On March 25, 1815: “I went to bed out of spirits from indeterminate but chiefly low apprehensions about Byron.”On April 1, 1815: “He advises me ‘not to marry,’ though he has the best of wives.”On April 2, 1815: “Lady Oxford walks about Naples with Byron’s picture on her girdle in front.”On July 31, 1815: “Byron is not more happy than before marriage. D. Kinnaird is also melancholy. This is the state of man.”On August 4, 1815: “Lord Byron tells me he and she have begun a little snubbing on money matters. ‘Marry not,’ says he.”On August 8, 1815: “Dined with Byron, &c. All grumbled at life.”On November 25, 1815: “Called on Byron. In that quarter things do not go well. Strong advice against marriage. Talking of going abroad.”
On March 25, 1815: “I went to bed out of spirits from indeterminate but chiefly low apprehensions about Byron.”
On April 1, 1815: “He advises me ‘not to marry,’ though he has the best of wives.”
On April 2, 1815: “Lady Oxford walks about Naples with Byron’s picture on her girdle in front.”
On July 31, 1815: “Byron is not more happy than before marriage. D. Kinnaird is also melancholy. This is the state of man.”
On August 4, 1815: “Lord Byron tells me he and she have begun a little snubbing on money matters. ‘Marry not,’ says he.”
On August 8, 1815: “Dined with Byron, &c. All grumbled at life.”
On November 25, 1815: “Called on Byron. In that quarter things do not go well. Strong advice against marriage. Talking of going abroad.”
There is nothing specific there; and when we set out to look for something specific, we only run up against gossip of doubtful authenticity. “Do I interrupt you?”... “Damnably,” may be assumed to be authentic since Byron himself has admitted the repartee. It was rude and reprehensible, though it was probably provoked. The charges which young Harness, now in Holy Orders, heard preferred by some of Lady Byron’s friends are rightly described by him as “nonsensical”; but we may as well have them before us in order to judge of the propriety of the epithet:
“The poor lady had never had a comfortable meal since their marriage. Her husband had no fixed hour for breakfast, and was always too late for dinner.“At his express desire she had invited two elderly ladies to meet them in her opera-box. Nothing could be more courteous than his manner to them while they remained; but no sooner had they gone than he began to annoy his wife by venting his ill-humour, in a strain of bitterest satire, against the dress and manners of her friends.”“Poor Lady Byron was afraid of her life. Her husband slept with loaded pistols by his bed-side, and a dagger under his pillow.”
“The poor lady had never had a comfortable meal since their marriage. Her husband had no fixed hour for breakfast, and was always too late for dinner.
“At his express desire she had invited two elderly ladies to meet them in her opera-box. Nothing could be more courteous than his manner to them while they remained; but no sooner had they gone than he began to annoy his wife by venting his ill-humour, in a strain of bitterest satire, against the dress and manners of her friends.”
“Poor Lady Byron was afraid of her life. Her husband slept with loaded pistols by his bed-side, and a dagger under his pillow.”
“Nonsensical” is decidedly the word for these allegations. The incidents, even if true, could only be symptoms, not causes, of the disagreement. Harness, perceiving that, seeks the true explanation of the estrangement in the disposition of Lady Byron, whom he had known as a girl. She “gave one the idea of being self-willed and self-opinionated.” She “carried no cheerfulness along with her.” The majority of her acquaintances “looked upon her as a reserved and frigid sort of being whom one would rather cross the room to avoid than be brought into conversation with unnecessarily.” A common acquaintance remarked to Harness: “If Lady Byron has a heart, it is deeper seated and harder to get at than anybody else’s heart whom I have ever known.”
Et cetera. So far as we can judge Lady Byron by the letters in which she subsequently announced, without formulating, her grievances, the verdictseems a just one. She might be pictured, in the words of the author of “Ionica” as one who
“Smiles at all that’s coarse and rash,Yet wins the trophies of the fight,Unscathed in honour’s wreck and crash,Heartless, yet always in the right.”
Or rather one begins so to picture her—and is even justified in so picturing her at the beginning—though presently, when one sees how unfairly she fought in the great fight which ensued, one changes one’s mind about her, withdraws such sympathy as one has allowed to go out to her, and thinks of her husband when one comes to the final couplet of the poem:
“And I, dear passionate Teucer, dareGo through the homeless world with you.”
Yet Lady Byron had her grievances, and though they were quite different from those which Harness has reported, they were not light ones. Two grievances in particular must have been very trying to the temper of a young bride who had been an only and spoiled child. In the first place, and almost at once, there was trouble about money. In the second place, and very soon, there was trouble about “the women of the theatre.”
