+shepherd's wife, who, by patience and prayer and forgiveness, succeeds
+in reclaiming her drunken husband, and making a good man of him; and
+then points his moral by contrasting with this touching picture the
+cold-hearted pharisaical correctness of Lady Byron.
+
+Moore, in his 'Life of Lord Byron,' when beginning the recital of the
+series of disgraceful amours which formed the staple of his life in
+Venice, has this passage:--
+
+'Highly censurable in point of morality and decorum as was his course
+of life while under the roof of Madame ----, it was (with pain I am
+forced to confess) venial in comparison with the strange, headlong
+career of licence to which, when weaned from that connection, he so
+unrestrainedly, and, it may be added, defyingly abandoned himself. Of
+the state of his mind on leaving England, I have already endeavoured
+to convey some idea; and among the feelings that went to make up that
+self-centred spirit of resistance which he then opposed to his fate was
+an indignant scorn for his own countrymen for the wrongs he thought
+they had done him. For a time, _the kindly sentiments which he still
+harboured toward Lady Byron, and a sort of vague hope, perhaps, that
+all would yet come right again_, kept his mind in a mood somewhat
+more softened and docile, as well as sufficiently under the influence
+of English opinions to prevent his breaking out into open rebellion
+against it, as he unluckily did afterward.
+
+'_By the failure of the attempted mediation with Lady Byron_, his
+last link with home was severed: while, notwithstanding the quiet and
+unobtrusive life which he led at Geneva, there was as yet, he found,
+no cessation of the slanderous warfare against his character; the same
+busy and misrepresenting spirit which had tracked his every step at
+home, having, with no less malicious watchfulness, dogged him into
+exile.'
+
+We should like to know what the misrepresentations and slanders
+must have been, when this sort of thing is admitted in Mr. Moore's
+_justification_. It seems to us rather wonderful how anybody, unless it
+were a person like the Countess Guiccioli, could misrepresent a life
+such as even Byron's friend admits he was leading.
+
+During all these years, when he was setting at defiance every principle
+of morality and decorum, the interest of the female mind all over
+Europe in the conversion of this brilliant prodigal son was unceasing,
+and reflects the greatest credit upon the faith of the sex.
+
+Madame de Stael commenced the first effort at evangelization
+immediately after he left England, and found her catechumen in a most
+edifying state of humility. He was, metaphorically, on his knees in
+penitence, and confessed himself a miserable sinner in the loveliest
+manner possible. Such sweetness and humility took all hearts. His
+conversations with Madame de Stael were printed, and circulated all
+over the world; making it to appear that only the inflexibility of Lady
+Byron stood in the way of his entire conversion.
+
+Lady Blessington, among many others, took him in hand five or six years
+afterwards, and was greatly delighted with his docility, and edified by
+his frank and free confessions of his miserable offences. Nothing now
+seemed wanting to bring the wanderer home to the fold but a kind word
+from Lady Byron. But, when the fair countess offered to mediate, the
+poet only shook his head in tragic despair; 'he had so many times tried
+in vain; Lady Byron's course had been from the first that of obdurate
+silence.'
+
+Any one who would wish to see a specimen of the skill of the
+honourable poet in mystification will do well to read a letter to Lady
+Byron, which Lord Byron, on parting from Lady Blessington, enclosed for
+her to read just before he went to Greece. He says,--
+
+'The letter which I enclose _I was prevented from sending by my despair
+of its doing any good_. I was perfectly sincere when I wrote it, and
+am so still. But it is difficult for me to withstand the thousand
+provocations on that subject which both friends and foes have for seven
+years been throwing in the way of a man whose feelings were once quick,
+and whose temper was never patient.'
+
+ 'TO LADY BYRON, CARE OF THE HON. MRS. LEIGH, LONDON
+
+  'PISA, _Nov._ 17, 1821.
+
+ 'I have to acknowledge the receipt of "Ada's hair," which is very
+ soft and pretty, and nearly as dark already as mine was at twelve
+ years old, if I may judge from what I recollect of some in Augusta's
+ possession, taken at that age. But it didn't curl--perhaps from its
+ being let grow.
+
+ 'I also thank you for the inscription of the date and name; and I will
+ tell you why: I believe that they are the only two or three words
+ of your handwriting in my possession. For your letters I returned;
+ and except the two words, or rather the one word, "Household,"
+ written twice in an old account book, I have no other. I burnt your
+ last note, for two reasons: firstly, it was written in a style not
+ very agreeable; and, secondly, I wished to take your word without
+ documents, which are the worldly resources of suspicious people.
+
+ 'I suppose that this note will reach you somewhere about Ada's
+ birthday--the 10th of December, I believe. She will then be six:
+ so that, in about twelve more, I shall have some chance of meeting
+ her; perhaps sooner, if I am obliged to go to England by business
+ or otherwise. Recollect, however, one thing, either in distance or
+ nearness--every day which keeps us asunder should, after so long a
+ period, rather soften our mutual feelings; which must always have one
+ rallying point as long as our child exists, which, I presume, we both
+ hope will be long after either of her parents.
+
+ 'The time which has elapsed since the separation has been considerably
+ more than the whole brief period of our union, and the not much longer
+ one of our prior acquaintance. We both made a bitter mistake; but
+ now it is over, and irrevocably so. For at thirty-three on my part,
+ and few years less on yours, though it is no very extended period of
+ life, still it is one when the habits and thought are generally so
+ formed as to admit of no modification; and, as we could not agree when
+ younger, we should with difficulty do so now.
+
+ 'I say all this, because I own to you, that notwithstanding
+ everything, I considered our reunion as not impossible for more than
+ a year after the separation; but then I gave up the hope entirely
+ and for ever. But this very impossibility of reunion seems to me
+ at least a reason why, on all the few points of discussion which
+ can arise between us, we should preserve the courtesies of life,
+ and as much of its kindness as people who are never to meet may
+ preserve,--perhaps more easily than nearer connections. For my own
+ part, I am violent, but not malignant; for only fresh provocations can
+ awaken my resentments. To you, who are colder and more concentrated,
+ I would just hint, that you may sometimes mistake the depth of a cold
+ anger for dignity, and a worse feeling for duty. I assure you that
+ I bear you _now_ (whatever I may have done) no resentment whatever.
+ Remember, that, _if you have injured me_ in aught, this forgiveness
+ is something; and that, if I have _injured you_, it is something more
+ still, if it be true, as the moralists say, that the most offending
+ are the least forgiving.
+
+ 'Whether the offence has been solely on my side, or reciprocal, or on
+ yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect upon any but two things; viz.,
+ that you are the mother of my child, and that we shall never meet
+ again. I think, if you also consider the two corresponding points with
+ reference to myself, it will be better for all three.
+
+  'Yours ever,
+
+  'NOEL BYRON.'
+
+
+The artless Thomas Moore introduces this letter in the 'Life,' with the
+remark,--
+
+'There are few, I should think, of my readers, who will not agree with
+me in pronouncing, that, if the author of the following letter had not
+_right_ on his side, he had at least most of those good feelings which
+are found in general to accompany it.'
+
+The reader is requested to take notice of the important admission, that
+_the letter was never sent to Lady Byron at all_. It was, in fact,
+never _intended_ for her, but was a nice little dramatic performance,
+composed simply with the view of acting on the sympathies of Lady
+Blessington and Byron's numerous female admirers; and the reader will
+agree with us, we think, that, in this point of view, it was very
+neatly done, and deserves immortality as a work of high art. For six
+years he had been plunged into every kind of vice and excess, pleading
+his shattered domestic joys, and his wife's obdurate heart, as the
+apology and the impelling cause; filling the air with his shrieks
+and complaints concerning the slander which pursued him, while he
+filled letters to his confidential correspondents with records of new
+mistresses. During all these years, the silence of Lady Byron was
+unbroken; though Lord Byron not only drew in private on the sympathies
+of his female admirers, but employed his talents and position as an
+author in holding her up to contempt and ridicule before thousands
+of readers. We shall quote at length his side of the story, which he
+published in the First Canto of 'Don Juan,' that the reader may see
+how much reason he had for assuming the injured tone which he did in
+the letter to Lady Byron quoted above. That letter never was sent to
+her; and the unmanly and indecent caricature of her, and the indelicate
+exposure of the whole story on his own side, which we are about to
+quote, were the only communications that could have reached her
+solitude.
+
+In the following verses, Lady Byron is represented as Donna Inez, and
+Lord Byron as Don Jose; but the incidents and allusions were so very
+pointed, that nobody for a moment doubted whose history the poet was
+narrating.
+
+  'His mother was a learned lady, famed
+    For every branch of every science known
+  In every Christian language ever named,
+    With virtues equalled by her wit alone:
+  She made the cleverest people quite ashamed;
+    And even the good with inward envy groaned,
+  Finding themselves so very much exceeded
+  In their own way by all the things that she did.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Save that her duty both to man and God
+  Required this conduct; which seemed very odd.
+
+  She kept a journal where his faults were noted,
+    And opened certain trunks of books and letters,
+  (All which might, if occasion served, be quoted);
+    And then she had all Seville for abettors,
+  Besides her good old grandmother (who doted):
+    The hearers of her case become repeaters,
+  Then advocates, inquisitors, and judges,--
+  Some for amusement, others for old grudges.
+
+  And then this best and meekest woman bore
+    With such serenity her husband's woes!
+  Just as the Spartan ladies did of yore,
+    Who saw their spouses killed, and nobly chose
+  Never to say a word about them more.
+    Calmly she heard each calumny that rose,
+  And saw _his_ agonies with such sublimity,
+  That all the world exclaimed, "What magnanimity!"'
+
+This is the longest and most elaborate version of his own story
+that Byron ever published; but he busied himself with many others,
+projecting at one time a Spanish romance, in which the same story is
+related in the same transparent manner: but this he was dissuaded
+from printing. The booksellers, however, made a good speculation in
+publishing what they called his domestic poems; that is, poems bearing
+more or less relation to this subject.
+
+Every person with whom he became acquainted with any degree of intimacy
+was made familiar with his side of the story. Moore's Biography is
+from first to last, in its representations, founded upon Byron's
+communicativeness, and Lady Byron's silence; and the world at last
+settled down to believing that the account so often repeated, and never
+contradicted, must be substantially a true one.
+
+The true history of Lord and Lady Byron has long been perfectly
+understood in many circles in England; but the facts were of a nature
+that could not be made public. While there was a young daughter living
+whose future might be prejudiced by its recital, and while there were
+other persons on whom the disclosure of the real truth would have been
+crushing as an avalanche, Lady Byron's only course was the perfect
+silence in which she took refuge, and those sublime works of charity
+and mercy to which she consecrated her blighted early life.
+
+But the time is now come when the truth may be told. All the actors
+in the scene have disappeared from the stage of mortal existence, and
+passed, let us have faith to hope, into a world where they would desire
+to expiate their faults by a late publication of the truth.
+
+No person in England, we think, would as yet take the responsibility of
+relating the true history which is to clear Lady Byron's memory; but,
+by a singular concurrence of circumstances, all the facts of the case,
+in the most undeniable and authentic form, were at one time placed in
+the hands of the writer of this sketch, with authority to make such
+use of them as she should judge best. Had this melancholy history been
+allowed to sleep, no public use would have been made of them; but the
+appearance of a popular attack on the character of Lady Byron calls for
+a vindication, and the true story of her married life will therefore
+now be related.
+
+Lord Byron has described in one of his letters the impression left
+upon his mind by a young person whom he met one evening in society,
+and who attracted his attention by the simplicity of her dress, and a
+certain air of singular purity and calmness with which she surveyed the
+scene around her.
+
+On inquiry, he was told that this young person was Miss Milbanke, an
+only child, and one of the largest heiresses in England.
+
+Lord Byron was fond of idealising his experiences in poetry; and the
+friends of Lady Byron had no difficulty in recognising the portrait of
+Lady Byron, as she appeared at this time of her life, in his exquisite
+description of Aurora Raby:--
+
+                                    'There was
+  Indeed a certain fair and fairy one,
+    Of the best class, and better than her class,--
+  Aurora Raby, a young star who shone
+    O'er life, too sweet an image for such glass;
+  A lovely being scarcely formed or moulded;
+  A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Early in years, and yet more infantine
+    In figure, she had something of sublime
+  In eyes which sadly shone as seraphs' shine;
+    All youth, but with an aspect beyond time;
+  Radiant and grave, as pitying man's decline;
+    Mournful, but mournful of another's crime,
+  She looked as if she sat by Eden's door,
+  And grieved for those who could return no more.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew,
+    As seeking not to know it; silent, lone,
+  As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew,
+    And kept her heart serene within its zone.
+  There was awe in the homage which she drew;
+    Her spirit seemed as seated on a throne,
+  Apart from the surrounding world, and strong
+  In its own strength,--most strange in one so young!'
+
+Some idea of the course which their acquaintance took, and of the
+manner in which he was piqued into thinking of her, is given in a
+stanza or two:--
+
+  'The dashing and proud air of Adeline
+    Imposed not upon her: she saw her blaze
+  Much as she would have seen a glowworm shine;
+    Then turned unto the stars for loftier rays.
+  Juan was something she could not divine,
+    Being no sibyl in the new world's ways;
+  Yet she was nothing dazzled by the meteor,
+  Because she did not pin her faith on feature.
+
+  His fame too (for he had that kind of fame
+    Which sometimes plays the deuce with womankind,--
+  A heterogeneous mass of glorious blame,
+    Half virtues and whole vices being combined;
+  Faults which attract because they are not tame;
+    Follies tricked out so brightly that they blind),--
+  These seals upon her wax made no impression,
+  Such was her coldness or her self-possession.
+
+  Aurora sat with that indifference
+    Which piques a _preux_ chevalier,--as it ought.
+  Of all offences, that's the worst offence
+    Which seems to hint you are not worth a thought.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  To his gay nothings, nothing was replied,
+    Or something which was nothing, as urbanity
+  Required. Aurora scarcely looked aside,
+    Nor even smiled enough for any vanity.
