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BYRON: THE LAST PHASE

 

 

BYRON:
THE LAST PHASE

 

BY RICHARD EDGCUMBE

 

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
153-157 FIFTH AVENUE
1909

 

 

TO
MRS. CHARLES CALL,
DAUGHTER OF EDWARD TRELAWNY, BYRON’S
COMPANION IN GREECE,
I DEDICATE THIS WORK AS A MARK OF AFFECTION
AND ESTEEM

 

 

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[Pg vii]

PREFACE

This book has no pretensions; it is merely a record of events and impressions which nearly forty years of close study have accumulated. There seems to be a general agreement that the closing scenes of Byron’s short life have not been adequately depicted by his biographers. From the time of Byron’s departure from Ravenna, in the autumn of 1821, his disposition and conduct underwent a transformation so complete that it would have been difficult to recognize, in the genial, unselfish personality who played so effective a rôle at Missolonghi, the gloomy misanthrope of 1811, or the reckless libertine of the following decade.

The conduct of Byron in Greece seems to have come as a revelation to his contemporaries, and his direction of complex affairs, in peculiarly trying circumstances, certainly deserves more attention than it has received. Records made on the spot by men whose works are now, for the most part, out of print have greatly simplified my task, and I hope that the following pages may be acceptable to those who have not had an opportunity of studying that picturesque phase of Byron’s career. I should have much preferred to preserve silence on the subject of his separation from his wife. Unfortunately, the late Lord Lovelace, in giving his sanction to the baseless and[Pg viii] forgotten slanders of a bygone age, has recently assailed the memory of Byron’s half-sister, and has set a mark of infamy upon her which cannot be erased without referring to matters which ought never to have been mentioned.

In order to traverse statements made in ‘Astarte,’ it was necessary to reveal an incident which, during Byron’s lifetime, was known only by those who were pledged to silence. With fuller knowledge of things hidden from Byron’s contemporaries, we may realize the cruelty of those futile persecutions to which Mrs. Leigh was subjected by Lady Byron and her advisers, under the impression that they could extract the confession of a crime which existed only in their prurient imaginations. Mrs. Leigh, in one of her letters to Hobhouse, says, ‘I have made it a rule to be silent—that is to say, As Long As I Can.’ Although the strain must have been almost insupportable she died with her secret unrevealed, and the mystery which Byron declared ‘too simple to be easily found out’ has hitherto remained unsolved. I regret being unable more precisely to indicate the source of information embodied in the concluding portions of this work. The reader may test the value of my statements by the light of citations which seem amply to confirm them. At all events, I claim to have shown by analogy that Lord Lovelace’s accusation against Mrs. Leigh is groundless, and therefore his contention, that Byron’s memoirs were destroyed because they implicated Mrs. Leigh, is absolutely untenable. Those memoirs were destroyed, as we now know, because both Hobhouse and Mrs. Leigh feared possible revelations concerning another person, whose feelings and interests formed the paramount consideration of those[Pg ix] who were parties to the deed. Lord John Russell, who had read the memoirs, stated in 1869 that Mrs. Leigh was not implicated in them, a fact which proves that they were not burned for the purpose of shielding her.

Lord Lovelace tells us that Sir Walter Scott, who had heard full particulars from Thomas Moore, remarked, ‘It is a pity, but there was a reason—premat nox alta.’ Facts which they hoped deep oblivion would hide have come to the surface at last, and I deeply regret that circumstances should have imposed upon me a duty which is repugnant both to my inclination and instincts. After all is said, the blame rightly belongs to Lady Byron’s grandson, who, heedless of consequences, stirred the depths of a muddy pool. He tells us, in ‘Astarte,’ (1) that the papers concerning Byron’s marriage have been carefully preserved; (2) that they form a complete record of all the causes of separation; and (3) that they contain full information on every part of the subject.

In those circumstances it is strange that, with the whole of Lady Byron’s papers before him, Lord Lovelace should have published only documents of secondary importance which do not prove his case. After saying, ‘It should be distinctly understood that no misfortunes, blunders, or malpractices, have swept away Lady Byron’s papers, or those belonging to the executors of Lord Byron,’ he leaves the essential records to the imagination of his readers, and feeds us on hints and suggestions which are not borne out by extracts provided as samples of the rest. It is impossible not to suspect that Lord Lovelace, in arranging the papers committed to his charge, discarded some that would have told in favour of[Pg x] Mrs. Leigh, and selected others which colourably supported his peculiar views.

In matters of this kind everything depends upon the qualifications of the accuser and the reliability of the witness. Lord Lovelace in a dual capacity certainly evinced an active imagination.

As an example, ‘Astarte,’ which was designed to blast the fair fame of Mrs. Leigh, was used by him to insult the memory of the late Mr. Murray (who he admits showed him many acts of kindness), and to repudiate promises which he undoubtedly made, to edit his grandfather’s works. Rambling statements are made with design to discredit both Mr. Gifford, the editor of the Quarterly, and Mr. Murray, the friend of Lord Byron. Even personal defects are dragged in to prejudice the reader and embitter the venom of irrelevant abuse. It was as if Plutarch, in order to enhance the glory of Antony, had named ‘the Last of the Romans’ Cassius the Short-sighted. Fortunately, written proofs were in existence to controvert Lord Lovelace’s assertions—proofs which were used with crushing effect—otherwise Mr. Murray might have found himself in a position quite as helpless as that of poor Mrs. Leigh herself. So unscrupulous a use of documents in that case suggests the possibility that a similar process may have been adopted in reference to Mrs. Leigh. It is indeed unfortunate that Lady Byron’s papers cannot be inspected by some unprejudiced person, for we have nothing at present beyond Lord Lovelace’s vague assertions. Were those papers thoroughly sifted they would surely acquit Mrs. Leigh of the crime that has been so cruelly laid to her charge. Meanwhile I venture to think that the following[Pg xi] pages help to clear the air of much of that mystery which surrounds the lives of Lord Byron and his sister.

In conclusion, I desire to record my personal obligation to the latest edition of the ‘Poems,’ edited by Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge; and of the ‘Letters and Journals,’ edited by Mr. Rowland Prothero, volumes which together form the most comprehensive and scholarly record of Byron’s life and poetry that has ever been issued.

R. E.

August, 1909.

 

 

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[Pg 1]

BYRON: THE LAST PHASE

 

PART I

‘... Le cose ti fien conte, Quando noi fermerem li nostri passi Sulla trista riviera d’ Acheronte.’ Inferno, Canto III., 76-78.

[Pg 2]

 

[Pg 3]

CHAPTER I

‘A large disagreeable city, almost without inhabitants’—such was the poet Shelley’s description of Pisa in 1821. The Arno was yellow and muddy, the streets were empty, and there was altogether an air of poverty and wretchedness in the town. The convicts, who were very numerous, worked in the streets in gangs, cleaning and sweeping them. They were dressed in red, and were chained together by the leg in pairs. All day long one heard the slow clanking of their chains, and the rumbling of the carts they were forced to drag from place to place like so many beasts of burden. A spectator could not but be struck by the appearance of helpless misery stamped on their yellow cheeks and emaciated forms.

On the Lung’ Arno Mediceo, east of the Ponte di Mezzo, stands the Palazzo Lanfranchi, which is supposed to have been built by Michael Angelo. Here, on November 2, 1821, Lord Byron arrived, with his servants, his horses, his monkey, bulldog, mastiff, cats, peafowl, hens, and other live stock, which he had brought with him from Ravenna. In another quarter of the city resided Count Rugiero Gamba, his son Pietro, and his daughter Countess Teresa[Pg 4] Guiccioli. On the other side of the Arno, nearly opposite to Byron’s residence, lived the poet Shelley, with his wife and their friends Edward and Jane Williams.

In the middle of November, Captain Thomas Medwin, a relative of Shelley’s, arrived at Pisa; and on January 14, 1822, came Edward John Trelawny, who was destined to play so important a part in the last scenes of the lives of both Shelley and Byron.

Byron was at this time in his thirty-third year. Medwin thus describes his personal appearance:

[Pg 5]Trelawny’s description is as follows:

Trelawny could find no peculiarity in his dress, which was adapted to the climate. Byron wore:

Lady Blessington, who first saw Byron in April of the following year, thus describes him:

Medwin tells us, in his ‘Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron,’ that Byron’s voice had a flexibility, a variety in its tones, a power and pathos, beyond any he ever heard; and his countenance was capable of expressing the tenderest as well as the[Pg 7] strongest emotions, which would perhaps have made him the finest actor in the world.

The Countess Guiccioli, who had a longer acquaintance with Byron than any of those who have attempted to portray him, says:

It appears that Mrs. Wildman (the widow of the Colonel who had bought Newstead from Byron) not long before her death presented to the Naturalist Society of Nottingham several objects which had belonged to Lord Byron, and amongst others his[Pg 8] boot and shoe trees. These trees are about nine inches long, narrow, and generally of a symmetrical form. They were accompanied by the following statement:

Byron’s alleged sensitiveness on the subject of his lameness seems to have been exaggerated.

We have been particular to set before the reader the impression which Byron’s personal appearance made upon those who saw him at this time, because none of the busts or portraits seem to convey anything like an accurate semblance of this extraordinary personality. Had the reader seen Byron in his various moods, he would doubtless have exclaimed, with Sir Walter Scott, that ‘no picture is like him.’

The portrait by Saunders represents Byron with thick lips, whereas ‘his lips were harmoniously perfect,’ says Countess Guiccioli. Holmes almost gives him a large instead of his well-proportioned head. In Phillips’s picture the expression is one of haughtiness and affected dignity, which Countess Guiccioli assures us was never visible to those who saw him in life. The worst portrait of Lord Byron, according to Countess Guiccioli, and which surpasses all others in ugliness, was done by Mr. West, an American, ‘an excellent man, but a very bad painter.’ This portrait, which some of Byron’s American admirers requested to have taken, and which Byron consented to sit for, was begun at Montenero, near Leghorn. Byron seems only to have sat two or three times for it, and it was finished from memory. Countess Guiccioli describes it as ‘a frightful [Pg 10]caricature, which his family or friends ought to destroy.’ As regards busts, she says:

On January 22, 1822, Byron’s mother-in-law, Lady Noel, died at the age of seventy.

There is no trace of this letter, and it is ignored by Lord Lovelace in ‘Astarte.’ It may be well here to point out how erroneous was the belief that Miss Milbanke was an heiress. Byron on his marriage settled £60,000 on his wife, and Miss Milbanke was to have brought £20,000 into settlement; but the money was not paid. Sir Ralph Milbanke’s property was at that time heavily encumbered. Miss Milbanke had some expectations through her mother and her uncle, Lord Wentworth; but those prospects were not mentioned in the settlements. Both Lord Wentworth and Sir Ralph Milbanke were free to leave their money as they chose. When Lord Wentworth died, in April 1815, he left his property to Lady Milbanke for her life, and at her death to her daughter, Lady Byron. Therefore, at Lady Noel’s death Byron inherited the whole property by right of his wife. But one of the terms of the separation provided that this property[Pg 11] should be divided by arbitrators. Lord Dacre was arbitrator for Lady Byron, and Sir F. Burdett for Byron. Under this arrangement half the income was allotted to the wife and half to the husband. In the London Gazette dated ‘Whitehall, March 2, 1822,’ royal licence is given to Lord Byron and his wife that they may ‘take and use the surname of Noel only, and also bear the arms of Noel only; and that the said George Gordon, Baron Byron, may subscribe the said surname of Noel before all titles of honour.’ Henceforward the poet signed all his letters either with the initials N. B. or with ‘Noel Byron’ in full.

Byron was at this time in excellent health and spirits, and the society of the Shelleys made life unusually pleasant to him. Ravenna, with its gloomy forebodings, its limited social intercourse, to say nothing of its proscriptions—for nearly all Byron’s friends had been exiled—was a thing of the past. The last phase had dawned, and Byron was about to show another side of his character. Medwin tells us that Byron’s disposition was eminently sociable, however great the pains which he took to hide it from the world. On Wednesdays there was always a dinner at the Palazzo Lanfranchi, to which the convives were cordially welcomed. When alone Byron’s table was frugal, not to say abstemious. But on these occasions every sort of wine, every luxury of the season, and every English delicacy, were displayed. Medwin says he never knew any man do the honours of his house with greater kindness and hospitality. On one occasion, after dinner, the conversation turned on the lyrical poetry of the day, and a question arose as to which was the most perfect ode that had been produced. Shelley contended for Coleridge’s on Switzerland[Pg 12] beginning, ‘Ye clouds,’ etc.; others named some of Moore’s ‘Irish Melodies’ and Campbell’s ‘Hohenlinden’; and, had Lord Byron not been present, his own Invocation to Manfred, or Ode to Napoleon, or on Prometheus, might have been cited. ‘Like Gray,’ said Byron, ‘Campbell smells too much of the oil: he is never satisfied with what he does; his finest things have been spoiled by over-polish—the sharpness of the outline is worn off. Like paintings, poems may be too highly finished. The great art is effect, no matter how produced.’

And then, rising from the table, he left the room, and presently returned with a magazine, from which he read ‘The Burial of Sir John Moore’ with the deepest feeling. It was at that time generally believed that Byron was the author of these admirable stanzas; and Medwin says: ‘I am corroborated in this opinion lately (1824) by a lady, whose brother received them many years ago from Lord Byron, in his lordship’s own handwriting.’

These festive gatherings were not pleasing to Shelley, who, with his abstemious tastes and modest, retiring disposition, disliked the glare and surfeit of it all. But Shelley’s unselfish nature overcame his antipathy, and for the sake of others he sacrificed himself. In writing to his friend Horace Smith, he marks his repugnance for these dinners, ‘when my nerves are generally shaken to pieces by sitting up, contemplating the rest of the company making themselves vats of claret, etc., till three o’clock in the morning.’ Nevertheless, companionship with Byron seemed for a time, to Shelley and Mary, to be like ‘companionship with a demiurge who could create rolling worlds at pleasure in the void of space.’[Pg 13] Shelley’s admiration for the poetic achievements of Byron is well known:

Byron recognized Shelley’s frankness, courage, and hardihood of opinion, but was not influenced by him so much as was at that time supposed by his friends in England. In writing to Horace Smith (April 11, 1822), Shelley begs him to assure Moore that he had not the smallest influence over Byron’s religious opinions.

‘Byron,’ says Professor Dowden in his ‘Life of Shelley,’ ‘on his own part protested that his dramatis personæ uttered their own opinions and sentiments, not his.’

Byron undoubtedly had a deep-seated reverence for religion, and had a strong leaning towards the Roman[Pg 14] Catholic doctrines. Writing to Moore (March 4, 1822), he says:

Countess Guiccioli, a woman of no ordinary intuitive perceptions, with ample opportunities for judging the characters of both Shelley and Byron, makes a clear statement on this point:

‘Shelley appears to me to be mad with his metaphysics,’ said Byron on one occasion to Count Gamba. ‘What trash in all these systems! say what they will, mystery for mystery, I still find that of the Creation the most reasonable of any.’

Thus it will be seen that the opinions of Lord Byron on matters of religion were far more catholic than those of his friend Shelley, who could not have influenced Byron in the manner generally supposed. That a change came over the spirit of Byron’s poetry after meeting Shelley on the Lake of Geneva is unquestionable; but the surface of the waters may be roughened by a breeze without disturbing the depths below. Like all true poets, Byron was highly susceptible to passing influences, and there can be no doubt that Shelley impressed him deeply.

The evident sincerity in the life and doctrines of Shelley—his unworldliness; the manner in which he had been treated by the world, and even by his own family, aroused the sympathy of Byron, at a time when he himself was for a different cause smarting under somewhat similar treatment. Although[Pg 16] Byron and Shelley differed fundamentally on some subjects they concurred in the principles of others. Byron had no fixed religious opinions—that was the string upon which Shelley played—but there is a wide difference between doubt and denial. Gamba, after Byron’s death, wrote thus to Dr. Kennedy:

We have quoted only a portion of Pietro Gamba’s letter, but sufficient to show that Byron has been, like his friend Shelley, ‘brutally misunderstood.’ There was no one better qualified than Count Gamba to express an opinion on the subject, for he was in the closest intimacy with Byron up to the time of the latter’s death. There was no attempt on Byron’s part to mystify his young friend, who had no epistolary intercourse with those credulous people in England whom Byron so loved to ‘gull.’ The desire to blacken his own character was reserved for those occasions when, as he well knew, there would be most publicity. Trelawny says:

According to the same authority, George IV. made[Pg 18] the sport known as ‘equivocation’ the fashion; the men about town were ashamed of being thought virtuous, and bragged of their profligacy. ‘In company,’ says Trelawny, ‘Byron talked in Don Juan’s vein; with a companion with whom he was familiar, he thought aloud.’

Among the accusations made against Byron by those who knew him least was that of intemperance—intemperance not in meat and drink only, but in everything. It must be admitted that Byron was to blame for this; he vaunted his propensity for the bottle, and even attributed his poetic inspirations to its aid. Trelawny, who had observed him closely, says:

While on this subject, it is not uninteresting to contrast the effects of Byron’s regimen of abstinence by the light of a record kept by the celebrated wine-merchants, Messrs. Berry, of St. James’s Street. This register of weights has been kept on their premises for the convenience of their customers since 1765, and contains over twenty thousand names. The following extract was made by the present writer on November 2, 1897:[3]

Date.		Stone.		lbs.		Age.
January 4, 1806 (boots, no hat)		13		12		18
July 8, 1807 (shoes)		10		13		19
July 23, 1807 (shoes, no hat)		11		0		19
August 13, 1807 (shoes, no hat)		10		11½		19
January 13, 1808 (see Moore’s ‘Life’)		10		7		20
May 27, 1808 (Messrs. Berry)		11		1		—
June 10, 1809 (Messrs. Berry)		11		5¾		21
July 15, 1811 (Messrs. Berry)		9		11½		23
(Circa) June, 1823 (see Trelawny)		10		9		35

It will be seen at a glance that between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five Byron had reduced his weight by three stone and three pounds. The fluctuations between the ages of nineteen and thirty-five are not remarkable. This record marks the consistency of a heroic self-denial under what must often have been a strong temptation to appease the pangs of hunger.

 

 

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[Pg 20]

CHAPTER II

Byron’s life at Pisa, as afterwards at Genoa, was what most people would call a humdrum, dull existence. He rose late.

On Sunday, March 24, 1822, while Byron, Shelley, Trelawny, Captain Hay, Count Pietro Gamba, and an Irish gentleman named Taaffe, were returning from their evening ride, and had nearly reached the Porta alle Piagge at the eastern end of the Lung’ Arno, Sergeant-Major Masi, belonging to a dragoon regiment, being apparently in a great hurry to get back to barracks, pushed his way unceremoniously through the group of riders in front of him, and somewhat severely jostled Mr. Taaffe. This gentleman appealed[Pg 21] to Byron, and the latter demanded an apology from the sergeant, whom he at first mistook for an officer. The sergeant lost his temper, and called out the guard at the gateway. Byron and Gamba dashed through, however, and before the others could follow there was some ‘dom’d cutting and slashing’; Shelley was knocked off his horse, and Captain Hay received a wound in his face. Masi in alarm fled, and on the Lung’ Arno met Byron returning to the scene of the fray: an altercation took place, and one of Byron’s servants, who thought that Masi had wounded his master, struck at him with a pitchfork, and tumbled the poor fellow off his horse. There was a tremendous hubbub about this, and the legal proceedings which followed occupied two months, with much bluster, false swearing, and injustice, as a natural consequence. The court eventually came to the conclusion that there was no evidence for criminal proceedings against any of Byron’s domestics, but, in consideration of Giovanni Battista Falcieri—one of Byron’s servants—having a black beard, he was condemned to be escorted by the police to the frontier and banished from the grand-duchy of Tuscany.

At the same time the Gambas (who had nothing whatever to do with the affair) were told that their presence at Pisa was disagreeable to the Government. In consequence of the hint, Byron and the Gambas hired the Villa Dupuy, at Montenero, near Leghorn. Here, on June 28, 1822, a scuffle took place in the gardens of the villa between the servants of Count Gamba and of Byron, in which Byron’s coachman and his cook took part. Knives were drawn as usual. Byron appeared on the balcony with his pistols, and threatened to shoot the whole party if they did[Pg 22] not drop their knives, and the police had to be called in to quell the disturbance. The Government, who were anxious to be rid of Byron, took advantage of this riot at the Villa Dupuy. Byron’s courier and Gamba’s valet were sent over the frontier of the grand-duchy under police escort, and the Gambas were warned that, unless they left the country within three days, formal sentence of banishment would be passed upon them. As soon as Byron heard the news, he wrote a letter to the Governor of Leghorn, and asked for a respite for his friends. A few days grace were granted to the Gambas, and on July 8 they took passports for Genoa, intending to go first to the Baths of Lucca, where they hoped to obtain permission to return to Pisa. While negotiations were proceeding Byron returned to the Palazzo Lanfranchi.[4]

On April 20, 1822, there died at Bagnacavallo, not far from Ravenna, Byron’s natural daughter Allegra, whose mother, Claire Clairmont, had joined the Shelleys at Pisa five days previously. The whole story is a sad one, and shall be impartially given in these pages.

