The Love Affairs of Lord Byron Part 15

"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 circ.u.mstances." 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sertions," 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 a.s.sertions 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 him that 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _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 pa.s.sing 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 doc.u.ment.

That Lady Byron did sign the doc.u.ment, 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 pa.s.sed at the time. He referred to the doc.u.ment, 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. Lady Byron 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 details still 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 my wife as a suffering angel--an incarnation of all the virtues and perfections of the s.e.x. 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. The _Examiner_ was the only paper that dared say a word in my defence, and Lady Jersey the only person in the fas.h.i.+onable 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sages 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 a.s.sumed 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 cla.s.sed 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 mult.i.tude. For them, the _causa teterrima belli_ was 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'accuse_ would 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 in which 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.

CHAPTER XX

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, printed by 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 rect.i.tude. 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--mostly to 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 ent.i.tled: "Lady Byron Vindicated: 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:

"There was something awful to me in the intensity of repressed emotion which she showed as she proceeded. The great fact upon which all turned was stated in words that were unmistakable:

"'He was guilty of incest with his sister.'"

There is the charge. Turning over the pages in quest of the evidence in support of it, we find this:

"She said that one night, in her presence, he treated his sister with a liberty which both shocked and astonished her. Seeing her amazement and alarm he came up to her, and said, in a sneering tone, 'I suppose you perceive _you_ are not wanted here. Go to your own room, and leave us alone. We can amuse ourselves better without you.'

"She said, 'I went to my room trembling. I went down on my knees and prayed to my heavenly Father to have mercy on them. I thought: What shall I do?'

"I remember, after this, a pause in the conversation, during which she seemed struggling with thoughts and emotions; and, for my part, I was unable to utter a word or ask a question."

No more than that. This _ex parte_ interpretation of a foolish conjugal quarrel of forty years before, admittedly untested by any demand for particulars, was absolutely the sole piece of testimony which Mrs. Stowe adduced when she set out to blast Byron's reputation. The rest of the book consists of pious and sentimental out-pourings, vulgar abuse of Byron, and equally vulgar eulogy of his wife; the two pa.s.sages cited being the only pa.s.sages material to the issue. There was nothing in writing for her to quote--no case which a respectable lawyer would have taken into Court--no case that would not have been laughed out of Court within five minutes if it had ever got so far.

The tribunal of public opinion did, in fact, laugh the case out of Court at the time. It was "snowed under," partly by laughter, and partly by indignation and the British feeling in favour of fair play; and it remained so buried for nearly forty years. Biographers could afford to scout it as "monstrous" without troubling to confute it. Sir Leslie Stephen, in the "Dictionary of National Biography," treated it as an hallucination to which Lady Byron had fallen a victim through brooding over her grievances in solitude.

One would be glad if one could still take that tone towards it; but Lord Lovelace has made it impossible to do so. Mrs. Stowe, as a mischief-making meddler, interfering with matters which did not concern her, and about which she was obviously very ill informed, had not even a _prima facie_ t.i.tle to be taken seriously. The case of Lord Lovelace was different. He was Byron's grandson and the custodian of Lady Byron's strong-box. He affected not merely to a.s.sert but to argue. He produced from the strong-box doc.u.ments which he was pleased to call proofs. A good many people, not having seen them, probably still believe that they are proofs.

They cannot be waived on one side like Mrs. Stowe's unsupported allegations, but must be dealt with; and the whole question of the charge which they are alleged to substantiate must, of course, be dealt with simultaneously.

And first, as the doc.u.ments laid before us are miscellaneous, we must distinguish between those of them which count and those which do not count. Some of the contents of the strong-box, it seems, are merely "statements" in Lady Byron's handwriting. These are only referred to by Lord Lovelace, but not printed. Not having been produced, they cannot be criticised; but there are, nevertheless, two comments which it is legitimate to make. In the first place, an _ex parte_ statement, though admissible in evidence for what it may be worth, is not the same thing as proof. In the second place, if the statements had been of a nature to strengthen the case which Lord Lovelace was trying to make out, instead of merely embellis.h.i.+ng it, they would not have been held back. Their absence from the _dossier_ need not, therefore, embarra.s.s us; and we need, in fact, be the less embarra.s.sed by it because it was already perfectly well known that Lady Byron was in the habit of writing out statements, and had shown them to impartial persons who had taken the measure of their value.

That fact is set forth in the Rev. Frederick Arnold's Life of Robertson of Brighton, who, as is well known, was, for a considerable time, Lady Byron's religious adviser.

"A remarkable incident," writes Mr. Arnold, "may be mentioned in ill.u.s.tration of the relations with Lord Byron. Lady Byron had acc.u.mulated a great ma.s.s of doc.u.mentary evidence, papers and letters, which were supposed to const.i.tute a case completely exculpatory of herself and condemnatory of Byron. She placed all this printed matter in the hands of a well-known individual, who was then resident at Brighton, and afterwards removed into the country. This gentleman went carefully through the papers, and was utterly astonished at the utter want of criminatory matter against Byron. He was not indifferent to the _eclat_ or emolument of editing such memoirs. But he felt that this was a brief which he was unable to hold, and accordingly returned all the papers to Lady Byron."

That comment on the "statements," significant in itself, is doubly significant when taken in conjunction with Lord Lovelace's suppression of them; and we may fairly consider the case without further reference to them, and without an apprehension that a surprise will be sprung from that source to upset the conclusions at which we arrive. Lord Lovelace did not rest his case on them, but on quite other doc.u.ments, which we will proceed to examine after first saying the few words which need to be said in order to clear the air.

One point, indeed, Lord Lovelace has made successfully. He has proved that the gross and mysterious charge which Lady Byron preferred (or rather hinted at while refusing to prefer it) at the time of the separation was, in fact, identical with the charge formulated in Mrs. Stowe's book. A contemporary memorandum to that effect, in Lus.h.i.+ngton's handwriting, signed by Lady Byron, and witnessed by Lus.h.i.+ngton, Wilmot Horton, and Colonel Doyle, is printed in "Astarte." To that extent the so-called Byron mystery is now solved, once and for all. The statement set forth in that memorandum, and afterwards repeated to Mrs. Stowe, was the statement on the strength of which Lus.h.i.+ngton declared, as has already been mentioned, that he could not be a party to any attempt to effect a reconciliation.

So far so good. The probability of these facts could have been inferred from Hobhouse's narrative; their certainty is now established. We now know of what Byron was accused--behind his back; we also know of what Mrs.

Leigh was accused--behind her back. But--and the "but" is most important--the memorandum contains this remarkable sentence:

"It will be observed that this Paper does not contain nor pretend to contain any of the grounds which gave rise to the suspicion which has existed and still continues to exist in Lady B.'s mind."

Which is to say that Lady Byron, on her own showing, and that of her legal advisers, was acting not on evidence but on "suspicion." In this doc.u.ment there is not even so much evidence as was set before Mrs. Stowe, or any suggestion that any evidence worthy of the name exists. The quest for proof must be pursued elsewhere.