Byron, at the time of his marriage, was heavily in debt. His one idea of economy had always been to obtain credit instead of paying cash; andsuch cash as he had the handling of quickly slipped through his fingers. He never denied himself a luxury, and seldom refused a request for a loan. He had helped Augusta; he had helped Hodgson; he had helped Coleridge. Now he found his expenses increased out of all proportion to the increase of his income; while his creditors, assuming that his wife had a fortune, proceeded to press for the settlement of their accounts. Hence that “snubbing on money matters” to which we have seen Hobhouse referring; and the word “snubbing” may well have been a euphemism for more severe remonstrance when executions began to be levied. There were no fewer than ten executions in the house in the course of a few months; and one can understand that the experience was unfavourable to the temper of a young wife coming from a well-ordered home in which precise middle-class notions on such subjects had prevailed.
The simultaneous trouble about women, of course, made matters worse. Whether there was trouble about Mary Chaworth or not is uncertain; but, at any rate, Lady Byron met her and appears to have felt the pangs of jealousy. “Such a wicked looking cat I never saw. Somebody else looked quite virtuous by the side of her,” was her commentary to Augusta; and, if she spoke of Mary Chaworth as a cat, we need not suppose her to have been any more complimentary in her references to those actresses whose acquaintance she knew her husband to be making.
He had become, at this time, together withLord Essex, George Lamb, Douglas Kinnaird, and Peter Moore, a member of the Sub-Committee of Management of Drury Lane Theatre. It does not appear that the Sub-Committee did a great deal except waste the time of the actual managers; but it is not to be supposed that they were altogether neglectful of the amenities of their position. They had “influence”; and upon the men who have “influence” actresses never fail to smile. Some actresses smiled upon Byron for that reason, and others smiled upon him for his own sake. Some of them, it may be, drew the line at smiling; but others, as certainly, did more than smile. Miss Jane Clairmont, in particular—but we shall come to Miss Jane Clairmont presently.
How much Lady Byron knew, at the time, about these matters is doubtful. She must have known a good deal, for actresses sometimes called at the house; and any defects in her knowledge may be presumed to have been eked out by conjecture. Knowledge, conjecture, and gossip, operating in concert, cannot have failed to make her feel uncomfortable. In this respect, as in others, things were not falling out as she had expected. The fondly cherished belief that her love was the one thing needful to Byron’s happiness, and that he had moped for two years because she had withheld it from him, was receiving every day a ruder shock.
The shocks were the more violent because Byron, in the midst of his pecuniary embarrassments and theatrical philanderings, was attackedby a disorder of the liver. No man is at his best when his liver is sluggish; and Byron probably was at his worst—gloomy, contentious, and prone to uncontrollable outbursts of passion. So there were scenes—the sort of scenes that one would expect: Lady Byron, on the one hand, coldly and reasonably reproachful—“always in the right,” and most careful not to lose her temper; Byron, on the other hand, talking to provoke her, boasting of abandoned wickedness, falling into fits of rage, much as his own mother had been wont to do when she rattled the fire-irons—throwing his watch on the ground and smashing it to pieces with the poker.
Very likely he was angry with Lady Byron because he did not love her—irritated beyond measure at every fresh revelation that she could never be to him what Mary Chaworth might have been. The beginning of unhappiness in marriage must often come like that. It is not unnatural, though it is unreasonable, and not to be combated by reason. Lady Byron, unhappily, had no other weapon than reason with which to combat it; and it is quite likely that her very reasonableness made the trouble worse. It did, at any rate, pass from bad to worse—and then from worse to worst—during the critical days of her confinement, at the end of 1815.
Those were the circumstances which paved the way for open war and the demand for judicial separation. Or, at all events, those were some of the circumstances; for the story is long, andintricate, and involved, and darkened with the clouds of controversy. Byron’s version of it, it is needless to say, is quite different from Lady Byron’s. According to him the causes of the separation were “too simple to be easily found out.” According to her, they included an enormity of which he dared not speak; and the clash of these conflicting allegations constitutes what has been called “the Byron mystery.”
Perhaps it is not possible to solve the whole of that mystery even now. New evidence, however, has lately been adduced, on the one hand in Hobhouse’s Diary and Narrative, and on the other hand from Lady Byron’s correspondence, printed by the late Earl of Lovelace in “Astarte.” By sifting it, we may at least contrive to come nearer to the truth—to put, as it were, a ring fence round the mystery—to distinguish the assertions which have been proved from the assertions which have been disproved, and to reduce within narrow limits the fragment of the mystery which, until more conclusive documents are produced, must still remain mysterious.
The late Earl of Lovelace, as is well-known, attempted to acquit his grandmother of a charge of evil-speaking by convicting his grandfather of a charge of unnatural vice. It will be necessary to consider whether he has succeeded or failed in the attempt. The latter charge, but for his revival of it, might have been waived aside as equally calumnious and incredible. As it is, a biographer cannot discharge his task without taking up the challenge.It shall be taken up with every possible avoidance of unpleasant detail, but taken up it must be; and the most convenient way to approach the subject will be first to tell the story as it is presented by Hobhouse who represented Byron throughout the negotiations.