When Shelley left Ravenna in August, 1821, he understood that Byron had determined that Allegra should not be left behind, alone and friendless, in the Convent of Bagnacavallo, and Shelley hoped that an arrangement would be made by which Claire might have the happiness of seeing her child once more. When Byron arrived at Pisa in November, and Allegra was not with him, Claire Clairmont’s anxiety was so great that she wrote twice to Byron, protesting against leaving her child in so unhealthy a place,[Pg 23] and entreated him to place Allegra with some respectable family in Pisa, or Florance, or Lucca. She promised not to go near the child, if such was his wish, nor should Mary or Shelley do so without Byron’s consent. Byron, it appears, took no notice of these letters. The Shelleys, while strongly of opinion that Allegra should in some way be taken out of Byron’s hands, thought it prudent to temporize and watch for a favourable opportunity. Claire held wild schemes for carrying off the child, schemes which were under the circumstances impolitic, even if practicable. Both Mary and Shelley did their utmost to dissuade Claire from any violent attempts, and Mary, in a letter written at this time, assures Claire that her anxiety for Allegra’s health was to a great degree unfounded. After carefully considering the affair she had come to the conclusion that Allegra was well taken care of by the nuns in the convent, that she was in good health, and would in all probability continue so.

On April 15 Claire Clairmont arrived at Pisa on a visit to the Shelleys, and a few days later started with the Williamses for Spezzia, to search for houses on the bay. Professor Dowden says:[5]

Lord Byron felt the loss bitterly at first.

Writing to Shelley on April 23, 1822, Byron says:

Whatever may be thought of Byron’s conduct in the matter of Miss Claire Clairmont—conduct which Allegra’s mother invariably painted in the darkest colours—the fact remains as clear as day, that Byron always behaved well and kindly towards the poor little child whose death gave him such intense pain. The evidence of the Hoppners at Venice, of Countess Guiccioli at Ravenna, and of the Shelleys, all point in the same direction; and if any doubt existed, a close study of the wild and wayward character of Claire Clairmont would show where the truth in the matter lay. Byron was pestered by appeals from Allegra’s mother, indirectly on her own behalf, and directly on behalf of the child. Claire never understood that, by[Pg 25] reason of Byron’s antipathy to her, the surest way of not getting what she wanted was to ask for it; and, with appalling persistency, she even persuaded Shelley to risk his undoubted influence over Byron by intercessions on her behalf, until Byron’s opinion of Shelley’s judgment was shaken. After making full allowance for the maternal feeling, so strong in all women, it was exceedingly foolish of Claire not to perceive that Byron, by taking upon himself the adoption of the child, had shielded her from scandal; and that, having surrendered Allegra to his care, Claire could not pretend to any claim or responsibility in the matter. It should also be pointed out that, in sending Allegra to the convent at Bagnacavallo, Byron had no intention of leaving her there for any length of time. It was merely a provisional step, and, at Hoppner’s suggestion, Byron thought of sending the child to a good institution in Switzerland. In his will he had bequeathed to the child the sum of £5,000, which was to be paid to her either on her marriage or on her attaining the age of twenty-one years (according as the one or the other should happen first), with the proviso that she should not marry with a native of Great Britain. Byron was anxious to keep her out of England, because he thought that his natural daughter would be under great disadvantage in that country, and would have a far better chance abroad.

 

 

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[Pg 26]

CHAPTER III

On April 26, 1822, the Shelleys left Pisa for Lerici, and on May 1 they took up their abode in the Casa Magni, situated near the fishing-village of San Terenzo. Towards the close of May, Byron moved to his new residence at Montenero, near Leghorn.

Leigh Hunt’s arrival, at the end of June, added considerably to Byron’s perplexities. The poet had not seen Hunt since they parted in England six years before, and many things had happened to both of them since then. Byron, never satisfied that his promise to contribute poetry to a joint stock literary periodical was wise, disliked the idea more and more as time went on, and Shelley foresaw considerable difficulties in the way of keeping Byron up to the mark in this respect. Hunt had brought over by sea a sick wife and several children, and opened the ball by asking Byron for a loan of money to meet current expenses. Byron now discovered that Leigh Hunt had ceased to be editor of the Examiner, and, being absolutely without any source of income, had no prospect save the money he hoped to get from a journal not yet in existence. He ought, of course, to have told both Byron and Shelley that in coming to Italy with his family—a wife and six children—he[Pg 27] would naturally expect one or both of his friends to provide the necessary funds. This information Hunt withheld, and although both Byron and Shelley knew him to be in pecuniary embarrassment, and had every wish to assist him, they were both under the impression that Hunt had some small income from the Examiner. Byron was astonished to hear that his proposed coadjutor in a literary venture had not enough money in his pockets even for one month’s current expenses. He was not inclined to submit tamely to Hunt’s arrangements for sucking money out of him.

Beginning as he meant to go on, Byron from the first showed Hunt that he had no intention of being imposed upon, and the social intercourse between them was, to say the least of it, somewhat strained. Byron and Shelley between them had furnished the ground-floor of the Palazzo Lanfranchi for the Hunt family, and had Shelley lived he would, presumably, have impoverished himself by disbursements in their favour; but his death placed the Hunts in a false position. Had Shelley lived, his influence over Byron would have diminished the friction between Byron and his tactless guest. The amount of money spent by Byron on the Hunt family was not great, but, considering the comparative cheapness of living in Italy at that time, and the difference in the value of money, Byron’s contribution was not niggardly. After paying for the furniture of their rooms in his palace, and sending £200 for the cost of their voyage to Italy, Byron gave Leigh Hunt £70 while he was at Pisa, defrayed the cost of their journey from Pisa to Genoa, and supplied them with another £30 to enable them to travel to Florence. There was[Pg 28] really no occasion for Byron to make Hunt a present of £500, which he seems to have done, except Hunt’s absolute incapacity to make both ends meet, which was his perpetual weakness. From the manner in which Hunt treats his pecuniary transactions with the wide-awake Byron, it is evident that the sum would have risen to thousands if Byron had not turned a deaf ear to the ‘insatiable applicant’ at his elbow.

On the first visit which Trelawny paid to Byron at the Palazzo Lanfranchi after Hunt’s arrival, he found Mrs. Hunt was confined to her room, as she generally was, from bad health. Trelawny says:

Truth told, the Hunts’ lodgment in his palace must have been a terrible infliction to the sensitive Byron. His letters to friends in England at this time are full of allusions to the prevailing discomfort. Trelawny tells us that

After Shelley and his friend Williams had established the Hunts in Lord Byron’s palace at Pisa, they returned to Leghorn, Shelley ‘in a mournful mood, depressed by a recent interview with Byron,’ says Trelawny.

It was evident to all who knew Byron that he bitterly repented having pledged himself to embark on the literary venture which, unfortunately, he himself had initiated. At their last interview Shelley found Byron irritable whilst talking with him on the fulfilment of his promises with regard to Leigh Hunt. Byron, like a lion caught in a trap, could only grind his teeth and bear it. Unfortunately, it was not in Byron’s nature to bear things becomingly; he could not restrain the exhibition of his inner mind. On these occasions he was not at his best, and forgot the courtesy due even to the most unwelcome guest. Williams appears to have been much impressed by Byron’s reception of Mrs. Hunt, and, writing to his wife from Leghorn, says:

Shelley and Edward Williams, two days after that letter had been written—on Monday, July 8, 1822, at[Pg 30] three o’clock in the afternoon—set sail on the Ariel for their home on the Gulf of Spezzia. The story is well known, thanks to the graphic pen of Edward Trelawny, and we need only allude to the deaths of Shelley and Williams, and the sailor lad Charles Vivian, in so far as it comes into our picture of Byron at this period.

Byron attended the cremation of the bodies of Shelley and Williams, and showed his deep sympathy with Mary Shelley and Jane Williams in various ways.

Writing to John Murray from Pisa on August 3, 1822, he says:

Writing August 8, 1822, to Thomas Moore, Byron says in allusion to Shelley’s death:

In another letter, written December 25, 1822, Byron says:

[Pg 31]Byron’s opinion of Leigh Hunt, and his own connection with that ill-fated venture known as The Liberal, is concisely given by Byron himself in a letter to Murray. The Liberal, published October 15, 1822, was fiercely attacked in the Literary Gazette and other periodicals. The Courier for October 26, 1822, calls it a ‘scoundrel-like publication.’ Byron writes:

In another letter to Murray (December 25, 1822) Byron says:

[Pg 32]It is perhaps not generally known that Shelley bequeathed a legacy of £2,000 to Byron. Byron’s renunciation of this token of friendship is ignored by Professor Dowden in his life of Shelley. Writing to Leigh Hunt on June 28, 1823, Byron says:

Towards the end of September, 1822, Byron and the Countess Guiccioli left the Palazzo Lanfranchi, and moved from Pisa to Albaro, a suburb of Genoa. At the Villa Saluzzo, where the poet resided until his departure for Greece, dwelt also Count Gamba and his son Pietro, who occupied one part of that large house, while Byron occupied another part, and their establishments were quite separate. The first number of The Liberal which had been printed in London, reached Byron’s hands at this time. The birth of that unlucky publication was soon followed by its death, as anyone knowing the circumstances attending its conception might have foreseen. Shelley’s death may be said to have destroyed the enterprise and energy of the survivors of that small coterie, who, in the absence of that vital force, the fine spirit that had animated and held them together, ‘degenerated apace,’ as Trelawny tells us. Byron ‘exhausted himself in planning, projecting, beginning, wishing, intending, postponing, regretting, and doing nothing. The unready are fertile in excuses, and his were inexhaustible.’

In December, 1822, Trelawny laid up Byron’s yacht, The Bolivar, paid off the crew, and started on horseback[Pg 33] for Rome. The Bolivar was eventually sold by Byron to Lord Blessington for 400 guineas. Four or five years after Byron’s death this excellent little sea-boat, with Captain Roberts (who planned her for Byron) on board, struck on the iron-bound coast of the Adriatic and foundered. Not a plank of her was saved.

On April 1, 1823, Lord and Lady Blessington called on Byron at the Casa Saluzzo. Lady Blessington assures us that, in speaking of his wife, Byron declared that he was totally unconscious of the cause of her leaving him. He said that he left no means[Pg 34] untried to effect a reconciliation, and added with bitterness: ‘A day will arrive when I shall be avenged. I feel that I shall not live long, and when the grave has closed over me, what must she feel!’

In speaking of his sister, Byron always spoke with strong affection, and said that she was the most faultless person he had ever known, and that she was his only source of consolation in his troubles during the separation business.

Lady Blessington seems to have made a most searching examination of Byron’s character, and very little escaped her vigilance during the two months of their intimate intercourse. She tells us that Byron talked for effect, and liked to excite astonishment. It was difficult to know when he was serious, or when he was merely ‘bamming’ his aquaintances. He admitted that he liked to hoax people, in order that they might give contradictory accounts of him and of his opinions. He spoke very highly of Countess Guiccioli, whom he had passionately loved and deeply respected. Lady Blessington says: ‘In his praises of Madame Guiccioli it is quite evident that he is sincere.’

[Pg 35]Byron confessed that he was not happy, but admitted that it was his own fault, as the Countess Guiccioli, the only object of his love, had all the qualities to render a reasonable being happy. In speaking of Allegra, Byron said that while she lived her existence never seemed necessary to his happiness; but no sooner did he lose her than it appeared to him as though he could not exist without her. It is noteworthy that, one evening, while Byron was speaking to Lady Blessington at her hotel at Genoa, he pointed out to her a boat at anchor in the harbour, and said: ‘That is the boat in which my friend Shelley went down—the sight of it makes me ill. You should have known Shelley to feel how much I must regret him. He was the most gentle, most amiable, and least worldly-minded person I ever met; full of delicacy, disinterested beyond all other men, and possessing a degree of genius, joined to a simplicity, as rare as it is admirable. He had formed to himself a beau-idéal of all that is fine, high-minded, and noble, and he acted up to this ideal even to the very letter. He had a most brilliant imagination, but a total want of worldly wisdom. I have seen nothing like him, and never shall again, I am certain.’

We may, upon the evidence before us, take it for certain that Byron only admired two of his contemporaries—Sir Walter Scott and Shelley. He liked Hobhouse, and they had travelled together without a serious quarrel, which is a proof of friendship; but he felt that Hobhouse undervalued him, and, as Byron had a good deal of the spoiled child about him, he resented the friendly admonitions which, it seems, Hobhouse unsparingly administered whenever they were together. Tom Moore was a ‘croney’—a man[Pg 36] to laugh and sit through the night with—but there was nothing, either in his genius or his conduct, which Byron could fall down and worship, as he seemed capable of doing in the case of Shelley and Scott.

It is evident that Lady Byron occupied his thoughts continually; he constantly mentioned her in conversation, and often spoke of the brief period during which they lived together. He told Lady Blessington that, though not regularly handsome, he liked her looks. He said that when he reflected on the whole tenor of her conduct—the refusing any explanation, never answering his letters, or holding out any hopes that in future years their child might form a bond of union between them—he felt exasperated against her, and vented this feeling in his writings. The mystery of Lady Byron’s silence piqued him and kept alive his interest in her. It was evident to those who knew Byron during the last year of his life that he anxiously desired a reconciliation with her. He seemed to think that, had his pecuniary affairs been in a less ruinous state, his temper would not have been excited as it constantly was, during the brief period of their union, by demands of insolent creditors whom he was unable to satisfy, and who drove him nearly out of his senses, until he lost all command of himself, and so forfeited his wife’s affection. Byron felt himself to blame for such conduct, and bitterly repented of it. But he never could divest himself of the idea that his wife still took a deep interest in him, and said that Ada must always be a bond of union between them, though perchance they were parted for ever.

On one occasion Byron lifted the veil, and showed his inmost thoughts by words which were carefully noted at the time. He spoke on this occasion from the depth of his heart as follows:

There is much in this statement which it is necessary for those who wish to understand Byron’s position at the close of his life to bear in mind. We may accept it unreservedly, for it coincides in every particular with conclusions independently arrived at by the present writer, after a long and patient study of all circumstances relating to the life of this extraordinary man. At the period of which we write—the last phase in Byron’s brief career—the poet was, morally, ascending.

His character, through the fire of suffering, had been purified. Even his pride—so assertive in public—had been humbled, and he was gradually and insensibly preparing himself for a higher destiny, unconscious of the fact that the hand of Death was upon him. ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘and you will see me one day become all that I ought to be. I have reflected seriously on all my faults, and that is the first step towards amendment.’

 

 

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[Pg 39]

CHAPTER IV

Certain it is, that in proportion to the admiration which Byron’s poetic genius excited, was the severity of the censure which his fellow-countrymen bestowed on his defects as a man. The humour of the situation no doubt appealed to Byron’s acute sense of proportion, and induced him to feed the calumnies against himself, by painting his own portrait in the darkest colours. Unfortunately, the effects of such conduct long survived him; for the world is prone to take a man at his own valuation, and ‘hypocrisy reversed’ does not enter into human calculations. It is unfortunate for the fame of Byron that his whole conduct after the separation was a glaring blunder, for which no subsequent act of his, no proof of his genius, could by any possibility atone.

Truth told, the obloquy which Byron had to endure, after Lady Byron left him, was such as might well have changed his whole nature. It must indeed have been galling to that proud spirit, after having been humbly asked everywhere, to be ostentatiously asked nowhere. The injustice he suffered at the hands of those who were fed on baseless calumnies raised in his breast a feeling of profound contempt for his fellow-creatures—a contempt which led him into many[Pg 40] follies; thus, instead of standing up against the storm and meeting his detractors face to face, as he was both capable of and justified in doing, he chose to leave England under a cloud, and, by a system of mystification, to encourage the belief that he thoroughly deserved the humiliation which had been cast upon him. As a consequence, to employ the words of Macaulay,

Lady Blessington tells us that Byron had an excellent heart, but that it was running to waste for want of being allowed to expend itself on his fellow-creatures. His heart teemed with affection, but his past experiences had checked its course, and left it to prey on the aching void in his breast. He could never forget his sorrows, which in a certain sense had unhinged his mind, and caused him to deny to others the justice that had been denied to himself. He affected to disbelieve in either love or friendship, and yet was capable of making great sacrifices for both.

As Lady Blessington remarks in her ‘Conversations of Lord Byron,’ from which we have largely quoted, Byron’s pre-eminence as a poet gives an interest to details which otherwise would not be worth mentioning. She tells us, for instance, that one of the strongest anomalies in Byron was the exquisite taste displayed in his descriptive poetry, and the total want of it that was so apparent in his modes of life.

Byron appeared to be wholly ignorant of what in his class of life constituted its ordinary luxuries.

[Pg 42]In one of Byron’s expansive moods—and these were rare with men, though frequent in the society of Lady Blessington—Byron, speaking of his wife, said:

In speaking of his sister, shortly before his departure for Greece, Byron maintained that he owed the little good which he could boast, to her influence over his wayward nature. He regretted that he had not known her earlier, as it might have influenced his destiny.

But we should not be writing about Byron and his foibles eighty-four years after his death, if he had not been wholly different to other men in his views of life. Shortly after his marriage, for no sufficient, or at least for no apparent reason, Byron chose to immolate himself, and took a sort of Tarpeian leap, passing the remainder of his existence in bemoaning his bruises, and reviling the spectators who were not responsible for his fall. One of the main results of this conduct was his separation from his child, for whom he seems to have felt the deepest affection. We find him, at the close of his life, constantly speaking of Ada, ‘sole daughter of his heart and house,’ and prophesying the advent of a love whose consolations he could never feel.

This prophecy was amply fulfilled. It appears that, after Ada’s marriage to Lord King, Colonel Wildman[Pg 44] met her in London, and invited her to pay him a visit at Newstead Abbey. One morning, while Ada was in the library, Colonel Wildman took down a book of poems. Ada asked the name of the author of these poems, and when shown the portrait of her father—Phillips’s well-known portrait—which hung upon the wall, Ada remained for a moment spell-bound, and then remarked ingenuously: ‘Please do not think that it is affectation on my part when I declare to you that I have been brought up in complete ignorance of all that concerns my father.’ Never until that moment had Ada seen the handwriting of her father, and, as we know, even his portrait had been hidden from her. When Byron’s genius was revealed to his daughter, an enthusiasm for his memory filled her soul. She shut herself up for hours in the rooms which Byron had used, absorbed in all the glory of one whose tenderness for her had been so sedulously concealed by her mother. On her death-bed she dictated a letter to Colonel Wildman, begging that she might be buried at Hucknall-Torkard, in the same vault as her illustrious father. And there they sleep the long sleep side by side—separated during life, united in death—the prophecy of 1816 fulfilled in 1852:

‘Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught,
I know that thou wilt love me; though my name
Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught
With desolation, and a broken claim:
Though the grave closed between us,—’twere the same,
I know that thou wilt love me; though to drain
My blood from out thy being were an aim
And an attainment,—all would be in vain,—
Still thou wouldst love me, still that more than life retain.’

 

 

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[Pg 45]

CHAPTER V

There is no doubt that Byron had a craving for celebrity in one form or another. In the last year of his life his thoughts turned with something like apathy from the fame which his pen had brought him[10] towards that wider and nobler fame which might be attained by the sword. In the spirit of an exalted poet who has lately passed from us, if such prescience were possible, Byron might have applied these stirring lines to himself:

It was towards the close of May, 1823, that Byron received a letter telling him that he had been elected a member of the Committee which sat in London to further the Greek cause. Byron willingly accepted the appointment, and from that moment turned his thoughts towards Greece, without exactly knowing in what manner he could best serve her cause. He experienced alternations of confidence and despondency certainly, but he never abandoned the notion that he might be of use, if only he could see his way clearly through the conflicting opinions and advice which reached him from all sides.

The presentiment that he would end his days in Greece, weighed so heavily on his mind, that he felt a most intense desire to revisit his native country before finally throwing in his lot with the Greeks. He seems to have vaguely felt that all chances of reconciliation with Lady Byron were not dead. He would have liked to say farewell to her without bitterness, and he longed to embrace his child. But the objections to a return to England were so formidable that he was compelled to abandon the idea.[Pg 47] His proud nature could not face the chance of a cold reception, and a revival of that roar of calumny which had driven him from our shores. He told Lady Blessington that he could laugh at those attacks with the sea between him and his traducers; but that on the spot, and feeling the effect which each libel produced upon the minds of his too sensitive friends, he could not stand the strain. Byron felt sure that his enemies would misinterpret his motives, and that no good would come of it.

After Byron had made up his mind to visit Greece in person, he does not appear ever to have seriously thought of drawing back. On June 15, 1823, he informed Trelawny, who was at Rome, that he was determined to go to Greece, and asked him to join the expedition. Seven days later Byron had hired a vessel to transport himself, his companions, his servants, and his horses, to Cephalonia.

On July 13, Byron, with Edward Trelawny, Count Pietro Gamba, and a young medical student,[11] with eight servants, embarked at Genoa on the English brig Hercules, commanded by Captain Scott. At the last moment a passage was offered to a Greek named Schilitzy, and to Mr. Hamilton Browne. Gamba tells us that five horses were shipped, besides arms, ammunition, and two one-pounder guns which had belonged to The Bolivar. Byron carried with him 10,000 Spanish dollars in ready-money, with bills of exchange for 40,000 more.

