Lady Byron Vindicated Part 29

In this letter, she says, with regard to their separation,--

'The facts are, I left London for Kirkby Mallory, the residence of my father and mother, on the 15th of January, 1816. LORD BYRON HAD SIGNIFIED TO ME IN WRITING, JAN. 6, HIS ABSOLUTE DESIRE THAT I SHOULD LEAVE LONDON ON THE EARLIEST DAY THAT I COULD CONVENIENTLY FIX. It was not safe for me to undertake the fatigue of a journey sooner than the 15th. Previously to my departure, it had been strongly impressed upon my mind that Lord Byron was under the influence of insanity. This opinion was derived, in a great measure, from the communications made me by his nearest relatives and personal attendant, who had more opportunity than myself for observing him during the latter part of my stay in town. It was even represented to me that he was in danger of destroying himself.

'With the concurrence of his family, I had consulted Dr. Baillie as a friend (Jan. 8) respecting the supposed malady. On acquainting him with the state of the case, and with Lord Byron's desire that I should leave London, Dr. Baillie thought that my absence might be advisable as an experiment, a.s.suming the fact of mental derangement; for Dr. Baillie, not having had access to Lord Byron, could not p.r.o.nounce a positive opinion on that point. He enjoined that, in correspondence with Lord Byron, I should avoid all but light and soothing topics. Under these impressions, I left London, determined to follow the advice given by Dr. Baillie.

Whatever might have been the conduct of Lord Byron toward me from the time of my marriage, yet, supposing him to be in a state of mental alienation, it was not for me, nor for any person of common humanity, to manifest at that moment a sense of injury.'

Nothing more than this letter from Lady Byron is necessary to substantiate the fact, that she did not leave her husband, but was driven from him,--driven from him that he might give himself up to the guilty infatuation that was consuming him, without being tortured by her imploring face, and by the silent power of her presence and her prayers.

For a long time before this, she had seen little of him. On the day of her departure, she pa.s.sed by the door of his room, and stopped to caress his favourite spaniel, which was lying there; and she confessed to a friend the weakness of feeling a willingness even to be something as humble as that poor little creature, might she only be allowed to remain and watch over him. She went into the room where he and the partner of his sins were sitting together, and said, 'Byron, I come to say goodbye,'

offering, at the same time, her hand.

Lord Byron put his hands behind him, retreated to the mantel-piece, and, looking on the two that stood there, with a sarcastic smile said, 'When shall we three meet again?' Lady Byron answered, 'In heaven, I trust'.

And those were her last words to him on earth.

Now, if the reader wishes to understand the real talents of Lord Byron for deception and dissimulation, let him read, with this story in his mind, the 'Fare thee well,' which he addressed to Lady Byron through the printer:--

'Fare thee well; and if for ever, Still for ever fare thee well!

Even though unforgiving, never 'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.

Would that breast were bared before thee Where thy head so oft hath lain, While that placid sleep came o'er thee Thou canst never know again!

Though my many faults defaced me, Could no other arm be found Than the one which once embraced me To inflict a careless wound?'

The re-action of society against him at the time of the separation from his wife was something which he had not expected, and for which, it appears, he was entirely unprepared. It broke up the guilty intrigue and drove him from England. He had not courage to meet or endure it. The world, to be sure, was very far from suspecting what the truth was: but the tide was setting against him with such vehemence as to make him tremble every hour lest the whole should be known; and henceforth, it became a warfare of desperation to make his story good, no matter at whose expense.

He had tact enough to perceive at first that the a.s.sumption of the pathetic and the magnanimous, and general confessions of faults, accompanied with admissions of his wife's goodness, would be the best policy in his case. In this mood, he thus writes to Moore:--

'The fault was not in my choice (unless in choosing at all); for I do not believe (and I must say it in the very dregs of all this bitter business) that there ever was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder, or a more amiable, agreeable being than Lady Byron. I never had, nor can have, any reproach to make her while with me. Where there is blame, it belongs to myself.'

As there must be somewhere a scapegoat to bear the sin of the affair, Lord Byron wrote a poem called 'A Sketch,' in which he lays the blame of stirring up strife on a friend and former governess of Lady Byron's; but in this sketch he introduces the following just eulogy on Lady Byron:--

'Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind, Deceit infect not, near contagion soil, Indulgence weaken, nor example spoil, Nor mastered science tempt her to look down On humbler talents with a pitying frown, Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain, Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain, Nor fortune change, pride raise, nor pa.s.sion bow, Nor virtue teach austerity,--till now; Serenely purest of her s.e.x that live, But wanting one sweet weakness,--to forgive; Too shocked at faults her soul can never know, She deemed that all could be like her below: Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue's friend; For Virtue pardons those she would amend.'

In leaving England, Lord Byron first went to Switzerland, where he conceived and in part wrote out the tragedy of 'Manfred.' Moore speaks of his domestic misfortunes, and the sufferings which he underwent at this time, as having influence in stimulating his genius, so that he was enabled to write with a greater power.

Anybody who reads the tragedy of 'Manfred' with this story in his mind will see that it is true.

The hero is represented as a gloomy misanthrope, dwelling with impenitent remorse on the memory of an incestuous pa.s.sion which has been the destruction of his sister for this life and the life to come, but which, to the very last gasp, he despairingly refuses to repent of, even while he sees the fiends of darkness rising to take possession of his departing soul. That Byron knew his own guilt well, and judged himself severely, may be gathered from pa.s.sages in this poem, which are as powerful as human language can be made; for instance this part of the 'incantation,'

which Moore says was written at this time:--

'Though thy slumber may be deep, Yet thy spirit shall not sleep: There are shades which will not vanish; There are thoughts thou canst not banish.