LADY BYRON’S DEMAND FOR A SEPARATION—RUMOURS THAT “GROSS CHARGES” MIGHT BE BROUGHT, INVOLVING MRS. LEIGH
Hobhouse, as we have seen, had an early inkling of the trouble which was to come; and it is not to be supposed that the brief entries in his Diary chronicle the whole of his knowledge. He had observed, indeed—or so he says—that it was “impossible for any couple to live in more apparent harmony”; but he also had reason to believe that the appearances did not reflect the realities with complete exactitude. He had heard Byron talk, though “vaguely,” of breaking up his establishment, of going abroad without Lady Byron, of living alone in rooms; and he had noticed that Byron’s complaints of his poverty led up to disparaging generalisations about marriage.
Speaking of his embarrassments, Byron had said that “no one could know what he had gone through,” but that he “should think lightly of them were he not married.” Marriage, he had added, “doubled all his misfortunes and diminished all his comforts.” He summed the matter up, with apparent anxiety to do equal justice to Lady Byron’s feelings and his own by saying: “My wife is perfection itself—the best creature breathing;but mind what I say—don’t marry.” Having received these confidences, and knowing Byron well, Hobhouse must have been at least partially prepared for the subsequent developments; but their suddenness nevertheless surprised him, as they surprised everyone.
The crisis came shortly after Lady Byron’s confinement, in the early days of 1816. Augusta, Byron’s cousin, Captain George Byron, and Mrs. Clermont, a waiting woman who had been promoted to be Lady Byron’s governess and companion, were all in the house at the time. They had witnessed some of the scenes of which we have spoken—scenes which appear to have included, if not to have been provoked by, irritating references to “the women of the theatre.” Byron is said to have been aggressive in his allusions to them; and there is no evidence that Lady Byron was conciliatory on the subject. The state of his liver and of her general health would naturally have tended to accentuate any differences that arose. Things came to such a pass that, for a few days, they communicated in writing instead of by word of mouth; and Byron sent a note to Lady Byron’s room.
He spoke in this note of the necessity of breaking up his establishment—a necessity of which, in view of the frequent invasions of the bailiffs, she can scarcely have then heard for the first time. He asked her to fix a date for accepting an invitation to stay with her mother at Kirkby Mallory.He proposed that that date should be as early as was compatible with her convenience, and added: “The child will, of course, accompany you.” Whereto Lady Byron replied, also in writing: “I shall obey your wishes and fix the earliest day that circumstances will admit for leaving London.”
Neither letter is particularly amiable. On the other hand, neither letter suggests that Lady Byron was leaving, or being asked to leave, as the direct consequence of any specific quarrel. There was no question of a separation—only of a visit to be paid; and the dread of more “men in possession” sufficiently explains Byron’s wish that it should be paid without delay. Lady Byron would obviously be more comfortable at Kirkby Mallory than in a house besieged or occupied by minions of the law. Her husband would have time, while she was there, to turn round and reconsider his position. The temporary estrangement—the interchange of heated recriminations—did not make the execution of the plan any the less desirable. On the contrary, it might afford opportunity for tempers to cool and for absence to make the heart grow fonder.
It seemed, at first, as though Lady Byron saw the matter in that light. She did not sail out of the house with indignation—she left it on ostensibly cordial terms with everybody who remained in it. She wrote to Byron in language which seemed to express fond affection, sending him news of his child, and saying that she looked forward to seeinghim at Kirkby. One of the letters—there were two of them—began with the words “Dear Duck,” and was signed with Lady Byron’s pet name “Pippin.” That was in the middle of January. There was an interval of a few days, and then it became known that Lady Noel[8]and Mrs. Clermont were in London, “for the purpose,” as Hobhouse states, “of procuring means of providing a separation.”
Nothing, Hobhouse insists, had happened since Lady Byron’s departure to account for this sudden change of attitude. There had, in fact, hardly been time for anything to happen. That intrigue with a “woman of the theatre” which Cordy Jeaffreson believed to have been Lady Byron’s determining grievance did not begin until a later date. The one thing, in short, which had happened was that Lady Byron—and Mrs. Clermont, who had accompanied her—had talked. Byron’s conduct had been painted by them in lurid colours—the more lurid, no doubt, because they found listeners who were at once astounded and sympathetic. Sir Ralph and Lady Noel had, naturally, been indignant. Their daughter, they vowed, was not to be treated in this way; and they were, no doubt, the more disposed to indignation because they and Byron had not got on very well together.
Sir Ralph is commonly described in Byron’s letters to his intimates as prosy and a bore. “Ican’t stand Lady Noel,” was the reason which he gave Hobhouse for declining to visit her house. A very small spark, in such circumstances, may kindle a fierce conflagration; and it appeared to do so in this case. There was no manœuvring for position, no beating about the bush. Byron received no intimation, direct or indirect, of the plans which were being laid for his confusion. What he did receive—on February 2—was a stiffly worded ultimatum from his father-in-law.