+  The Devil was in the girl! Could it be pride,
+    Or modesty, or absence, or inanity?
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Juan was drawn thus into some attentions,
+    Slight but select, and just enough to express,
+  To females of perspicuous comprehensions,
+    That he would rather make them more than less.
+  Aurora at the last (so history mentions,
+    Though probably much less a fact than guess)
+  So far relaxed her thoughts from their sweet prison
+  As once or twice to smile, if not to listen.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  But Juan had a sort of winning way,
+    A proud humility, if such there be,
+  Which showed such deference to what females say,
+    As if each charming word were a decree.
+  His tact, too, tempered him from grave to gay,
+    And taught him when to be reserved or free.
+  He had the art of drawing people out,
+  Without their seeing what he was about.
+
+  Aurora, who in her indifference,
+    Confounded him in common with the crowd
+  Of flatterers, though she deemed he had more sense
+    Than whispering foplings or than witlings loud,
+  Commenced (from such slight things will great commence)
+    To feel that flattery which attracts the proud,
+  Rather by deference than compliment,
+  And wins even by a delicate dissent.
+
+  And then he had good looks: that point was carried
+    _Nem. con._ amongst the women.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Now, though we know of old that looks deceive,
+  And always have done, somehow these good looks,
+  Make more impression than the best of books.
+
+  Aurora, who looked more on books than faces,
+    Was very young, although so very sage:
+  Admiring more Minerva than the Graces,
+    Especially upon a printed page.
+  But Virtue's self, with all her tightest laces,
+    Has not the natural stays of strict old age;
+  And Socrates, that model of all duty,
+  Owned to a penchant, though discreet for beauty.'
+
+The presence of this high-minded, thoughtful, unworldly woman is
+described through two cantos of the wild, rattling 'Don Juan,' in a
+manner that shows how deeply the poet was capable of being affected by
+such an appeal to his higher nature.
+
+For instance, when Don Juan sits silent and thoughtful amid a circle of
+persons who are talking scandal, the poet says,--
+
+  ''Tis true, he saw Aurora look as though
+    She approved his silence: she perhaps mistook
+  Its motive for that charity we owe,
+    But seldom pay, the absent.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  He gained esteem where it was worth the most;
+    And certainly Aurora had renewed
+  In him some feelings he had lately lost
+    Or hardened,--feelings which, perhaps ideal,
+  Are so divine that I must deem them real:--
+
+  The love of higher things and better days;
+    The unbounded hope and heavenly ignorance
+  Of what is called the world and the world's ways;
+    The moments when we gather from a glance
+
+  More joy than from all future pride or praise,
+    Which kindled manhood, but can ne'er entrance
+  The heart in an existence of its own
+    Of which another's bosom is the zone.
+
+  And full of sentiments sublime as billows
+    Heaving between this world and worlds beyond,
+  Don Juan, when the midnight hour of pillows
+    Arrived, retired to his.'...
+
+In all these descriptions of a spiritual unworldly nature acting on
+the spiritual and unworldly part of his own nature, every one who ever
+knew Lady Byron intimately must have recognised the model from which
+he drew, and the experience from which he spoke, even though nothing
+was further from his mind than to pay this tribute to the woman he had
+injured, and though before these lines, which showed how truly he knew
+her real character, had come one stanza of ribald, vulgar caricature,
+designed as a slight to her:--
+
+  'There was Miss Millpond, smooth as summer's sea
+    That usual paragon, an only daughter,
+  Who seemed the cream of equanimity
+    'Till skimmed; and then there was some milk and water;
+  With a slight shade of blue, too, it might be,
+    Beneath the surface: but what did it matter?
+  Love's riotous; but marriage should have quiet,
+  And, being consumptive, live on a milk diet.'
+
+The result of Byron's intimacy with Miss Milbanke and the enkindling
+of his nobler feelings was an offer of marriage, which she, though
+at the time deeply interested in him, declined with many expressions
+of friendship and interest. In fact, she already loved him, but had
+that doubt of her power to be to him all that a wife should be which
+would be likely to arise in a mind so sensitively constituted and so
+unworldly. They, however, continued a correspondence as friends; on her
+part, the interest continually increased; on his, the transient rise of
+better feelings was choked and overgrown by the thorns of base unworthy
+passions.
+
+From the height at which he might have been happy as the husband of a
+noble woman, he fell into the depths of a secret adulterous intrigue
+with a blood relation, so near in consanguinity, that discovery must
+have been utter ruin and expulsion from civilised society.
+
+From henceforth, this damning guilty secret became the ruling force in
+his life; holding him with a morbid fascination, yet filling him with
+remorse and anguish, and insane dread of detection. Two years after his
+refusal by Miss Milbanke, his various friends, seeing that for some
+cause he was wretched, pressed marriage upon him.
+
+Marriage has often been represented as the proper goal and terminus
+of a wild and dissipated career; and it has been supposed to be the
+appointed mission of good women to receive wandering prodigals, with
+all the rags and disgraces of their old life upon them, and put rings
+on their hands, and shoes on their feet, and introduce them, clothed
+and in their right minds, to an honourable career in society.
+
+Marriage was, therefore, universally recommended to Lord Byron by his
+numerous friends and well-wishers; and so he determined to marry, and,
+in an hour of reckless desperation, sat down and wrote proposals to two
+ladies. One was declined: the other, which was accepted, was to Miss
+Milbanke. The world knows well that he had the gift of expression, and
+will not be surprised that he wrote a very beautiful letter, and that
+the woman who had already learned to love him fell at once into the
+snare.
+
+Her answer was a frank, outspoken avowal of her love for him, giving
+herself to him heart and hand. The good in Lord Byron was not so
+utterly obliterated that he could receive such a letter without
+emotion, or practise such unfairness on a loving, trusting heart
+without pangs of remorse. He had sent the letter in mere recklessness;
+he had not seriously expected to be accepted; and the discovery of the
+treasure of affection which he had secured was like a vision of lost
+heaven to a soul in hell.
+
+But, nevertheless, in his letters written about the engagement,
+there are sufficient evidences that his self-love was flattered at
+the preference accorded him by so superior a woman, and one who had
+been so much sought. He mentions with an air of complacency that
+she has employed the last two years in refusing five or six of his
+acquaintance; that he had no idea she loved him, admitting that it was
+an old attachment on his part. He dwells on her virtues with a sort
+of pride of ownership. There is a sort of childish levity about the
+frankness of these letters, very characteristic of the man who skimmed
+over the deepest abysses with the lightest jests. Before the world, and
+to his intimates, he was acting the part of the successful _fiance_,
+conscious all the while of the deadly secret that lay cold at the
+bottom of his heart.
+
+When he went to visit Miss Milbanke's parents as her accepted lover
+she was struck with his manner and appearance: she saw him moody and
+gloomy, evidently wrestling with dark and desperate thoughts, and
+anything but what a happy and accepted lover should be. She sought an
+interview with him alone, and told him that she had observed that he
+was not happy in the engagement; and magnanimously added, that, if on
+review, he found he had been mistaken in the nature of his feelings,
+she would immediately release him, and they should remain only friends.
+
+Overcome with the conflict of his feelings, Lord Byron fainted away.
+Miss Milbanke was convinced that his heart must really be deeply
+involved in an attachment with reference to which he showed such
+strength of emotion, and she spoke no more of a dissolution of the
+engagement.
+
+There is no reason to doubt that Byron was, as he relates in his
+'Dream,' profoundly agonized and agitated when he stood before God's
+altar with the trusting young creature whom he was leading to a fate so
+awfully tragic; yet it was not the memory of Mary Chaworth, but another
+guiltier and more damning memory, that overshadowed that hour.
+
+The moment the carriage-doors were shut upon the bridegroom and the
+bride, the paroxysm of remorse and despair--unrepentant remorse and
+angry despair--broke forth upon her gentle head:--
+
+'You might have saved me from this, madam! You had all in your own
+power when I offered myself to you first. Then you might have made
+me what you pleased; but now you will find that you have married a
+_devil_!'
+
+In Miss Martineau's Sketches, recently published, is an account of the
+termination of this wedding-journey, which brought them to one of Lady
+Byron's ancestral country seats, where they were to spend the honeymoon.
+
+Miss Martineau says,--
+
+'At the altar she did not know that she was a sacrifice; but before
+sunset of that winter day she knew it, if a judgment may be formed from
+her face, and attitude of despair, when she alighted from the carriage
+on the afternoon of her marriage-day. It was not the traces of tears
+which won the sympathy of the old butler who stood at the open door.
+The bridegroom jumped out of the carriage and walked away. The bride
+alighted, and came up the steps alone, with a countenance and frame
+agonized and listless with evident horror and despair. The old servant
+longed to offer his arm to the young, lonely creature, as an assurance
+of sympathy and protection. From this shock she certainly rallied,
+and soon. The pecuniary difficulties of her new home were exactly
+what a devoted spirit like hers was fitted to encounter. Her husband
+bore testimony, after the catastrophe, that a brighter being, a more
+sympathising and agreeable companion, never blessed any man's home.
+When he afterwards called her cold and mathematical, and over-pious,
+and so forth, it was when public opinion had gone against him, and
+when he had discovered that her fidelity and mercy, her silence and
+magnanimity, might be relied on, so that he was at full liberty to make
+his part good, as far as she was concerned.
+
+'Silent she was even to her own parents, whose feelings she
+magnanimously spared. She did not act rashly in leaving him, though she
+had been most rash in marrying him.'
+
+Not all at once did the full knowledge of the dreadful reality into
+which she had entered come upon the young wife. She knew vaguely, from
+the wild avowals of the first hours of their marriage, that there was
+a dreadful secret of guilt; that Byron's soul was torn with agonies of
+remorse, and that he had no love to give to her in return for a love
+which was ready to do and dare all for him. Yet bravely she addressed
+herself to the task of soothing and pleasing and calming the man whom
+she had taken 'for better or for worse.'
+
+Young and gifted; with a peculiar air of refined and spiritual beauty;
+graceful in every movement; possessed of exquisite taste; a perfect
+companion to his mind in all the higher walks of literary culture; and
+with that infinite pliability to all his varying, capricious moods
+which true love alone can give; bearing in her hand a princely fortune,
+which, with a woman's uncalculating generosity, was thrown at his
+feet,--there is no wonder that she might feel for a while as if she
+could enter the lists with the very Devil himself, and fight with a
+woman's weapons for the heart of her husband.
+
+There are indications scattered through the letters of Lord Byron,
+which, though brief indeed, showed that his young wife was making every
+effort to accommodate herself to him, and to give him a cheerful home.
+One of the poems that he sends to his publisher about this time, he
+speaks of as being copied by her. He had always the highest regard for
+her literary judgments and opinions; and this little incident shows
+that she was already associating herself in a wifely fashion with his
+aims as an author.
+
+The poem copied by her, however, has a sad meaning, which she
+afterwards learned to understand only too well:--
+
+  'There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away
+  When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay:
+  'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone that fades so fast;
+  But the tender bloom of heart is gone e'er youth itself be past.
+  Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness
+  Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt, or ocean of excess:
+  The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain
+  The shore to which their shivered sail shall never stretch again.'
+
+Only a few days before she left him for ever, Lord Byron sent Murray
+manuscripts, in Lady Byron's handwriting, of the 'Siege of Corinth,'
+and 'Parisina,' and wrote,--
+
+
+'I am very glad that the handwriting was a favourable omen of the
+_morale_ of the piece: but you must not trust to that; for my copyist
+would write out anything I desired, in all the ignorance of innocence.'
+
+There were lucid intervals in which Lord Byron felt the charm of his
+wife's mind, and the strength of her powers. 'Bell, you could be a poet
+too, if you only thought so,' he would say. There were summer-hours in
+her stormy life, the memory of which never left her, when Byron was as
+gentle and tender as he was beautiful; when he seemed to be possessed
+by a good angel: and then for a little time all the ideal possibilities
+of his nature stood revealed.
+
+The most dreadful men to live with are those who thus alternate between
+angel and devil. The buds of hope and love called out by a day or two
+of sunshine are frozen again and again, till the tree is killed.
+
+But there came an hour of revelation,--an hour when, in a manner
+which left no kind of room for doubt, Lady Byron saw the full depth
+of the abyss of infamy which her marriage was expected to cover, and
+understood that she was expected to be the cloak and the accomplice of
+this infamy.
+
+Many women would have been utterly crushed by such a disclosure; some
+would have fled from him immediately, and exposed and denounced the
+crime. Lady Byron did neither. When all the hope of womanhood died out
+of her heart, there arose within her, stronger, purer, and brighter,
+that immortal kind of love such as God feels for the sinner,--the love
+of which Jesus spoke, and which holds the one wanderer of more account
+than the ninety and nine that went not astray. She would neither leave
+her husband nor betray him, nor yet would she for one moment justify
+his sin; and hence came two years of convulsive struggle, in which
+sometimes, for a while, the good angel seemed to gain ground, and then
+the evil one returned with sevenfold vehemence.
+
+Lord Byron argued his case with himself and with her with all the
+sophistries of his powerful mind. He repudiated Christianity as
+authority; asserted the right of every human being to follow out what
+he called 'the impulses of nature.' Subsequently he introduced into one
+of his dramas the reasoning by which he justified himself in incest.
+
+In the drama of 'Cain,' Adah, the sister and the wife of Cain, thus
+addresses him:--
+
+                        'Cain, walk not with this spirit.
+  Bear with what we have borne, and love me: I
+  Love thee.
+
+  _Lucifer._ More than thy mother and thy sire?
+
+  _Adah._ I do. Is that a sin, too?
+
+  _Lucifer._                       No, not yet:
+  It one day will be in your children.
+
+  _Adah._                               What!
+  Must not my daughter love her brother Enoch?
+
+  _Lucifer._ Not as thou lovest Cain.
+
+  _Adah._                            O my God!
+  Shall they not love, and bring forth things that love
+  Out of their love? Have they not drawn their milk
+  Out of this bosom? Was not he, their father,
+  Born of the same sole womb, in the same hour
+  With me? Did we not love each other, and,
+  In multiplying our being, multiply
+  Things which will love each other as we love
+  Them? And as I love thee, my Cain, go not
+  Forth with this spirit: he is not of ours.