Passing within sight of Elba, Corsica, the Lipari Islands (including Stromboli,) Sicily, Italy, etc., on August 2, the Hercules lay between Zante and Cephalonia; and the next day she cast anchor in Argostoli,[Pg 48] the principal port of Cephalonia. The Resident, Colonel Napier, was at that time absent from the island. Shortly after Byron’s arrival, Captain Kennedy, Colonel Napier’s secretary, came on board, and informed him that little was known of the internal affairs of Greece. The Turks appeared to have been in force at sea, while the Greeks remained inactive at Hydra, Spezia, and Ipsara. It was supposed that Mr. Blaquière had gone to Corfu, while the famous Marco Botzari, to whom Byron had been especially recommended, was at Missolonghi. Before taking any definite step, Byron judged it best to send messengers to Corfu and Missolonghi, to collect information as to the state of affairs in the Morea. To pass the time, Byron and some of his companions made an excursion to Ithaca. The first opportunity of showing his sympathy towards the victims of barbarism and tyranny occurred at this period. Many poor families had taken refuge at Ithaca, from Scio, Patras, and other parts of Greece. Byron handed 3,000 piastres to the Commandant for their relief, and transported a family, in absolute poverty, to Cephalonia, where he provided them with a house and gave them a monthly allowance.

The following narrative, written by a gentleman who was travelling in Ithaca at that time, seems to be worthy of reproduction in these pages:

 

 

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[Pg 64]

CHAPTER VI

After an absence of eight days the party returned to Argostoli, and went on board the Hercules. The messenger whom Byron had sent to Corfu brought the unwelcome intelligence that Mr. Blaquière had sailed for England, without leaving any letters for Byron’s guidance. News also reached him that the Greeks were split up into factions, and more intent on persecuting and calumniating each other than on securing the independence of their country. This was depressing news for a man who had sacrificed so much, and would have damped the enthusiasm of most people in Byron’s position; but it neither deceived nor disheartened him. He was, and had always been, prepared for the worst. He made up his mind not to enter personally into the arena of contending factions, but to await further developments at Cephalonia, hoping to acquire an influence which might eventually be employed in settling their internal discords. As he himself remarked, ‘I came not here to join a faction, but a nation. I must be circumspect.’ Trelawny, in his valuable record of events at this time, is hard on Byron. He mistook Byron’s motives, and thought that he was ‘shilly-shallying and doing nothing.’ But Trelawny, though mistaken, was sincere. He was in every sense of the word a man of[Pg 65] action, and full of a wild enthusiasm for the Greek cause. It was not in his nature to await events, but rather to create them, and Byron’s wise decision made him restive. He determined to proceed to the Morea, and induced Hamilton Browne to go with him. Byron gave them letters to the Greek Government, if they could find any such authority, expressing his readiness to serve them when they had satisfied him how he could do so.

Gamba takes a calmer view of Byron’s hesitation. He says that Byron well knew that prudence had never been in the catalogue of his virtues; that he knew the necessity of such a virtue in his present situation, and was determined to attain it. He carefully avoided every appearance of ostentation, and dreaded being suspected of being a mere hunter after adventures.

How far he succeeded we shall see later. From the time of Byron’s arrival at Argostoli until September 6 he lived on board the Hercules. Colonel Napier had frequently begged him to take up his quarters with him, but Byron declined the hospitality; mainly because he feared that he might thereby embroil the British authorities on the island with their own Government, whose dispositions were yet unknown. Early in September Byron removed with Gamba to a village named Metaxata, in a healthy situation and amidst magnificent scenery. A month later letters arrived from Edward Trelawny, saying that things were not so bad as had been reported. It was evident[Pg 66] that great apathy and total disorganization prevailed among those who had got the upper hand, but that the mass of the people—well disposed towards the revolution—was beginning to take an interest in the war. A general determination of never again submitting to the Turkish yoke had taken deep root. The existing Greek Government sent pressing letters to Byron inviting him to set out immediately, but Byron still thought it wiser not to move; for the reasons which had governed his conduct hitherto still prevailed. He was determined neither to waste his services nor his money on furthering the greed of some particular chieftain, or at best of some faction. Letters arrived from the Greek Committee in London, informing Byron that arrangements had been made for the floating of a Greek loan. Meanwhile Mavrocordato wrote to Byron from Hydra, whither he had fled, inviting him to that island. Lord Byron replied that so long as the dissensions between the factions continued he would remain a mere spectator, as he was resolved not to be mixed up in quarrels whose effects were so disastrous to the cause. He at the same time begged Mavrocordato to expedite the departure of the fleet, and to send the Greek deputies to London. The Turkish fleet meanwhile had sailed for the Dardanelles, leaving a squadron of fourteen vessels for the blockade of Missolonghi, and for the protection of a fortress in the gulf, which was still in the hands of the Turks.

The gallant Marco Botzari had been killed in action, and Missolonghi was in a state of siege. Its Governor wrote and implored Byron to come there; but as the place was in no danger, either from famine or from assault, he declined the proposal.

[Pg 67]In the middle of November, 1823, Mr. Hamilton Browne and the deputies arrived at Cephalonia. They brought letters from the Greek Government asking Byron to advance £6,000 (30,000 dollars) for the payment of the Greek fleet. An assurance was offered by the legislative body that, upon payment of this money, a Greek squadron would immediately put to sea. Byron consented to advance £4,000, and gave the deputies letters for London. In allusion to the loan about to be raised in England, he thus addressed them:

On December 17, 1823, while Byron was at Metaxata, awaiting definite information as to the progress of events, he resumed his journal, which had been abruptly discontinued in consequence of news having reached him that his daughter was ill.

[Pg 68]The Greeks were still quarrelling among themselves, and Byron almost despaired of being able to unite the factions in one common interest. Mavrocordato and the squadron from Hydra, for whose coming Byron had bargained when he advanced £4,000, had at length arrived after the inglorious capture of a small Turkish vessel with 50,000 dollars on board. This prize having been captured within the bounds of neutrality, on the coast of Ithaca, Byron naturally foresaw that it would bring the Greeks into trouble with the British authorities. Meanwhile, news from London confirmed the accounts of an increasing interest in the Greek cause, and gave good promise of a successful floating of the loan.

In the middle of November Colonel Leicester Stanhope arrived at Cephalonia. He had been deputed by the London Committee to act with Lord Byron. News also came from Greece that the Pasha of Scutari had abandoned Anatolico, and that the Turkish army had been put to flight. But the Greek factions, whose jealous dissensions promised to wreck the cause of Greek independence, had come to blows in the Morea.

As Byron had been recognized as a representative of the English and German Committees interested in the Greek cause, he was advised to write a public remonstrance to the general Government of Greece, pointing out that their dissensions would be fatal to the cause which it was presumed they all had at heart. Byron disliked to take so prominent a step, but he was eventually persuaded that such a letter might do a great deal of good. Gamba cites the following extract from Byron’s appeal to the executive and legislative bodies of the Greek nation:

[Pg 70]Byron at the same time wrote to Prince Mavrocordato, and sent the letter by Colonel Leicester Stanhope. He tells the Prince that he is very uneasy at the news about the dissensions among the Greek chieftains, and warns him that Greece must prepare herself for three alternatives. She must either reconquer her liberty by united action, or become a Dependence of the Sovereigns of Europe; or, failing in either direction, she would revert to her position as a mere province of Turkey. There was no other choice open to her. Civil war was nothing short of ruin.

Byron, in his journal dated December 17, 1823, says:

Finlay, in his ‘History of Greece,’ states that the Turks made no effort to capture the place, and after a harmless bombardment the siege was raised, and the Turkish forces retired into Epirus.

The following extract from a letter, which Byron wrote to his sister[13] conveys an unimpeachable record of his feelings and motives in coming to Greece:

 

 

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[Pg 72]

CHAPTER VII

It was during the time that Byron was in the neighbourhood of Cephalonia that Dr. Kennedy, a Scottish medical man, methodistically inclined, undertook the so-called ‘conversion’ of the poet. Gamba tells us that their disputes on religious matters sometimes lasted five or six hours. ‘The Bible was so familiar to Byron that he frequently corrected the citations of the theological doctor.’

Byron, in the letter from which we have quoted, says:

As disputants, Byron and Kennedy stood far as the poles asunder. The former, while believing firmly in the existence and supreme attributes of God, doubted, but never denied, manifestations that could not be tested or demonstrated by positive proof. The latter, through blind unquestioning faith, believed in everything which an inspired Bible had revealed to [Pg 73]mankind. Thus both were believers up to a certain point, and both were equally well-meaning and sincere. The intensity of their faith had its limitations. They did not agree, and never could have agreed, in their views of religion. They moved on parallel lines that might have been extended indefinitely, but could never meet. Kennedy discouraged the unlimited use of reason, and preferred an absolute reliance on the traditional teaching of his Church. To Byron the exercise of reason was an absolute necessity. He would not admit that God had given us minds, and had denied us the right to use them intelligently; or that the Almighty desired us to sacrifice reason to faith. ‘It is useless,’ said Byron, ‘to tell me that I am to believe, and not to reason; you might as well say to a man: “Wake not, but sleep.”’ While Byron profoundly disbelieved in eternal punishments, Kennedy would have mankind kept straight by fear of them. Kennedy, though versed in the Bible, was, as events proved, hardly a match for Byron.

Hodgson, an old friend of Byron’s, has left a record that a Bible presented to him ‘by that better angel of his life,’ his beloved sister, was among the books which Byron always kept near him. The following lines, taken from Scott, were inserted by Byron on the fly-leaf:

‘Within this awful volume lies
The Mystery of Mysteries.
Oh! happiest they of human race
To whom our God has given grace
To hear, to read, to fear, to pray,
To lift the latch, and force the way;
But better had he ne’er been born
Who reads to doubt, or reads to scorn!’[14]

[Pg 74]During the discussions which took place, Kennedy was forced to admit that Byron was well versed in the Bible; but he maintained that prayer was necessary in order to understand its message. Byron said that, in his opinion, prayer does not consist in the act of kneeling, or of repeating certain words in a solemn manner, as devotion is the affection of the heart.

‘When I look at the marvels of the creation,’ said he, ‘I bow before the Majesty of Heaven; and when I experience the delights of life, health, and happiness, then my heart dilates in gratitude towards God for all His blessings.’

Kennedy maintained that this was not sufficient; it must be an earnest supplication for grace and humility. In Kennedy’s opinion Byron had not sufficient humility to understand the truths of the Gospel. At this time, certainly, Byron was not prepared to believe implicitly in the Divinity of Christ. He lacked the necessary faith to do so, but he did not reject the doctrine.

‘I have not the slightest desire,’ he said, ‘to reject a doctrine without having investigated it. Quite the contrary; I wish to believe, because I feel extremely unhappy in a state of uncertainty as to what I am to believe.’

He wanted proofs—as so many others have before and since—and without it conviction was impossible.

Byron had been brought up by his mother in very strict religious principles, and in his youth had read many theological works. He told Dr. Kennedy that[Pg 75] he was in no sense an unbeliever who denied the Scriptures, or was content to grope in atheism, but, on the contrary, that it was his earnest wish to increase his belief, as half-convictions made him wretched. He declared that, with the best will in the world, he could not understand the Scriptures. Kennedy, on the other hand, took the Bible to be the salvation of mankind, and was strong in his condemnation of the Catholic Church. He objected to the Roman Communion as strongly as he repudiated and despised Deism and Socinianism.

Byron had at this time a decided leaning towards the Roman Communion, and, while deploring hypocrisies and superstitions, deeply respected those who believed conscientiously, whatever that belief might be. He loathed hypocrites of all kinds, and especially hypocrites in religion.

‘I do not reject the doctrines of Christianity,’ he said; ‘I only ask a few more proofs to profess them sincerely. I do not believe myself to be the vile Christian which so many assert that I am.’

Kennedy advised Byron to put aside all difficult subjects—such as the origin of sin, the fall of man, the nature of the Trinity, the doctrine of predestination, and kindred mysteries—and to study Christianity by the light of the Bible alone, which contains the only means of salvation. We give Byron’s answer in full on Dr. Kennedy’s authority:

Kennedy, in reply, alluded to the differences which existed in religious opinions, and expressed regret at this, but pleaded indulgence for those sects which do not attack the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. He strongly condemned Arianism, Socinianism, and Swedenborgianism, which were anathema to him.

‘You seem to hate the Socinians greatly,’ said Byron, ‘but is this charitable? Why exclude a Socinian, who believes honestly, from any hope of salvation? Does he not also found his belief upon the Bible? It is a religion which gains ground daily. Lady Byron is much in favour with its followers. We were wont to discuss religious matters together, and many of our misunderstandings have arisen from that. Yet, on the whole, I think her religion and mine were much alike.’

[Pg 77]Whether Byron was justified in this opinion or not may be seen from a letter which Lady Byron wrote to Mr. Crabb Robinson[15] in reference to Dr. Kennedy’s book:

Lady Byron writes from her own personal experience of a time when tender affection or sympathy formed no part of Byron’s nature; of a time when he had no regard for the interests or the happiness of others;[Pg 78] when he lived according to his own humours, and when his will was his law. Byron’s earlier poetry amply supports Lady Byron’s view of so miserable a state of mind. But there is reason to hope—nay, we might say to believe—that, in the last years of his life, Byron began to realize that a merciful God would be wholly incapable of such manifest injustice as to condemn His creatures to suffer for crimes which they were powerless to resist and predestined to commit. He believed in God and in the immortality of the soul, and has publicly declared that all punishment which is to revenge, rather than to correct, must be morally wrong. ‘Human passions,’ wrote Byron, ‘have probably disfigured the Divine doctrines here: but the whole thing is inscrutable.’

Countess Guiccioli tells us that, whatever may have been Byron’s opinions with regard to certain points of religious doctrine, sects, and modes of worship, in essential matters his mind never seriously doubted. Matthews in his Cambridge days, and Shelley towards the close of life, moved him not at all. Between the commencement of Byron’s career and its close, his mind passed successively through different phases before arriving at the last result. Leicester Stanhope, who was at Missolonghi with Byron, and who knew him well latterly, says:

[Pg 79]Parry, who stood at Byron’s bedside when he died at Missolonghi, tells us that Byron died fearless and resigned. Could there be a better proof than these words, spoken by Byron a few hours before he passed away?—

During the time that Byron lived at Metaxata, in Cephalonia, he seldom saw anyone in the evening except Dr. Stravolemo, one of the most estimable men in the island, who lived in that village. He had been first physician to Ali Pacha. He was an entertaining man, and afforded Byron much amusement by disputing with Dr. Bruno on medical questions.

One evening Colonel Napier, the British Resident, arrived at Byron’s house at a gallop, and asked for Drs. Bruno and Stravolemo. He said that a party of peasants who were road-making had, in excavating a high bank, fallen under a landslide and were in danger of their lives. There were at least a dozen persons entombed. Colonel Napier happened to be passing at the moment when the catastrophe occurred; help was urgently needed. Byron sent Dr. Bruno to their assistance, while he and Gamba followed as soon as their horses could be saddled.

In the month of December the Greek squadron anchored off Missolonghi, where Prince Mavrocordato was received with enthusiasm. He was given full powers to organize Western Greece. The Turkish squadron was at this time shut up in the Gulf of Lepanto.

Byron sent to inform Mavrocordato that the loan which he had promised to the Government was ready, and that he was prepared either to go on board some vessel belonging to the Greek fleet, or to come to Missolonghi and confer with him. Mavrocordato and Colonel Leicester Stanhope wrote to beg Byron to come as soon as possible to Missolonghi, where his presence would be of great service to the cause. In the first place money to pay the fleet was much wanted; the sailors were on the verge of mutiny. Mavrocordato was in a state of anxiety, the Greek Admiral looked gloomy, and the sailors grumbled aloud.

Byron at the same time received a letter from the Legislative Council, begging him to co-operate with[Pg 82] Mavrocordato in the organization of Western Greece. It was now December 26, 1823. Byron chartered a vessel for part of the baggage; a mistico, or light fast-sailing vessel, for himself and his suite; and a larger vessel for the horses, baggage, and munitions of war. The weather was unfavourable and squally, the vessels could not get under-weigh, and the whole party were detained for two days, during which time Byron lodged with his banker, Mr. Charles Hancock, and passed the greater part of the day in the society of the British authorities of the island.

We are able, through the courtesy of General Skey Muir, the son of Byron’s friend at Cephalonia, to give extracts from a letter which Mr. Charles Hancock wrote to Dr. Muir on June 1, 1824. During Byron’s residence at Metaxata, Dr. Muir was the principal medical officer at Cephalonia, and it was in his house that some of the conversations on religion between Dr. Kennedy and Byron were held. Mr. Charles Hancock writes:

The wind becoming fair, on December 28, at 3 p.m., the vessels got under way, Byron in the mistico, Pietro Gamba in the larger vessel. On the morning of the 29th they were at Zante, and spent the day in transacting business with Mr. Barff and shipping a considerable sum of money. Byron declined the Commandant’s invitation to his residence, as his time was fully occupied with the business in hand. At about six in the evening they sailed for Missolonghi, without the slightest suspicion that the Turkish fleet was on the lookout for prizes. They knew that the Greek fleet was lying before Missolonghi, and they expected to sight a convoy sent out to meet them. Gamba says:

At 6.30 a.m. the vessel which bore Gamba along gaily approached the rocks which border the shallows of Missolonghi. They saw a large vessel bearing down upon them, which they at first took for one of the Greek fleet; in appearance it seemed superior to a Turkish man-of-war. But as Gamba’s vessel hoisted the Ionian flag, to their dismay the stranger hoisted the Ottoman ensign. The Turkish commander ordered Gamba’s captain to come on board, and the poor fellow gave himself up for lost. They could think of no excuse which would have any weight with their captors, and were in some trepidation as to Byron’s fate, he having money, arms, and some Greeks, with him.

Writing from Missolonghi on January 5, 1824, Colonel Stanhope says:

On January 5, 1824, Byron arrived at Missolonghi. He was received with military honours and popular applause.

Byron seems to have escaped from perils quite as great, though differing in nature, from those through which Gamba had passed. His vessel passed close to the Turkish frigate, but under favour of the night, and by preserving complete silence, the master ran her close under the rocks of the Scrofes, whither the Turk dared not follow her. Byron saw Gamba’s vessel taken and conducted to Patras. Byron, thinking it wiser not to make straight for Missolonghi steered for Petala; but finding that port open and unsafe, his vessel was taken to Dragomestri, a small town on the coast of Acarnania. On his arrival there, Byron was visited by the Primates and officers of the place, who offered him their good offices. From this place Byron sent messengers both to Zante and Missolonghi. On receipt of Byron’s letter, Mavrocordato sent five gunboats and a brig-of-war to escort him to Missolonghi.[Pg 86] On January 4, the flotilla was caught in a violent storm, which threw Byron’s vessel in dangerous proximity to the rocks on that inhospitable coast. The sailors at first behaved remarkably well, and got the vessel off the rocks; but a second squall burst upon them with great violence, and drove the Mistico into dangerous waters, causing the sailors to lose all hope of saving her. They abandoned the vessel to her fate, and thought only of their own safety. But Byron persuaded them to remain; and by his firmness, and no small share of nautical skill, not only got the crew out of danger, but also saved the vessel, several lives, and 25,000 dollars, the greater part of which was in hard cash. Byron does not seem to have pulled off his clothes since leaving Cephalonia.

It was an adventurous voyage—appropriately so—for it was his last journey in this world.

 

 

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[Pg 87]

CHAPTER VIII

At the beginning of the war, Missolonghi consisted of about 800 scattered houses, built close to the seaside on a muddy and most unhealthy site, scarcely above the level of the waters, ‘which a few centuries ago must have covered the spot, as may be judged from the nature of the soil, consisting of decomposed seaweed and dried mud.’ The population was exceedingly poor, and amounted to nearly 3,000 souls. The town had a most uninviting appearance; the streets were narrow and badly paved. But, says Millingen, what most revolted a stranger was the practice of having the buildings so constructed that the most loathsome substances were emptied into the streets. The inhabitants were so accustomed to this abominable state of things that they ridiculed the complaints of strangers, and even swore at people who ventured to suggest reform. Missolonghi must indeed have been a wretched place even for a strong man in his full powers and vitality—for Byron it was nothing short of Death! Trelawny tells us that this place is situated on the verge of a dismal swamp. The marvel to him was that Byron, who was always liable to fevers, should have consented to live three months on this mud-bank, shut in by a circle of stagnant pools[Pg 88] ‘which might be called the belt of death.’ When Trelawny arrived in the early spring, he found most of the strangers suffering from gastric fevers. He waded through the streets, ‘between wind and water,’ to the house where Byron had lived—a detached building on the margin of the shallow, slimy sea-waters.

Such, then, was the residence which was destined to be the last home of the author of ‘Childe Harold!’

Byron had scarcely reached the modest apartment which had been assigned to him, when he was greeted by the tumultuous visits of the Primates and chiefs. All the chieftains of Western Greece—that is to say, the mountainous districts occupied by the Greeks—were now collected at Missolonghi in a general assembly, together with many of the Primates of the same districts. Mavrocordato, at that time Governor-General of the province, was President of the Assembly, with a bodyguard of 5,000 armed men. The first object of this assembly, says Gamba, was to organize the military forces, the assignment of the soldiers’ pay, and the establishment of the national constitution and some regular form of government for Western Greece. The chieftains were not all of them well disposed towards Mavrocordato; the soldiers were badly paid—in fact, hardly paid at all; and so great was the fear of disturbances, quarrels, and even of a civil war, that without the influence of Prince Mavrocordato, and the presence of Byron with his money, there could have been no harmony.