The charges contained in the ultimatum were mostly vague; in so far as they were precise, they were untrue. “Very recently,” Sir Ralph began, “circumstances have come to my knowledge”; the circumstances, so far as he disclosed them, relating to Lady Byron’s “dismissal” from Byron’s house, and “the treatment she experienced while in it.” He went on to propose a separation and to demand as early an answer as possible. He got his answer the same day. It was to the effect that Lady Byron had not been “dismissed” from Piccadilly Terrace, but had left London “by medical advice,” and it concluded: “Till I have her express sanction of your proceedings, I shall take leave to doubt the propriety of your interference.”
Mrs. Leigh wrote simultaneously to Lady Byron to inquire whether the proposal made by her father had her concurrence. The answer, dated February 3, was that it had, but that Lady Byron, owing to her “distressing situation” did not feel “capable of stating in a detailed manner thereasons which will not only justify this measure, but compel me to take it.” She referred, however, to Byron’s “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”; and she added in a subsequent letter, written on the following day:
“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 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.”
That was the stage which the discussion had reached when Hobhouse, calling on Byron on February 5, heard what had happened and was taken into council. The whole thing was a mystery to him, and a mystery on which Byron could throw but little light. In the light of the few facts before him, Lady Byron’s conduct was absolutely unaccountable, inconsistent, and incoherent. The transition from the “Dearest Duck” letter to the “avowed and insurmountable aversion to the married state” letter seemed inexplicably abrupt; and, indeed, it seems so still, though later disclosures enable us, in some measure, to trace its history; the facts nowknown, but not then known either to Byron or to his advisers, being as follows:
1. Lady Byron had assumed that Byron was mad, and must be humoured tactfully. The “Dearest Duck” letter had been the manifestation of her tact.2. Lady Byron had secretly instructed doctors to inquire into, and report upon, the state of Byron’s mind. They had reported that he was perfectly sane; and their report had, in Lady Byron’s opinion, removed all shadow of excuse for his behaviour, and decided her to leave him. Hence Lady Noel’s journey to London, to consult lawyers.3. Dr. Lushington, the lawyer consulted, had advised Lady Noel that, while the circumstances laid before him “were such as justified a separation,” they were “not such as to render such a measure indispensable,” and that he “deemed a reconciliation practicable.”4. Lady Byron had persisted, for reasons which she did not yet state, either to her family or to her legal advisers, in her refusal to return. Hence Sir Ralph Noel’s ultimatum.
1. Lady Byron had assumed that Byron was mad, and must be humoured tactfully. The “Dearest Duck” letter had been the manifestation of her tact.
2. Lady Byron had secretly instructed doctors to inquire into, and report upon, the state of Byron’s mind. They had reported that he was perfectly sane; and their report had, in Lady Byron’s opinion, removed all shadow of excuse for his behaviour, and decided her to leave him. Hence Lady Noel’s journey to London, to consult lawyers.
3. Dr. Lushington, the lawyer consulted, had advised Lady Noel that, while the circumstances laid before him “were such as justified a separation,” they were “not such as to render such a measure indispensable,” and that he “deemed a reconciliation practicable.”
4. Lady Byron had persisted, for reasons which she did not yet state, either to her family or to her legal advisers, in her refusal to return. Hence Sir Ralph Noel’s ultimatum.
These facts, which gave Lady Byron’s conduct a certain superficial coherence, were gradually elicited. For the moment, however, the only fact which Hobhouse had before him was the ultimatum and Lady Byron’s endorsement of it. Of Lady Byron’s reasons he knew nothing; and he had no grounds for suspectingany other motives than the word “tantrums” would cover. He proceeded, as did all Byron’s supporters, on the assumption that the word “tantrums” did, in fact, cover them; and a fusillade of letters ensued. One cannot quote them all, but their contents can easily be summed up. From Byron’s side there issued appeals for reconciliation, for explanations, for specific charges, for personal interviews; from Lady Byron’s side there came refusals either to give reasons or to parley, and reiterated statements that her mind was unalterably made up.
“I must decline your visit and all discussion,” was what Lady Byron wrote to Hobhouse on February 7; and on the same day she wrote to Byron himself: “I have finally determined on the measure of a separation.... Every expression of feeling, sincerely as it might be made, would be misplaced.” The letter apparently crossed one from Byron to Sir Ralph Noel, in which he said that his house was still open to Lady Byron, that he must not debase himself to “implore as a suppliant the restoration of a reluctant wife,” but that it was her duty to return, and that he knew of no reason why she should not do so. On the following day Byron addressed a further appeal to Lady Byron herself: “Will you see me—when and where you please—in whose presence you please?” and, almost as he was writing, he received another communication from Sir Ralph Noel, threatening legal proceedings “until a final separation is effected.”