+
+  _Lucifer._ The sin I speak of is not of my making
+  And cannot be a sin in you, whate'er
+  It seems in those who will replace ye in
+  Mortality.
+
+  _Adah._ What is the sin which is not
+  Sin in itself? Can circumstance make sin
+  Of virtue? If it doth, we are the slaves
+  Of'--
+
+Lady Byron, though slight and almost infantine in her bodily presence,
+had the soul, not only of an angelic woman, but of a strong reasoning
+man. It was the writer's lot to know her at a period when she formed
+the personal acquaintance of many of the very first minds of England;
+but, among all with whom this experience brought her in connection,
+there was none who impressed her so strongly as Lady Byron. There was
+an almost supernatural power of moral divination, a grasp of the very
+highest and most comprehensive things, that made her lightest opinions
+singularly impressive. No doubt, this result was wrought out in a great
+degree from the anguish and conflict of these two years, when, with no
+one to help or counsel her but Almighty God, she wrestled and struggled
+with fiends of darkness for the redemption of her husband's soul.
+
+She followed him through all his sophistical reasonings with a keener
+reason. She besought and implored, in the name of his better nature,
+and by all the glorious things that he was capable of being and doing;
+and she had just power enough to convulse and shake and agonise, but
+not power enough to subdue.
+
+One of the first of living writers, in the novel of 'Romola,' has
+given, in her masterly sketch of the character of Tito, the whole
+history of the conflict of a woman like Lady Byron with a nature like
+that of her husband. She has described a being full of fascinations
+and sweetnesses, full of generosities and of good-natured impulses; a
+nature that could not bear to give pain, or to see it in others, but
+entirely destitute of any firm moral principle; she shows how such a
+being, merely by yielding step by step to the impulses of passion,
+and disregarding the claims of truth and right, becomes involved in a
+fatality of evil, in which deceit, crime, and cruelty are a necessity,
+forcing him to persist in the basest ingratitude to the father who has
+done all for him, and hard-hearted treachery to the high-minded wife
+who has given herself to him wholly.
+
+There are few scenes in literature more fearfully tragic than the one
+between Romola and Tito, when he finally discovers that she knows him
+fully, and can be deceived by him no more. Some such hour always must
+come for strong decided natures irrevocably pledged--one to the service
+of good, and the other to the slavery of evil. The demoniac cried out,
+'What have I to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to
+torment me before the time?' The presence of all-pitying purity and
+love was a torture to the soul possessed by the demon of evil.
+
+These two years in which Lady Byron was with all her soul struggling to
+bring her husband back to his better self were a series of passionate
+convulsions.
+
+During this time, such was the disordered and desperate state of his
+worldly affairs, that there were ten executions for debt levied on
+their family establishment; and it was Lady Byron's fortune each time
+which settled the account.
+
+Toward the last, she and her husband saw less and less of each other;
+and he came more and more decidedly under evil influences, and seemed
+to acquire a sort of hatred of her.
+
+Lady Byron once said significantly to a friend who spoke of some
+causeless dislike in another, 'My dear, I have known people to be hated
+for no other reason than because they impersonated conscience.'
+
+The biographers of Lord Byron, and all his apologists, are careful to
+narrate how sweet and amiable and obliging he was to everybody who
+approached him; and the saying of Fletcher, his man-servant, that
+'_anybody_ could do anything with my Lord, except my Lady,' has often
+been quoted.
+
+The reason of all this will now be evident. 'My Lady' was the only one,
+fully understanding the deep and dreadful secrets of his life, who had
+the courage resolutely and persistently and inflexibly to plant herself
+in his way, and insist upon it, that, if he went to destruction, it
+should be in spite of her best efforts.
+
+He had tried his strength with her fully. The first attempt had been
+to make her an accomplice by sophistry; by destroying her faith in
+Christianity, and confusing her sense of right and wrong, to bring her
+into the ranks of those convenient women who regard the marriage-tie
+only as a friendly alliance to cover licence on both sides.
+
+When her husband described to her the Continental latitude (the
+good-humoured marriage, in which complaisant couples mutually agreed
+to form the cloak for each other's infidelities), and gave her to
+understand that in this way alone she could have a peaceful and
+friendly life with him, she answered him simply, 'I am too truly your
+friend to do this.'
+
+When Lord Byron found that he had to do with one who would not yield,
+who knew him fully, who could not be blinded and could not be deceived,
+he determined to rid himself of her altogether.
+
+It was when the state of affairs between herself and her husband seemed
+darkest and most hopeless, that the only child of this union was
+born. Lord Byron's treatment of his wife during the sensitive period
+that preceded the birth of this child, and during her confinement,
+was marked by paroxysms of unmanly brutality, for which the only
+possible charity on her part was the supposition of insanity. Moore
+sheds a significant light on this period, by telling us that, about
+this time, Byron was often drunk, day after day, with Sheridan. There
+had been insanity in the family; and this was the plea which Lady
+Byron's love put in for him. She regarded him as, if not insane, at
+least so nearly approaching the boundaries of insanity as to be a
+subject of forbearance and tender pity; and she loved him with that
+love resembling a mother's, which good wives often feel when they have
+lost all faith in their husband's principles, and all hopes of their
+affections. Still, she was in heart and soul his best friend; true to
+him with a truth which he himself could not shake.
+
+In the verses addressed to his daughter, Lord Byron speaks of her as
+
+  'The child of love, though born in bitterness,
+  And nurtured in convulsion.'
+
+A day or two after the birth of this child, Lord Byron came suddenly
+into Lady Byron's room, and told her that her mother was dead. It was
+an utter falsehood; but it was only one of the many nameless injuries
+and cruelties by which he expressed his hatred of her. A short time
+after her confinement, she was informed by him, in a note, that, as
+soon as she was able to travel, she must go; that he could not and
+would not longer have her about him; and, when her child was only five
+weeks old, he carried this threat of expulsion into effect.
+
+Here we will insert briefly Lady Byron's own account (the only one she
+ever gave to the public) of this separation. The circumstances under
+which this brief story was written are affecting.
+
+Lord Byron was dead. The whole account between him and her was closed
+for ever in this world. Moore's life had been prepared, containing
+simply and solely Lord Byron's own version of their story. Moore
+sent this version to Lady Byron, and requested to know if she had
+any remarks to make upon it. In reply, she sent a brief statement to
+him,--the first and only one that had come from her during all the
+years of the separation, and which appears to have mainly for its
+object the exculpation of her father and mother from the charge, made
+by the poet, of being the instigators of the separation.
+
+In this letter, she says, with regard to their separation,--
+
+'The facts are, I left London for Kirkby Mallory, the residence of my
+father and mother, on the 15th of January, 1816. LORD BYRON HAD
+SIGNIFIED TO ME IN WRITING, JAN. 6, HIS ABSOLUTE DESIRE THAT I SHOULD
+LEAVE LONDON ON THE EARLIEST DAY THAT I COULD CONVENIENTLY FIX. It
+was not safe for me to undertake the fatigue of a journey sooner than
+the 15th. Previously to my departure, it had been strongly impressed
+upon my mind that Lord Byron was under the influence of insanity.
+This opinion was derived, in a great measure, from the communications
+made me by his nearest relatives and personal attendant, who had more
+opportunity than myself for observing him during the latter part of my
+stay in town. It was even represented to me that he was in danger of
+destroying himself.
+
+'_With the concurrence of his family_, I had consulted Dr. Baillie as a
+friend (Jan. 8) respecting the supposed malady. On acquainting him with
+the state of the case, and with Lord Byron's desire that I should leave
+London, Dr. Baillie thought that my absence might be advisable as an
+experiment, assuming the fact of mental derangement; for Dr. Baillie,
+not having had access to Lord Byron, could not pronounce a positive
+opinion on that point. He enjoined that, in correspondence with Lord
+Byron, I should avoid all but light and soothing topics. Under these
+impressions, I left London, determined to follow the advice given by
+Dr. Baillie. Whatever might have been the conduct of Lord Byron toward
+me from the time of my marriage, yet, supposing him to be in a state of
+mental alienation, it was not for _me_, nor for any person of common
+humanity, to manifest at that moment a sense of injury.'
+
+Nothing more than this letter from Lady Byron is necessary to
+substantiate the fact, that she did not _leave_ her husband, but _was
+driven_ from him,--driven from him that he might give himself up to
+the guilty infatuation that was consuming him, without being tortured
+by her imploring face, and by the silent power of her presence and her
+prayers.
+
+For a long time before this, she had seen little of him. On the day
+of her departure, she passed by the door of his room, and stopped to
+caress his favourite spaniel, which was lying there; and she confessed
+to a friend the weakness of feeling a willingness even to be something
+as humble as that poor little creature, might she only be allowed to
+remain and watch over him. She went into the room where he and the
+partner of his sins were sitting together, and said, 'Byron, I come to
+say good-bye,' offering, at the same time, her hand.
+
+Lord Byron put his hands behind him, retreated to the mantel-piece,
+and, looking on the two that stood there, with a sarcastic smile said,
+'When shall we three meet again?' Lady Byron answered, 'In heaven, I
+trust.' And those were her last words to him on earth.
+
+Now, if the reader wishes to understand the real talents of Lord Byron
+for deception and dissimulation, let him read, with this story in his
+mind, the 'Fare thee well,' which he addressed to Lady Byron through
+the printer:--
+
+  'Fare thee well; and if for ever,
+    Still for ever fare thee well!
+  Even though unforgiving, never
+    'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.
+
+  Would that breast were bared before thee
+    Where thy head so oft hath lain,
+  While that placid sleep came o'er thee
+    Thou canst never know again!
+
+  Though my many faults defaced me,
+    Could no other arm be found
+  Than the one which once embraced me
+    To inflict a careless wound?'
+
+The re-action of society against him at the time of the separation from
+his wife was something which he had not expected, and for which, it
+appears, he was entirely unprepared. It broke up the guilty intrigue
+and drove him from England. He had not courage to meet or endure it.
+The world, to be sure, was very far from suspecting what the truth was:
+but the tide was setting against him with such vehemence as to make
+him tremble every hour lest the whole should be known; and henceforth,
+it became a warfare of desperation to make his story good, no matter at
+whose expense.
+
+He had tact enough to perceive at first that the assumption of the
+pathetic and the magnanimous, and general confessions of faults,
+accompanied with admissions of his wife's goodness, would be the best
+policy in his case. In this mood, he thus writes to Moore:--
+
+'The fault was not in my choice (unless in choosing at all); for I do
+not believe (and I must say it in the very dregs of all this bitter
+business) that there ever was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder,
+or a more amiable, agreeable being than Lady Byron. I never had, nor
+can have, any reproach to make her while with me. Where there is blame,
+it belongs to myself.'
+
+As there must be somewhere a scapegoat to bear the sin of the affair,
+Lord Byron wrote a poem called 'A Sketch,' in which he lays the blame
+of stirring up strife on a friend and former governess of Lady Byron's;
+but in this sketch he introduces the following just eulogy on Lady
+Byron:--
+
+    'Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind
+  Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind,
+  Deceit infect not, near contagion soil,
+  Indulgence weaken, nor example spoil,
+  Nor mastered science tempt her to look down
+  On humbler talents with a pitying frown,
+  Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain,
+  Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain,
+  Nor fortune change, pride raise, nor passion bow,
+  Nor virtue teach austerity,--till now;
+  Serenely purest of her sex that live,
+  But wanting one sweet weakness,--to forgive;
+  Too shocked at faults her soul can never know,
+  She deemed that all could be like her below:
+  Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue's friend;
+  For Virtue pardons those she would amend.'
+
+In leaving England, Lord Byron first went to Switzerland, where he
+conceived and in part wrote out the tragedy of 'Manfred.' Moore speaks
+of his domestic misfortunes, and the sufferings which he underwent at
+this time, as having influence in stimulating his genius, so that he
+was enabled to write with a greater power.
+
+Anybody who reads the tragedy of 'Manfred' with this story in his mind
+will see that it is true.
+
+The hero is represented as a gloomy misanthrope, dwelling with
+impenitent remorse on the memory of an incestuous passion which has
+been the destruction of his sister for this life and the life to come,
+but which, to the very last gasp, he despairingly refuses to repent of,
+even while he sees the fiends of darkness rising to take possession
+of his departing soul. That Byron knew his own guilt well, and judged
+himself severely, may be gathered from passages in this poem, which are
+as powerful as human language can be made; for instance this part of
+the 'incantation,' which Moore says was written at this time:--
+
+  'Though thy slumber may be deep,
+  Yet thy spirit shall not sleep:
+  There are shades which will not vanish;
+  There are thoughts thou canst not banish.
+  By a power to thee unknown,
+  Thou canst never be alone:
+  Thou art wrapt as with a shroud;
+  Thou art gathered in a cloud;
+  And for ever shalt thou dwell
+  In the spirit of this spell.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  From thy false tears I did distil
+  An essence which had strength to kill;
+  From thy own heart I then did wring
+  The black blood in its blackest spring;
+  From thy own smile I snatched the snake,
+  For there it coiled as in a brake;
+  From thy own lips I drew the charm
+  Which gave all these their chiefest harm
+  In proving every poison known,
+  I found the strongest was thine own.
+
+  By thy cold breast and serpent smile,
+  By thy unfathomed gulfs of guile,
+  By that most seeming virtuous eye,
+  By thy shut soul's hypocrisy,
+  By the perfection of thine art
+  Which passed for human thine own heart,
+  By thy delight in other's pain,
+  And by thy brotherhood of Cain,
+  I call upon thee, and compel
+  Thyself to be thy proper hell!'
+
+Again: he represents Manfred as saying to the old abbot, who seeks to
+bring him to repentance,--
+
+  Old man, there is no power in holy men,
+  Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form
+  Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast,
+  Nor agony, nor greater than all these,
+  The innate tortures of that deep despair,
+  Which is remorse without the fear of hell,
+  But, all in all sufficient to itself,
+  Would make a hell of heaven, can exorcise
+  From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense
+  Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge
+  Upon itself: there is no future pang
+  Can deal that justice on the self-condemned
+  He deals on his own soul.'
