Lady Byron Vindicated Part 17

Moore's Life of Byron;

Lady Byron's own account of the separation, published in 1830;

Lady Byron's statements to me in 1856;

Lord Lindsay's communication, giving an extract from Lady Anne Barnard's diary, and a copy of a letter from Lady Byron dated 1818, about three years after her marriage;

Mrs. Mimms' testimony, as given in a daily paper published at Newcastle, England;

And Lady Byron's letters, as given recently in the late 'London Quarterly.'

All which doc.u.ments appear to arrange themselves into a connected series.

From these, then, let us construct the story.

According to Mrs. Mimms' account, which is likely to be accurate, the time spent by Lord and Lady Byron in bridal-visiting was three weeks at Halnaby Hall, and six weeks at Seaham, when Mrs. Mimms quitted their service.

During this first period of three weeks, Lord Byron's treatment of his wife, as testified to by the servant, was such that she advised her young mistress to return to her parents; and, at one time, Lady Byron had almost resolved to do so.

What the particulars of his conduct were, the servant refuses to state; being bound by a promise of silence to her mistress. She, however, testifies to a warm friends.h.i.+p existing between Lady Byron and Mrs.

Leigh, in a manner which would lead us to feel that Lady Byron received and was received by Lord Byron's sister with the greatest affection. Lady Byron herself says to Lady Anne Barnard, 'I had heard that he was the best of brothers;' and the inference is, that she, at an early period of her married life, felt the greatest confidence in his sister, and wished to have her with them as much as possible. In Lady Anne's account, this wish to have the sister with her was increased by Lady Byron's distress at her husband's attempts to corrupt her principles with regard to religion and marriage.

In Moore's Life, vol. iii., letter 217, Lord Byron writes from Seaham to Moore, under date of March 8, sending a copy of his verses in Lady Byron's handwriting, and saying, 'We shall leave this place to-morrow, and shall stop on our way to town, in the interval of taking a house there, at Colonel Leigh's, near Newmarket, where any epistle of yours will find its welcome way. I have been very comfortable here, listening to that d---d monologue which elderly gentlemen call conversation, in which my pious father-in-law repeats himself every evening, save one, when he played upon the fiddle. However, they have been vastly kind and hospitable, and I like them and the place vastly; and I hope they will live many happy months. Bell is in health and unvaried good-humour and behaviour; but we are in all the agonies of packing and parting.'

Nine days after this, under date of March 17, Lord Byron says, 'We mean to metropolize to-morrow, and you will address your next to Piccadilly.'

The inference is, that the days intermediate were spent at Colonel Leigh's. The next letters, and all subsequent ones for six months, are dated from Piccadilly.

As we have shown, there is every reason to believe that a warm friends.h.i.+p had thus arisen between Mrs. Leigh and Lady Byron, and that, during all this time, Lady Byron desired as much of the society of her sister-in-law as possible. She was a married woman and a mother, her husband's nearest relative; and Lady Byron could with more propriety ask, from her, counsel or aid in respect to his peculiarities than she could from her own parents. If we consider the character of Lady Byron as given by Mrs.

Mimms, that of a young person of warm but repressed feeling, without sister or brother, longing for human sympathy, and having so far found no relief but in talking with a faithful dependant,--we may easily see that the acquisition of a sister through Lord Byron might have been all in all to her, and that the feelings which he checked and rejected for himself might have flowed out towards his sister with enthusiasm. The date of Mrs. Leigh's visit does not appear.

The first domestic indication in Lord Byron's letters from London is the announcement of the death of Lady Byron's uncle, Lord Wentworth, from whom came large expectations of property. Lord Byron had mentioned him before in his letters as so kind to Bell and himself that he could not find it in his heart to wish him in heaven if he preferred staying here.

In his letter of April 23, he mentions going to the play immediately after hearing this news, 'although,' as he says, 'he ought to have stayed at home in sackcloth for "unc."'

On June 12, he writes that Lady Byron is more than three months advanced in her progress towards maternity; and that they have been out very little, as he wishes to keep her quiet. We are informed by Moore that Lord Byron was at this time a member of the Drury-Lane Theatre Committee; and that, in this unlucky connection, one of the fatalities of the first year of trial as a husband lay. From the strain of Byron's letters, as given in Moore, it is apparent, that, while he thinks it best for his wife to remain at home, he does not propose to share the retirement, but prefers running his own separate career with such persons as thronged the greenroom of the theatre in those days.