February 13 brought the letter in which Lady Byron stated that she had excused Byron’s conduct in the belief that he was mad, but that she could not excuse it now that she had received assurance of his sanity. She added: “I have consistently fulfilled my duty as your wife; it was too dear to be resigned till it was hopeless. Now my resolution cannot be changed.” Byron rejoined on February 15: “I have invited your return; it has been refused. I have requested to know with what I am charged; it is refused.”
He had, in fact, made, and was still to make, attempts, through several channels, to pin Lady Byron and her supporters to a specific allegation. Hodgson had been appealed to by Mrs. Leigh to come and help. He came, and, on the strength of the information supplied to him, wrote to Lady Byron. Two of her letters and one of his are published in his life by his son, the Reverend James T. Hodgson. Hers may be analysed as a very thinly veiled threat to bring mysterious and abominable charges unless she got her way. There is an air about the letters of conscious virtue and of consideration for the feelings of others, but the threat is unmistakably contained in them. “Hedoesknow—too well—what he affects to inquire,” is one sentence; and another is: “The circumstances, which are of too convincing a nature, shall not be generally known whilst Lord B. allows me to spare him.”
Hanson, the lawyer had, in the meantime, been sent to call on Sir Ralph Noel. He had asked forexplanations, and been refused any. He had also met Lushington who had, by this time, been definitely retained by Lady Byron, and addressed some inquiries to him. “Oh, we are not going to let you into theforteof our case,” had been Dr. Lushington’s reply.
It was, no doubt, a reply in strict conformity with his instructions. Lushington, as we know from a published letter from him to Lady Byron, was, at this date, personally in favour of an attempt at reconciliation. On the other hand, as is equally clear from the letters quoted in preceding paragraphs, Lady Byron had announced her intention of going into Court unless she could get her separation without doing so. Whether she had, at this date, any case—any case, that is to say, which a lawyer could take into Court with any confidence of winning it—may be questioned. The weaker her case, of course, the less likely her counsel would be to reveal the nakedness of the land prematurely by talking about it. Professional etiquette and zeal for the interests intrusted to him account quite adequately for his reticence; and there is no other influence to be drawn from it.
A little later, at an uncertain date towards the end of February, Lushington, as his letter to Lady Byron sets forth, received a visit from Lady Byron, had “additional information” imparted to him, changed his mind, and said that, if a reconciliation were still contemplated, or should thereafter be proposed, he, at any rate, should decline to render anyhelp in bringing it about. The original “Byron mystery” was: What was the nature of that “additional information” which so suddenly altered Lushington’s attitude towards the case? That mystery has, as we shall see in a moment, been solved by Lord Lovelace. The questions left unsolved relate, not to the nature of the information but to its accuracy. Byron, Hobhouse, and Hodgson, however, were unable to dispute its accuracy because they were left uninformed as to its nature, and could only guess the charges to be met.
The awkwardness of the situation is obvious. On the one hand, Byron could not be expected to desire, for his own sake, the society of a wife who wrote him such letters as he was now receiving from Lady Byron—to separate from her would, at any rate, be the least uncomfortable of the courses open to him. On the other hand, he could not afford to let it be said that he had consented to a separation under the threat of gross, but unspecified, accusations. The charges might be specified afterwards, whether by Lady Byron herself or by the irresponsible voice of gossip, and he would be held to have pleaded guilty to them.
That, as Byron’s friends impressed upon him, could not be allowed. It could the less be allowed because rumour was already busy, and charges of a very monstrous and malignant character were being whispered. The name of Mrs. Leigh was being mixed up in the matter, and there was somereason to suppose that the stories implicating her emanated from Lady Byron; for Lady Byron, according to Hobhouse, had intimated to Mrs. Leigh that “she would be one of her evidences against her brother.” That might mean much, or might mean little; but it meant enough, at any rate, to make it imperative for Byron to show fight until the air was cleared. So his friends urged, and he agreed with them, and waited for the next step to be taken by the other side.
What the other side did, in these circumstances—we are still following Hobhouse’s account—was simultaneously to appeal for pity, to bluff, and to spy out the land. They “talked of the cruelty of dragging” Lady Byron into a public Court. They sent Mrs. Clermont to Captain Byron to try to induce him to dissuade Byron from fighting. They threatened that, if he did fight, they would carry the case from Court to Court, and bury him alive under a heap of costs. But all this without effect. Sir Ralph Noel wrote to Hanson to inquire whether Byron had “come to any determination” on the proposal to separate. The reply was to the effect that “his Lordship cannot accede.”
At the end of February, that is to say, Byron still meant fighting. He said that, if Lady Byron did not proceed against him, he should proceed against her, and commence an action for the restitution of conjugal rights. His friends approved of his determination; but, at the same time, desiring to know what sort of a case would have to be met,they begged Byron to be quite candid with them and inform them, not, of course, of the nature of Lady Byron’s charges, of which he had not himself been informed, but of any good grounds of complaint which he knew himself to have given her.
