Byron: The Last Phase Part 20

'"By our Mary (dear name!) thou art both Mother and May, I think it never was a man's lot to die before his day."'

It is attested, by all those who were acquainted with Mary Chaworth, that she always bore an exemplary character. It was well known that her marriage was an unhappy one, and that she had been for some time deserted by her husband. In June, 1813, when she fell under the fatal spell of Byron, then the most fascinating man in society,[38] she was living in deep dejection, parted from her lawful protector, with whom she had a serious disagreement. He had neglected her, and she well knew that she had a rival in his affections at that time.

It was in these distressing circ.u.mstances that Byron, with the world at his feet, came to wors.h.i.+p her in great humility. As he looked back upon the past, he realized that this neglected woman had always been the light of his life, the lodestar of his destiny. And now that he beheld his 'Morning Star of Annesley' shedding ineffectual rays upon the dead embers of a lost love, the old feeling returned to him with resistless force.

'We met--we gazed--I saw, and sighed; She did not speak, and yet replied; There are ten thousand tones and signs We hear and see, but none defines-- Involuntary sparks of thought, Which strike from out the heart o'erwrought, And form a strange intelligence, Alike mysterious and intense, Which link the burning chain that binds, Without their will, young hearts and minds.

I saw, and sighed--in silence wept, And still reluctant distance kept, Until I was made known to her, And we might then and there confer Without suspicion--then, even then, I longed, and was resolved to speak; But on my lips they died again, The accents tremulous and weak, Until one hour...

'I would have given My life but to have called her mine In the full view of Earth and Heaven; For I did oft and long repine That we could only meet by stealth.'

In the remorseful words of Manfred,

'Her faults were mine--her virtues were her own-- I loved her, and destroyed her!...

Not with my hand, but heart--which broke _her_ heart-- It gazed on mine and withered.'

Without attempting to excuse Byron's conduct--indeed, that were useless--it must be remembered that he was only twenty-five years of age, and Mary was very unhappy. After all hope of meeting her again had been abandoned, the force of destiny, so to speak, had unexpectedly restored his lost Thyrza--the _Theresa_ of 'Mazeppa.'

'I loved her then, I love her still; And such as I am, love indeed In fierce extremes--in good and ill-- But still we love...

Haunted to our very age With the vain shadow of the past.'

Byron's punishment was in this world. The remorse which followed endured throughout the remaining portion of his life. It wrecked what might have proved a happy marriage, and drove him, from stone to stone, along life's causeway, to that 'Sea Sodom' where, for many months, he tried to destroy the memory of his crime by reckless profligacy.

Mary Chaworth no sooner realized her awful danger--the madness of an impulse which not even love could excuse--than she recoiled from the precipice which yawned before her. She had been momentarily blinded by the irresistible fascination of one who, after all, really and truly loved her. But she was a good woman in spite of this one episode, and to the last hour of her existence she never swerved from that narrow path which led to an honoured grave.

Although it was too late for happiness, too late to evade the consequences of her weakness, there was still time for repentance. The secret was kept inviolate by the very few to whom it was confided, and the present writer deeply regrets that circ.u.mstances have compelled him to break the seal.

If 'Astarte' had not been written, there would have been no need to lift the veil. Lord Lovelace has besmirched the good name of Mrs. Leigh, and it is but an act of simple justice to defend her.

When Mary Chaworth escaped from Byron's fatal influence, he reproached her for leaving him, and tried to shake her resolution with heart-rending appeals. Happily for both, they fell upon deaf ears.

'Astarte! my beloved! speak to me; Say that thou loath'st me not--that I do bear This punishment for both.'

The depth and sincerity of Byron's love for Mary Chaworth cannot be questioned. Moore, who knew him well, says:

'The all-absorbing and unsuccessful (unsatisfied) love for Mary Chaworth was the agony, without being the death, of an unsated desire which lived on through life, filled his poetry with the very soul of tenderness, lent the colouring of its light to even those unworthy ties which vanity or pa.s.sion led him afterwards to form, and was the last aspiration of his fervid spirit, in those stanzas written but a few months before his death.'

It was, in fact, a love of such unreasonableness and persistence as might be termed, without exaggeration, a madness of the heart.

Although Mary escaped for ever from that baneful infatuation, which in an unguarded moment had destroyed her peace of mind, her separation from Byron was not complete until he married. Not only did they correspond frequently, but they also met occasionally. In the following January (1814) Byron introduced Mary to Augusta Leigh. From that eventful meeting, _when probable contingencies were provided for_, until Mary's death in 1832, these two women, who had suffered so much through Byron, continued in the closest intimacy; and in November, 1819, Augusta stood sponsor for Mary's youngest daughter.

In a poem which must have been written in 1813, an apostrophe 'To Time,'

Byron refers to Mary's resolutions.

'In Joy I've sighed to think thy flight Would soon subside from swift to slow; Thy cloud could overcast the light, But could not add a night to Woe; For then, however drear and dark, My soul was suited to thy sky; _One star alone_ shot forth a spark To prove thee--not Eternity.