In commenting on Lord Byron's course, we must not by any means be supposed to indicate that he was doing any more or worse than most gay young men of his time. The licence of the day as to getting drunk at dinner-parties, and leading, generally, what would, in these days, be called a disorderly life, was great. We should infer that none of the literary men of Byron's time would have been ashamed of being drunk occasionally. The Noctes Ambrosianae Club of 'Blackwood' is full of songs glorying, in the broadest terms, in out-and-out drunkenness, and inviting to it as the highest condition of a civilised being. {178a}

But drunkenness upon Lord Byron had a peculiar and specific effect, which he notices afterwards, in his Journal, at Venice: 'The effect of all wines and spirits upon me is, however, strange. It settles, but makes me gloomy--gloomy at the very moment of their effect: it composes, however, though sullenly.' {178b} And, again, in another place, he says, 'Wine and spirits make me sullen, and savage to ferocity.'

It is well known that the effects of alcoholic excitement are various as the natures of the subjects. But by far the worst effects, and the most destructive to domestic peace, are those that occur in cases where spirits, instead of acting on the nerves of motion, and depriving the subject of power in that direction, stimulate the brain so as to produce there the ferocity, the steadiness, the utter deadness to compa.s.sion or conscience, which characterise a madman. How fearful to a sensitive young mother in the period of pregnancy might be the return of such a madman to the domestic roof! Nor can we account for those scenes described in Lady Anne Barnard's letters, where Lord Byron returned from his evening parties to try torturing experiments on his wife, otherwise than by his own statement, that spirits, while they steadied him, made him 'gloomy, and savage to ferocity.'

Take for example this:--

'One night, coming home from one of his lawless parties, he saw me (Lady B.) so indignantly collected, and bearing all with such a determined calmness, that a rush of remorse seemed to come over him.

He called himself a monster, and, though his sister was present, threw himself in agony at my feet. "I could not, no, I could not, forgive him such injuries! He had lost me forever!" Astonished at this return to virtue, my tears, I believe, flowed over his face; and I said, "Byron, all is forgotten; never, never shall you hear of it more."

'He started up, and folding his arms while he looked at me, burst out into laughter. "What do you mean?" said I. "Only a philosophical experiment; that's all," said he. "I wished to ascertain the value of your resolutions."'

To ascribe such deliberate cruelty as this to the effect of drink upon Lord Byron, is the most charitable construction that can be put upon his conduct.

Yet the manners of the period were such, that Lord Byron must have often come to this condition while only doing what many of his acquaintances did freely, and without fear of consequences.

Mr. Moore, with his usual artlessness, gives us an idea of a private supper between himself and Lord Byron. We give it, with our own italics, as a specimen of many others:--

'Having taken upon me to order the repast, and knowing that Lord Byron for the last two days had done nothing towards sustenance beyond eating a few biscuits and (to appease appet.i.te) chewing mastic, I desired that we should have a good supply of at least two kinds of fish. My companion, however, confined himself to lobsters; and of these finished two or three, to his own share, interposing, sometimes, a small liqueur-gla.s.s of strong white brandy, sometimes a tumbler of very hot water, and then pure brandy again, to the amount of near half a dozen small gla.s.ses of the latter, without which, alternately with the hot water, he appeared to think the lobster could not be digested.

After this, we had claret, of which, having despatched two bottles between us, at about four o'clock in the morning we parted.

'As Pope has thought his "delicious lobster-nights" worth commemorating, these particulars of one in which Lord Byron was concerned may also have some interest.

'Among other nights of the same description which I had the happiness of pa.s.sing with him, I remember once, in returning home from some a.s.sembly at rather a late hour, we saw lights in the windows of his old haunt, Stevens's in Bond Street, and agreed to stop there and sup.

On entering, we found an old friend of his, Sir G---- W----, who joined our party; and, the lobsters and brandy and water being put in requisition, it was (as usual on such occasions) broad daylight before we separated.'--Vol. iii. p.83.

During the latter part of Lady Byron's pregnancy, it appears from Moore that Byron was, night after night, engaged out at dinner parties, in which getting drunk was considered as of course the finale, as appears from the following letters:--

(LETTER 228.)

TO MR. MOORE.

'TERRACE, PICCADILLY, OCT. 31,1815.

'I have not been able to ascertain precisely the time of duration of the stock-market; but I believe it is a good time for selling out, and I hope so. First, because I shall see you; and, next, because I shall receive certain moneys on behalf of Lady B., the which will materially conduce to my comfort; I wanting (as the duns say) "to make up a sum."

'Yesterday I dined out with a large-ish party, where were Sheridan and Colman, Harry Harris, of C. G., and his brother, Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Ds. Kinnaird, and others of note and notoriety. Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, * then altogethery, then inarticulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again without stumbling; and, to crown all, Kinnaird and I had to conduct Sheridan down a d---d corkscrew staircase, which had certainly been constructed before the discovery of fermented liquors, and to which no legs, however crooked, could possibly accommodate themselves.