“GROSS CHARGES” DISAVOWED BY LADY BYRON—SEPARATION AGREED TO
How far Byron was candid with his friends it is, of course, impossible to say. We know neither what he told them nor what he left untold. All that is on record is their opinion, reproduced by Hobhouse, that “the whole charge against him would amount merely to such offences as are more often committed than complained of, and, however they might be regretted as subversive of matrimonial felicity, would not render him amenable to the laws of any court, whether of justice or of equity.”
That was either at the end of February or the beginning of March. Early in the latter month Byron and his friends opened further negotiations. Byron once more asked his wife to see him, and she replied: “I regret the necessity of declining an interview under existing circumstances.” Then Lady Melbourne urged her to return to her husband, but only elicited an expression of wonder “that Lord Byron had not more regard for his reputation than to think of coming before the public.” Then Lord Holland, who had already offered his services as a negotiator, submitted to Byron the proposed terms of a deed of separation;but Byron rejected the terms, describing the proposal as “a kind of appeal to the supposed mercenary feelings of the person to whom it was made.”
There next followed interviews between Lady Byron and Mrs. Leigh, and between Lady Byron and Captain Byron. To these intermediaries Lady Byron represented that “something had passed which she had as yet told to no one, and which nothing but the absolute necessity of justifying herself in Court should wring from her.” Whereto Byron replied that “it was absolutely false that he had been guilty of any enormity—that nothing could or would be proved by anybody against him, and that he was prepared for anything that could be said in any Court.” He allowed Hobhouse to offer on his behalf “any guarantees short of separation”; but he made it quite clear that he was not frightened, and would not yield to threats.
Upon that Lady Byron changed her tone. Her next letter did not so much claim a separation as beg for one. “After your repeated assertions,” she wrote, “that, when convinced my conduct has not been influenced by others, you should not oppose my wishes, I am yet disposed to hope these assertions will be realised.” There, at last, was an appeal to which it was possible for Byron to respond—on terms; not on Lady Byron’s terms, of course—but on his own. He had begun the negotiations by declining to “implore as a suppliant the return of a reluctant wife.” Nothing had happened in the course of the negotiations to persuade himthat he would live more happily with Lady Byron than without her. Indeed, it was now more evident than ever that to separate was the only way of making the best of a bad job.
Lady Byron.
At the same time it was equally evident that he must stand out for terms. Mud had been thrown; and while there had been no specific charges, there had been dark hints of monstrous crimes. It was necessary, therefore, to insist that Lady Byron should give “a positive disavowal of all the grosser charges” which had been suggested without being positively preferred; and Hobhouse proceeded to continue the negotiations on those lines.
There were, in fact, two “gross” charges to be faced. One of these concerned Mrs. Leigh, and the other did not. On the nature of the latter charge it is quite superfluous to speculate. Whatever it may have been, no evidence was offered in support of it at the time, and no evidence bearing on it has since been brought to light. It was not maintained; it was not revived; it has been forgotten. The rules of controversy not only warrant us in passing it over, but bid us do so. The Byron mystery, wherever it may be, is not there. Though all the “gross” charges had, at the moment, to be dealt with collectively, the only charge which mattered was the charge in which Mrs. Leigh was involved.
Lady Byron, when challenged with the charges, at first equivocated. She was quite willing, she said, to declare that the rumours indicated “had not emanated from her or from her family.” That,naturally, was not good enough for Byron and his friends. What they required was that Lady Byron should state “not only that the rumours did not originate with her or her family, but that the charges which they involved made no part of her charges against Lord Byron.” A statement to that effect was drawn up for her to sign, and she signed it. The signed statement, witnessed by Byron’s cousin, Wilmot Horton, was shown to Hobhouse, and was left in Wilmot Horton’s hands until the settlement should be completed. The Byron mystery, such as it is, or was, only exists—or existed—because Byron and Wilmot Horton fell out, and the latter, withdrawing from the negotiations, mislaid or lost the document.
That Lady Byron did sign the document, however, and that its contents were as stated, no doubt whatever can be entertained. Hobhouse’s subsequent evidence on the subject is supported by the correspondence which passed at the time. He referred to the document, with full particularity, in a letter which he wrote Lady Byron, and which has been published; and Lady Byron, in her answer, did not deny either that she had signed, or that she was bound by its contents. The trouble arose because, after having signed it, she behaved as if she had not done so, and, by her conduct, gave the lie to her pledged word that “neither of the specified charges would have formed part of her allegations if she had come into Court.”
This trouble, however, was not immediate. LadyByron did not begin to talk till some time afterwards: and at first she only talked to people who had sense enough to keep her secret, if not to rate it at its true value. Not until some years after her death did a foolish woman in whom she had confided publish her story to the world in a book filled from cover to cover with gross and even ludicrous inaccuracies. When that happened, the old scandal which the book revived was mistaken for a new scandal freshly brought to light; and there was a great outcry about “shocking revelations” and much angry beating of the air by violent controversialists on both sides. All that it is necessary to say on that branch of the subject shall be said in a moment. What we have to note now is that Byron did not, and could not, foresee that that particular battle would rage over his reputation.