_That beam hath sunk._'

It is of course true that matters were not, and could never again be, on the same footing as in July of that year; but Mary Chaworth was constancy itself, in a higher and a n.o.bler sense than Byron attached to it, when he reproached her for broken vows.

'Thy vows are all broken, And light is thy fame: I hear thy name spoken, And share in its shame.'

During the remainder of Byron's life, Mary took a deep interest in everything that affected him. In 1814, believing that marriage would be his salvation, she used her influence in that direction. We know that she did not approve of the choice which Byron so recklessly made, and she certainly had ample cause to deplore its results. Through her close intimacy with Augusta Leigh--an intimacy which has not hitherto been suspected--she became acquainted with every phase in Byron's subsequent career. She could read 'between the lines,' and solve the mysteries to be found in such poems as 'Lara,' 'Mazeppa,' 'Manfred,' and 'Don Juan.'

We believe that Byron's love for Mary was the main cause of the indifference he felt towards his wife. In order to s.h.i.+eld Mary from the possible consequences of a public investigation into conduct prior to his marriage, Byron, in 1816, consented to a separation from his wife.

After Byron had left England Mary broke down under the strain she had borne so bravely, and her mind gave way. When at last, in April, 1817, a reconciliation took place between Mary and her husband, it was apparent to everyone that she had, during those four anxious years, become a changed woman. She never entirely regained either health or spirits. Her mind 'had acquired a tinge of religious melancholy, which never afterwards left it.' Sorrow and disappointment had subdued a naturally buoyant nature, and 'melancholy marked her for its own.' Shortly before her death, in 1832, she destroyed every letter she had received from Byron since those distant fateful years when, as boy and girl, they had wandered on the Hills of Annesley. For eight sad years Mary Chaworth survived the lover of her youth. Shortly before her death, in a letter to one of her daughters, she drew her own character which might fitly form her epitaph: 'Soon led, easily pleased, very hasty, and very relenting, with a heart moulded in a warm and affectionate fas.h.i.+on.'

Such was the woman who, though parted by fate, maintained through suns.h.i.+ne and storm an ascendancy over the heart of Byron which neither time nor absence could impair, and which endured to the end of his earthly existence. We may well believe that those inarticulate words which the dying poet murmured to the bewildered Fletcher--those broken sentences which ended with, 'Tell her everything; you are friends with her'--may have referred, not to Lady Byron, as policy suggested, but to Mary Chaworth, with whom Fletcher had been acquainted since his youth.

We have incontestable proof that, only two months before he died, Byron's thoughts were occupied with one whom he had named 'the starlight of his boyhood.' How deeply Byron thought about Mary Chaworth at the last is proved by the poem which was found among his papers at Missolonghi. In six stanzas the poet revealed the story that he would fain have hidden. A note in his handwriting states that they were addressed 'to no one in particular,' and that they were merely 'a poetical scherzo.' There is, however, no room for doubt that the poem bears a deep significance.

I.

'I watched thee when the foe was at our side, Ready to strike at him--or thee and me Were safety hopeless--rather than divide Aught with one loved, save love and liberty.'

We have here a glimpse of that turbulent scene when Mary's husband, in a fit of jealousy, put an end to their dangerous intimacy.

II.

'I watched thee on the breakers, when the rock Received our prow, and all was storm and fear, And bade thee cling to me through every shock; This arm would be thy bark, or breast thy bier.'

This brings us to that period of suspense and fear, in 1814, which preceded the birth of Medora. In a letter which Byron at that time wrote to Miss Milbanke, we find these words:

'I am at present a little feverish--I mean mentally--and, as usual, _on the brink of something or other, which will probably crush me at last, and cut our correspondence short, with everything else_.'

Twelve days later (March 3, 1814), Byron tells Moore that he is 'uncomfortable,' and that he has 'no lack of argument to ponder upon of the most gloomy description.'

'Some day or other,' he writes, 'when we are _veterans_, I may tell you a tale of present and past times; and it is not from want of confidence that I do not now.... _All this would be very well if I had no heart_; but, unluckily, I have found that there is such a thing still about me, though in no very good repair, and also that it has a habit of attaching itself to _one_, whether I will or no. _Divide et impera_, I begin to think, will only do for politics.'

When Moore, who was puzzled, asked Byron to explain himself more clearly, he replied: 'Guess darkly, and you will seldom err.'

Thirty-four days later Medora was born, April 15, 1814.

III.

'I watched thee when the fever glazed thine eyes, Yielding my couch, and stretched me on the ground, When overworn with watching, ne'er to rise From thence if thou an early grave had found.'

Here we see Byron's agony of remorse. Like Herod, he lamented for Mariamne:

'And mine's the guilt, and mine the h.e.l.l, This bosom's desolation dooming; And I have earned those tortures well Which unconsumed are still consuming!'

In 'Manfred' we find a note of remembrance in the deprecating words:

'Oh! no, no, no!

My injuries came down on those who loved me-- On those whom I best loved: I never quelled An enemy, save in my just defence-- But my embrace was fatal.'

IV.