+
+And when the abbot tells him,
+
+                             'All this is well;
+  For this will pass away, and be succeeded
+  By an auspicious hope, which shall look up
+  With calm assurance to that blessed place
+  Which all who seek may win, whatever be
+  Their earthly errors,'
+
+He answers,
+
+  'It is too late.'
+
+Then the old abbot soliloquises:--
+
+  'This should have been a noble creature: he
+  Hath all the energy which would have made
+  A goodly frame of glorious elements,
+  Had they been wisely mingled; as it is,
+  It is an awful chaos,--light and darkness,
+  And mind and dust, and passions and pure thoughts,
+  Mixed, and contending without end or order.'
+
+The world can easily see, in Moore's Biography, what, after this, was
+the course of Lord Byron's life; how he went from shame to shame, and
+dishonour to dishonour, and used the fortune which his wife brought him
+in the manner described in those private letters which his biographer
+was left to print. Moore, indeed, says Byron had made the resolution
+not to touch his lady's fortune; but adds, that it required more
+self-command than he possessed to carry out so honourable a purpose.
+
+Lady Byron made but one condition with him. She had him in her power;
+and she exacted that the unhappy partner of his sins should not follow
+him out of England, and that the ruinous intrigue should be given
+up. Her inflexibility on this point kept up that enmity which was
+constantly expressing itself in some publication or other, and which
+drew her and her private relations with him before the public.
+
+The story of what Lady Byron did with the portion of her fortune which
+was reserved to her is a record of noble and skilfully administered
+charities. Pitiful and wise and strong, there was no form of human
+suffering or sorrow that did not find with her refuge and help. She
+gave not only systematically, but also impulsively.
+
+Miss Martineau claims for her the honour of having first invented
+practical schools, in which the children of the poor were turned
+into agriculturists, artizans, seamstresses, and good wives for poor
+men. While she managed with admirable skill and economy permanent
+institutions of this sort, she was always ready to relieve suffering
+in any form. The fugitive slaves William and Ellen Crafts, escaping to
+England, were fostered by her protecting care.
+
+In many cases where there was distress or anxiety from poverty among
+those too self-respecting to make their sufferings known, the delicate
+hand of Lady Byron ministered to the want with a consideration which
+spared the most refined feelings.
+
+As a mother, her course was embarrassed by peculiar trials. The
+daughter inherited from the father not only brilliant talents, but a
+restlessness and morbid sensibility which might be too surely traced
+to the storms and agitations of the period in which she was born. It
+was necessary to bring her up in ignorance of the true history of
+her mother's life; and the consequence was that she could not fully
+understand that mother.
+
+During her early girlhood, her career was a source of more anxiety than
+of comfort. She married a man of fashion, ran a brilliant course as a
+gay woman of fashion, and died early of a lingering and painful disease.
+
+In the silence and shaded retirement of the sick-room, the daughter
+came wholly back to her mother's arms and heart; and it was on that
+mother's bosom that she leaned as she went down into the dark valley.
+It was that mother who placed her weak and dying hand in that of her
+Almighty Saviour.
+
+To the children left by her daughter, she ministered with the
+faithfulness of a guardian angel; and it is owing to her influence that
+those who yet remain are among the best and noblest of mankind.
+
+The person whose relations with Byron had been so disastrous, also, in
+the latter years of her life, felt Lady Byron's loving and ennobling
+influences, and, in her last sickness and dying hours, looked to her
+for consolation and help.
+
+There was an unfortunate child of sin, born with the curse upon
+her, over whose wayward nature Lady Byron watched with a mother's
+tenderness. She was the one who could have patience when the patience
+of every one else failed; and though her task was a difficult one, from
+the strange abnormal propensities to evil in the object of her cares,
+yet Lady Byron never faltered, and never gave over, till death took
+the responsibility from her hands.
+
+During all this trial, strange to say, her belief that the good in Lord
+Byron would finally conquer was unshaken.
+
+To a friend who said to her, 'Oh! how could you love him?' she answered
+briefly, 'My dear, there was the angel in him.' It is in us all.
+
+It was in this angel that she had faith. It was for the deliverance
+of this angel from degradation and shame and sin that she unceasingly
+prayed. She read every work that Byron wrote--read it with a deeper
+knowledge than any human being but herself could possess. The ribaldry
+and the obscenity and the insults with which he strove to make her
+ridiculous in the world fell at her pitying feet unheeded.
+
+When he broke away from all this unworthy life to devote himself to a
+manly enterprise for the redemption of Greece, she thought that she saw
+the beginning of an answer to her prayers. Even although one of his
+latest acts concerning her was to repeat to Lady Blessington the false
+accusation which made Lady Byron the author of all his errors, she
+still had hopes from the one step taken in the right direction.
+
+In the midst of these hopes came the news of his sudden death. On his
+death-bed, it is well-known that he called his confidential English
+servant to him, and said to him, 'Go to my sister; tell her--Go to Lady
+Byron,--you will see her,--and say'--
+
+Here followed twenty minutes of indistinct mutterings, in which the
+names of his wife, daughter, and sister, frequently occurred. He then
+said, 'Now I have told you all.'
+
+'My lord,' replied Fletcher, 'I have not understood a word your
+lordship has been saying.'
+
+'Not understand me!' exclaimed Lord Byron with a look of the utmost
+distress: 'what a pity! Then it is too late,--all is over!' He
+afterwards, says Moore, tried to utter a few words, of which none were
+intelligible except 'My sister--my child.'
+
+When Fletcher returned to London, Lady Byron sent for him, and walked
+the room in convulsive struggles to repress her tears and sobs, while
+she over and over again strove to elicit something from him which
+should enlighten her upon what that last message had been; but in vain:
+the gates of eternity were shut in her face, and not a word had passed
+to tell her if he had repented.
+
+For all that, Lady Byron never doubted his salvation. Ever before her,
+during the few remaining years of her widowhood, was the image of her
+husband, purified and ennobled, with the shadows of earth for ever
+dissipated, the stains of sin for ever removed; 'the angel in him,' as
+she expressed it, 'made perfect, according to its divine ideal.'
+
+Never has more divine strength of faith and love existed in woman.
+Out of the depths of her own loving and merciful nature, she gained
+such views of the divine love and mercy as made all hopes possible.
+There was no soul of whose future Lady Byron despaired,--such was her
+boundless faith in the redeeming power of love.
+
+After Byron's death, the life of this delicate creature--so frail in
+body that she seemed always hovering on the brink of the eternal world,
+yet so strong in spirit, and so unceasing in her various ministries of
+mercy--was a miracle of mingled weakness and strength.
+
+To talk with her seemed to the writer of this sketch the nearest
+possible approach to talking with one of the spirits of the just made
+perfect.
+
+She was gentle, artless; approachable as a little child; with ready,
+outflowing sympathy for the cares and sorrows and interests of all who
+approached her; with a _naive_ and gentle playfulness, that adorned,
+without hiding, the breadth and strength of her mind; and, above all,
+with a clear, divining, moral discrimination; never mistaking wrong
+for right in the slightest shade, yet with a mercifulness that made
+allowance for every weakness, and pitied every sin.
+
+There was so much of Christ in her, that to have seen her seemed to be
+to have drawn near to heaven. She was one of those few whom absence
+cannot estrange from friends; whose mere presence in this world seems
+always a help to every generous thought, a strength to every good
+purpose, a comfort in every sorrow.
+
+Living so near the confines of the spiritual world, she seemed already
+to see into it: hence the words of comfort which she addressed to a
+friend who had lost a son:--
+
+'Dear friend, remember, as long as our loved ones are in _God's_ world,
+they are in _ours_.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It has been thought by some friends who have read the proof-sheets
+of the foregoing that the author should give more specifically her
+authority for these statements.
+
+The circumstances which led the writer to England at a certain time
+originated a friendship and correspondence with Lady Byron, which was
+always regarded as one of the greatest acquisitions of that visit.
+
+On the occasion of a second visit to England, in 1856, the writer
+received a note from Lady Byron, indicating that she wished to have
+some private, confidential conversation upon important subjects,
+and inviting her, for that purpose, to spend a day with her at her
+country-seat near London.
+
+The writer went and spent a day with Lady Byron alone; and the object
+of the invitation was explained to her. Lady Byron was in such a state
+of health, that her physicians had warned her that she had very little
+time to live. She was engaged in those duties and retrospections which
+every thoughtful person finds necessary, when coming deliberately, and
+with open eyes, to the boundaries of this mortal life.
+
+At that time, there was a cheap edition of Byron's works in
+contemplation, intended to bring his writings into circulation among
+the masses; and the pathos arising from the story of his domestic
+misfortunes was one great means relied on for giving it currency.
+
+Under these circumstances, some of Lady Byron's friends had proposed
+the question to her, _whether she had not a responsibility to society
+for the truth_; whether _she did right_ to allow these writings to gain
+influence over the popular mind by giving a silent consent to what she
+knew to be utter falsehoods.
+
+Lady Byron's whole life had been passed in the most heroic
+self-abnegation and self-sacrifice: and she had now to consider whether
+one more act of self-denial was not required of her before leaving this
+world; namely, to declare the absolute truth, no matter at what expense
+to her own feelings.
+
+For this reason, it was her desire to recount the whole history to a
+person of another country, and entirely out of the sphere of personal
+and local feelings which might be supposed to influence those in the
+country and station in life where the events really happened, in order
+that she might be helped by such a person's views in making up an
+opinion as to her own duty.
+
+The interview had almost the solemnity of a death-bed avowal. Lady
+Byron stated the facts which have been embodied in this article, and
+gave to the writer a paper containing a brief memorandum of the whole,
+with the dates affixed.
+
+We have already spoken of that singular sense of the reality of the
+spiritual world which seemed to encompass Lady Byron during the last
+part of her life, and which made her words and actions seem more like
+those of a blessed being detached from earth than of an ordinary
+mortal. All her modes of looking at things, all her motives of action,
+all her involuntary exhibitions of emotion, were so high above any
+common level, and so entirely regulated by the most unworldly causes,
+that it would seem difficult to make the ordinary world understand
+exactly how the thing seemed to lie before her mind. What impressed
+the writer more strongly than anything else was Lady Byron's perfect
+conviction that her husband was now a redeemed spirit; that he looked
+back with pain and shame and regret on all that was unworthy in his
+past life; and that, if he could speak or could act in the case, he
+would desire to prevent the further circulation of base falsehoods,
+and of seductive poetry, which had been made the vehicle of morbid and
+unworthy passions.
+
+Lady Byron's experience had led her to apply the powers of her strong
+philosophical mind to the study of mental pathology: and she had become
+satisfied that the solution of the painful problem which first occurred
+to her as a young wife, was, after all, the true one; namely, that
+Lord Byron had been one of those unfortunately constituted persons in
+whom the balance of nature is so critically hung, that it is always in
+danger of dipping towards insanity; and that, in certain periods of his
+life, he was so far under the influence of mental disorder as not to be
+fully responsible for his actions.
+
+She went over with a brief and clear analysis the history of his
+whole life as she had thought it out during the lonely musings of her
+widowhood. She dwelt on the ancestral causes that gave him a nature
+of exceptional and dangerous susceptibility. She went through the
+mismanagements of his childhood, the history of his school-days, the
+influence of the ordinary school-course of classical reading on such
+a mind as his. She sketched boldly and clearly the internal life of
+the young men of the time, as she, with her purer eyes, had looked
+through it; and showed how habits, which, with less susceptible fibre,
+and coarser strength of nature, were tolerable for his companions,
+were deadly to him, unhinging his nervous system, and intensifying the
+dangers of ancestral proclivities. Lady Byron expressed the feeling
+too, that the Calvinistic theology, as heard in Scotland, had proved
+in his case, as it often does in certain minds, a subtle poison. He
+never could either disbelieve or become reconciled to it; and the sore
+problems it proposes embittered his spirit against Christianity.
+
+'The worst of it is, I _do believe_,' he would often say with violence,
+when he had been employing all his powers of reason, wit, and ridicule
+upon these subjects.
+
+Through all this sorrowful history was to be seen, not the care of a
+slandered woman to make her story good, but the pathetic anxiety of
+a mother, who treasures every particle of hope, every intimation of
+good, in the son whom she cannot cease to love. With indescribable
+resignation, she dwelt on those last hours, those words addressed to
+her, never to be understood till repeated in eternity.
+
+But all this she looked upon as for ever past; believing, that, with
+the dropping of the earthly life, these morbid impulses and influences
+ceased, and that higher nature which he often so beautifully expressed
+in his poems became the triumphant one.
+
+While speaking on this subject, her pale ethereal face became luminous
+with a heavenly radiance; there was something so sublime in her belief
+in the victory of love over evil, that faith with her seemed to have
+become sight. She seemed so clearly to perceive the divine ideal of
+the man she had loved, and for whose salvation she had been called to
+suffer and labour and pray, that all memories of his past unworthiness
+fell away, and were lost.
+
+Her love was never the doting fondness of weak women; it was the
+appreciative and discriminating love by which a higher nature
+recognised god-like capabilities under all the dust and defilement
+of misuse and passion: and she never doubted that the love which in
+her was so strong, that no injury or insult could shake it, was yet
+stronger in the God who made her capable of such a devotion, and that
+in him it was accompanied by power to subdue all things to itself.
+
+The writer was so impressed and excited by the whole scene and recital,
+that she begged for two or three days to deliberate before forming any
+opinion. She took the memorandum with her, returned to London, and gave
+a day or two to the consideration of the subject. The decision which
+she made was chiefly influenced by her reverence and affection for Lady
+Byron. She seemed so frail, she had suffered so much, she stood at
+such a height above the comprehension of the coarse and common world,
+that the author had a feeling that it would almost be like violating a
+shrine to ask her to come forth from the sanctuary of a silence where
+she had so long abode, and plead her cause. She wrote to Lady Byron,
+that while this act of justice did seem to be called for, and to be in
+some respects most desirable, yet, as it would involve so much that was
+painful to her, the writer considered that Lady Byron would be entirely
+justifiable in leaving the truth to be disclosed after her death; and
+recommended that all the facts necessary should be put in the hands of
+some person, to be so published.
+
+Years passed on. Lady Byron lingered four years after this interview to
+the wonder of her physicians and all her friends.
+
+After Lady Byron's death, the writer looked anxiously, hoping to see a
+Memoir of the person whom she considered the most remarkable woman that
+England has produced in the century. No such Memoir has appeared on the
+part of her friends; and the mistress of Lord Byron has the ear of the
+public, and is sowing far and wide unworthy slanders, which are eagerly
+gathered up and read by an undiscriminating community.
+
+There may be family reasons in England which prevent Lady Byron's
+friends from speaking. But Lady Byron has an American name and an
+American existence; and reverence for pure womanhood is, we think, a
+national characteristic of the American; and, so far as this country
+is concerned, we feel that the public should have this refutation of
+the slanders of the Countess Guiccioli's book.
+
+
+LORD LINDSAY'S LETTER TO THE LONDON 'TIMES.'
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF 'THE TIMES.'
+
+Sir,--I have waited in expectation of a categorical denial of the
+horrible charge brought by Mrs. Beecher Stowe against Lord Byron and
+his sister on the alleged authority of the late Lady Byron. Such denial
+has been only indirectly given by the letter of Messrs. Wharton and
+Fords in your impression of yesterday. That letter is sufficient to
+prove that Lady Byron never contemplated the use made of her name, and
+that her descendants and representatives disclaim any countenance of
+Mrs. B. Stowe's article; but it does not specifically meet Mrs. Stowe's
+allegation, that Lady Byron, in conversing with her thirteen years ago,
+affirmed the charge now before us. It remains open, therefore, to a
+scandal-loving world, to credit the calumny through the advantage of
+this flaw, involuntary, I believe, in the answer produced against it.
+My object in addressing you is to supply that deficiency by proving
+that what is now stated on Lady Byron's supposed authority is at
+variance, in all respects, with what she stated immediately after the
+separation, when everything was fresh in her memory in relation to
+the time during which, according to Mrs. B. Stowe, she believed that
+Byron and his sister were living together in guilt. I publish this
+evidence with reluctance, but in obedience to that higher obligation
+of justice to the voiceless and defenceless dead which bids me break
+through a reserve that otherwise I should have held sacred. The Lady
+Byron of 1818 would, I am certain, have sanctioned my doing so, had
+she foreseen the present unparalleled occasion, and the bar that the
+conditions of her will present (as I infer from Messrs. Wharton and
+Fords' letter) against any fuller communication. Calumnies such as the
+present sink deep and with rapidity into the public mind, and are not
+easily eradicated. The fame of one of our greatest poets, and that
+of the kindest and truest and most constant friend that Byron ever
+had, is at stake; and it will not do to wait for revelations from the
+fountain-head, which are not promised, and possibly may never reach us.
+
+The late Lady Anne Barnard, who died in 1825, a contemporary and friend
+of Burke, Windham, Dundas, and a host of the wise and good of that
+generation, and remembered in letters as the authoress of 'Auld Robin
+Gray,' had known the late Lady Byron from infancy, and took a warm
+interest in her; holding Lord Byron in corresponding repugnance, not
+to say prejudice, in consequence of what she believed to be his harsh
+and cruel treatment of her young friend. I transcribe the following
+passages, and a letter from Lady Byron herself (written in 1818) from
+_ricordi_, or private family memoirs, in Lady Anne's autograph, now
+before me. I include the letter, because, although treating only in
+general terms of the matter and causes of the separation, it affords
+collateral evidence bearing strictly upon the point of the credibility
+of the charge now in question:--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'The separation of Lord and Lady Byron astonished the world, which
+believed him a reformed man as to his habits, and a becalmed man as to
+his remorses. He had written nothing that appeared after his marriage
+till the famous "Fare thee well," which had the power of compelling
+those to pity the writer who were not well aware that he was not the
+unhappy person he affected to be. Lady Byron's misery was whispered
+soon after her marriage and his ill usage, but no word transpired,
+no sign escaped, from her. She gave birth, shortly, to a daughter;
+and when she went, as soon as she was recovered, on a visit to her
+father's, taking her little Ada with her, no one knew that it was to
+return to her lord no more. At that period, a severe fit of illness had
+confined me to bed for two months. I heard of Lady Byron's distress;
+of the pains he took to give a harsh impression of her character
+to the world. I wrote to her, and entreated her to come and let me
+see and hear her, if she conceived my sympathy or counsel could be
+any comfort to her. She came; but what a tale was unfolded by this
+interesting young creature, who had so fondly hoped to have made a
+young man of genius and romance (as she supposed) happy! They had not
+been an hour in the carriage which conveyed them from the church, when,
+breaking into a malignant sneer, "Oh! what a dupe you have been to your
+imagination! How is it possible a woman of your sense could form the
+wild hope of reforming _me_? Many are the tears you will have to shed
+ere that plan is accomplished. It is enough for me that you are my wife
+for me to hate you! If you were the wife of any other man, I own you
+might have charms," &c. I who listened was astonished. "How could you
+go on after this," said I, "my dear? Why did you not return to your
+father's?" "Because I had not a conception he was in earnest; because I
+reckoned it a bad jest, and told him so,--that my opinions of him were
+very different from his of himself, otherwise he would not find me by
+his side. He laughed it over when he saw me appear hurt: and I forgot
+what had passed, till forced to remember it. I believe he was pleased
+with me, too, for a little while. I suppose it had escaped his memory
+that I was his wife." But she described the happiness they enjoyed to
+have been unequal and perturbed. Her situation, in a short time, might
+have entitled her to some tenderness; but she made no claim on him for
+any. He sometimes reproached her for the motives that had induced her
+to marry him: all was "vanity, the vanity of Miss Milbanke carrying the
+point of reforming Lord Byron! He always knew _her_ inducements; her
+pride shut her eyes to _his_: _he_ wished to build up his character
+and his fortunes; both were somewhat deranged: she had a high name,
+and would have a fortune worth his attention,--let her look to that
+for his motives!"--"O Byron, Byron!" she said, "how you desolate me!"
+He would then accuse himself of being mad, and throw himself on the
+ground in a frenzy, which she believed was affected to conceal the
+coldness and malignity of his heart,--an affectation which at that
+time never failed to meet with the tenderest commiseration. I could
+find by some implications, not followed up by me, lest she might have
+condemned herself afterwards for her involuntary disclosures, that he
+soon attempted to corrupt her principles, both with respect to her own
+conduct and her latitude for his. She saw the precipice on which she
+stood, and kept his sister with her as much as possible. He returned
+in the evenings from the haunts of vice, where he made her understand
+he had been, with manners so profligate! "O the wretch!" said I. "And
+had he no moments of remorse?" "Sometimes he appeared to have them.
+One night, coming home from one of his lawless parties, he saw me so
+indignantly collected, and bearing all with such a determined calmness,
+that a rush of remorse seemed to come over him. He called himself a
+monster, though his sister was present, and threw himself in agony at
+my feet. I could not--no--I could not forgive him such injuries. He
+had lost me for ever! Astonished at the return of virtue, my tears, I
+believe, flowed over his face, and I said, 'Byron, all is forgotten:
+never, never shall you hear of it more!' He started up, and, folding
+his arms while he looked at me, burst into laughter. 'What do you
+mean?' said I. 'Only a philosophical experiment; that's all,' said
+he. 'I wished to ascertain the value of your resolutions.'" I need
+not say more of this prince of duplicity, except that varied were his
+methods of rendering her wretched, even to the last. When her lovely
+little child was born, and it was laid beside its mother on the bed,
+and he was informed he might see his daughter, after gazing at it with
+an exulting smile, this was the ejaculation that broke from him: "Oh,
+what an implement of torture have I acquired in you!" Such he rendered
+it by his eyes and manner, keeping her in a perpetual alarm for its
+safety when in his presence. All this reads madder than I believe he
+was: but she had not then made up her mind to disbelieve his pretended
+insanity, and conceived it best to intrust her secret with the
+excellent Dr. Baillie; telling him all that seemed to regard the state
+of her husband's mind, and letting his advice regulate her conduct.
+Baillie doubted of his derangement; but, as he did not reckon his own
+opinion infallible, he wished her to take precautions as if her husband
+were so. He recommended her going to the country, but to give him no
+suspicion of her intentions of remaining there, and, for a short time,
+to show no coldness in her letters, till she could better ascertain his
+state. She went, regretting, as she told me, to wear any semblance but
+the truth. A short time disclosed the story to the world. He acted the
+part of a man driven to despair by her inflexible resentment and by the
+arts of a governess (once a servant in the family) who hated him. "I
+will give you," proceeds Lady Anne, "a few paragraphs transcribed from
+one of Lady Byron's own letters to me. It is sorrowful to think, that,
+in a very little time, this young and amiable creature, wise, patient,
+and feeling, will have her character mistaken by every one who reads
+Byron's works. To rescue her from this, I preserved her letters; and,
+when she afterwards expressed a fear that any thing of her writings
+should ever fall into hands to injure him (I suppose she meant by
+publication), I safely assured her that it never should. But here this
+letter shall be placed, a sacred record in her favour, unknown to
+herself":--
+
+ '"I am a very incompetent judge of the impression which the last canto
+ of 'Childe Harold' may produce on the minds of indifferent readers.
+ It contains the usual trace of a conscience restlessly awake; though
+ his object has been too long to aggravate its burden, as if it could
+ thus be oppressed into eternal stupor. I will hope, as you do, that it
+ survives for his ultimate good. It was the acuteness of his remorse,
+ impenitent in its character, which so long seemed to demand from my
+ compassion to spare every resemblance of reproach, every look of
+ grief, which might have said to his conscience, 'You have made me
+ wretched.' I am decidedly of opinion that he is responsible. He has
+ wished to be thought partially deranged, or on the brink of it, to
+ perplex observers, and prevent them from tracing effects to their
+ real causes through all the intricacies of his conduct. I was, as
+ I told you, at one time the dupe of his acted insanity, and clung
+ to the former delusions in regard to the motives that concerned me
+ personally, till the whole system was laid bare. He is the absolute
+ monarch of words, and uses them, as Bonaparte did lives, for conquest,
+ without more regard to their intrinsic value; considering them only
+ as ciphers, which must derive all their import from the situation in
+ which he places them, and the ends to which he adapts them with such
+ consummate skill. Why, then, you will say, does he not employ them to
+ give a better colour to his own character? Because he is too good an
+ actor to over-act, or to assume a moral garb which it would be easy
+ to strip off. In regard to his poetry, egotism is the vital principle
+ of his imagination, which it is difficult for him to kindle on any
+ subject with which his own character and interests are not identified:
+ but by the introduction of fictitious incidents, by change of scene
+ or time, he has enveloped his poetical disclosures in a system
+ impenetrable except to a very few; and his constant desire of creating
+ a sensation makes him not averse to be the object of wonder and
+ curiosity, even though accompanied by some dark and vague suspicions.
+ Nothing has contributed more to the misunderstanding of his real
+ character than the lonely grandeur in which he shrouds it, and his
+ affectation of being above mankind, when he exists almost in their
+ voice. The romance of his sentiments is another feature of this mask
+ of state. I know no one more habitually destitute of that enthusiasm
+ he so beautifully expresses, and to which he can work up his fancy
+ chiefly by contagion. I had heard he was the best of brothers, the
+ most generous of friends; and I thought such feelings only required to
+ be warmed and cherished into more diffusive benevolence. Though these
+ opinions are eradicated, and could never return but with the decay
+ of my memory, you will not wonder if there are still moments when
+ the association of feelings which arose from them soften and sadden
+ my thoughts. But I have not thanked you, dearest Lady Anne, for your
+ kindness in regard to a principal object,--that of rectifying false
+ impressions. I trust you understand my wishes, which never were to
+ injure Lord Byron in any way: for, though he would not suffer me to
+ remain his wife, he cannot prevent me from continuing his friend; and
+ it was from considering myself as such that I silenced the accusations
+ by which my own conduct might have been more fully justified. It is
+ not necessary to speak ill of his heart in general: it is sufficient
+ that to me it was hard and impenetrable; that my own must have been
+ broken before his could have been touched. I would rather represent
+ this as _my_ misfortune than as _his_ guilt; but surely that
+ misfortune is not to be made my crime! Such are my feelings: you will
+ judge how to act. His allusions to me in 'Childe Harold' are cruel
+ and cold, but with such a semblance as to make _me_ appear so, and to
+ attract all sympathy to himself. It is said in this poem that hatred
+ of him will be taught as a lesson to his child. I might appeal to all
+ who have ever heard me speak of him, and still more to my own heart,
+ to witness that there has been no moment when I have remembered injury
+ otherwise than affectionately and sorrowfully. It is not my duty to
+ give way to hopeless and wholly unrequited affection; but, so long
+ as I live, my chief struggle will probably be not to remember him
+ too kindly. I do not seek the sympathy of the world; but I wish to be
+ known by those whoso opinion is valuable, and whose kindness is dear
+ to me. Among such, my dear Lady Anne, you will ever be remembered by
+ your truly affectionate,
+
+  '"A. BYRON."'
+
+It is the province of your readers, and of the world at large, to
+judge between the two testimonies now before them,--Lady Byron's in
+1816 and 1818, and that put forward in 1869 by Mrs. B. Stowe, as
+communicated by Lady Byron thirteen years ago. In the face of the
+evidence now given, positive, negative, and circumstantial, there
+can be but two alternatives in the case: either Mrs. B. Stowe must
+have entirely misunderstood Lady Byron, and been thus led into error
+and misstatement, or we must conclude that, under the pressure of a
+lifelong and secret sorrow, Lady Byron's mind had become clouded with
+an hallucination in respect of the particular point in question.
+
+Tho reader will admire the noble but severe character displayed
+in Lady Byron's letter; but those who keep in view what her first
+impressions were, as above recorded, may probably place a more lenient
+interpretation than hers upon some of the incidents alleged to Byron's
+discredit. I shall conclude with some remarks upon his character,
+written shortly after his death by a wise, virtuous, and charitable
+judge, the late Sir Walter Scott, likewise in a letter to Lady Anne
+Barnard:--
+
+'Fletcher's account of poor Byron is extremely interesting. I
+had always a strong attachment to that unfortunate though most
+richly-gifted man, because I thought I saw that his virtues (and he had
+many) were his own; and his eccentricities the result of an irritable
+temperament, which sometimes approached nearly to mental disease. Those
+who are gifted with strong nerves, a regular temper, and habitual
+self-command, are not, perhaps, aware how much of what they may think
+virtue they owe to constitution; and such are but too severe judges of
+men like Byron, whose mind, like a day of alternate storm and sunshine,
+is all dark shades and stray gleams of light, instead of the twilight
+gray which illuminates happier though less distinguished mortals. I
+always thought, that, when a moral proposition was placed plainly
+before Lord Byron, his mind yielded a pleased and willing assent to
+it; but, if there was any side view given in the way of raillery or
+otherwise, he was willing enough to evade conviction.... It augurs
+ill for the cause of Greece that this master-spirit should have been
+withdrawn from their assistance just as he was obtaining a complete
+ascendency over their counsels. I have seen several letters from the
+Ionian Islands, all of which unite in speaking in the highest praise of
+the wisdom and temperance of his counsels, and the ascendency he was
+obtaining over the turbulent and ferocious chiefs of the insurgents. I
+have some verses written by him on his last birthday: they breathe a
+spirit of affection towards his wife, and a desire of dying in battle,
+which seems like an anticipation of his approaching fate.'
+
+  I remain, sir, your obedient servant,
+
+  LINDSAY,
+
+  DUNECHT, Sept. 3.
+
+
+DR. FORBES WINSLOW'S LETTER TO THE LONDON 'TIMES.'
+
+TO THE EDITOR.
+
+SIR,--Your paper of the 4th of September, containing an able
+and deeply interesting 'Vindication of Lord Byron,' has followed me
+to this place. With the general details of the 'True Story' (as it is
+termed) of Lady Byron's separation from her husband, as recorded in
+'Macmillan's Magazine,' I have no desire or intention to grapple. It
+is only with the hypothesis of insanity, as suggested by the clever
+writer of the 'Vindication' to account for Lady Byron's sad revelations
+to Mrs. Beecher Stowe, with which I propose to deal. I do not believe
+that the mooted theory of mental aberration can, in this case, be for a
+moment maintained. If Lady Byron's statement of facts to Mrs. B. Stowe
+is to be viewed as the creation of a distempered fancy, a delusion or
+hallucination of an insane mind, what part of the narrative are we to
+draw the boundary-line between fact and delusion, sanity and insanity?
+Where are we to fix the _point d'appui_ of the lunacy? Again: is the
+alleged 'hallucination' to be considered as strictly confined to the
+idea that Lord Byron had committed the frightful sin of incest? or is
+the whole of the 'True Story' of her married life, as reproduced with
+such terrible minuteness by Mrs. Beecher Stowe, to be viewed as the
+delusion of a disordered fancy? If Lady Byron was the subject of an
+'hallucination' with regard to her husband, I think it not unreasonable
+to conclude that the mental alienation existed on the day of her
+marriage. If this proposition be accepted, the natural inference will
+be, that the details of the conversation which Lady Byron represents to
+have occurred between herself and Lord Byron as soon as they entered
+the carriage never took place. Lord Byron is said to have remarked
+to Lady Byron, 'You might have prevented this (or words to this
+effect): you will now find that you have married a devil.' Is this
+alleged conversation to be viewed as _fact_, or _fiction_? evidence of
+_sanity_, or _insanity_? Is the revelation which Lord Byron is said to
+have made to his wife of his 'incestuous passion' another delusion,
+having no foundation except in his wife's disordered imagination? Are
+his alleged attempts to justify to Lady Byron's mind the _morale_ of
+the plea of 'Continental latitude--the good-humoured marriage, in which
+complaisant couples mutually agree to form the cloak for each other's
+infidelities,'--another morbid perversion of her imagination? Did this
+conversation ever take place? It will be difficult to separate one
+part of the 'True Story' from another, and maintain that this portion
+indicates insanity, and that portion represents sanity. If we accept
+the hypothesis of hallucination, we are bound to view the whole of Lady
+Byron's conversations with Mrs. B. Stowe, and the written statement
+laid before her, as the wild and incoherent representations of a
+lunatic. On the day when Lady Byron parted from her husband, did she
+enter his private room, and find him with the 'object of his guilty
+passion?' and did he say, as they parted, 'When shall we three meet
+again?' Is this to be considered as an actual occurrence, or as another
+form of hallucination? It is quite inconsistent with the theory of Lady
+Byron's insanity to imagine that her delusion was restricted to the
+idea of his having committed 'incest.' In common fairness, we are bound
+to view the aggregate mental phenomena which she exhibited from the
+day of the marriage to their final separation and her death. No person
+practically acquainted with the true characteristics of insanity would
+affirm, that, had this idea of 'incest' been an insane hallucination,
+Lady Byron could, from the lengthened period which intervened between
+her unhappy marriage and death, have refrained from exhibiting her
+mental alienation, not only to her legal advisers and trustees, but to
+others, exacting no pledge of secrecy from them as to her disordered
+impressions. Lunatics do for a time, and for some special purpose, most
+cunningly conceal their delusions; but they have not the capacity to
+struggle for thirty-six years with a frightful hallucination, similar
+to the one Lady Byron is alleged to have had, without the insane state
+of mind becoming obvious to those with whom they are daily associating.
+Neither is it consistent with experience to suppose that, if Lady Byron
+had been a monomaniac, her state of disordered understanding would have
+been restricted to one hallucination. Her diseased brain, affecting the
+normal action of thought, would, in all probability, have manifested
+other symptoms besides those referred to of aberration of intellect.
+
+During the last thirty years, I have not met with a case of insanity
+(assuming the hypothesis of hallucination) at all parallel with that
+of Lady Byron's. In my experience, it is unique. I never saw a patient
+with such a delusion. If it should be established, by the statements of
+those who are the depositors of the secret (and they are now bound, in
+vindication of Lord Byron's memory, to deny, if they have the power of
+doing so, this most frightful accusation), that the idea of incest did
+unhappily cross Lady Byron's mind prior to her finally leaving him, it
+no doubt arose from a most inaccurate knowledge of facts and perfectly
+unjustifiable data, and was not, in the right psychological acceptation
+of the phrase, an insane hallucination.
+
+  Sir, I remain your obedient servant,
+
+  FORBES WINSLOW, M.D.
+
+ZARINGERHOF, FREIBURG-EN-BREISGAU, Sept. 8, 1869.
+
+
+EXTRACT FROM LORD BYRON'S EXPUNGED LETTER.
+
+TO MR. MURRAY.
+
+  'BOLOGNA, June 7, 1819.
+
+... 'Before I left Venice, I had returned to you your late, and Mr.
+Hobhouse's sheets of "Juan." Don't wait for further answers from
+me, but address yours to Venice as usual. I know nothing of my own
+movements. I may return there in a few days, or not for some time:
+all this depends on circumstances. I left Mr. Hoppner very well. My
+daughter Allegra is well too, and is growing pretty: her hair is
+growing darker, and her eyes are blue. Her temper and her ways, Mr.
+Hoppner says, are like mine, as well as her features: she will make, in
+that case, a manageable young lady.
+
+'I have never seen anything of Ada, the little Electra of my Mycenae....
+But there will come a day of reckoning, even if I should not live
+to see it. I have at least seen ---- shivered, who was one of my
+assassins. When that man was doing his worst to uproot my whole
+family,--tree, branch, and blossoms; when, after taking my retainer,
+he went over to them; when he was bringing desolation on my hearth,
+and destruction on my household gods,--did he think that, in less
+than three years, a natural event, a severe domestic, but an expected
+and common calamity, would lay his carcass in a cross-road, or stamp
+his name in a verdict of lunacy? Did he (who in his sexagenary ...)
+reflect or consider what my feelings must have been when wife and child
+and sister, and name and fame and country, were to be my sacrifice on
+his legal altar?--and this at a moment when my health was declining,
+my fortune embarrassed, and my mind had been shaken by many kinds of
+disappointment? while I was yet young, and might have reformed what
+might be wrong in my conduct, and retrieved what was perplexing in
+my affairs? But he is in his grave, and--What a long letter I have
+scribbled!'...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In order that the reader may measure the change of moral tone with
+regard to Lord Byron, wrought by the constant efforts of himself and
+his party, we give the two following extracts from 'Blackwood.'
+
+The first is 'Blackwood' in 1819, just after the publication of 'Don
+Juan': the second is 'Blackwood' in 1825.
+
+'In the composition of this work, there is, unquestionably, a more
+thorough and intense infusion of genius and vice, power and profligacy,
+than in any poem which had ever before been written in the English,
+or, indeed, in any other modern language. Had the wickedness been less
+inextricably mingled with the beauty and the grace and the strength of
+a most inimitable and incomprehensible Muse, our task would have been
+easy. 'Don Juan' is by far the most admirable specimen of the mixture
+of ease, strength, gaiety, and seriousness, extant in the whole body
+of English poetry: the author has devoted his powers to the worst of
+purposes and passions; and it increases his guilt and our sorrow that
+he has devoted them entire.
+
+'The moral strain of the whole poem is pitched in the lowest key. Love,
+honour, patriotism, religion, are mentioned only to be scoffed at, as
+if their sole resting-place were, or ought to be, in the bosoms of
+fools. It appears, in short, as if this miserable man, having exhausted
+every species of sensual gratification, having drained the cup of sin
+even to its bitterest dregs, were resolved to show us that he is no
+longer a human being, even in his frailties, but a cool, unconcerned
+fiend, laughing with a detestable glee over the whole of the better and
+worse elements of which human life is composed; treating well-nigh with
+equal derision the most pure of virtues, and the most odious of vices;
+dead alike to the beauty of the one, and the deformity of the other;
+a mere heartless despiser of that frail but noble humanity, whose
+type was never exhibited in a shape of more deplorable degradation
+than in his own contemptuously distinct delineation of himself. To
+confess to his Maker, and weep over in secret agonies the wildest and
+most fantastic transgressions of heart and mind, is the part of a
+conscious sinner, in whom sin has not become the sole principle of life
+and action; but to lay bare to the eye of man and of _woman_ all the
+hidden convulsions of a wicked spirit, and to do all this without one
+symptom of contrition, remorse, or hesitation, with a calm, careless
+ferociousness of contented and satisfied depravity,--this was an insult
+which no man of genius had ever before dared to put upon his Creator
+or his species. Impiously railing against his God, madly and meanly
+disloyal to his sovereign and his country, and brutally outraging all
+the best feelings of female honor, affection, and confidence, how small
+a part of chivalry is that which remains to the descendant of the
+Byrons!--a gloomy visor and a deadly weapon!
+
+'Those who are acquainted (as who is not?) with the main incidents in
+the private life of Lord Byron, and who have not seen this production,
+will scarcely believe that malignity should have carried him so far as
+to make him commence a filthy and impious poem with an elaborate satire
+on the character and manners of his wife, from whom, even by his own
+confession, he has been separated only in consequence of his own cruel
+and heartless misconduct. It is in vain for Lord Byron to attempt in
+any way to justify his own behaviour in that affair; and, now that he
+has so openly and audaciously invited inquiry and reproach, we do not
+see any good reason why he should not be plainly told so by the general
+voice of his countrymen. It would not be an easy matter to persuade
+any man who has any knowledge of the nature of woman, that a female
+such as Lord Byron has himself described his wife to be would rashly or
+hastily or lightly separate herself from the love with which she had
+once been inspired for such a man as he is or was. Had he not heaped
+insult upon insult, and scorn upon scorn, had he not forced the iron
+of his contempt into her very soul, there is no woman of delicacy and
+virtue, as he _admitted_ Lady Byron to be, who would not have hoped all
+things, and suffered all things, from one, her love of whom must have
+been inwoven with so many exalting elements of delicious pride, and
+more delicious humility. To offend the love of such a woman was wrong,
+but it might be forgiven; to desert her was unmanly, but he might have
+returned, and wiped for ever from her eyes the tears of her desertion:
+but to injure and to desert, and then to turn back and wound her
+widowed privacy with unhallowed strains of cold-blooded mockery, was
+brutally, fiendishly, inexpiably mean. For impurities there might be
+some possibility of pardon, were they supposed to spring only from the
+reckless buoyancy of young blood and fiery passions; for impiety there
+might at least be pity, were it visible that the misery of the impious
+soul equalled its darkness: but for offences such as this, which cannot
+proceed either from the madness of sudden impulse or the bewildered
+agonies of doubt, but which speak the wilful and determined spite of
+an unrepenting, unsoftened, smiling, sarcastic, joyous sinner, there
+can be neither pity nor pardon. Our knowledge that it is committed
+by one of the most powerful intellects our island ever has produced
+lends intensity a thousand-fold to the bitterness of our indignation.
+Every high thought that was ever kindled in our breasts by the Muse of
+Byron, every pure and lofty feeling that ever responded from within
+us to the sweep of his majestic inspirations, every remembered moment
+of admiration and enthusiasm, is up in arms against him. We look back
+with a mixture of wrath and scorn to the delight with which we suffered
+ourselves to be filled by one, who, all the while he was furnishing
+us with delight, must, we cannot doubt it, have been mocking us with
+a cruel mockery; less cruel only, because less peculiar, than that
+with which he has now turned him from the lurking-place of his selfish
+and polluted exile to pour the pitiful chalice of his contumely on
+the surrendered devotion of a virgin bosom, and the holy hopes of the
+mother of his child. It is indeed a sad and a humiliating thing to
+know, that in the same year, there proceeded from the same pen two
+productions in all things so different as the fourth canto of "Childe
+Harold" and his loathsome "Don Juan."
+
+'We have mentioned one, and, all will admit, the worst instance of the
+private malignity which has been embodied in so many passages of "Don
+Juan;" and we are quite sure the lofty-minded and virtuous _men_ whom
+Lord Byron has debased himself by insulting will close the volume which
+contains their own injuries, with no feelings save those of pity for
+him that has inflicted them, and for her who partakes so largely in the
+same injuries.'--_August, 1819._
+
+
+'BLACKWOOD,'--_iterum_.
+
+'We shall, like all others who say anything about Lord Byron, begin,
+_sans apologie_, with his personal character. This is the great object
+of attack, the constant theme of open vituperation to one set, and the
+established mark for all the petty but deadly artillery of sneers,
+shrugs, groans, to another. Two widely different matters, however,
+are generally, we might say universally, mixed up here,--the personal
+character of the man, as proved by his course of life; and his personal
+character, as revealed in or guessed from his books. Nothing can be
+more unfair than the style in which this mixture is made use of. Is
+there a noble sentiment, a lofty thought, a sublime conception, in
+the book? "Ah, yes!" is the answer, "But what of that? It is only
+the _roue_ Byron that speaks!" Is a kind, a generous action of the
+man mentioned? "Yes, yes!" comments the sage; "but only remember the
+atrocities of 'Don Juan:' depend on it, this, if it be true, must have
+been a mere freak of caprice, or perhaps a bit of vile hypocrisy."
+Salvation is thus shut out at either entrance: the poet damns the man,
+and the man the poet.
+
+'Nobody will suspect us of being so absurd as to suppose that it is
+possible for people to draw no inferences as to the character of an
+author from his book, or to shut entirely out of view, in judging of
+a book, that which they may happen to _know_ about the man who writes
+it. The cant of the day supposes such things to be practicable; but
+they are not. But what we complain of and scorn is the extent to which
+they are carried in the case of this particular individual, as compared
+with others; the impudence with which things are at once assumed to be
+facts in regard to _his_ private history; and the absolute unfairness
+of never arguing from _his_ writings to _him, but for evil_.
+
+'Take the man, in the first place, as unconnected, in so far as we
+can thus consider him, with his works; and ask, What, after all, are
+the bad things we know of him? Was he dishonest or dishonourable?
+had he ever _done_ anything to forfeit, or even endanger, his rank
+as a gentleman? Most assuredly, no such accusations have ever been
+maintained against Lord Byron the private nobleman, although something
+of the sort may have been insinuated against the author. "But he was
+such a profligate in his morals, that his name cannot be mentioned with
+anything like tolerance." Was he so, indeed? We should like extremely
+to have the catechising of the individual _man_ who says so. That
+he indulged in sensual vices, to some extent, is certain, and to be
+regretted and condemned. But was he worse, as to such matters, than
+the enormous majority of those who join in the cry of horror upon this
+occasion? We most assuredly believe exactly the reverse; and we rest
+our belief upon very plain and intelligible grounds. First, we hold it
+impossible that the majority of mankind, or that anything beyond a very
+small minority, are or can be entitled to talk of sensual profligacy as
+having formed a part of the life and character of the man, who, dying
+at six and thirty, bequeathed a collection of works such as Byron's to
+the world. Secondly, we hold it impossible, that laying the extent of
+his intellectual labours out of the question, and looking only to the
+nature of the intellect which generated, and delighted in generating,
+such beautiful and noble conceptions as are to be found in almost all
+Lord Byron's works,--we hold it impossible that very many men can be
+at once capable of comprehending these conceptions, and entitled to
+consider sensual profligacy as having formed the principal, or even
+a principal, trait in Lord Byron's character. Thirdly, and lastly,
+we have never been able to hear any one fact established which could
+prove Lord Byron to deserve anything like the degree or even kind
+of odium which has, in regard to matters of this class, been heaped
+upon his name. We have no story of base unmanly seduction, or false
+and villainous intrigue, against him,--none whatever. It seems to us
+quite clear, that, if he had been at all what is called in society
+an unprincipled sensualist, there must have been many such stories,
+authentic and authenticated. But there are none such,--absolutely none.
+His name has been coupled with the names of three, four, or more women
+of some rank: but what kind of women? Every one of them, in the first
+place, about as old as himself in years, and therefore a great deal
+older in character; every one of them utterly battered in reputation
+long before he came into contact with them,--licentious, unprincipled,
+characterless women. What father has ever reproached him with the ruin
+of his daughter? What husband has denounced him as the destroyer of his
+peace?
+
+'Let us not be mistaken. We are not defending the offences of which
+Lord Byron unquestionably was guilty; neither are we finding fault
+with those, who, after looking honestly within and around themselves,
+condemn those offences, no matter how severely: but we are speaking
+of society in general as it now exists; and we say that there is vile
+hypocrisy in the tone in which Lord Byron is talked of _there_. We
+say, that, although all offences against purity of life are miserable
+things, and condemnable things, the degrees of guilt attached to
+different offences of this class are as widely different as are the
+degrees of guilt between an assault and a murder; and we confess our
+belief, that no man of Byron's station or age could have run much risk
+in gaining a very bad name in society, had a course of life similar
+(in so far as we know any thing of that) to Lord Byron's been the only
+thing chargeable against him.
+
+'The last poem he wrote was produced upon his birthday, not many weeks
+before he died. We consider it as one of the finest and most touching
+effusions of his noble genius. We think he who reads it, and can ever
+after bring himself to regard even the worst transgressions that have
+been charged against Lord Byron with any feelings but those of humble
+sorrow and manly pity, is not deserving of the name of man. The deep
+and passionate struggles with the inferior elements of his nature (and
+ours) which it records; the lofty thirsting after purity; the heroic
+devotion of a soul half weary of life, because unable to believe in
+its own powers to live up to what it so intensely felt to be, and so
+reverentially honoured as, the right; the whole picture of this mighty
+spirit, often darkened, but never sunk,--often erring, but never
+ceasing to see and to worship the beauty of virtue; the repentance of
+it; the anguish; the aspiration, almost stilled in despair,--the whole
+of this is such a whole, that we are sure no man can read these solemn
+verses too often; and we recommend them for repetition, as the best and
+most conclusive of all possible answers whenever the name of Byron is
+insulted by those who permit themselves to forget nothing, either in
+his life or in his writings, but the good.'--[1825.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following letters of Lady Byron's are reprinted from the Memoirs of
+H. C. Robinson. They are given that the reader may form some judgment
+of the strength and activity of her mind, and the elevated class of
+subjects upon which it habitually dwelt.
+
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+  'DEC. 31, 1853.
+
+'DEAR MR. CRABB ROBINSON,--I have an inclination, if I were
+not afraid of trespassing on your time (but you can put my letter by
+for any leisure moment), to enter upon the history of a character which
+I think less appreciated than it ought to be. Men, I observe, do not
+understand men in certain points, without a woman's interpretation.
+Those points, of course, relate to feelings.
+
+'Here is a man taken by most of those who come in his way either for
+Dry-as-Dust, Matter-of-fact, or for a "vain visionary." There are,
+doubtless, some defective or excessive characteristics which give rise
+to those impressions.
+
+'My acquaintance was made, oddly enough, with him twenty-seven years
+ago. A pauper said to me of him, "He's the _poor man's_ doctor." Such
+a recommendation seemed to me a good one: and I also knew that his
+organizing head had formed the first district society in England (for
+Mrs. Fry told me she could not have effected it without his aid); yet
+he has always ignored his own share of it. I felt in him at once the
+curious combination of the Christian and the cynic,--of reverence for
+_man_, and contempt of _men_. It was then an internal war, but one in
+which it was evident to me that the holier cause would be victorious,
+because there was deep belief, and, as far as I could learn, a
+blameless and benevolent life. He appeared only to want sunshine. It
+was a plant which could not be brought to perfection in darkness. He
+had begun life by the most painful conflict between filial duty and
+conscience,--a large provision in the church secured for him by his
+father; but he could not _sign_. There was discredit, as you know,
+attached to such scruples.
+
+'He was also, when I first knew him, under other circumstances of
+a nature to depress him, and to make him feel that he was unjustly
+treated. The gradual removal of these called forth his better nature
+in thankfulness to God. Still the old misanthropic modes of expressing
+himself obtruded themselves at times. This passed in '48 between him
+and Robertson. Robertson said to me, "I want to know something about
+ragged schools." I replied, "You had better ask Dr. King: he knows
+more about them."--"I?" said Dr. King. "I take care to know nothing of
+ragged schools, lest they should make _me_ ragged." Robertson did not
+see through it. Perhaps I had been taught to understand such suicidal
+speeches by my cousin, Lord Melbourne.
+
+'The example of Christ, imperfectly as it may be understood by him, has
+been ever before his eyes: he woke to the thought of following it, and
+he went to rest consoled or rebuked by it. After nearly thirty years
+of intimacy, I may, without presumption, form that opinion. There is
+something pathetic to me in seeing any one _so_ unknown. Even the other
+medical friends of Robertson, when I knew that Dr. King felt a woman's
+tenderness, said on one occasion to him, "But we know that you, Dr.
+King, are _above all feeling_."
+
+'If I have made the character more consistent to you by putting in
+these bits of mosaic, my pen will not have been ill employed, nor
+unpleasingly to you.
+
+  'Yours truly,
+  'A. NOEL BYRON.'
+
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+  'BRIGHTON, Nov. 15, 1854.
+
+'The thoughts of all this public and private suffering have taken
+the life out of my pen when I tried to write on matters which would
+otherwise have been most interesting to me: _these_ seemed the shadows,
+_that_ the stern reality. It is good, however, to be drawn out of
+scenes in which one is absorbed most unprofitably, and to have one's
+natural interests revived by such a letter as I have to thank you for,
+as well as its predecessor. You touch upon the very points which do
+interest me the most, habitually. The change of form, and enlargement
+of design, in "The Prospective" _had_ led me to express to one of the
+promoters of that object my desire to contribute. The religious crisis
+is instant; but the man for it? The next best thing, if, as I believe,
+he is not to be found _in England_, is an association of such men as
+are to edit the new periodical. An address delivered by Freeman Clarke
+at Boston, last May, makes me think him better fitted for a leader than
+any other of the religious "Free-thinkers." I wish I could send you
+my one copy; but you do not _need_, it, and others do. His object is
+the same as that of the "Alliance Universelle:" only he is still more
+free from "partialism" (his own word) in his aspirations and practical
+suggestions with respect to an ultimate "Christian synthesis." He
+so far adopts Comte's theory as to speak of religion itself under
+three successive aspects, historically,--1. Thesis; 2. Antithesis;
+3. Synthesis. I made his acquaintance in England; and he inspired
+confidence at once by his brave independence (_incomptis capillis_) and
+self-_un_consciousness. J. J. Tayler's address of last month follows in
+the same path,--all in favour of the "irenics," instead of polemics.
+
+'The answer which you gave me so fully and distinctly to the questions
+I proposed for your consideration was of value in turning to my view
+certain aspects of the case which I had not before observed. I had
+begun a second attack on your patience, when all was forgotten in the
+news of the day.'
+
+
+Lady Byron to H. C. R.
+
+  'BRIGHTON, Dec. 25, 1854.
+
+'With J. J. Tayler, though almost a stranger to him, I have a peculiar
+reason for sympathising. A book of his was a treasure to my daughter on
+her death-bed.[50]
+
+[Footnote 50: Probably 'The Christian Aspects of Faith and Duty.'
+Mr. Tayler has also written 'A Retrospect of the Religious Life of
+England.']
+
+'I must confess to intolerance of opinion as to these two
+points,--_eternal_ evil in any form, and (involved in it) _eternal_
+suffering. To believe in these would take away my God, who is
+all-loving. With a God with whom omnipotence and omniscience were all,
+evil might be eternal; but why do I say to you what has been better
+said elsewhere?'
+
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+  'BRIGHTON, Jan. 31, 1855.
+
+... 'The great difficulty in respect to "The Review"[51] seems to be
+to settle a basis, inclusive and exclusive; in short, a _boundary
+question_. From what you said, I think you agreed with me, that
+a latitudinarian Christianity ought to be the character of the
+periodical; but the depth of the roots should correspond with the width
+of the branches of that tree of knowledge. Of some of those minds one
+might say, "They have no root;" and then, the richer the foliage, the
+more danger that the trunk will fall. "Grounded in Christ" has to me
+a most practical significance and value. I, too, have anxiety about
+a friend (Miss Carpenter) whose life is of public importance: she,
+more than any of the English reformers, unless Nash and Wright, has
+found the art of drawing out the good of human nature, and proving its
+existence. She makes these discoveries by the light of love. I hope
+she may recover, from to-day's report. The object of a Reformatory
+in Leicester has just been secured at a county meeting.... Now the
+desideratum is well-qualified masters and mistresses. If you hear
+of such by chance, pray let me know. The regular schoolmaster is an
+extinguisher. Heart, and familiarity with the class to be educated,
+are all important. At home and abroad, the evidence is conclusive on
+that point; for I have for many years attended to such experiments
+in various parts of Europe. "The Irish Quarterly" has taken up the
+subject with rather more zeal than judgment. I had hoped that a sound
+and temperate exposition of the facts might form an article in the
+"Might-have-been Review."'
+
+[Footnote 51: 'The National Review.']
+
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+  'BRIGHTON, Feb. 12, 1855.
+
+'I have at last earned the pleasure of writing to you by having settled
+troublesome matters of little moment, except locally; and I gladly take
+a wider range by sympathizing in your interests. There is, besides, no
+responsibility--for me at least--in canvassing the merits of Russell
+or Palmerston, but much in deciding whether the "village politician"
+Jackson or Thompson shall be leader in the school or public-house.
+
+'Has not the nation been brought to a conviction that the _system_
+should be broken up? and is Lord Palmerston, who has used it so long
+and so cleverly, likely to promote that object?
+
+'But, whatever obstacles there may be in state affairs, that general
+persuasion must modify other departments of action and knowledge.
+"Unroasted coffee" will no longer be accepted under the official
+seal,--another reason for a new literary combination for distinct
+special objects, a review in which every separate article should be
+_convergent_. If, instead of the problem to make a circle pass through
+three given points, it were required to find the centre from which to
+describe a circle through any three articles in the "Edinburgh" or
+"Westminster Review," who would accomplish it? Much force is lost for
+want of this one-mindedness amongst the contributors. It would not
+exclude variety or freedom in the unlimited discussion of means towards
+the ends unequivocally recognized. If St. Paul had edited a review, he
+might have admitted Peter as well as Luke or Barnabas....
+
+'Ross gave us an excellent sermon, yesterday, on "Hallowing the Name."
+Though far from commonplace, it might have been delivered in any church.
+
+'We have had Fanny Kemble here last week. I only heard her "Romeo
+and Juliet,"--not less instructive, as her readings always are, than
+exciting; for in her glass Shakspeare is a philosopher. I know her, and
+honour her, for her truthfulness amidst all trials.'
+
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+  'BRIGHTON, March 5, 1855.
+
+'I recollect only those passages of Dr. Kennedy's book which bear
+upon the opinions of Lord Byron. Strange as it may seem, Dr. Kennedy
+is most faithful where you doubt his being so. Not merely from casual
+expressions, but from the whole tenor of Lord Byron's feelings, I could
+not but conclude he was a believer in the inspiration of the Bible,
+and had the gloomiest Calvinistic tenets. To that unhappy view of the
+relation of the creature to the Creator, I have always ascribed the
+misery of his life.... It is enough for me to remember, that he who
+thinks his transgressions beyond _forgiveness_ (and such was his own
+deepest feeling) _has_ righteousness beyond that of the self-satisfied
+sinner, or, perhaps, of the half-awakened. It was impossible for me to
+doubt, that, could he have been at once assured of pardon, his living
+faith in a moral duty, and love of virtue ("I love the virtues which
+I cannot claim"), would have conquered every temptation. Judge, then,
+how I must hate the creed which made him see God as an Avenger, not a
+Father! My own impressions were just the reverse, but could have little
+weight; and it was in vain to seek to turn his thoughts for long from
+that _idee fixe_ with which he connected his physical peculiarity as
+a stamp. Instead of being made happier by any apparent good, he felt
+convinced that every blessing would be "turned into a curse" to him.
+Who, possessed by such ideas, could lead a life of love and service to
+God or man? They must, in a measure, realize themselves. "The worst
+of it is, I _do_ believe," he said. I, like all connected with him,
+was broken against the rock of predestination. I may be pardoned for
+referring to his frequent expression of the sentiment that I was only
+sent to show him the happiness he was forbidden to enjoy. You will now
+better understand why "The Deformed Transformed" is too painful to me
+for discussion. Since writing the above, I have read Dr. Granville's
+letter on the Emperor of Russia, some passages of which seem applicable
+to the prepossession I have described. I will not mix up less serious
+matters with these, which forty years have not made less than present
+still to me.'
+
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+  '_Brighton_, April 8, 1855.
+
+... 'The book which has interested me most, lately, is that on
+"Mosaism," translated by Miss Goldsmid, and which I read, as you
+will believe, without any Christian (unchristian?) prejudice. The
+missionaries of the Unity were always, from my childhood, regarded by
+me as in that sense _the_ people; and I believe they were true to that
+mission, though blind, intellectually, in demanding the crucifixion.
+The present aspect of Jewish opinions, as shown in that book, is
+all but Christian. The author is under the error of taking, as the
+representatives of Christianity, the Mystics, Ascetics, and Quietists;
+and therefore he does not know how near he is to the true spirit of the
+gospel. If you should happen to see Miss Goldsmid, pray tell her what
+a great service I think she has rendered to us _soi-disant_ Christians
+in translating a book which must make us sensible of the little we have
+done, and the much we have to do, to justify our preference of the
+later to the earlier dispensation.'...
+
+
+LADY BYRON TO H. C. R.
+
+  'BRIGHTON, April 11, 1855.
+
+'You appear to have more definite information respecting "The Review"
+than I have obtained.... It was also said that "The Review" would, in
+fact, be "The Prospective" amplified,--not satisfactory to me, because
+I have always thought that periodical too Unitarian, in the sense of
+separating itself from other Christian churches, if not by a high wall,
+at least by a wire-gauze fence. Now, separation is to me _the_
+[Greek: ha/iresis]. The revelation through Nature never separates: it
+is the revelation through the Book which separates. Whewell and Brewster
+would have been one, had they not, I think, equally dimmed their lamps
+of science when reading their Bibles. As long as we think a truth
+_better_ for being shut up in a text, we are not of the wide-world
+religion, which is to include all in one fold: for that text will not
+be accepted by the followers of other books, or students of the same;
+and separation will ensue. The Christian Scripture should be dear to
+us, not as the charter of a few, but of mankind; and to fashion it into
+cages is to deny its ultimate objects. These thoughts hot, like the
+roll at breakfast, where your letter was so welcome an addition.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THREE DOMESTIC POEMS BY LORD BYRON.
+
+
+FARE THEE WELL.
+
+  Fare thee well! and if for ever,
+    Still for ever fare thee well!
+  Even though unforgiving, never
+    'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.
+
+  Would that breast were bared before thee
+    Where thy head so oft hath lain,
+  While that placid sleep came o'er thee
+    Which thou ne'er canst know again!
+
+  Would that breast, by thee glanced over,
+    Every inmost thought could show!
+  Then thou wouldst at last discover
+    'Twas not well to spurn it so.
+
+  Though the world for this commend thee,
+    Though it smile upon the blow,
+  Even its praises must offend thee,
+    Founded on another's woe.
+
+  Though my many faults defaced me,
+    Could no other arm be found,
+  Than the one which once embraced me,
+    To inflict a cureless wound?
+
+  Yet, oh! yet, thyself deceive not
+    Love may sink by slow decay;
+  But, by sudden wrench, believe not
+    Hearts can thus be torn away:
+
+  Still thine own its life retaineth;
+    Still must mine, though bleeding, beat
+  And the undying thought which paineth
+    Is--that we no more may meet.
+
+  These are words of deeper sorrow
+    Than the wail above the dead:
+  Both shall live, but every morrow
+    Wake us from a widowed bed.
+
+  And when thou wouldst solace gather,
+    When our child's first accents flow,
+  Wilt thou teach her to say 'Father,'
+    Though his care she must forego?
+
+  When her little hand shall press thee,
+    When her lip to thine is pressed,
+  Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee
+    Think of him thy love had blessed.
+
+  Should her lineaments resemble
+    Those thou never more mayst see,
+  Then thy heart will softly tremble
+    With a pulse yet true to me.
+
+  All my faults, perchance, thou knowest;
+    All my madness none can know:
+  All my hopes, where'er thou goest,
+    Wither; yet with thee they go.
+
+  Every feeling hath been shaken:
+    Pride, which not a world could bow,
+  Bows to thee, by thee forsaken;
+    Even my soul forsakes me now.
+
+  But 'tis done: all words are idle;
+    Words from me are vainer still;
+  But the thoughts we cannot bridle
+    Force their way without the will.
+
+  Fare thee well!--thus disunited,
+    Torn from every nearer tie,
+  Seared in heart, and lone and blighted,
+    More than this I scarce can die.
+
+
+A SKETCH.
+
+  Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred;
+  Promoted thence to deck her mistress' head;
+  Next--for some gracious service unexpress'd,
+  And from its wages only to be guessed--
+  Raised from the toilette to the table, where
+  Her wondering betters wait behind her chair,
+  With eye unmoved, and forehead unabashed,
+  She dines from off the plate she lately washed.
+  Quick with the tale, and ready with the lie,
+  The genial confidante and general spy,
+  Who could, ye gods! her next employment guess?--
+  An only infant's earliest governess!
+  She taught the child to read, and taught so well,
+  That she herself, by teaching, learned to spell.
+  An adept next in penmanship she grows,
+  As many a nameless slander deftly shows:
+  What she had made the pupil of her art,
+  None know; but that high soul secured the heart,
+  And panted for the truth it could not hear,
+  With longing breast and undeluded ear.
+  Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind,
+  Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind,
+  Deceit infect not, near contagion soil,
+  Indulgence weaken, nor example spoil,
+  Nor mastered science tempt her to look down
+  On humbler talents with a pitying frown,
+  Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain,
+  Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain,
+  Nor fortune change, pride raise, nor passion bow,
+  Nor virtue teach austerity, till now.
+  Serenely purest of her sex that live;
+  But wanting one sweet weakness,--to forgive;
+  Too shocked at faults her soul can never know,
+  She deems that all could be like her below:
+  Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue's friend;
+  For Virtue pardons those she would amend.
+    But to the theme, now laid aside too long,--
+  The baleful burthen of this honest song.
+  Though all her former functions are no more,
+  She rules the circle which she served before.
+  If mothers--none know why--before her quake;
+  If daughters dread her for the mothers' sake;
+  If early habits--those false links, which bind
+  At times the loftiest to the meanest mind--
+  Have given her power too deeply to instil
+  The angry essence of her deadly will;
+  If like a snake she steal within your walls
+  Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;
+  If like a viper to the heart she wind,
+  And leave the venom there she did not find,--
+  What marvel that this hag of hatred works
+  Eternal evil latent as she lurks,
+  To make a Pandemonium where she dwells,
+  And reign the Hecate of domestic hells?
+  Skilled by a touch to deepen scandal's tints
+  With all the kind mendacity of hints,
+  While mingling truth with falsehood, sneers with smiles,
+  A thread of candour with a web of wiles;
+  A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming.
+  To hide her bloodless heart's soul-hardened scheming
+  A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal,
+  And, without feeling, mock at all who feel;
+  With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown;
+  A cheek of parchment, and an eye of stone.
+  Mark how the channels of her yellow blood
+  Ooze to her skin, and stagnate there to mud!
+  Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,
+  Or darker greenness of the scorpion's scale,
+  (For drawn from reptiles only may we trace
+  Congenial colours in that soul or face,)--
+  Look on her features! and behold her mind
+  As in a mirror of itself defined.
+  Look on the picture! deem it not o'ercharged;
+  There is no trait which might not be enlarged:
+  Yet true to 'Nature's journeymen,' who made
+  This monster when their mistress left off trade,
+  This female dog-star of her little sky,
+  Where all beneath her influence droop or die.
+
+    O wretch without a tear, without a thought,
+  Save joy above the ruin thou hast wrought!
+  The time shall come, nor long remote, when thou
+  Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now,--
+  Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain,
+  And turn thee howling in unpitied pain.
+  May the strong curse of crushed affections light
+  Back on thy bosom with reflected blight,
+  And make thee, in thy leprosy of mind,
+  As loathsome to thyself as to mankind,
+  Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate
+  Black as thy will for others would create;
+  Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,
+  And thy soul welter in its hideous crust!
+  Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,
+  The widowed couch of fire, that thou hast spread
+  Then, when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with prayer,
+  Look on thine earthly victims, and despair!
+  Down to the dust! and, as thou rott'st away,
+  Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.
+  But for the love I bore, and still must bear,
+  To her thy malice from all ties would tear,
+  Thy name, thy human name, to every eye
+  The climax of all scorn, should hang on high,
+  Exalted o'er thy less abhorred compeers,
+  And festering in the infamy of years.
+
+
+LINES
+
+ON HEARING THAT LADY BYRON WAS ILL.
+
+  And thou wert sad, yet I was not with thee!
+    And thou wert sick, and yet I was not near!
+  Methought that joy and health alone could be
+    Where I was _not_, and pain and sorrow here.
+  And is it thus? It is as I foretold,
+    And shall be more so; for the mind recoils
+  Upon itself, and the wrecked heart lies cold,
+    While heaviness collects the shattered spoils.
+  It is not in the storm nor in the strife
+    We feel benumbed, and wish to be no more,
+    But in the after-silence on the shore,
+  When all is lost except a little life.
+  I am too well avenged! But 'twas my right:
+    Whate'er my sins might be, _thou_ wert not sent
+  To be the Nemesis who should requite;
+    Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument.
+  Mercy is for the merciful!--if thou
+  Hast been of such, 'twill be accorded now.
+  Thy nights are banished from the realms of sleep!
+    Yes! they may flatter thee; but thou shalt feel
+    A hollow agony which will not heal;
+  For thou art pillowed on a curse too deep:
+  Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap
+    The bitter harvest in a woe as real!
+  I have had many foes, but none like thee;
+    For 'gainst the rest myself I could defend,
+    And be avenged, or turn them into friend;
+  But thou in safe implacability
+  Hadst nought to dread, in thy own weakness shielded
+  And in my love, which hath but too much yielded,
+    And spared, for thy sake, some I should not spare.
+  And thus upon the world,--trust in thy truth,
+  And the wild fame of my ungoverned youth,
+    On things that were not and on things that are,--
+  Even upon such a basis hast thou built
+  A monument, whose cement hath been guilt;
+  The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord,
+  And hewed down, with an unsuspected sword,
+  Fame, peace, and hope, and all the better life,
+    Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart,
+  Might still have risen from out the grave of strife,
+    And found a nobler duty than to part.
+  But of thy virtues didst thou make a vice,
+    Trafficking with them in a purpose cold,
+    For present anger and for future gold,
+  And buying others' grief at any price.
+  And thus, once entered into crooked ways,
+  The early truth, which was thy proper praise,
+  Did not still walk beside thee, but at times,
+  And with a breast unknowing its own crimes,
+  Deceit, averments incompatible,
+  Equivocations, and the thoughts which dwell
+    In Janus-spirits; the significant eye
+  Which learns to lie with silence; the pretext
+  Of prudence, with advantages annexed;
+  The acquiescence in all things which tend,
+  No matter how, to the desired end,--
+    All found a place in thy philosophy.
+  The means were worthy, and the end is won
+  I would not do by thee as thou hast done.
+
+
+_Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London._
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Lady Byron Vindicated, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
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