He admitted to his friends, and he had previously admitted to Lady Byron, that “he had been guilty of infidelity with one female.” He was under the impression that she had given him “a plenary pardon”; but the offence nevertheless gave her a moral—if not also a legal—right to her separation, if she insisted on it. Of the “gross” charges he only knew that they had never been formally pressed, and that they had been formally repudiated. So far as they were concerned, therefore, his honour was perfectly clear; and there remained no reason why he should not append his signature to the proposed deed of separation, as soon as its exact terms were agreed upon. The detailsstill awaiting adjustment were mainly of the financial order. They were adjusted, and then Byron signed.
It may be that he signed the more readily because the rumours had been tracked to another source, and disavowed there also. Lady Caroline Lamb has often been accused of putting them in circulation. She heard, at the time, that she had been so accused, and wrote to Byron to repudiate the charge. “They tell me,” she wrote, “that you have accused me of having spread injurious reports against you. Had you the heart to say this? I do not greatly believe it.” Very possibly the receipt of that letter strengthened Byron’s resolution to sign. At all events he did sign, and then a storm burst about his head:
“I need not tell you of the obloquy and opprobrium that were cast upon my name when our separation was made public. I once made a list from the Journals of the day of the different worthies, ancient and modern, to whom I was compared. I remember a few: Nero, Apicius, Epicurus, Caligula, Heliogabalus, Henry the Eighth, and lastly the ——. All my former friends, even my cousin George Byron, who had been brought up with me, and whom I loved as a brother, took my wife’s part. He followed the stream when it was strongest against me, and can never expect anything from me: he shall never touch a sixpence of mine. I was looked upon as the worst of husbands, the most abandoned and wicked of men, and mywife as a suffering angel—an incarnation of all the virtues and perfections of the sex. I was abused in the public prints, made the common talk of private companies, hissed as I went to the House of Lords, insulted in the streets, afraid to go to the theatre, whence the unfortunate Mrs. Mardyn had been driven with insult. TheExaminerwas the only paper that dared say a word in my defence, and Lady Jersey the only person in the fashionable world that did not look upon me as a monster.”“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 need not tell you of the obloquy and opprobrium that were cast upon my name when our separation was made public. I once made a list from the Journals of the day of the different worthies, ancient and modern, to whom I was compared. I remember a few: Nero, Apicius, Epicurus, Caligula, Heliogabalus, Henry the Eighth, and lastly the ——. All my former friends, even my cousin George Byron, who had been brought up with me, and whom I loved as a brother, took my wife’s part. He followed the stream when it was strongest against me, and can never expect anything from me: he shall never touch a sixpence of mine. I was looked upon as the worst of husbands, the most abandoned and wicked of men, and mywife as a suffering angel—an incarnation of all the virtues and perfections of the sex. I was abused in the public prints, made the common talk of private companies, hissed as I went to the House of Lords, insulted in the streets, afraid to go to the theatre, whence the unfortunate Mrs. Mardyn had been driven with insult. TheExaminerwas the only paper that dared say a word in my defence, and Lady Jersey the only person in the fashionable world that did not look upon me as a monster.”
“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.”
The former of these passages is from Medwin’s “Conversations”; the latter is written by Byron’s own hand. There is very little to be added to the picture which they draw. Byron discovered that, for a man of his notoriety, there was no such thing as private life. His business was assumed to be everybody’s business. In his case, just as in the Dreyfus case, at a later date, all the world took a side, and those who knew least of the rights of the case were the most vehement in their indignation.
Broadly speaking one may say that his friends were for him but his acquaintances were against him, and the mob took the part of his acquaintances. Hobhouse, Hodgson, Moore, Rogers, Leigh Hunt, and Scrope Davies never faltered in their allegiance. On the other hand, many social leaders cut him; the journalists showered abuse on him as spitefully as if they felt that they had “failed in literature” through his fault; the religious seized the opportunity to punish him for what they considered the immoral tone of his writings; the pit and gallery at Drury Lane classed him with the villain of the melodrama who presumes to lay his hand upon a woman otherwise than in the way of kindness. It was a combination as irresistible as it was unforeseen, and he had to yield to it.
Lady Jersey, as he told Medwin, did her best for him. He and Mrs. Leigh were both present at a reception specially given in his honour—a demonstration that one social leader at least attached no importance and gave no credence to the scandals which besmeared his name. Miss Mercer, afterwards Madame de Flahault and, in her own right, Lady Keith, made a point of greeting him with frank cordiality as if nothing had happened. Probably the specific scandal which Lady Byron had been compelled to disavow was never taken very seriously outside Lady Byron’s immediate circle. Certainly it was not the scandal which aroused the indignation of the multitude. For them, thecausa teterrima belliwas Mrs. Mardyn, the actress, whom Byron hardly knew by sight; and the gravamen of their charge against him was that he had treated a woman badly.