After the departure of the Turks, who had blockaded Missolonghi, there was a general feeling of security, and no one expected them to return before the spring. The Peloponnesus, with exception of the castles of[Pg 89] the Morea and of Patras, of Modon and of Covon, was in the hands of the Greeks. The northern shore of the Gulf of Lepanto, with the exception of the two castles, were also in Greek hands. They swayed Bœotia and Attica, together with the whole isthmus of Corinth.

Such was the state of affairs when Byron arrived on that dismal swamp. The position in which he found himself required much skill and tact; for the dissension among the various leaders in other parts of Greece was in its bitterest phase, and public opinion everywhere was dead against the executive body. It would have been fatal to the prestige of Byron if, in a moment of impetuosity, he had cast in his lot with some particular faction. It was his fixed intention, as it was clearly his best policy, to reconcile differences, and to bring the contending factions closer together. His influence amongst all parties was daily increasing, and everyone believed that Byron would eventually be able to bring discordant voices into harmony, and pave the way for the formation of a strong, patriotic Government. He faced the situation bravely, and closed his ears to the unworthy squabbles of ambitious cliques. He made arrangements, with the best assistance at hand, to turn the expected loan from England to the best account, in order to insure the freedom and independence of Greece.

The first day of his arrival at Missolonghi was signalized by an act of grace. A Turk, who had fallen into the hands of some Greek sailors, was released by Byron’s orders, and, having been clothed and fed at his own expense, was given quarters at Byron’s house until an opportunity occurred of sending him in freedom to Patras. About a fortnight later,[Pg 90] hearing that four Turkish prisoners were at Missolonghi in a state of destitution, Byron caused them to be set at liberty, and sent them to Usouff Pacha at Patras, with a letter which, though it has been often printed, deserves a place in this narrative:

This letter was the keynote of Byron’s policy during the remainder of his life. The horrors of war were sufficient in themselves without that unnecessary cruelty so often exhibited by Eastern nations in their treatment of prisoners of war.

The following account of an incident connected with Byron’s clemency to a prisoner pictures the state of things at Missolonghi.

During the winter preparations were being made for an expedition against Lepanto, a fortress which, if captured by the Greeks, would facilitate the siege of Patras. Its fortifications were constructed on the slope of a hill, forming a triangle, the base of which was close to the sea. Its walls were of Venetian construction, but without ditches. As portions of its walls were commanded by a neighbouring hill, its siege would have proved a very arduous undertaking even with regular troops; but with raw Greek levies its reduction, except by famine, would have been almost impossible. On January 14, 1824, Colonel Stanhope writes to Mr. Bowring in the following terms: ‘Lord Byron has taken 500 Suliotes into pay. He burns with military ardour and chivalry, and will proceed with the expedition to Lepanto.’ Circumstances were, however, against this expedition from the very beginning. Great hopes had been entertained by Lord Byron and by Colonel Stanhope that the Suliotes would conform to discipline, and that Mr. Parry, who had been sent out by the Greek Committee with stores and ammunition, would on his arrival organize the artillery, and[Pg 92] manufacture Congreve rockets—a projectile of which the Turks were said to be in great awe.

Parry arrived at Missolonghi early in February, on board the brig Anna, which had been chartered by the London Greek Committee. He brought cannons, ammunition, printing-presses, medicines, and all the apparatus necessary for the establishment of a military laboratory. Several English mechanics came with him, and some English, German, and Swedish gentlemen, who wished to serve the Greek cause.

Mr. (or, as he was afterwards called) Major, Parry was a peculiar person in every way. He had at one time served as a shipwright, then as Firemaster in the King’s service, and won favour with Byron through his buffoonery and plain speaking—two very useful qualifications in environments of stress and duplicity. When Byron appointed him Major in the Artillery Brigade, the best officers in the brigade tendered their resignations, stating that, while they would be proud to serve under Lord Byron, neither their honour nor the interests of the service would allow them to serve under a man who had no practical experience of military evolutions. The German officers also, who had previously served in the Prussian army, appealed against Parry’s appointment, and offered proofs of his ignorance of artillery. But Byron would not listen to complaints, which he attributed partly to jealousy and partly to German notions of etiquette, which seemed to him to be wholly out of place in a country where merit rather than former titles should regulate such appointments.

In supporting Parry against these officers, Byron was in a measure influenced by the recommendations of both the Greek Committee who sent him out, and[Pg 93] of Colonel Leicester Stanhope, who at that time considered Parry to be an exceedingly capable officer. Perhaps, if Parry had not appeared on parade in an apron, brandishing a hammer, and if he had not asserted himself so extravagantly, he might possibly have passed muster. But tact and modesty were not in Parry’s line; and having boasted to the London Committee that he was acquainted with almost every branch of military mechanics, he bullied its members into a belief that his pretentions were well founded. As a matter of fact, Parry proved to be unsuited for high command, although it must be admitted that he worked indefatigably. He made plans for the erection of a laboratory, and presided over the works. He paved the yard of the Seraglio, repaired the batteries, instructed the troops in musketry and gunnery; he gave lessons with the broadsword, inspected the fortifications, and directed the operations of Cocchini, the chief engineer. He repaired gun-carriages, and put his hand to anything wanted, so that it appeared as if really nothing could be done without him. In one thing only did Parry seem to fall short of general expectation. He had boasted that he knew the composition of ‘Congreve rockets.’ With this mighty instrument of mischief he prophesied that the Greeks would be able to paralyze all the efforts of their enemy, both by land and sea. The Turkish cavalry, the only arm against which the Greeks were impotent, would be rendered useless, and the Turkish vessels, by the same means, would be easily destroyed.

Unfortunately, the manufacture of these rockets was impossible without the assistance of the English mechanics whom he had brought with him, and these men were unable to work without materials, which were[Pg 94] not obtainable. Thus the principal part of Parry’s ‘stock-in-trade’—his rockets, incendiary kites, and improved Grecian fires—were not forthcoming.

For a long time the roads in the neighbourhood of Missolonghi were so broken up by incessant rain that Byron could not ride or take any outdoor exercise. This affected his health. His only means of getting a little fresh air was by paddling through the murky waters in a sort of canoe. During these expeditions, says Gamba, who always accompanied him, he spoke often of his anxiety to begin the campaign. He had not much hope of success, but felt that something must be done during these tedious months, if only to employ the troops and keep them from creating disturbances in the town.

It was Byron’s custom to spend his evenings in Colonel Stanhope’s room, with his English comrades. Sometimes the Germans would join the party, play on their flutes, and sing their national airs to the accompaniment[Pg 95] of a guitar. Byron was fond of music in general, and was especially partial to German music, particularly to their national songs.

Millingen tells us that in the evening all the English who had not, with Colonel Stanhope, turned Odysseans assembled at Byron’s house, and enjoyed the charm of his conversation till late at night. Byron’s character, says Millingen,

Lord Byron was very much taken with Parry, whose drolleries relieved the tedium and constant vexations incidental to the situation at Missolonghi.[Pg 96] The Major appears to have been an excellent mimic, and possessed a fund of quaint expressions that made up for the deficiency of real wit. Millingen says that he could tell, in his coarse language, a good story, and could play Falstaff’s, or the part of a clown very naturally. He ranted Richard III.’s or Hamlet’s soliloquies in a mock-tragic manner like a player at Bartholomew Fair, which made everyone laugh, and beguiled the length of many a rainy evening.

On January 21, 1824, Missolonghi was blockaded by the Turkish fleet. There were neither guns nor even sailors fit to man the gunboats; the only chance was to make a night attack upon the Turks in boats manned by the European volunteers then residing at Missolonghi. Byron took the matter in hand, and insisted on joining personally in the expedition. He was so determined on this project that Mavrocordato and others, realizing the folly of exposing so valuable a life on so desperate an enterprise, dissuaded Byron from risking his valuable life in a business for which there were already sufficient volunteers. As things turned out, it did not much matter, for the Turkish fleet suddenly abandoned the blockade and returned to the gulf.

On January 22, while Colonel Stanhope and some friends were assembled, Byron came from his bedroom and said, with a smile: ‘You were complaining the other day that I never write any poetry now: this is my birthday, and I have just finished something, which, I think, is better than what I usually write.’ He then produced those affecting verses on his own birthday which were afterwards found written in his journal, with the following introduction: ‘January 22: on this day I complete my thirty-sixth year.’

This resolution was accompanied with the natural presentiment that he should never leave Greece alive. He one day asked his faithful servant Tita whether he thought of returning to Italy. ‘Yes,’ said Tita; ‘if your lordship goes, I go.’ Lord Byron smiled, and said: ‘No, Tita, I shall never go back from Greece; either the Turks, or the Greeks, or the climate, will prevent that.’

Parry tells us that Byron’s mind on this point was irrevocably fixed.

The following extract from a letter written by Mr. George Finlay in June, 1824, seems worthy of production in this place:

 

 

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[Pg 105]

CHAPTER IX

Millingen tells us that Byron, even before his arrival in Greece, was a favourite among the people and soldiers. Popular imagination had been kindled by reports of his genius, his wealth, and his rank. Everything that a man could perform was expected of him; and many a hardship and grievance was borne patiently, in hope that on Byron’s arrival everything would be set right. The people were not disappointed; his conduct towards them after he had landed soon made him a popular idol. It was perceived that Byron was not a theoretical, but a practical, friend to Greece; and his repeated acts of kindness and charity in relieving the poor and distressed, the heavy expenses he daily incurred for the furtherance of every plan, and every institution which he deemed worthy of support, showed the people of Missolonghi that Byron was not less alive to their private than he was to their public interests. But there were some people, of course, who felt a slight attack of that pernicious malady known euphuistically as ‘the green-eyed monster’. Mavrocordato, the Governor-General of Western Greece, was, according to Millingen, slightly afflicted with envy. He had imagined, when using every means during Byron’s stay at Cephalonia[Pg 106] to induce him to come to Missolonghi, that he was preparing for himself a powerful instrument to execute his own designs, and that, by placing Byron in a prominent position which would require far more knowledge of the state of things than Byron could possibly possess, he would helplessly drift, and eventually fall entirely under his own guidance. But in this Mavrocordato was entirely mistaken, for Byron had long made up his mind as to the course which he meant to steer, and by sheer honesty of purpose and by the glamour of his fame his authority daily increased, while that of Mavrocordato fell in proportion, until his high-sounding title was little better than an empty phrase. The people of Missolonghi were fascinated by the personality of a man who had practically thrown his whole fortune at their feet. They openly spoke of the advantages that would be derived by Western Greece were Byron to be appointed its Governor-General.

Byron perceived the change in Mavrocordato’s conduct, and from that moment lost much of the confidence which he had at first felt in him.

[Pg 107]Mavrocordato thus laboured under a delusion. Far from having ambitious views, Byron would, in Millingen’s opinion, have refused, if the offer had been made to him, ever to take a part in civil administration. He knew too well how little his impetuous character fitted him for the tedious and intricate details of Greek affairs. ‘He had come to Greece to assist her sacred cause with his wealth, his talents, his courage; and the only reward he sought was a soldier’s grave.’

Had Lord Byron lived, says Millingen, the misunderstanding between these two distinguished individuals would have been merely temporary. Their principles and love of order were the same, as also the ends they proposed to attain. However different were the roads upon which they marched, they would have been sure to meet at last.

Colonel Leicester Stanhope was himself deserving of the praise which he thus bestows on Byron, the item ‘money’ being equally discarded. Colonel Stanhope was a chivalrous gentleman, and devoted himself heart and soul to the regeneration of Greece. But his views were not those of Byron. He was all for printing-presses, freedom of the press, and schools. Byron was all for fighting and organization in a military sense. Their aims were the same, but their methods entirely different. Byron recognized the virtues of Stanhope, and never seriously opposed any of his schemes. Stanhope was absolutely boiling over with enthusiasm regarding the advantages of publishing[Pg 108] a newspaper. His paramount policy, as he states himself in a letter to Mr. Bowring, was ‘to strive to offend no one, but, on the contrary, to make all friendly to the press.’ He contended for the absolute liberty of the press, and for publicity in every shape! It would be difficult to match such a contention applied to such a period and such a people. In forwarding the third number of the Greek Chronicle to Mr. Bowring, Stanhope writes: ‘The last article in the Chronicle is on Mr. Bentham. Its object is to dispose the people to read and contemplate his works. Conviction follows.’

Byron had a peculiar antipathy to Mr. Bentham and all his works, but he provided money to support the Chronicle. On January 24 Colonel Stanhope wrote to Mr. Bowring a letter which explains the position exactly; and a very peculiar position it was. After asking Byron whether he will subscribe £50 for the support of the Greek Chronicle, which Byron cheerfully agreed to do, Colonel Stanhope proceeds to ‘heckle’ him. The conversation is well worth transcribing:

In a subsequent letter to Mr. Bowring, Colonel Stanhope repeats a conversation with Byron on the subject of Mr. Bentham. One does not know whether to laugh or cry; there is both humour and pathos in the incident.

It would be difficult indeed to find anything in the wide range of literature dealing with that period which would throw a stronger light upon both these men. Imagine the agent appointed by the London Committee wasting his precious time in writing such a letter as this for the information of its chairman. Stanhope meant no harm, we feel sure of that; but such a letter was little calculated to advance either his own reputation or Byron’s, and it was above all things necessary for the London Committee to have a good opinion of both. But Stanhope was decidedly impetuous, and lacked all sense of humour.

Millingen tells us that it soon became evident that little co-operation could be expected between Byron and Colonel Stanhope. Byron was fully persuaded that, in the degraded state of the Greek nation, a republican form of Government was totally unsuited, as well as incompatible with her situation, in respect to the neighbouring States of Europe. Colonel Stanhope, whose enthusiasm for the cause was extreme, supposed the Greeks to be endowed with the same virtue which their ancestors displayed. We, who live in the twentieth century, are able by the light of subsequent events to decide which of these two men held the sounder view; and we can honestly deplore that a mere matter of opinion should have caused any disagreements between two men who had sacrificed so much in a common cause.

Gamba, who seems to have been present during the altercation above alluded to, says that Colonel Stanhope, in accusing Lord Byron of being an enemy to the press, laid himself open to a rejoinder which is[Pg 112] not recorded in the report of these proceedings. Byron’s reply was to the point: ‘And yet, without my money, where would your Greek newspaper be?’ And he concluded the sentence, ‘Judge me by my actions,’ cited by Stanhope, with, ‘not by my words.’

Colonel Stanhope could not understand Byron’s bantering moods. They seemed to him to be entirely out of place. The more Byron laughed and joked, the more serious Stanhope became, and their discussions seldom ended without a strong reproof, which irritated Byron for the moment. But so far from leaving any unfavourable impression on Byron’s mind, it increased his regard for an antagonist of such evident sincerity:

With the money provided by Byron, Colonel Stanhope’s pet scheme, the Greek Chronicle, printed in Greek type, came into being. Its editor, ‘a hot-headed republican’ named Jean Jacques Meyer, who had been a Swiss doctor, was particularly unfitted for the post, and soon came to loggerheads with Byron for publishing a violent attack on the Austrian Government. In a letter to Samuel Barff, Byron says:

On the appearance of Meyer’s stupid attack on monarchy, Byron immediately suppressed the whole edition.

Early in March the prospectus of a polyglot newspaper, entitled the Greek Telegraph, was published at Missolonghi. Millingen says:

Gamba says:

Byron believed that the moment had arrived for uniting the Greeks; the approach of danger and the chance of succour seemed favourable to his designs.

[Pg 115]Early in February, 1824, Colonel Stanhope proposed to go into the Morea, in order to co-operate in the great work of appeasing the discords of that country. Prince Mavrocordato wrote privately to Sir Thomas Maitland[19] in the hope of averting trouble consequent upon the infraction of the neutrality of the Ionian territory at Ithaca. Lord Byron forwarded his letter to Lord Sidney Osborne.[20] with the following explanation:

This letter is dated from Missolonghi, February 9, 1824. On February 11 Byron heard the news of the death of Sir Thomas Maitland. Parry says:

Parry throws light upon Byron’s attitude towards Mavrocordato, to which we alluded in a previous chapter.

The following incident, related by Parry, seems to fall naturally into this part of our narrative:

Byron was remarkably sincere and frank in all his words and actions. Parry says that he never harboured a thought concerning another man that he did not express to his face; neither could he bear duplicity in others. If one person were to speak[Pg 118] against a third party, in Byron’s presence, he would be sure to repeat it the first time the two opponents were in presence of one another. This was a habit, says Parry, of which his acquaintance were well aware, and it spared Byron the trouble of listening to many idle and degrading calumnies. He probably expected thereby to teach others a sincerity which he so highly prized; but it must be added that he derived pleasure from witnessing the confusion of the person thus exposed. We recognize Byron in this trait, as none of his biographers have omitted to mention the extraordinary indiscretion of his confidences; but never before was his habit of ‘blabbing’ turned to a better use.

It is generally admitted that the Greeks were supine to the last degree. Little or nothing had been done to repair the losses resulting from the late campaign, nor had adequate preparations been made for the struggle in prospect. Through their improvidence, the Greeks had neither money nor materials. Neither in the Morea nor in Western Greece had any steps been taken to meet an assault by the enemy. The fortifications, that had suffered in the previous campaign, were left in statu quo. The Greek fleet was practically non-existent, owing to the insufficiency of money wherewith to pay the crews. In addition to internal dissensions, which might at any moment give rise to a civil war, the French and English Governments were continually demanding satisfaction for breaches of neutrality, or for acts of piracy committed by vessels of the Greek fleet, under a singular misapprehension of the game of war. In the midst of all these depressing conditions Byron kept his intense enthusiasm for the cause, and whatever may have[Pg 119] been the errors in his policy, everyone acknowledged the purity of his motives and the intensity of his zeal.

Prince Mavrocordato and Colonel Stanhope were not on very good terms. The Colonel had no confidence in the Prince, and, indeed, openly defied and opposed him. His hostility to Mavrocordato became so marked that both Greeks and English were persuaded that he was endeavouring to break up the establishment at Missolonghi, and to remove all the stores, belonging to the Committee, to Athens.

Byron was much displeased by the neglect which he had experienced at the hands of the London Committee, who, instead of sending supplies that would have been of some use, sent printing-presses, maps, and bugles. Books and Bibles were sent to a people who wanted guns, and when they asked for a sword they sent the lever of a printing-press. The only wonder was that they did not send out a pack of beagles. Colonel Stanhope, who might perhaps have been of some use in a military capacity, began organizing the whole country in accordance with Mr. Bentham’s views of morality and justice. In this he acted entirely on his own responsibility, and rarely consulted Byron or Mavrocordato before carrying his[Pg 120] wild schemes into execution. Byron said of him, in a moment of exasperation:

Byron placed practice before precept, and was content to wait until the Turks had been driven out of Greece before entering upon any scheme for the cultivation of the soil and the development of commerce. He always maintained that Colonel Stanhope began at the wrong end, and was foolish to expect, by introducing some signs of wealth and knowledge, to make the people of Greece both rich and intelligent.

The vexations to which Byron was daily subjected during his stay at Missolonghi, and the insufficiency of the diet which he prescribed for himself against the advice of his medical attendant, so affected his nervous[Pg 121] system, which by nature was highly irritable, that at last he broke down. Count Gamba says:

As Gamba is no longer a witness of what actually happened, we refer the reader to the statement of Parry himself:

According to Gamba:

The attack had been brought on by the vexations which he had long suffered in silence, and borne heroically. But his mode of living was a contributory cause. He ate nothing but fish, cheese, and vegetables—having regulated his table, says Gamba, so as not to cost more than 45 paras. This he did to show that he could live on fare as simple as that of the Greek soldiers.

Byron had scarcely recovered consciousness, when a false alarm was brought to him that the Suliotes had risen, and were about to attack the building where the arms were stored.

[Pg 124]Dr. Millingen says that Dr. Bruno had at first proposed opening a vein; but finding it impossible to obtain Byron’s consent, he applied leeches to the temples, which bled so copiously as almost to bring on syncope. Byron, alarmed to see the difficulty Dr. Bruno had in stopping the hæmorrhage, sent for Millingen, who, by the application of lunar caustic, succeeded in stopping the flow of blood.

In Millingen’s opinion, Byron was never the same man after this; a change took place in his mental and bodily functions.

On one occasion Byron said to Dr. Millingen that he did not wish for life; it had ceased to have any attraction for him.

[Pg 125]Two days after this seizure Byron made the following entry in his journal:

The following note, which is entered by Mr. Rowland Prothero in the new edition of Lord Byron’s ‘Letters and Journals,’[21] was dashed off by Byron in pencil, on the day of his seizure, February 15, 1824:

No better proof could be given of the perplexities which worried him at that particular time. But the surrounding gloom was lightened now and then by some of Parry’s stories. The following anecdote about Jeremy Bentham was an especial favourite with[Pg 126] Byron; Parry’s sea-terms and drollery doubtless heightened its effect:

Parry tells us that Byron took a great interest in all that concerned the welfare of the working classes, and particularly of the artisans.