By a power to thee unknown, Thou canst never be alone: Thou art wrapt as with a shroud; Thou art gathered in a cloud; And for ever shalt thou dwell In the spirit of this spell.

From thy false tears I did distil An essence which had strength to kill; From thy own heart I then did wring The black blood in its blackest spring; From thy own smile I s.n.a.t.c.hed the snake, For there it coiled as in a brake; From thy own lips I drew the charm Which gave all these their chiefest harm: In proving every poison known, I found the strongest was thine own.

By thy cold breast and serpent smile, By thy unfathomed gulfs of guile, By that most seeming virtuous eye, By thy shut soul's hypocrisy, By the perfection of thine art Which pa.s.sed for human thine own heart, By thy delight in other's pain, And by thy brotherhood of Cain, I call upon thee, and compel Thyself to be thy proper h.e.l.l!'

Again: he represents Manfred as saying to the old abbot, who seeks to bring him to repentance,--

'Old man, there is no power in holy men, Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast, Nor agony, nor greater than all these, The innate tortures of that deep despair, Which is remorse without the fear of h.e.l.l, But, all in all sufficient to itself, Would make a h.e.l.l of heaven, can exorcise From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge Upon itself: there is no future pang Can deal that justice on the self-condemned He deals on his own soul.'

And when the abbot tells him,

'All this is well; For this will pa.s.s away, and be succeeded By an auspicious hope, which shall look up With calm a.s.surance to that blessed place Which all who seek may win, whatever be Their earthly errors,'

he answers,

'It is too late.'

Then the old abbot soliloquises:--

'This should have been a n.o.ble creature: he Hath all the energy which would have made A goodly frame of glorious elements, Had they been wisely mingled; as it is, It is an awful chaos,--light and darkness, And mind and dust, and pa.s.sions and pure thoughts, Mixed, and contending without end or order.'

The world can easily see, in Moore's Biography, what, after this, was the course of Lord Byron's life; how he went from shame to shame, and dishonour to dishonour, and used the fortune which his wife brought him in the manner described in those private letters which his biographer was left to print. Moore, indeed, says Byron had made the resolution not to touch his lady's fortune; but adds, that it required more self-command than he possessed to carry out so honourable a purpose.

Lady Byron made but one condition with him. She had him in her power; and she exacted that the unhappy partner of his sins should not follow him out of England, and that the ruinous intrigue should be given up. Her inflexibility on this point kept up that enmity which was constantly expressing itself in some publication or other, and which drew her and her private relations with him before the public.

The story of what Lady Byron did with the portion of her fortune which was reserved to her is a record of n.o.ble and skilfully administered charities. Pitiful and wise and strong, there was no form of human suffering or sorrow that did not find with her refuge and help. She gave not only systematically, but also impulsively.

Miss Martineau claims for her the honour of having first invented practical schools, in which the children of the poor were turned into agriculturists, artizans, seamstresses, and good wives for poor men.

While she managed with admirable skill and economy permanent inst.i.tutions of this sort, she was always ready to relieve suffering in any form. The fugitive slaves William and Ellen Crafts, escaping to England, were fostered by her protecting care.

In many cases where there was distress or anxiety from poverty among those too self-respecting to make their sufferings known, the delicate hand of Lady Byron ministered to the want with a consideration which spared the most refined feelings.

As a mother, her course was embarra.s.sed by peculiar trials. The daughter inherited from the father not only brilliant talents, but a restlessness and morbid sensibility which might be too surely traced to the storms and agitations of the period in which she was born. It was necessary to bring her up in ignorance of the true history of her mother's life; and the consequence was that she could not fully understand that mother.

During her early girlhood, her career was a source of more anxiety than of comfort. She married a man of fas.h.i.+on, ran a brilliant course as a gay woman of fas.h.i.+on, and died early of a lingering and painful disease.

In the silence and shaded retirement of the sick-room, the daughter came wholly back to her mother's arms and heart; and it was on that mother's bosom that she leaned as she went down into the dark valley. It was that mother who placed her weak and dying hand in that of her Almighty Saviour.

To the children left by her daughter, she ministered with the faithfulness of a guardian angel; and it is owing to her influence that those who yet remain are among the best and n.o.blest of mankind.

The person whose relations with Byron had been so disastrous, also, in the latter years of her life, felt Lady Byron's loving and enn.o.bling influences, and, in her last sickness and dying hours, looked to her for consolation and help.

There was an unfortunate child of sin, born with the curse upon her, over whose wayward nature Lady Byron watched with a mother's tenderness. She was the one who could have patience when the patience of every one else failed; and though her task was a difficult one, from the strange abnormal propensities to evil in the object of her cares, yet Lady Byron never faltered, and never gave over, till death took the responsibility from her hands.

During all this trial, strange to say, her belief that the good in Lord Byron would finally conquer was unshaken.

To a friend who said to her, 'Oh! how could you love him?' she answered briefly, 'My dear, there was the angel in him.' It is in us all.

It was in this angel that she had faith. It was for the deliverance of this angel from degradation and shame and sin that she unceasingly prayed. She read every work that Byron wrote--read it with a deeper knowledge than any human being but herself could possess. The ribaldry and the obscenity and the insults with which he strove to make her ridiculous in the world fell at her pitying feet unheeded.

When he broke away from all this unworthy life to devote himself to a manly enterprise for the redemption of Greece, she thought that she saw the beginning of an answer to her prayers. Even although one of his latest acts concerning her was to repeat to Lady Blessington the false accusation which made Lady Byron the author of all his errors, she still had hopes from the one step taken in the right direction.

In the midst of these hopes came the news of his sudden death. On his death-bed, it is well-known that he called his confidential English servant to him, and said to him, 'Go to my sister; tell her--Go to Lady Byron,--you will see her,--and say'--