We deposited him safe at home, where his man, evidently used to the business, {181} waited to receive him in the hall.

'Both he and Colman were, as usual, very good; but I carried away much wine, and the wine had previously carried away my memory: so that all was hiccough and happiness for the last hour or so, and I am not impregnated with any of the conversation. Perhaps you heard of a late answer of Sheridan to the watchman who found him bereft of that "divine particle of air" called reason . . . He (the watchman) found Sherry in the street fuddled and bewildered, and almost insensible.

"Who are you, sir?"--No answer. "What's your name?"--A hiccough.

"What's your name?"--Answer, in a slow, deliberate, and impa.s.sive tone, "Wilberforce!" Is not that Sherry all over?--and, to my mind, excellent. Poor fellow, his very dregs are better than the "first sprightly runnings" of others.

'My paper is full, and I have a grievous headache.

'P.S.--Lady B. is in full progress. Next month will bring to light (with the aid of "Juno Lucina, fer opem," or rather opes, for the last are most wanted) the tenth wonder of the world; Gil Blas being the eighth, and he (my son's father) the ninth.'

Here we have a picture of the whole story,--Lady Byron within a month of her confinement; her money being used to settle debts; her husband out at a dinner-party, going through the usual course of such parties, able to keep his legs and help Sheridan downstairs, and going home 'gloomy, and savage to ferocity,' to his wife.

Four days after this (letter 229), we find that this dinner-party is not an exceptional one, but one of a series: for he says, 'To-day I dine with Kinnaird,--we are to have Sheridan and Colman again; and to-morrow, once more, at Sir Gilbert Heathcote's.'

Afterward, in Venice, he reviews the state of his health, at this period in London; and his account shows that his excesses in the vices of his times had wrought effects on his sensitive, nervous organisation, very different from what they might on the more phlegmatic const.i.tutions of ordinary Englishmen. In his journal, dated Venice, Feb. 2, 1821, he says,--

'I have been considering what can be the reason why I always wake at a certain hour in the morning, and always in very bad spirits,--I may say, in actual despair and despondency, in all respects, even of that which pleased me over night. In about an hour or two this goes off, and I compose either to sleep again, or at least to quiet. In England, five years ago, I had the same kind of hypochondria, but accompanied with so violent a thirst, that I have drunk as many as fifteen bottles of soda-water in one night, after going to bed, and been still thirsty,--calculating, however, some lost from the bursting- out and effervescence and overflowing of the soda-water in drawing the corks, or striking off the necks of the bottles from mere thirsty impatience. At present, I have not the thirst; but the depression of spirits is no less violent.'--Vol. v. p.96.

These extracts go to show what must have been the condition of the man whom Lady Byron was called to receive at the intervals when he came back from his various social excitements and pleasures. That his nerves were exacerbated by violent extremes of abstinence and reckless indulgence; that he was often day after day drunk, and that drunkenness made him savage and ferocious,--such are the facts clearly shown by Mr. Moore's narrative. Of the natural peculiarities of Lord Byron's temper, he thus speaks to the Countess of Blessington:--

'I often think that I inherit my violence and bad temper from my poor mother, not that my father, from all I could ever learn, had a much better; so that it is no wonder I have such a very bad one. As long as I can remember anything, I recollect being subject to violent paroxysms of rage, so disproportioned to the cause as to surprise me when they were over; and this still continues. I cannot coolly view any thing which excites my feelings; and, once the lurking devil in me is roused, I lose all command of myself. I do not recover a good fit of rage for days after. Mind, I do not by this mean that the ill humour continues, as, on the contrary, that quickly subsides, exhausted by its own violence; but it shakes me terribly, and leaves me low and nervous after.'--Lady Blessington's Conversations, p.142.

That during this time also his irritation and ill temper were increased by the mortification of duns, debts, and executions, is on the face of Moore's story. Moore himself relates one incident, which gives some idea of the many which may have occurred at these times, in a note on p.215, vol. iv., where he speaks of Lord Byron's destroying a favourite old watch that had been his companion from boyhood, and gone with him to Greece. 'In a fit of vexation and rage, brought upon him by some of these humiliating embarra.s.sments, to which he was now almost daily a prey, he furiously dashed this watch on the hearth, and ground it to pieces with the poker among the ashes.'

It is no wonder, that, with a man of this kind to manage, Lady Byron should have clung to the only female companions.h.i.+p she could dare to trust in the case, and earnestly desired to retain with her the sister, who seemed, more than herself, to have influence over him.