Parry remarks that it would be folly to attribute to Byron any love for democracy, as the term was then understood. Although the bent of his mind was more Liberal than Conservative, he was not a party man in its narrow sense. He was a sworn foe to injustice, cruelty, and oppression; such was the alpha and omega of his political prejudices. He would be an inveterate enemy to any Government which oppressed one class for the benefit of another class, and which did not allow its subjects to be free and happy.

In speaking of America, Byron said:

 

 

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[Pg 132]

CHAPTER X

According to Gamba’s journal, on the day following the seizure to which we have referred, Byron followed up his former efforts to inculcate the principles and practice of humanity into both the nations engaged in the war. There were twenty-four Turks, including women and children, who had suffered all the rigours of captivity at Missolonghi since the beginning of the revolution. Byron caused them to be released, and sent at his own cost to Prevesa. The following letter, which he addressed to the English Consul at that port, deserves a place in this record:

The details of this incident have hitherto passed almost unnoticed. The whole story is full of pathos, and affords a view of Byron’s real character.

In June, 1821, when Missolonghi and Anatolico proclaimed themselves parts of independent Greece, all Turkish residents were arrested. The males were cruelly put to death, and their wives and families were handed over to the Greek householders as slaves. The miseries these defenceless people endured while Death stared them daily in the face are indescribable. Millingen says:

Hatajè! and what became of little Hatajè? On February 23 Byron wrote to his sister:

Meanwhile, Byron, wishing to remove the child from Missolonghi, seems to have proposed to Dr. Kennedy at Cephalonia that Mrs. Kennedy should take temporary charge of her. Writing to Kennedy on March 4, 1824, Byron says:

This arrangement fell through, and was never carried out. The child remained at Missolonghi with her mother until Byron’s death. Then, by the irony of fate, they departed in the Florida—the vessel that bore the dead body of their protector to the inhospitable lazaretto at Zante. With wonderful prophetic instinct, Byron, long before his voyage to Greece, gave to the world the vision of[Pg 137] another Hatajè, rescued from death on the field of battle:

‘The Moslem orphan went with her protector,
For she was homeless, houseless, helpless; all
Her friends, like the sad family of Hector,
Had perished in the field or by the wall:
Her very place of birth was but a spectre
Of what it had been: there the Muezzin’s call
To prayer was heard no more—and Juan wept,
And made a vow to shield her, which he kept.’

Blaquière, who was at Zante when the Florida was placed in quarantine, says:

According to Millingen, when Hatajè and her mother arrived at Patras, the child’s father received them in a transport of joy. ‘I thought you slaves,’ said the father in embracing them, ‘and, lo! you return to me decked like brides.’

And that is all that we know—all, we suppose, that can be known—of little Hatajè! She may still be alive, the last survivor of those who had spoken to Byron! If, in her ninety-third year, she still recalls the events of 1824, she will hold up the torch with modest pride, while the present writer commemorates[Pg 138] one, out of many, of the noble actions performed by the poet Byron.

‘This special honour was conferred, because
He had behaved with courage and humanity—
Which last men like, when they have time to pause
From their ferocities produced by vanity.
His little captive gained him some applause
For saving her amidst the wild insanity
Of carnage—and I think he was more glad in her
Safety, than his new order of St. Vladimir.’
Don Juan, Canto VIII., CXL.

 

 

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[Pg 139]

CHAPTER XI

On February 17 there was great excitement at Missolonghi on account of a Turkish brig-of-war, which had run ashore on a sand-bank about seven miles from the city.

Byron sent for Parry, and accosted him in his liveliest manner:

‘Now’s the day, Parry, and now’s the hour; now for your rockets, your fire-kites, and red-hot shots; now, Parry, for your Grecian fires. Onward, death or victory!’

Byron was still so weak that he could not rise from the sofa; but all the available soldiers manned the Greek boats, and set off in the hope of plunder. Parry and some other European officers went out to reconnoitre the brig, and discovered a broad and long neck of land, which separated the shallows from the sea, upon which it would be easy to plant a couple of guns and make an attack upon the brig. Parry says that he had only two guns fit for immediate service—a long three-pounder and a howitzer. The attack was to be made on the following day, and Byron gave orders that, in the event of any prisoners being taken, their lives were, if possible, to be spared. He offered to pay two dollars a head for each prisoner saved, to pay something more for officers, and have them cared for at Missolonghi at his own expense. He[Pg 140] also gave strict orders that the artillery brigade should be kept in reserve, so as to relieve and protect the Turkish prisoners. Early on the following day the guns were shipped, but, unfortunately, the boats ran aground, and much valuable time was lost. Meanwhile three Turkish brigs came to the rescue, and got into position so as to enfilade the beach. They manned their boats and tried to haul the brig into deep water, but without success; and seeing the Greeks preparing to attack, they thought it better to sheer off. But before doing so they managed to remove all the men, and as many of the brig’s stores as they could save, and then set the vessel on fire. Although Byron was disappointed in not having captured a prize, he was glad to hear that the brig had been burnt to the water’s edge. It was estimated that the loss of that vessel to the enemy would amount to nearly 20,000 dollars, and the little garrison of Missolonghi was highly elated at so important an achievement.

On February 19 a serious event occurred, which caused something like a revolution at Missolonghi, and might have been attended with more serious consequences if Byron had not shown a firm hand. It is thus related by Millingen:

It appears, from Gamba’s account of this unfortunate affair, that Lieutenant Sass was universally esteemed as one of the best and bravest of the foreigners in the service of Greece. The Suliote chiefs laid all the blame of this affray on Sass himself, whose imprudence in striking one of the proud and warlike race cannot be justified.

The Suliotes had already given many proofs of lawless insubordination, and several skirmishes had previously taken place between them and the people of Missolonghi. This last affair brought matters to a head, and Byron agreed, with the Primates and Mavrocordato, that these lawless troops must, at any cost, be got rid of.

Not only did their presence at Missolonghi alarm its inhabitants, but their fighting value had diminished, owing to their determination not to take any part in the projected siege of Lepanto, alleging as a reason that they were not disposed to fight against stone walls. Their dismissal was, however, not an easy matter, for they were practically masters of the city, and claimed 3,000 dollars as arrears of pay. The Primates, being applied to by Byron, declared that[Pg 142] they had no money. Under these circumstances it became absolutely necessary for Byron to find the money himself, which he did on the understanding that the Primates bound themselves to clear the town of this turbulent band. Upon payment of this money the Suliotes packed up their effects, and departed for Arta, thus putting an end to all Byron’s hopes of capturing the fortress of Lepanto. A report was at this time circulated in Missolonghi that the Turkish authorities had set a price on the lives of all Europeans engaged in the Greek service. This rumour added enormously to the difficulties of the situation; for the artificers, whom Parry had brought out from England to work in the arsenal, struck work, and applied to Byron for permission to return home. They said that they had bargained to be conducted into a place of safety. Byron tried, says Gamba, to persuade them that the affray had been accidental, that, after the departure of the Suliotes, nothing of the kind would happen again, and so long as he himself remained there could not be any serious danger. But all arguments were useless; the men were thoroughly demoralized, and went from Byron’s presence unshaken in their resolve to return to their native land.

Byron, writing to Kennedy on March 10, says with his usual good-nature:

In a letter to Barff, some days later, Byron once more alludes to these artificers, whose absence began to be seriously felt at the arsenal:

These are the men in whose interests Byron had written to Barff:

Byron was exceedingly vexed by these proceedings, and began to lose all hope of being of any real service to the Greeks. He told Gamba that he had lost time, money, patience, and even health, only to meet with deception, calumny, and ingratitude. Gamba begged[Pg 144] Byron to visit Athens, partly for the benefit of his health, and partly to be quit for a time from the daily annoyances to which he was subjected. But he refused, and determined to remain in that dismal swamp until he saw what turn things would take in the Morea, and until he received news of the success of the loan from London. He resolved meanwhile to fortify Missolonghi and Anatolico, and to drill the Greek troops into something like discipline.

In order to reorganize the artillery brigade, Byron agreed to furnish money which would encourage the Greeks to enlist. Artillery was the only arm that it was possible to form, as there were no muskets with bayonets suitable for infantry regiments, and the artillery was deficient both in officers and men. With great difficulty Parry succeeded in collecting some Greek artificers, and made some slight progress with his laboratory.

The weather improved, and Byron was able to take long rides, which had an excellent effect on his health and spirits. Artillery recruits came in faster than was expected, and were regularly trained for efficient service. It seemed as though the tide had turned. At about this time Byron received a letter from Mr. Barff, strongly urging his return to Zante for the purpose of regaining his usual health, which it was feared he would not attain at Missolonghi. Byron was touched by this mark of friendship, but would not grasp the hand that might have saved his life.

It may seem strange, but it is nevertheless certain, that Byron found more pleasure in the society of Parry, that ‘rough, burly fellow,’ than he did in the companionship of anyone else at Missolonghi. He thoroughly trusted the man, and even confided in him without reserve. Parry appreciated the honour of Byron’s intimacy, and his evidence of what passed during the last few weeks of Byron’s life is, so far as we are able to judge, quite reliable. He tells us that Byron had taken a small body of Suliotes into his own pay, and kept them about his person as a bodyguard. They consisted altogether of fifty-six men, and of these a certain number were always on duty. A large outer room in Byron’s house was used by them, and their carbines were hung upon its walls.

Parry gives a graphic description of the state of Missolonghi during this period, which compelled Byron to take a circuitous route whenever the state of the weather permitted him to ride. The pavements and condition of the streets were so bad that it was impossible to ride through them without the risk of breaking one’s neck.

The Suliote guard always attended Byron during his rides; and, though on foot, it was surprising to see their swiftness, says Parry. With carbines carried at the trail in their right hands, these agile mountaineers kept pace with the horses, even when Byron went at a gallop. It was a matter of honour with these Suliotes never to desert their chief; for they considered themselves responsible both to Greece and to England for his safety. Parry says:

Byron while in Greece abandoned his habit of spending the whole morning in bed, as was his custom in Italy. He rose at nine o’clock, and breakfasted at ten. This meal consisted of tea without either milk or sugar, dry toast, and water-cresses.

After an early dinner, composed of dried toast, vegetables, and cheese, with a very small quantity of wine or cider (Parry assures us that he never drank any spirituous liquors during any part of the day or night), Byron would attend the drilling of the officers of his corps, in an outer apartment of his own dwelling, and went through all the exercises which it was proper for them to learn. When this was finished he very often played a bout of singlestick, or underwent some other severe muscular exertion. He then retired for the evening, to spin yarns with his friends or to study military tactics. Parry says:

It was at the end of February that Mr. George Finlay, who afterwards wrote a ‘History of Greece,’ arrived at Missolonghi. He brought a message from Odysseus, and also from Edward Trelawny, inviting both Byron and Mavrocordato to a Conference at Salona. Gamba, writing on February 28, 1824, says:

On the following day Gamba wrote in his journal these ominous words:

On March 13 all the shops in the town of Missolonghi were shut, owing to a report that there was a case of the plague there. It seems that a Greek merchant who came from Gastuni was attacked with violent sickness and died within a few hours. After death several black pustules appeared on his face, arms, and back. The doctors were undecided as to whether it was a case of poisoning or of plague. It was ascertained[Pg 149] that great mortality prevailed at Gastuni, but whether the plague or a fever was not known. Every possible precaution was taken to prevent infection, and the greatest alarm prevailed in the town. Everyone walked with a stick, to keep off the passer-by. It was realized by the doctors that, in a country so devoid of cleanliness, the plague would make alarming strides. Byron sent an express to Zante to communicate the intelligence to the Resident, and began to make plans for going into the mountains if the plague broke out. On the following day news arrived from Gastuni that there were no cases of the plague there. This intelligence restored a general confidence, and business was resumed as usual. Meanwhile, says Gamba,

The following anecdote, which is given on the authority of Parry, will show the respect in which Byron was held by the peasants in Greece:

 

 

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[Pg 151]

CHAPTER XII

It has been suggested by Byron’s enemies that he flattered himself with the notion of some day becoming King of Greece, and that his conduct during the latter part of his life was influenced by ambition. The idea is, of course, absurd. No one knew better than Byron that the Greek leaders were not disposed to accept a King at that time. He also knew that, in order to attain that position, it would have been necessary to have recourse to measures which were utterly repugnant to his deep sense of humanity and justice. That Byron may have been sounded by some of the intriguing chieftains with some such suggestion is more than probable, but he was far too honest to walk into the snare. One day he said to Parry:

[Pg 152]That Byron, if he had lived, and if he had chosen to usurp power, could have made himself a Dictator admits of no doubt. In the then state of that distracted country, and the well-known mercenary disposition of the Greeks, he might with his dollars have raised an army which would have made him supreme in Greece.

But Byron had no such views; he never wished to possess political power in Greece. He had come to serve the Greeks on their own conditions, and nothing could have made him swerve from that intention.

Byron’s talk with Trelawny at Cephalonia on this subject was not serious, and it took place before he had mastered all the perplexing problems connected with Greece.

It is to Byron’s lasting credit that, with so many opportunities for self-aggrandizement, he should have proved himself so unselfish and high-minded.

What might have happened if he had been able to attend the Congress at Salona we shall never know. But we feel confident, from a long and close study of Byron’s character, that, even if the Government and the chieftains had offered him the throne of Greece, he would have refused it. Not only would such a throne have been, figuratively, poised in air, swayed by every breath which the rival chieftains would have blown upon it, but Byron himself would have been accused, throughout the length and breadth of Europe, of exploiting the sufferings of Greece for his own[Pg 153] personal aggrandizement. While we are discussing this question, it is well to understand the position of affairs at the time when the proposal to hold a Congress at Salona was made.

The ostensible object of the Congress was to shake hands all round, to let bygones be bygones, and to unite all available forces in a spirit of amity. It was high time. The Morea was troubled by the hostilities between Colocotroni’s men and Government factions. Colocotroni[22] himself was shut up in Tripolitza, and his son Pano in Napoli di Romagna. Eastern Greece was more or less tranquil. Odysseus[23] was at Negropont, from whence seven hundred Albanians had lately absconded. The passes of Thermopylæ were insecure. Although Western Greece was for the moment tranquil, life in Missolonghi was not worth an hour’s purchase; and there was a serious split between the so-called Odysseans and the party of Mavrocordato, skilfully fostered by both Colonel Stanhope and Odysseus. Though Candia was subdued, the peasantry threatened a rising in the mountains; the Albanians were discontented; and, finally, the Government itself was not sleeping on a bed of roses, for it had most of the great military chiefs dead against it.

There were, in fact, at that time two Governments—one at Argos and one at Tripolitza—and both hostile[Pg 154] to each other. The Primates were in favour of a Turkish form of government, and they had great influence in the Morea. The chiefs, on the contrary, while professing democratic principles, were really in favour of frank terrorism and plunder. Some of them were personally brave; others were the offspring of heroes, whom the Turks had never been able to subdue, and who held a sort of feudal tenure over lands which they had kept by the sword. The people of the Peloponnesus were under the influence of the civil and military oligarchs; those of Eastern and Western Greece were chiefly under the captains. Of these, Odysseus and Mavrocordato were the most influential. The islands Hydra and Spezzia were under the influence of some rich oligarchs; while Ipsara was purely democratic. The only virtue to be found in Greece was monopolized by the peasantry, who had passed through a long period of Turkish oppression without being tainted by that corruption which was so prevalent in the towns. Indeed, the peasants and some of the islanders were the finest examples of the ‘national’ party, which had never been subdued by military or civil tyrants. When we consider the mercenary character of the Greeks, their real or assumed poverty, their insatiable demands for Byron’s money; when one realizes the hopeless tangle into which greed and ambition had thrown the affairs of Greece (the open hostility of the capitanis to any settled form of government), it is evident that the supreme management of such a circus would have been no sinecure. No one believed that Greece, under the conditions then prevailing, would have found repose under a foreign King. Nothing short of a cruel, unflinching despotism would have quieted the country.

[Pg 155]It is, of course, possible that the chiefs assembled at Salona would have offered to Byron the general direction of affairs in the western continent. Gamba says that he had heard rumours to the effect that in a short time the general government of Greece would have been placed in Byron’s hands. ‘Considering,’ he says, ‘the vast addition to his authority which the arrival of the moneys from England would have insured to Byron, such an idea is by no means chimerical.’

Writing to Barff on March 22, Byron says:

 

 

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[Pg 156]

CHAPTER XIII

On March 22 news reached Missolonghi that the Greek loan had been successfully raised in London. Byron sent this welcome intelligence to the Greek Government, with a request that no time should be lost in fitting out the fleet at the different islands. The artillery corps at Missolonghi was augmented by one hundred regular troops under the command of Lambro, a brave Suliote chief, for the better protection of the guns stationed in the mountains. Unfortunately, the weather, upon which Byron so much depended for exercise, could not possibly have been worse. Incessant rain and impassable roads confined him to the house until his health was seriously affected. He constantly complained of oppression on his chest, and was altogether in a depressed condition of mind.

On the day fixed for his departure for Salona, the River Phidari was so swollen as not to be fordable, and the roads in every direction were impassable. For many days the rain poured down in torrents, until, to employ Byron’s quaint phrase, ‘The dykes of Holland, when broken down, would be the deserts of Arabia for dryness, in comparison.’

On March 28 an event occurred to which Byron has alluded in his published correspondence. It was a trifling matter enough, but might have had serious consequences if Byron had not shown great firmness.[Pg 157] One of the artillerymen, an Italian, had robbed a poor peasant in the market-place of 25 piastres. The man was in due course arrested, tried by court-martial, and convicted. There was no doubt as to his guilt, but a serious dispute arose among the officers as to his punishment. The Germans were for the bastinado; but that was contrary to the French military code, under which the man was tried, and Byron strongly opposed its infliction. He declared that, so far as he was concerned, no barbarous usages should be introduced into Greece, especially as such a mode of punishment would disgust rather than reform. He proposed that, instead of corporal punishment, the offender should have his uniform stripped off his back, and be marched through the streets, bearing a label describing the nature of his offence. He was then to be handed over to the regular police and imprisoned for a time. This example of severity, tempered by humanity, produced an excellent effect upon the soldiers and the citizens of Missolonghi. In the course of the evening some high words passed on the subject between three Englishmen, two of them being officers of the brigade, cards were exchanged, and two duels were to be fought the next morning. Byron did not hear of this until late at night. He then ordered Gamba to arrest the whole party. When they were afterwards brought before Byron, he with some difficulty prevailed upon them to shake hands, and thus averted a serious scandal. Gamba, writing on March 30, says that the Primates of Missolonghi on that day presented Byron with the freedom of their town.

On the following night a Greek came with tears rolling down his cheeks, and complained that one of Byron’s soldiers had, in a drunken frenzy, broken open his door and with drawn sword alarmed his whole family. He appealed to Byron for protection. Without a moment’s hesitation Byron sent an officer with a file of men to arrest the delinquent. He was a Russian who had lately arrived and enlisted in the artillery brigade. The man vowed that the charge was false; that he had lodged in that house for several days, and that he only broke the door open because the Greek would not admit him, and kept him outside in the rain. He moreover complained of the time and manner of his arrest, and sent a letter to Byron accusing the officer who had arrested him. Byron’s reply was as follows:

It is doubtful whether any other commanding officer would, in similar circumstances, have taken the trouble to write such a letter to a private in his regiment. We merely allude to the incident in order to show that even in trivial matters Byron performed his duty towards those under his command, taking especial interest in each case, so that breaches of discipline might not be too harshly treated by his subordinates.

On April 3 the whole town of Missolonghi was thrown into a panic of alarm. A rumour quickly spread that a body of troops had disembarked at Chioneri, a village on the southern shore of the city. At two o’clock in the afternoon about one hundred and fifty men, belonging to the chief Cariascachi, landed, and demanded reparation for an injury which had been inflicted on his nephew by some boatmen belonging to Missolonghi. Meanwhile the man who wounded the young man had absconded; and the soldiers, unable to wreak their vengeance upon them, arrested two of the Primates, and sent them to Cariascachi as hostages.[Pg 160] They then seized the fort at Vasiladi, a small mud island commanding the flats, which on the sea side afford an impenetrable defence to the town. Cariascachi further declared that he would neither give up the Primates nor Vasiladi until the men who had wounded his nephew were delivered into his hands. On the same day seven Turkish vessels anchored off Vasiladi. Cariascachi had long been suspected of a treasonable correspondence with the Turks, and Mavrocordato was quick to perceive that his conduct on this occasion, coinciding as it did with the movements of the enemy, was part of a conspiracy against his authority in Western Greece. He expected every moment to hear that the Turks had taken possession of Vasiladi, and guessed that the soldiers sent by Cariascachi, ostensibly to avenge a private injury, had really come to open the gates to the Turks. It was a critical moment indeed. All the disposable troops were in the provinces; the Suliotes were marching to Arta, and some of them had already accepted service under Cariascachi himself.

Byron, with wonderful self-command, concealed his indignation at such evidence of treason, and urged Mavrocordato to dismiss his fears, and to display all possible energy in order to defeat Cariascachi’s designs. He offered his own services, that of the artillery brigade, and of the three hundred Suliotes who formed his guard. Gunboats were sent to Vasiladi with orders to dislodge the rebels, and Byron resolved that the suspected treason of this Greek chieftain should be severely punished. The batteries of Missolonghi were immediately secured by the artillerymen, and several of their guns were pointed towards the town, so as to prevent a surprise.

[Pg 161]At the approach of the gunboats the rebels precipitately fled, and, perceiving the resolute bearing assumed by Byron’s troops, they immediately surrendered the Primates, and humbly asked permission to retire unmolested. This was of course granted, but Cariascachi was subsequently tried by court-martial, and found guilty of holding treasonable communications with the enemy.

According to Millingen, who was at Missolonghi at that time, it was not proved against Cariascachi that he had ever proposed to deliver up Vasiladi and Missolonghi to the Turks; but appearances were certainly against him, and his subsequent flight to Agraffa seems to have given evidence of a guilty conscience. Byron was deeply mortified by this example of treason on the part of a Greek chieftain. He had not been prepared to meet with black-hearted treachery, or to see Greeks conspiring against their own country, courting the chains of their former masters, and bargaining the liberties and very existence of their own fellow-countrymen.

[Pg 162]While absorbed by the gloomy reflections to which this incident gave rise, a spy was discovered under Byron’s own roof. A man named Constantine Volpiotti, it was asserted, had had several conferences with Cariascachi at Anatolico. Letters found upon him confirmed the worst suspicions, and he was handed over by Byron’s orders to the tender mercies of the town guard. A military commission subsequently examined minutely into the whole affair. It appears that the incriminating letters found in Volpiotti’s clothes were those written by Mavrocordato and other patriots to Cariascachi, reproaching him for his treachery and connivance with the enemy. These Volpiotti was to show to Omer Pacha as certificates to prove how faithful Cariascachi had ever been to his engagements with him.

Under these circumstances it was not wise, even if it were politic, to allow Cariascachi to escape. Byron felt this keenly, and foresaw what actually happened. Cariascachi was no sooner clear of Anatolico than he placed himself at the head of his followers, and, assisted by Andrea Isco, of Macrinoro, he again made Agraffa and its adjoining provinces the scene of his depredations and daily sanguinary encounters.

Gamba tells us that Byron, after the events above mentioned, became nervous and irritable. He had not been on horseback for some days on account of the weather, but on April 9, though the weather was threatening, he determined to ride. Three miles from the town he and Gamba were caught in a heavy downpour of rain, and they returned to the town walls wet through and in a violent perspiration. Gamba says:

Byron said that he suffered a great deal of pain, and in consequence Dr. Bruno proposed to bleed him. Bruno seems to have considered the lancet as a sovereign remedy for all the ills of life.

‘Have you no other remedy than bleeding? There are many more die of the lancet than the lance,’ said Byron, as he declined his doctor’s proposal. On the[Pg 164] following day he was perpetually shuddering, but he got up at his usual hour and transacted business. He did not, however, leave the house. On April 11 Byron resolved to ride out an hour before his usual time, fearing that, if he waited, he would be prevented by the rain.

The dates to which Gamba refers in the statement we have quoted were April 11 and 12. It is important to remark that in Fletcher’s account, published in the Westminster Review, it is stated that the last time Byron rode out was on April 10. According to Parry, who supports Fletcher’s opinion, Byron was very unwell on April 11, and did not leave his house. He had shivering fits, and complained of pains, particularly in his bones and head.

Gamba, in his journal, says that Byron rose from his bed on April 13, but did not leave the house. The fever appeared to be diminished, but the pains in his head and bones continued. He was melancholy and irritable. He had not slept since his attack, and could take no other nourishment than a little broth and a[Pg 165] spoonful or two of arrowroot. On the 14th he got out of bed at noon; he was calmer. The fever had apparently diminished, but he was very weak, and still complained of pains in his head. It was with the greatest difficulty, says Gamba, that the physicians dissuaded him from going out riding, which, in spite of the threatening weather, he desired to do. There seems at that time to have been no suspicion of danger, and it was even supposed by his doctors that the malady was under control. Byron himself said that he was rather glad of his fever, as it might cure him of his tendency to epilepsy. He attended to his correspondence as usual. Gamba says:

On April 15 the fever was still upon him, says Gamba, but all pain had ceased. He was easier, and expressed a wish to ride out, but the weather would not permit. He transacted business, and received, among others, a letter from the Turkish Governor to whom he had sent the prisoners he had liberated. The Turk thanked Byron for his courtesy, and asked for a repetition of this favour. ‘The letter pleased him much,’ says Gamba.

According to Fletcher, it appears that both on that day and the day previous Byron had a suspicion that his complaint was not understood by his doctors.

Parry says that on April 15 the doctors thought there was no danger, and said so, openly. He paid[Pg 166] Byron a visit, and remained at his bedside from 7 p.m. until 10 o’clock.

Byron then spoke of the sadness of being ill in such a place as Missolonghi, and seemed to have imagined the possibility of a reconciliation with his wife.

Byron then spoke of Tita (and Fletcher also, doubtless, though Parry does not mention that honest and faithful servant), and said that Bruno was an excellent young man and very skilful, but too much agitated. He hoped that Parry would come to him as often as possible, as he was jaded to death by the worrying of his doctors, and the evident anxiety of all those who wished him well. On a wretched fever-stricken swamp, in a house barely weather-tight, in a miserable room, far from all those whom he loved on earth, lay the ‘pilgrim of eternity,’ his life, so full of promise, slowly flickering out. The pestilent sirocco was blowing a hurricane, and the rain was falling with almost tropical violence. Gamba had met with an accident which confined him to his quarters in another[Pg 167] part of the town, a circumstance which deprived Byron of a loyal friend in the hour of his direst need. Under these circumstances, Parry was a godsend to Byron, and he seems to have done everything possible to cheer him in his moments of depression.

On April 16 Byron was alarmingly ill, and, according to Parry, almost constantly delirious. He spoke alternately in English and Italian, and his thoughts wandered. The doctors were not alarmed, and told Parry that Byron would certainly recover. According to Millingen’s account, Dr. Bruno called him in for a consultation on the 15th, and we shall see what Millingen thought of his patient’s condition when we lay his narrative before the reader.

When Parry visited Byron on the morning of the 17th, he was at times delirious. He appeared to be much worse than on the day before. The doctors succeeded in bleeding him twice, and both times he fainted.

On the 17th Gamba managed to get to Byron’s room, and was struck by the change in his appearance.

On this day Gamba heard that Dr. Thomas, of Zante, had been sent for. It is unfortunate that this was not done sooner; but Byron had forbidden Fletcher to send for that excellent medical man, when he proposed it two days previously. During the night of the 17th Byron became delirious, and wandered in his speech; he fancied himself at the head of his Suliotes, assailing the walls of Lepanto—a wish that had lain very close to his heart for many and many a day. It was his dream of a soldier’s glory, to die fighting, sword in hand. On the morning of the 18th Drs. Millingen and Bruno were alarmed by symptoms of an inflammation of the brain, and proposed another bleeding, to which Byron consented, but soon ordered the vein to be closed.

April 18, 1824, was Easter Day, a holiday throughout the length and breadth of Greece, and a noisy one, too. It is the day on which the Greeks at Missolonghi were accustomed to discharge their firearms and great guns. Prince Mavrocordato gave orders that Parry should march his artillery brigade and Suliotes to some distance from the town, in order[Pg 169] to attract the populace from the vicinity of Byron’s house. At the same time the town guard patrolled the streets, and informed people of Byron’s danger, begging them to make as little noise as possible. The plan succeeded admirably; Byron was not disturbed, and at three o’clock in the afternoon he rose, and, leaning on the arm of Tita, went into the next room. When seated, he told Tita to bring him a book, mentioning it by name. About this time Dr. Bruno entreated him, with tears in his eyes, to be again bled.

‘No,’ said Byron; ‘if my hour is come, I shall die whether I lose my blood or keep it.’

After reading a few minutes he became faint, and, leaning on Tita’s arm, he tottered into the next room and returned to bed.

At half-past three, Dr. Bruno and Dr. Millingen, becoming more alarmed, wished to call in two other physicians, a Dr. Freiber, a German, and a Greek named Luca Vaya, the most distinguished of his profession in the town, and physician to Mavrocordato. Lord Byron at first refused to see them; but being told that Mavrocordato advised it, he said: ‘Very well, let them come; but let them look at me and say nothing.’ They promised this, and were admitted. When about him and feeling his pulse, one of them wished to speak. ‘Recollect your promise,’ said Byron, ‘and go away.’

In order to form some idea of the state of things while Byron’s life was slowly ebbing away, we will quote a passage from Parry’s book, which was published soon after the poet’s death:

At four o’clock on April 18, according to Gamba, Byron seemed to be aware of his approaching end. Dr. Millingen, Fletcher, and Tita, were at his bedside. Strange though it may seem to us in these far-off days, with our experience of medical men, Dr. Millingen, unable to restrain his tears, walked out of the room. Tita also wept profusely, and would have retired if Byron had not held his hand. Byron looked at him steadily, and said, half smiling, in Italian: ‘Oh, questa è una bella scena.’ He then seemed to reflect a moment, and exclaimed, ‘Call Parry.’

When he came to himself Fletcher was with him. He then knew that he was dying, and seemed very anxious to make his servant understand his wishes. He was very considerate about his servants, and said that he was afraid they would suffer from sitting up so long in attendance upon him. Byron said, ‘I wish to do something for Tita and Luca.’ ‘My lord,’ said Fletcher, ‘for God’s sake never mind that now, but talk of something of more importance.’ But he returned to the same topic, and, taking Fletcher by the hand, continued: ‘You will be provided for—and now hear my last wishes.’

Fletcher begged that he might bring pen and paper to take down his words. ‘No,’ replied Lord Byron, ‘there is no time—mind you execute my orders. Go to my sister—tell her—go to Lady Byron—you will see her, and say——’ Here his voice faltered, and gradually became indistinct; but still he continued muttering something in a very earnest manner for nearly twenty minutes, though in such a tone that only a few words could be distinguished. These were only names: ‘Augusta,’ ‘Ada,’ ‘Hobhouse,’ ‘Kinnaird.’ He then said: ‘Now I have told you all.’

‘My lord,’ replied Fletcher, ‘I have not understood a word your lordship has been saying.’ Byron looked most distressed at this, and said, ‘Not understand me? What a pity! Then it is too late—all is over.’ ‘I hope not,’ answered Fletcher; ‘but the Lord’s will be done.’ Byron continued, ‘Yes, not mine.’ He then tried to utter a few words, of which none were intelligible except, ‘My sister—my child.’ The doctors[Pg 172] began to concur in an opinion which one might have thought sufficiently obvious from the first, namely, that the principal danger to the patient was his extreme weakness, and now agreed to administer restoratives. Dr. Bruno, however, thought otherwise, but agreed to administer a dose of claret, bark, and opium, and to apply blisters to the soles of Byron’s feet. He took the draught readily, but for some time refused the blisters. At last they were applied, and Byron fell asleep.

Gamba says: ‘He awoke in half an hour. I wished to go to him, but I had not the heart. Parry went; Byron knew him, and squeezed his hand.’

Parry says:

It must be borne in mind that the details given above were written by a man who asserts that he was present during the period of which he gives an account. Gamba, as we have seen, was not present, and the details which he gives are avowedly gathered from those who happened to be in the room.

He said this in Italian, and Parry may of course not have understood him. ‘Io lascio qualche cosa di caro nel mondo.’ He also said: ‘I am content to die.’ In speaking of Greece, he said: ‘I have given her my time, my means, my health, and now I give her my life! What could I do more?’

Byron remained insensible, immovable, for twenty-four hours. There were occasional symptoms of suffocation, and a rattling in the throat, which induced his servants occasionally to raise his head. Gamba says:

 

 

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[Pg 174]

CHAPTER XIV

It matters little what we now think of Byron as a man. After eighty-four years, his personality is of less public interest than his achievements, while our capacity for forming an adequate judgment of his character is necessarily dependent on second-hand evidence, some of which is false, and much tainted by prejudice. But what did those hard men of action who stood at his side in those terrible days in Greece—Stanhope, Parry, Finlay, Blaquière, Millingen, Trelawny—what did they think of Byron?

Stanhope, who was at Salona, wrote to Bowring on April 30:

Three days later Stanhope wrote again to Bowring:

Parry says:

After Byron’s death Finlay wrote these words:

Blaquière, who had brought out the first instalment of the Greek loan, arrived at Zante on April 24, and was there informed of Byron’s death. He had been among the first to urge Byron to hasten his projected visit to Greece, and had held a long conversation with him at Genoa on the state of affairs in the Morea. The following extract is taken from a letter which he wrote to a friend in England:

Millingen says:

Trelawny, who arrived at Missolonghi four days after Byron’s death, thus writes to Stanhope at Salona:

On April 28 Trelawny wrote again to Stanhope:

Such was Trelawny’s opinion of Byron in April, 1824. From all that the present writer has been able to gather, both from Trelawny’s lips and from his ‘Recollections,’ published thirty-four years after Byron’s death, such was his real opinion to the last.

Mrs. Julian Marshall, having called attention[24] to the fact that, four months after Byron’s death, Trelawny, in a letter to Mary Shelley, spoke in contemptuous[Pg 179] terms of Byron, we feel bound to refer to it here. It must be remembered that the letter in question was of a strictly private nature. In making it public, Mrs. Marshall unintentionally dealt a severe blow at Trelawny, which, in justice to his memory, we will endeavour to soften.

To anyone acquainted with the character of this remarkable man—the fearless soul of honour—such a volte-face seems absurd, except on the hypothesis that something had transpired, since Byron’s death, sufficient to destroy a long-tried friendship. The fact is that during those four months the whole situation had changed. Trelawny, no longer a free-lance, was practically a prisoner in a cave on Mount Parnassus. His friend Odysseus went about in daily fear of assassination, and was persecuted by the active hostility of a Government which both Odysseus and Trelawny thought was inspired by Mavrocordato. Trelawny’s opinion of the latter, whose cause Byron had espoused, may be gathered from his letter to Mary Shelley:

It will be seen that Trelawny, when fairly warmed up, did not mince his words. It is indeed a pity that these heated adjectives were served up to the public. It was only because Byron had consistently supported Mavrocordato as the Governor of Western Greece that Trelawny, in his indiscriminative manner, assailed his memory. But his letter was evidently only the peevish[Pg 180] outburst of an angry man, and closed with these words:

‘I would do much to see and talk to you, but, as I am now too much irritated to disclose the real state of things, I will not mislead you by false statements.’

The state of things at the time may be gathered from a letter addressed to Colonel Stanhope by Captain Humphreys, who was then serving the Greek cause as a volunteer.

There is enough in this letter to account for Trelawny’s irritation; but he was entirely wrong in thinking that Byron was in any sense subservient to the man whom he then regarded as the real author of his misfortunes. Trelawny had made the mistake of joining the faction of Odysseus, but Byron was never connected with any faction whatever. Odysseus seems to have persuaded Trelawny that Byron had become a mere tool of Mavrocordato, and it was under that erroneous impression that his letter to Mary Shelley was written.

If, as Mrs. Julian Marshall says, ‘Trelawny’s mercurial and impulsive temperament—ever in extremes—was liable to the most sudden revulsion of feeling,’ it[Pg 181] would surely have been wiser, and certainly fairer, to have withheld the publication of opinions which were not intended for publication, and which he had, in later life, openly disavowed. In his estimate of the character and policy of Mavrocordato, he was also mistaken. It would be quite easy to show that Mavrocordato was perhaps the only man of his nation, then in Greece, who united in an eminent degree unadulterated patriotism with the talents which form a statesman. Millingen, who knew him well, tells us that it was fortunate for Greece that Mavrocordato was so well acquainted with the character of those with whom he had to deal. That knowledge preserved Missolonghi, until the arrival of reinforcements enabled it to hold out against Omer Pacha’s assault. Mavrocordato, he tells us, never pursued any other object than the good of his country, and never sacrificed her interests to his own ambition. He alone was capable of organizing a civil administration; in fact, he created a stable form of government from the ashes of chaos. So far from his having been a coward, as Trelawny asserts, Mavrocordato, in his intense desire to serve his country, often placed himself at the head of troops and fought bravely. Having held the position of Governor-General of Western Greece in very trying times, he relinquished his command in 1825, in compliance with the orders of his Government, which recalled him to Anapli, there to fill the post of Secretary of State. He sacrificed the whole of his fortune in the service of Greece. According to Millingen, he was occasionally so distressed for money as to be unable to provide for his daily expenses.

Enough has been said to show that Trelawny’s abuse of Byron must not be taken too seriously, and[Pg 182] that his opinion of Mavrocordato was not endorsed by those whose opportunities for judging the Prince’s conduct were far greater than Trelawny’s.

Let us dismiss from our minds the recollection of hasty words written in anger, and let us remember those truer and deeper sentiments which Trelawny expressed in his old age:

 

 

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[Pg 183]

CHAPTER XV

The news of Byron’s death spread like wildfire through the streets and bazaars of Missolonghi. The whole city seemed stunned by the unexpected blow. Byron’s illness had been known, but no one dreamed that it would end so fatally. As Gamba has well said: ‘He died in a strange land, and amongst strangers; but more loved, more sincerely wept, he could never have been wherever he had breathed his last.’

On the day of Byron’s death, Mavrocordato issued the following proclamation, which forms a real and enduring tribute to the memory of one who, in the prime of life, died in a great cause:

At sunrise, on the day following Byron’s death, thirty-seven minute-guns were fired from the principal battery; and one of the batteries belonging to the corps immediately under his orders fired a gun every half-hour during the day. We take the following from Gamba’s journal:

Spiridion Tricoupi, a son of one of the Primates of Missolonghi, pronounced the funeral oration in the following words, translated from the modern Greek by an inhabitant of Missolonghi:

Soon after death, Byron’s body was embalmed, and a report of the autopsy will be found in the Appendix.

Millingen says:

Trelawny arrived at Missolonghi on April 24, after the body had been embalmed. He states that Byron’s right leg was shorter than the other, and the right foot was the most distorted, being twisted inwards, so that only the edge could have touched the ground. The discrepancy between Trelawny’s statement and that of Millingen is probably due to the fact that nearly[Pg 192] thirty-four years had passed before Trelawny’s book was written.

Trelawny wrote, from Fletcher’s dictation, full particulars of Byron’s last illness and death. It is presumably from these notes that Trelawny drafted his letter to Colonel Stanhope, dated April 28, 1814. In reference to that letter, Gamba says:

As Trelawny was not present during the illness and death of Byron, he cannot be held responsible for any inaccuracies that may appear in his ‘Records.’ He merely wrote from Fletcher’s dictation, without adding one word of his own.

On Fletcher’s return to England, he gave the following evidence:

Dr. Bruno’s answer to the above statement will be found in the Appendix.

 

 

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[Pg 198]

CHAPTER XVI

Several days passed after the requiem service held in the Church of S. Spiridion. Meanwhile the necessary preparations were made for transporting the body to Zante. On May 2 the coffin was carried down to the seaside on the shoulders of four military chiefs, and attended in the same order as before. The guns of the fortress saluted until the moment of embarkation. The vessel which bore the body reached the island of Zante on the third day after leaving Missolonghi, having, as Gamba says, taken the same course exactly as on the voyage out. The vessel, owing to head-winds, was brought to anchor close to the same rocks where Byron had sought shelter from the Turkish frigate.

Blaquière, who was at Zante at the time, says:

During the time that the body of Lord Byron was detained at the lazaretto, a discussion arose as to the[Pg 199] final disposal of the remains, Colonel Stanhope and others being of opinion that they should be interred in the Parthenon at Athens. It would seem that such a course would have met with Byron’s approval; but, in deference to what were then supposed to have been the wishes of the poet’s family, it was finally arranged to charter the brig Florida, which had lately arrived at Zante with the first instalment of the Greek loan. In this connection, the last entry in Gamba’s journal may be quoted in full:

The following tribute to Byron from the pen of Blaquière, written on May 24, 1824, must here be given:

At six o’clock on the evening of that day, Blaquière added the following words:

The following extracts are taken from Lord Broughton’s ‘Recollections of a Long Life,’ a work that was printed, but not published, in 1865. As the opinions of Byron’s life-long friend, John Cam Hobhouse, they cannot fail to interest the reader:[27]

The following account by Colonel Leicester Stanhope, probably outlined during his voyage home with Byron’s body, is well worth reading. It unveils the personality of Byron as he appeared during those trying times at Missolonghi, when, tortured by illness and worried by dissensions among his coadjutors, he gave his life to Greece. Stanhope’s sketch conveys the honest opinion of a man whose political views, differing fundamentally from those of Byron, brought them often in collision. But for this reason, perhaps,[Pg 205] this record is the more valuable. It is written without prejudice, with considerable perspicuity, and with unquestionable sincerity. Its peculiar value lies in the approval which, as we have seen, it received from Mr. Hobhouse, who undoubtedly was better acquainted with the character of Byron than any of his contemporaries.

On Monday, July 12, at eleven o’clock in the morning, the funeral procession, attended by a great number of carriages and by crowds of people, left No. 20, Great George Street, Westminster, and, passing the Abbey, moved slowly to St. Pancras Gate. Here a halt was made; the carriages returned, and the hearse proceeded by slow stages to Nottingham.