That was enough for them; and their indignation was too much for him. Now that the deed of separation had been signed, it was too late for him to fight. The “grosser charges” against him were charges of which he could not prove publication—charges which had been withdrawn. Sneers and innuendoes did not, any more than hoots and hisses, furnish him with any definite allegation on which he could join issue. The whispered charge involving his sister was not one which he could formally contradict unless it were formally preferred.Qui s’excuse s’accusewould have been quoted against him if he had done so; and Mrs. Leigh’s good name as well as his own would have been at the mercy of the mud-slingers. All things considered, it seemed that the best course open to him was to travel, and let the hostile rumours die away, instead of keeping them alive by argument.
He went, and they died away and were forgotten. We will follow him to the continent presently, and see how nearly persecution drove him to degradation, and how, under the influence of the blow which threatened to crush him, his genius took fresh flights, more hardy than of old, and more sublime. But first we must turn back, and face the scandal in the form inwhich Mrs. Beecher Stowe and Lord Lovelace have successively given it two fresh leases of life, and see whether it is not possible to blow it into the air so effectively that no admirer of Byron’s genius need ever feel uneasy about it again.
REVIVAL OF THE BYRON SCANDAL BY MRS. BEECHER STOWE AND THE LATE LORD LOVELACE
The Byron scandal slowly fell asleep, and was allowed to slumber for about half a century. Even the publication of Moore’s Life did not awaken it. People took sides, indeed, as they always do, some throwing the blame on the husband, and others on the wife; but the view that, whoever was to blame, the causes of the separation were “too simple to be easily found out” prevailed.
Forces, however, making for the revival of the scandal were nevertheless at work. Byron smarted under social ostracism and resented it. Though Lady Byron had never made any formal charge to which he could reply, but had, on the contrary, formally retracted all “gross” charges, he continued to be embittered by suggestions of mysterious iniquities, and his anger found expression alike in his letters and in his poems. To a certain extent he defended himself by taking the offensive. He caused notes on his case to be privately distributed. He wrote “at” Lady Byron, in the Fourth Canto of “Childe Harold,” in “Don Juan,” and elsewhere. A good deal of his correspondence, printedby Moore, expressed his opinion of her in terms very far from flattering.
Under these combined influences public opinion veered round—the more readily because Byron was held to have made ample atonement for his faults, whatever they might have been, by sacrificing his life in the cause of Greek independence. Lady Byron was now thought, not indeed to have erred in any technical sense, but to have made an undue fuss about very little, and to have been most unwomanly in her frigid consciousness of rectitude. The world, in short, was more certain now that she had been “heartless” than that she had been “always in the right.”
Naturally, her temptation to “answer back” was strong. She could not very well answer back by preferring any monstrous indictment in public. That course was not only to be avoided in her daughter’s interest, but might also have involved her in an action for defamation of character on the part of Mrs. Leigh—an action which she could not have met with any adequate defence. Of that risk, indeed, she had been warned by her friend Colonel Doyle, in a letter printed in “Astarte” to which it will presently be necessary to return—a letter in which she had been urgently recommended to “act as if a time might possibly arise when it might be necessary for you to justify yourself.” But if she could not answer back in public, at least she could answer back in private.
She did so. That is to say, she talked—mostlyto sympathetic women who were more or less discreet, but also, in her later years to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who did not so much as know what discretion was. The story of which Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe had already received hints from the women whose discretion was comparative was ultimately told to her, whose indiscretion was absolute, by Lady Byron herself. She remained as discreet as the rest—that is to say, more or less discreet—during Lady Byron’s life, and for some time afterwards. But when the Countess Guiccioli wrote a book about Byron in which Lady Byron was disparaged, she could restrain herself no longer. In support of Lady Byron’s story she had no evidence except Lady Byron’s word. She did not know—and she did not trouble to inquire—what evidence against it might exist. She did not pause to ask herself whether her own recollection might not be at fault concerning a story which she had heard thirteen years before. It was enough for her, apparently, that Lady Byron was a religious woman, and that Byron, on his own showing, had lived “a man’s life.” That sufficed, in her view, wherever there was a conflict of statements, to demonstrate that Byron was a liar, and that Lady Byron spoke the truth. So she plunged into the fray, and, with a great flourish of trumpets, published Lady Byron’s story in “Macmillan’s Magazine.” When the “Quarterly Review” had, in so far as it is ever possible to prove a negative, disproved the story, she repeated it with embellishments in a book entitled: “Lady ByronVindicated: A History of the Byron Controversy from its Beginning in 1816 to the Present Time.”
The essence of Mrs. Stowe’s story is contained in this report of Lady Byron’s conversation: