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.
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. :
’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 ,
: “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 , , etc.): “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
, 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. From the following part of the narrative
, 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.”
’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 (Ja 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 (Ja, 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 (Ja, 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”
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.
’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, Ja, 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, Fe, 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
ploughshares.
’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
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,
etc.,
‘A.
I. NOEL BYRON.’
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 piqués
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.’ Timothy Tickler informs Christopher
North that he means to tender Murray, as Emperor of
the North, an interleaved copy 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.’
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.