The Mayor and Corporation of Nottingham now joined the funeral procession. Mr. Hobhouse, who attended, tells us that the cortège extended about a quarter of a mile, and, moving very slowly, was five hours on the road to Hucknall-Torkard.

Hobhouse concludes his account with these words:

 

 

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[Pg 217]

PART II

WHAT THE POEMS REVEAL

‘Intesi, che a cosi fatto tormento Enno dannati i peccator carnali Che la ragion sommettono al talento.’ Inferno, Canto V., 37-39.

[Pg 218]

 

[Pg 219]

WHAT THE POEMS REVEAL

Lady Byron has expressed her opinion that almost every incident in Byron’s poems was drawn from his personal experience. In a letter to Lady Anne Barnard, written two years after the separation, she says:

Byron himself has told us in ‘Don Juan’ that his music ‘has some mystic diapasons, with much which could not be appreciated in any manner by the uninitiated.’ In a letter to John Murray (August 23, 1821), he says: ‘Almost all “Don Juan” is real life, either my own or from people I knew.’

It is no exaggeration to say that in Byron’s poems some of the mysterious incidents in his life are plainly revealed. For example, ‘Childe Harold,’ ‘The Giaour,’ ‘The Bride of Abydos,’ ‘The Corsair,’ ‘Lara,’ ‘The Dream,’ ‘Manfred,’ ‘Don Juan,’ and several of the smaller pieces, all disclose episodes connected with his own personal experience. In the so-called ‘Fugitive Pieces’ we get a glimpse of his school life and friendships;[Pg 220] his pursuits during the time that he resided with his mother at Southwell; and his introduction to Cambridge. In the ‘Hours of Idleness’ we are introduced to Mary Chaworth, after her marriage and the ruin of his hopes.

In the verse ‘Remembrance’ we realize that the dawn of his life is overcast. We see, from some verses written in 1808, how, three years after that marriage, he was still the victim of a fatal infatuation:

‘I deem’d that Time, I deem’d that Pride,
Had quench’d at length my boyish flame;
Nor knew, till seated by thy side,
My heart in all—save hope—the same.’

After lingering for three months in the neighbourhood of the woman whom he so unwisely loved, he finally resolved to break the chain:

‘In flight I shall be surely wise,
Escaping from temptation’s snare;
I cannot view my Paradise
Without the wish of dwelling there.’

When about to leave England, in vain pursuit of the happiness he had lost, he addresses passionate verses to Mary Chaworth:

‘And I must from this land be gone,
Because I cannot love but one.’

He tells her that he has had love passages with another woman, in the vain hope of destroying the love of his life:

‘But some unconquerable spell
Forbade my bleeding breast to own
A kindred care for aught but one.’

He wished to say farewell, but dared not trust himself. In the cantos of ‘Childe Harold,’ written during[Pg 221] his absence, he recurs to the subject nearest to his heart. He says that before leaving Newstead—

‘Oft-times in his maddest mirthful mood
Strange pangs would flash along Childe Harold’s brow,
As if the memory of some deadly feud
Or disappointed passion lurked below:
But this none knew, nor haply cared to know.’

He mentions his mother, from whom he dreaded to part, and his sister Augusta, whom he loved, but had not seen for some time. After his return to England in 1811, he wrote the ‘Thyrza’ poems, and added some stanzas to ‘Childe Harold,’ wherein he expresses a hope that the separation between himself and Mary Chaworth may not be eternal. He then pours out the sorrows of his heart to Francis Hodgson. We cannot doubt that the ‘Lines written beneath a Picture,’ composed at Athens in January, 1811,

‘Dear object of defeated care!
Though now of Love and thee bereft,’

referred to Mary Chaworth, for he mentions the deathblow of his hope. In the ‘Epistle to a Friend,’ Byron mentions the effect which a chance meeting with Mary had upon him, causing him to realize that ‘Time had not made him love the less.’

The poems that have puzzled the commentator most were those which Byron addressed to ‘Thyrza’—a mysterious personage, whose identity has not hitherto been discovered. The present writer proposes to enter fully, and, he hopes, impartially, into the subject, trusting that the conclusions at which he has arrived may ultimately be endorsed by others who have given their serious attention to the question at issue.

In any attempt to unravel the mystery of the[Pg 222] ‘Thyrza’ poems, it will be necessary to consider, not only the circumstances in which they were written, but also those associations of Byron’s youth which inspired a love that endured throughout his life.

Byron’s attachment to his distant cousin, Mary Anne Chaworth, is well known. We know that his boyish love was not returned, and that the young heiress of Annesley married, in 1805, Mr. John Musters, of Colwick, in the neighbourhood of Nottingham. In order to account for these love-poems, it has been suggested that, subsequent to this marriage, Byron fell in love with some incognita, whose identity has never been established, and who died soon after his return to England in 1811.

We are unable to concur with so simple a solution of the mystery, for the following reasons: It will be remembered that shortly after Mary Chaworth’s marriage Byron entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he formed a romantic attachment to a young chorister, named Edleston, whose life he had saved from drowning. Writing to Miss Elizabeth Pigot on June 30, 1807, Byron says:

[Pg 223]On July 5, 1807, Byron again wrote to Miss Pigot:

This letter shows the depth of the boyish affection that had sprung up between two lads with little experience of life. The attachment on both sides was sincere, but not more so than many similar boy friendships, which,[Pg 224] alas! fade away under the chilling influences of time and circumstance. In this case the ‘Cornelian Heart’ that had sparkled with the tears of Edleston, and which, in the fervour of his feelings, Byron had suspended round his neck, was, not long afterwards, transferred to Miss Elizabeth Pigot.

A vague notion seems to prevail that the inspiration of these ‘Thyrza’ poems is in some way connected with Edleston. This idea seems to have arisen from Byron’s allusion to a pledge of affection given in better days:

‘Thou bitter pledge! thou mournful token!’

We cannot accept this theory, being of opinion, not lightly formed, that the ‘bitter pledge’ referred to had a far deeper and a more lasting significance than ever could have belonged to ‘the Cornelian heart that was broken.’

In later years, it will be remembered, Byron told Medwin that, shortly after his arrival at Cambridge, he fell into habits of dissipation, in order to drown the remembrance of a hopeless passion for Mary Chaworth. That Mary Chaworth held his affections at that time is beyond question. She also had given Byron ‘a token,’ which was still in his possession when the ‘Thyrza’ poems were written; whereas Edleston’s gift had passed to other hands. The following anecdote, related by the Countess Guiccioli, may be accepted on Byron’s authority:

It is therefore probable that the ‘dear simple gift,’ of the first draft, was the ring which Mary Chaworth had given to her boy lover in 1804, and that the words we have quoted had no connection whatever with young Edleston.

Assuming that the ‘Thyrza’ poems were addressed to a woman—and there is abundant proof of this—it is remarkable that, neither in the whole course of his correspondence with his friends, nor from any source whatever, can any traces be found of any other serious attachment which would account for the poems in question. Between the date of the marriage, in 1805, and the autumn of 1808, Byron and Mary Chaworth had not met. It will be remembered that in the autumn—only eight months before he left England with Hobhouse—Byron met Mary Chaworth at dinner in her own home. The effect of that meeting, which he has himself described, shows the depth of his feelings, and precludes the idea that he could at that time have been deeply interested in anyone else. After that meeting Byron remained three months in the neighbourhood of Annesley; and it may be inferred that an intimacy sprang up between them, which was broken off somewhat abruptly by Mary’s husband. There are traces of this in ‘Lara.’

At the end of November, 1808, Byron writes from Newstead to his sister:

A fortnight later he writes to Hanson, his agent, and talks of either marrying for money or blowing his brains out. It was then that he wrote those verses addressed to Mary Chaworth:

‘When man, expell’d from Eden’s bowers,
A moment linger’d near the gate,
Each scene recall’d the vanish’d hours,
And bade him curse his future fate.

‘In flight I shall be surely wise,
Escaping from temptation’s snare;
I cannot view my Paradise
Without the wish of dwelling there.’

On January 25, 1809, Byron returned to London. It is hard to believe that during those three months Byron did not often meet the lady of his love. It is more than probable that the old friendship between them had been renewed, since there is evidence to prove that, after Byron had taken his seat in the House of Lords on March 13, 1809, he confided his Parliamentary robes to Mary Chaworth’s safe-keeping, a circumstance which suggests a certain amount of neighbourly friendship.

In May, Byron again visited Newstead, where he entertained Matthews and some of his college friends. That sérénade indiscrète,

‘’Tis done—and shivering in the gale,’

which was addressed to Mary Chaworth from Falmouth on, or about, June 22, shows the state of his feelings towards her; but she does not seem to have given him any encouragement, and there was no [Pg 227]correspondence between them during Byron’s absence from England. Between July 2, 1809, and July 15, 1811, Byron’s thoughts were fully occupied in other directions. His distractions, which may be traced in his writings, were, however, not sufficient to crush out the remembrance of that fatal infatuation. When, in 1811, he returned to England, it was without pleasure, and without the faintest hope of any renewal of an intimacy which Mary Chaworth had broken off for both their sakes. He was in no hurry to visit Newstead, where his mother anxiously awaited him, and dawdled about town, under various pretexts, until the first week in August, when he heard of his mother’s serious illness. Before Byron reached Newstead his mother had died. He seems to have heard of her illness one day, and of her death on the day following. Although there had long been a certain estrangement between them, all was now forgotten, and Byron felt his mother’s death acutely.

It was at this time that he wrote to his friend Scrope Davies:

In that gloomy frame of mind, in the solitude of a ruin—for Newstead at that time was but little better than a ruin—Byron, on August 12, drew up some directions for his will, in which he desired to be buried in the garden at Newstead, by the side of his favourite dog Boatswain.

On the same day he wrote to Dallas, who was[Pg 228] superintending the printing of the first and second cantos of ‘Childe Harold’:

The writer of this letter was in his twenty-fourth year!

Ten days later Byron writes to Hodgson:

At about the same date, in a letter to Dallas, Byron writes:

The verses, ‘Oh! banish care,’ etc., were written at this time.

In the following lines we see that his grief at the losses he had sustained was deepened by the haunting memory of Mary Chaworth:

‘I’ve seen my bride another’s bride—
Have seen her seated by his side—
Have seen the infant which she bore
Wear the sweet smile the mother wore,
When she and I in youth have smiled
As fond and faultless as her child;
Have seen her eyes, in cold disdain,
Ask if I felt no secret pain.
And I have acted well my part,
And made my cheek belie my heart,
Returned the freezing glance she gave,
Yet felt the while that woman’s slave;
Have kissed, as if without design,
The babe which ought to have been mine,
And showed, alas! in each caress
Time had not made me love the less.’

Moore, who knew more of the inner workings of Byron’s mind in later years than anyone else, has told us that the poems addressed to ‘Thyrza’ were merely ‘the abstract spirit of many griefs,’ and that the pseudonym was given to an ‘object of affection’ to whom he poured out the sorrows of his heart.

Moore here expresses himself guardedly. He was one of the very few who knew the whole story of Mary Chaworth’s associations with Byron. He could not, of course, betray his full knowledge; but he has made it sufficiently clear that Byron, in writing the ‘Thyrza’ group of poems, was merely strewing the flowers of poetry on the grave of his love for Mary Chaworth.

The first of these poems was written on the day on which he heard of the death of Edleston. In a letter to Dallas he says:

Shortly after this letter was written Byron visited Cambridge, where, among the many memories which[Pg 231] that place awakened, a remembrance of the young chorister and their ardent friendship was most vivid. Byron recollected the Cornelian that Edleston gave him as a token of friendship, and, now that the giver had passed away for ever, he regretted that he had parted with it. The following letter to Mrs. Pigot explains itself:

The cornelian when found, was returned to Byron, but apparently in a broken condition.

‘Ill-fated Heart! and can it be,
That thou shouldst thus be rent in twain?’

[Pg 232]It was through the depressing influence of solitude that the idea entered Byron’s mind to depict his (possibly eternal) separation from Mary Chaworth in terms synonymous with death. With a deep feeling of desolation he recalled every incident of his boyish love. We have seen how the image of his lost Mary, now the wife of his rival, deepened the gloom caused by the sudden death of his mother, and of some of his college friends. It was to Mary, whom he dared not name, that he cried in his agony:

‘By many a shore and many a sea
Divided, yet beloved in vain;
The Past, the Future fled to thee,
To bid us meet—no, ne’er again!’

Her absence from Annesley, where he had hoped to find her on his return home, was a great disappointment to him.

‘Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one!
Whom Youth and Youth’s affections bound to me;
Who did for me what none beside have done,
Nor shrank from one albeit unworthy thee.
What is my Being! thou hast ceased to be!
Nor staid to welcome here thy wanderer home,
Who mourns o’er hours which we no more shall see—
Would they had never been, or were to come!
Would he had ne’er returned to find fresh cause to roam!

‘Oh I ever loving, lovely, and beloved!
How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past,
And clings to thoughts now better far removed!
But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last.
All thou couldst have of mine, stern Death! thou hast;
The Parent, Friend, and now the more than Friend:
Ne’er yet for one thine arrows flew so fast,
And grief with grief continuing still to blend,
Hath snatch’d the little joy that Life hath yet to lend.
******** [Pg 233]
‘What is the worst of woes that wait on Age?
What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?
To view each loved one blotted from Life’s page,
And be alone on earth, as I am now.
Before the Chastener humbly let me bow,
O’er Hearts divided and o’er Hopes destroyed:
Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow,
Since Time hath reft whate’er my soul enjoyed,
And with the ills of Eld mine earlier years alloyed.’

These stanzas were attached to the second canto of ‘Childe Harold,’ after that poem was in the press. Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge, who so ably edited the latest edition of the poetry of Byron, states that they were sent to Dallas on the same day that Byron composed the poem ‘To Thyrza.’ This is significant, as also his attempt to mystify Dallas by telling him that he had again (October 11, 1811) been shocked by a death. This was true enough, for he had on that day heard of the death of Edleston; but it was not true that the stanzas we have quoted had any connection with that event. Mr. Coleridge in a note says:

Assuredly he did not. The ‘more than friend’ was not dead; she had merely absented herself, and did not[Pg 234] stay to welcome the ‘wanderer’ on his return from his travels. She was, however, dead to him in a sense far deeper than mere absence at such a time.

‘The absent are the dead—for they are cold,
And ne’er can be what once we did behold.’[34]

Mary Chaworth’s presence would have consoled him at a time when he felt alone in the world. He feared that she was lost to him for ever. He knew her too well to suppose that she could ever be more to him than a friend; and yet it was just that female sympathy and friendship for which he so ardently yearned. In his unreasonableness, he was both hurt and disappointed that this companion of his earlier days should have kept away from her home at that particular time, and of course misconstrued the cause. With the feeling that this parting must be eternal, he wished that they could have met once more.

‘Could this have been—a word, a look,
That softly said, “We part in peace,”
Had taught my bosom how to brook,
With fainter sighs, thy soul’s release.’

In the bitterness of his desolation he recalled the days when they were at Newstead together—probably stolen interviews, which find no place in history—when

‘many a day
In these, to me, deserted towers,
Ere called but for a time away,
Affection’s mingling tears were ours?
[Pg 235]Ours, too, the glance none saw beside;
The smile none else might understand;
The whispered thought: the walks aside;
The pressure of the thrilling hand;
The kiss so guiltless and relined,
That Love each warmer wish forbore;
Those eyes proclaimed so pure a mind,
Ev’n Passion blushed to plead for more.
The tone that taught me to rejoice,
When prone, unlike thee, to repine;
The song, celestial from thy voice,
But sweet to me from none but thine;
The pledge we wore—I wear it still,
But where is thine? Ah! where art thou?
Oft have I borne the weight of ill,
But never bent beneath till now!’

Six days after these lines were written Byron left Newstead. Writing to Hodgson from his lodgings in St. James’s Street, he enclosed some stanzas which he had written a day or two before, ‘on hearing a song of former days.’ The lady, whose singing now so deeply impressed Byron, was the Hon. Mrs. George Lamb, whom he had met at Melbourne House.

In this, the second of the ‘Thyrza’ poems, the allusions to Mary Chaworth are even more marked. Byron says the songs of Mrs. George Lamb ‘speak to him of brighter days,’ and that he hopes to hear those strains no more:

‘For now, alas!
I must not think, I may not gaze,
On what I am—on what I was.

The voice that made those sounds more sweet
Is hush’d, and all their charms are fled.
******
‘On my ear
The well-remembered echoes thrill;
I hear a voice I would not hear,
A voice that now might well be still.
****** [Pg 236]
‘Sweet Thyrza! waking as in sleep,
Thou art but now a lovely dream;
A Star that trembled o’er the deep,
Then turned from earth its tender beam.
But he who through Life’s dreary way
Must pass, when Heaven is veiled in wrath,
Will long lament the vanished ray
That scattered gladness o’er his path.’

In Byron’s imagination Mary Chaworth was always hovering over him like a star. She was the ‘starlight of his boyhood,’ the ‘star of his destiny,’ and three years later the poet, in his unpublished fragment ‘Harmodia,’ speaks of Mary as his

‘melancholy star
Whose tearful beam shoots trembling from afar.’

The third and last of the ‘Thyrza’ poems must have been written at about the same time as the other two. It appeared with ‘Childe Harold’ in 1812. Byron, weary of the gloom of solitude, and tortured by ‘pangs that rent his heart in twain,’ now determined to break away and seek inspiration for that mental energy which formed part of his nature. Man, he says, was not made to live alone.

‘I’ll be that light unmeaning thing
That smiles with all, and weeps with none.
It was not thus in days more dear,
It never would have been, but thou
Hast fled, and left me lonely here.’

Byron’s thoughts went back to the days when he was sailing over the bright waters of the blue Ægean, in the Salsette frigate, commanded by ‘good old Bathurst’[35]—those halcyon days when he was weaving his visions into stanzas for ‘Childe Harold.’

[Pg 237] ‘On many a lone and lovely night
It soothed to gaze upon the sky;
For then I deemed the heavenly light
Shone sweetly on thy pensive eye:
And oft I thought at Cynthia’s noon,
When sailing o’er the Ægean wave,
“Now Thyrza gazes on that moon”—
Alas! it gleamed upon her grave!

‘When stretched on Fever’s sleepless bed,
And sickness shrunk my throbbing veins,
“’Tis comfort still,” I faintly said,
“That Thyrza cannot know my pains.”
Like freedom to the timeworn slave—
A boon ’tis idle then to give—
Relenting Nature vainly gave
My life, when Thyrza ceased to live!

‘My Thyrza’s pledge in better days,
When Love and Life alike were new!
How different now thou meet’st my gaze!
How tinged by time with Sorrow’s hue!
The heart that gave itself with thee
Is silent—ah, were mine as still!
Though cold as e’en the dead can be,
It feels, it sickens with the chill.’

Byron here suggests that the pledge in question was given with the giver’s heart. Lovers are apt to interpret such gifts as ‘love-tokens,’ without suspicion that they may possibly have been due to a feeling far less flattering to their hopes.

‘Thou bitter pledge! thou mournful token!
Though painful, welcome to my breast!
Still, still, preserve that love unbroken,
Or break the heart to which thou’rt pressed.
Time tempers Love, but not removes,
More hallowed when its Hope is fled.’

These three pieces comprise the so-called ‘Thyrza’ poems, and, in the absence of proof to the contrary, we may reasonably suppose that their subject was Mary Chaworth. This is the more likely because the[Pg 238] original manuscripts were the property of Byron’s sister, to whom they were probably given by Mary Chaworth, when, in later years, she destroyed or parted with all the letters and documents which she had received from Byron since the days of their childhood.

Byron did not give up the hope of winning Mary Chaworth’s love until her marriage in 1805. Two months later he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, and from that time, until his departure with Hobhouse on his first foreign tour, those who were in constant intercourse with him never mentioned any other object of adoration who might fit in with the Thyrza of the poems. If such a person had really existed, Byron would certainly, either in conversation or in writing, have disclosed her identity. Moore makes it clear that the one passion of Byron’s life was Mary Chaworth. He tells us that there were many fleeting love-episodes, but only one passion strong enough to have inspired the poems in question. If Byron’s heart, during the two years that he passed abroad, had been overflowing with love for some incognita, it was not in his nature to have kept silence. From his well-known effusiveness, reticence under such circumstances is inconceivable.

Finally, as there were no poems, no letters, and no allusion to any such person in the first draft of ‘Childe Harold,’ we may confidently assume that the poet, in the loneliness of his heart, appealed to the only woman whom he ever really loved, and that the legendary Thyrza was a myth.

It will be remembered that the ninth stanza in the second canto of ‘Childe Harold’ was interpolated long after the manuscript had been given to Dallas. It was forwarded for that purpose, three days after the date[Pg 239] of the poem ‘To Thyrza,’ and essentially belongs to that period of desolation which inspired those poems:

‘There, Thou! whose Love and Life, together fled,
Have left me here to love and live in vain—
Twined with my heart, and can I deem thee dead,
When busy Memory flashes on my brain?
Well—I will dream that we may meet again,
And woo the vision to my vacant breast:
If aught of young Remembrance then remain,
Be as it may Futurity’s behest,
Or seeing thee no more, to sink to sullen rest.’[36]

It is difficult to believe that this stanza was inspired by a memory of the dead. Are we not told that ‘Love and Life together fled’—in other words, when Mary withdrew her love, she was dead to him?

He tells her that in abandoning him she has left him to love and live in vain. And yet he will not give up the hope of meeting her again some day; this is now his sole consolation. Memory of the past (possibly those meetings which took place by stealth, shortly before his departure from England in 1809) feeds the hope that now sustains him. But he will leave everything to chance, and if fate decides that they shall be parted for ever, then will he sink to sullen apathy.

We may remind the reader that at this period (1811) Byron had no belief in any existence after death.

[Pg 240]Even when, in later years, Byron somewhat modified the views of his youth, he expressed an opinion that

It is therefore tolerably certain that, on the day when he expressed a hope that he might meet his lady-love again, the meeting was to have been in this world, and not in that ‘land of souls beyond the sable shore.’ It must also be remembered that the eighth stanza in the second canto of ‘Childe Harold’ was substituted for one in which Byron deliberately stated that he did not look for Life, where life may never be. The revise was written to please Dallas, and does not pretend to be a confession of belief in immortality, but merely an admission that, on a subject where ‘nothing can be known,’ no final decision is possible.

In the summer of 1813 Byron underwent grave vicissitudes, mental, moral, and financial. His letters and journals teem with allusions to some catastrophe. It seemed as though he were threatened with impending ruin. In his depressed state of mind he found relief only, as he tells us, in the composition of poetry. It was at this time that he wrote in swift succession ‘The Giaour,’ ‘The Bride of Abydos,’ and ‘The Corsair.’ It is clear that Byron’s dejection was the result of a hopeless attachment. Mr. Hartley Coleridge assumes that Byron’s innamorata was Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster. But that bright star did not long shine in Byron’s orbit—certainly not after October, 1813—and it is doubtful whether they were ever on terms of close intimacy. Her husband had long been Byron’s friend. Byron had lent him money, and[Pg 241] had given him advice, which he seems to have sorely needed. It is difficult to understand why Lady Frances Webster should have been especially regarded as Byron’s Calypso. There is nothing to show that she ever seriously occupied his thoughts. Writing to Moore on September 27, 1813, Byron says:

So little does Byron seem to have been attracted by Lady Frances, that he only once more visited the Websters, and then only for a few days, on his way to Newstead, between October 3 and 10, 1813.

On June 3 of that year Byron wrote to Mr. John Hanson, his solicitor, a letter which shows the state of his mind at that time. He tells Hanson that he is about to visit Salt Hill, near Maidenhead, and that he will be absent for one week. He is determined to go abroad. The prospective lawsuit with Mr. Claughton (about the sale of Newstead) is to be dropped, if it cannot be carried on in Byron’s absence. At all hazards, at all losses, he is determined that nothing shall prevent him from leaving the country.

‘If utter ruin were or is before me on the one hand, and wealth at home on the other, I have made my choice, and go I will.’

The pictures, and every movable that could be converted into cash, were, by Byron’s orders, to be sold. ‘All I want is a few thousand pounds, and then, Adieu. You shan’t be troubled with me these ten years, if ever.’ Clearly, there must have been something more than a passing fancy which could have[Pg 242] induced Byron to sacrifice his chances of selling Newstead, for the sake of a few thousand pounds of ready-money. It had been his intention to accompany Lord and Lady Oxford on their travels, but this project was abandoned. After three weeks—spent in running backwards and forwards between Salt Hill and London—Byron confided his troubles to Augusta. She was always his rock of refuge in all his deeper troubles. Augusta Leigh thought that absence might mend matters, and tried hard to keep her brother up to his resolve of going abroad; she even volunteered to accompany him. But Lady Melbourne—who must have had a prurient mind—persuaded Byron that the gossips about town would not consider it ‘proper’ for him and his sister to travel alone! As Byron was at that time under the influence of an irresistible infatuation, Lady Melbourne’s warning turned the scale, and the project fell through. Meanwhile the plot thickened. Something—he told Moore—had ruined all his prospects of matrimony. His financial circumstances, he said, were mending; ‘and were not my other prospects blackening, I would take a wife.’

In July he still wishes to get out of England. ‘They had better let me go,’ he says; ‘one can die anywhere.’

On August 22, after another visit to Salt Hill, Byron writes to Moore:

A week later he wrote again to Moore:

[Pg 243]Moore suggested that Byron’s case was similar to that of the youth apostrophized by Horace in his twenty-seventh ode, and invited his confidence:

‘Come, whisper it—the tender truth—
To safe and friendly ears!
What! Her? O miserable youth!
Oh! doomed to grief and tears!
In what a whirlpool are you tost,
Your rudder broke, your pilot lost!’

Recent research has convinced the present writer that the incident which affected Byron so profoundly at this time—about eighteen months before his marriage—indirectly brought about the separation between Lord and Lady Byron in 1816. A careful student of Byron’s character could not fail to notice, among all the contradictions and inconsistencies of his life, one point upon which he was resolute—namely, a consistent reticence on the subject of the intimacy which sprang up between himself and Mary Chaworth in the summer of 1813. The strongest impulse of his life—even to the last—was a steadfast, unwavering, hopeless attachment to that lady. Throughout his turbulent youth, in his early as in his later days, the same theme floats through the chords of his melodious verse, a deathless love and a deep remorse. Even at the last, when the shadow of Death was creeping slowly over the flats at Missolonghi, the same wild, despairing note found involuntary expression, and the last words that Byron ever wrote tell the sad story with a distinctness which might well open the eyes even of the blind.

When he first met his fate, he was a schoolboy of sixteen—precocious, pugnacious, probably a prig, and by no means handsome. He must have appeared to Mary much as we see him in his portrait by Sanders. Mary was two years older, and already in love with[Pg 244] a fox-hunting squire of good family. ‘Love dwells not in our will,’ and a nature like Byron’s, once under its spell, was sure to feel its force acutely. There was romance, too, in the situation; and the poetic temperament—always precocious—responded to an impulse on the gossamer chance of achieving the impossible. Mary was probably half amused and half flattered by the adoration of a boy of whose destiny she divined nothing.

There is no reason to suppose that there was any meeting between Byron and Mary Chaworth after the spring of 1809, until the summer of 1813. Their separation seemed destined to be final. Although Byron, in after-years, wished it to be believed that they had not met since 1808, it is certain that a meeting took place in the summer of 1813. Although Byron took, as we shall see presently, great pains to conceal that fact from the public, he did not attempt to deceive either Moore, Hobhouse, or Hodgson. In his letter to Monsieur Coulmann, written in July, 1823, we have the version which Byron wished the public to believe.

At about the same time Byron told Medwin that, after Mary’s separation from her husband, she proposed an interview with him—a suggestion which[Pg 245] Byron, by the advice of Mrs. Leigh, declined. He also said to Medwin:

It is difficult to see how Byron could have arrived at so unflattering an estimate of a woman whom he had only once seen since her marriage—at a dinner-party, when, as he has told us, he was overcome by shyness and a feeling of awkwardness! But let that pass. Byron wished the world to believe (1) that Mary Chaworth, after the separation from her husband in 1813, proposed a meeting with Byron; (2) that he declined to meet her; (3) that, after his unfortunate marriage, Mary became insane; and (4) that he found her, ‘like the rest of her sex, anything but angelic.’

It is quite possible, of course, that Byron may have at first refused to meet the only woman on earth whom he sincerely loved, and more than likely that Mrs. Leigh did her utmost to dissuade him from so rash a proceeding. But it is on record that Byron incautiously admitted to Medwin that he did meet Mary Chaworth after his return from Greece.[37] It will be remembered that he returned from Greece in 1811. Their intimacy had long before been broken off by Mr. John Musters; and, as we have seen, Mary, faithful to a promise which she had made to her husband, kept away from Annesley during the period (1811) when the ‘Thyrza’ poems were written. It is doubtful whether they would ever again have met if her husband had shown any consideration for her feelings. But he[Pg 246] showed her none. When, nearly forty years ago, the present writer visited Annesley, there were several people living who remembered both Mary Chaworth and her husband. These people stated that their married life, so full of grief and bitterness, was a constant source of comment both at Annesley and Newstead. The trouble was attributed to the harsh and capricious conduct, and the well-known infidelities, of one to whose kindness and affection Mary had a sacred claim. She seems to have been left for long periods at Annesley with only one companion, Miss Anne Radford, who had been brought up with her from childhood. This state of things eventually broke down, and when, in the early part of 1813, Mary could stand the strain no longer, a separation took place by mutual consent.

In the summer of that year Byron and this unhappy woman were thrown together by the merest accident, and, unfortunately for both, renewed their dangerous friendship.

Byron’s friend and biographer, Thomas Moore, took great pains to suppress every allusion to Mary Chaworth in Byron’s memoranda and letters. He faithfully kept the secret. There is nothing in Byron’s letters or journals, as revised by Moore, to show that they ever met after 1808, and yet they undoubtedly did meet in 1813, after Mary’s estrangement from her husband. That they were in constant correspondence in November of that year may be gathered from Byron’s journal, where Mary’s name is veiled by asterisks.

On November 24 he writes:

Then follows, on the 27th, a clue:

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 circumstances that Byron, with the world at his feet, came to worship 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—
[Pg 248]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.’

[Pg 249]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 circumstances 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[Pg 250] Chaworth cannot be questioned. Moore, who knew him well, says:

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.’

[Pg 251]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 nobler 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 shield 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[Pg 252] 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 fashion.’

Such was the woman who, though parted by fate, maintained through sunshine 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[Pg 253] 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:

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.’

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 hell,
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.
‘The earthquake came, and rocked the quivering wall,
And men and Nature reeled as if with wine:
Whom did I seek around the tottering hall?
For thee. Whose safety first provide for? Thine.’

We now see Byron, at the supreme crisis of his life, standing in solitude on his hearth, with all his household gods shivered around him. We perceive that not least among his troubles at that time was the ever-haunting fear lest the secret of Medora’s birth should[Pg 255] be disclosed. His greatest anxiety was for Mary’s safety, and this could only be secured by keeping his matrimonial squabbles out of a court of law. It was, in fact, by agreeing to sign the deed of separation that the whole situation was saved. The loyalty of Augusta Leigh on this occasion was never forgotten:

‘There was soft Remembrance and sweet Trust
In one fond breast.’

‘That love was pure—and, far above disguise,
Had stood the test of mortal enmities
Still undivided, and cemented more
By peril, dreaded most in female eyes,
But this was firm.’

In the fifth stanza we see Byron, eight years later, at Missolonghi, struck down by that attack of epilepsy which preceded his death by only two months:

V.
‘And when convulsive throes denied my breath
The faintest utterance to my fading thought,
To thee—to thee—e’en in the gasp of death
My spirit turned, oh! oftener than it ought.’

In the sixth and final stanza, probably the last lines that Byron ever wrote, we find him reiterating, with all a lover’s persistency, a belief that Mary could never have loved him, otherwise she would not have left him.

VI.
‘Thus much and more; and yet thou lov’st me not,
And never will! Love dwells not in our will.
Nor can I blame thee, though it be my lot
To strongly, wrongly, vainly love thee still.’

The reproaches of lovers are often unjust. Byron either could not, or perhaps would not, see that in abandoning him Mary had been actuated by the highest, the purest motives, and that the renunciation must have afforded her deep pain—a sacrifice, not[Pg 256] lightly made, for Byron’s sake quite as much as for her own. That Byron for a time resented her conduct in this respect is evident from a remark made in a letter to Miss Milbanke, dated November 29, 1813. After saying that he once thought that Mary Chaworth could have made him happy, he added, ‘but subsequent events have proved that my expectations might not have been fulfilled had I ever proposed to and received my idol.’[39]

What those ‘subsequent events’ were may be guessed from reproaches which at this period appear among his poems:

‘The wholly false the heart despises,
And spurns deceiver and deceit;
But she who not a thought disguises,
Whose love is as sincere as sweet—
When she can change, who loved so truly,
It feels what mine has felt so newly.’

In the letter written five years after their final separation, Byron again reproaches Mary Chaworth, but this time without a tinge of bitterness:

‘The Giaour’ was begun in May and finished in November, 1813. Those parts which relate to Mary Chaworth were added to that poem in July and August:

‘She was a form of Life and Light,
That, seen, became a part of sight;
And rose, where’er I turned mine eye,
The Morning-Star of Memory!’

[Pg 257]Byron says that, like the bird that sings within the brake, like the swan that swims upon the waters, he can only have one mate. He despises those who sneer at constancy. He does not envy them their fickleness, and regards such heartless men as lower in the scale of creation than the solitary swan.

‘Such shame at least was never mine—
Leila! each thought was only thine!
My good, my guilt, my weal, my woe,
My hope on high—my all below.
Earth holds no other like to thee,
Or, if it doth, in vain for me:
... Thou wert, thou art,
The cherished madness of my heart!’

‘Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven;
A spark of that immortal fire
With angels shared, by Alla given,
To lift from earth our low desire.
I grant my love imperfect, all
That mortals by the name miscall;
Then deem it evil, what thou wilt;
But say, oh say, hers was not Guilt!
And she was lost—and yet I breathed,
But not the breath of human life:
A serpent round my heart was wreathed,
And stung my every thought to strife.’

Who can doubt that the friend ‘of earlier days,’ whose memory the Giaour wishes to bless before he dies, but whom he dares not bless lest Heaven should ‘mark the vain attempt’ of guilt praying for the guiltless, was Mary Chaworth. He bids the friar tell that friend

‘What thou didst behold:
The withered frame—the ruined mind,
The wreck that Passion leaves behind—
The shrivelled and discoloured leaf,
Seared by the Autumn blast of Grief.’

He wonders whether that friend is still his friend, as in those earlier days, when hearts were blended in[Pg 258] that sweet land where bloom his native valley’s bowers. To that friend he sends a ring, which was the memorial of a youthful vow:

‘Tell him—unheeding as I was,
Through many a busy bitter scene
Of all our golden youth hath been,
In pain, my faltering tongue had tried
To bless his memory—ere I died;
I do not ask him not to blame,
Too gentle he to wound my name;
I do not ask him not to mourn,
Such cold request might sound like scorn.
But bear this ring, his own of old,
And tell him what thou dost behold!’

The motto chosen by Byron for ‘The Giaour’ is in itself suggestive:

‘One fatal remembrance—one sorrow that throws
Its bleak shade alike o’er our Joys and our Woes—
To which Life nothing darker nor brighter can bring,
For which Joy hath no balm—and affliction no sting.’

On October 10, 1813, Byron arrived at Newstead, where he stayed for a month. Mary Chaworth was at Annesley during that time. On his return to town he wrote (November 8) to his sister:

On November 30 Byron wrote to Moore:

In order the more effectually to dispose of the theory that Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster was the cause of Byron’s disquietude, we insert an extract from his journal, dated a fortnight earlier (November 14, 1813):

Surely the name that Byron dared not write, even in his own journal, was not that of Lady Frances Webster, whose name appears often in his correspondence. The ‘sacred name’ was that of one of whom he afterwards wrote, ‘Thou art both Mother and May.’

During October, November, and December, 1813,[Pg 260] Byron’s mind was in a perturbed condition. We gather, from a letter which he wrote to Moore on November 30, that his thoughts were centred on a lady living in Nottinghamshire[41], and that the scrape, which he mentions in his letter to Augusta on November 8, referred to that lady and the dreaded prospects of maternity.

Mr. Coleridge believes that the verses, ‘Remember him, whom Passion’s power,’ were addressed to Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster. There is nothing, so far as the present writer knows, to support that opinion. There is no evidence to show the month in which they were written; and, in view of the statement that the lady in question had lived in comparative retirement, ‘Thy soul from long seclusion pure,’ and that she had, because of his presumption, banished the poet in 1813, it could not well have been Lady Frances Webster, who in September of that year had asked Byron to be godfather to her child, and in October had invited him to her house. It is noteworthy that Byron expressly forbade Murray to publish those verses with ‘The Corsair,’ where, it must be owned, they would have been sadly out of place. ‘Farewell, if ever fondest prayer,’ was decidedly more appropriate to the state of things existing at that time.

The motto chosen for his ‘Bride of Abydos’ is taken from Burns:

‘Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met—or never parted,
We had ne’er been broken-hearted.’

The poem was written early in November, 1813.

Byron has told us that it was written to divert his[Pg 261] mind,[42] ‘to wring his thoughts from reality to imagination, from selfish regrets to vivid recollections’; to ‘distract his thoughts from the recollection of * * * * “Dear sacred name, rest ever unrevealed,”’ and in a letter to John Galt (December 11, 1813) he says that parts of the poem were drawn ‘from existence.’ He had been staying at Newstead, in close proximity to Annesley, from October 10 to November 8, during which time, as he says, he regretted the absence of his sister Augusta, ‘who might have saved him much trouble.’ He says, ‘All convulsions end with me in rhyme,’ and that ‘The Bride of Abydos’ was ‘the work of a week.’ In speaking of a ‘dear sacred name, rest ever unrevealed,’ he says: ‘At least even here my hand would tremble to write it’; and on November 30 he writes to Moore: ‘Since I last wrote’ (October 2), ‘much has happened to me.’ On November 27 he writes in his journal: ‘Mary—dear name—thou art both Mother and May.’[43] At the end of November, after he had returned to town, he writes in his journal:

On November 14 Byron sends a device for the seals of himself and * * * *; the seal in question is at present in the possession of the Chaworth-Musters family. On December 10, we find from one of Byron’s letters that[Pg 262] he had thoughts of committing suicide, and was deterred by the idea that ‘it would annoy Augusta, and perhaps * * * *.’

Byron seems to have put into the mouth of Zuleika words which conveyed his own thoughts:

‘Think’st thou that I could bear to part
With thee, and learn to halve my heart?
Ah! were I severed from thy side,
Where were thy friend—and who my guide?
Years have not seen, Time shall not see,
The hour that tears my soul from thee:
Ev’n Azrael, from his deadly quiver
When flies that shaft, and fly it must,
That parts all else, shall doom for ever
Our hearts to undivided dust!
***** *
What other can she seek to see
Than thee, companion of her bower,
The partner of her infancy?
These cherished thoughts with life begun,
Say, why must I no more avow?’

Selim suggests that Zuleika should brave the world and fly with him:

‘But be the Star that guides the wanderer, Thou!
Thou, my Zuleika, share and bless my bark;
The Dove of peace and promise to mine ark!
Or, since that hope denied in worlds of strife,
Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life!
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!
*******
Not blind to Fate, I see, where’er I rove,
Unnumbered perils,—but one only love!
Yet well my toils shall that fond breast repay,
Though Fortune frown, or falser friends betray.’

Zuleika, we are told, was the ‘last of Giaffir’s race.’[44][Pg 263] Selim tells her that ‘life is hazard at the best,’ and there is much to fear:

‘Yes, fear! the doubt, the dread of losing thee.
That dread shall vanish with the favouring gale;
Which Love to-night has promised to my sail.
No danger daunts the pair his smile hath blest,
Their steps still roving, but their hearts at rest.
With thee all toils are sweet, each clime hath charms;
Earth—Sea alike—our world within our arms!’

‘The Corsair’ was written between December 18, 1813, and January 11, 1814. While it was passing through the press, Byron was at Newstead. He gives a little of his own spirit to Conrad, and all Mary’s virtues to Medora—a name which was afterwards given to his child. Conrad

‘Knew himself a villain—but he deemed
The rest no better than the thing he seemed;
And scorned the best as hypocrites who hid
Those deeds the bolder spirit plainly did.
Lone, wild, and strange, he stood alike exempt
From all affection and from all contempt.
None are all evil—quickening round his heart,
One softer feeling would not yet depart.
Yet ’gainst that passion vainly still he strove,
And even in him it asks the name of Love!
Yes, it was Love—unchangeable—unchanged,
Felt but for one from whom he never ranged.
Yes—it was Love—if thoughts of tenderness,
Tried in temptation, strengthened by distress,
Unmoved by absence, firm in every clime,
And yet—oh! more than all! untired by Time.
If there be Love in mortals—this was Love!
He was a villain—aye, reproaches shower
On him—but not the Passion, nor its power,
Which only proved—all other virtues gone—
Not Guilt itself could quench this earliest one!’

The following verses are full of meaning for the initiated:

[Pg 264] I.
‘Deep in my soul that tender secret dwells,
Lonely and lost to light for evermore,
Save when to thine my heart responsive swells,
Then trembles into silence as before.

II.
‘There, in its centre, a sepulchral lamp
Burns the slow flame, eternal—but unseen;
Which not the darkness of Despair can damp,
Though vain its ray as it had never been.

III.
‘Remember me—oh! pass not thou my grave
Without one thought whose relics there recline:
The only pang my bosom dare not brave
Must be to find forgetfulness in thine.

IV.
‘My fondest—faintest—latest accents hear—
Grief for the dead not Virtue can reprove;
Then give me all I ever asked—a tear,
The first—last—sole reward of so much love!’

Conrad and Medora part, to meet no more in life

‘But she is nothing—wherefore is he here?...
By the first glance on that still, marble brow—
It was enough—she died—what recked it how?
The love of youth, the hope of better years,
The source of softest wishes, tenderest fears,
The only living thing he could not hate,
Was reft at once—and he deserved his fate,
But did not feel it less.’

The blow he feared the most had fallen at last. The only woman whom he loved had withdrawn her society from him, and his heart,

‘Formed for softness—warped to wrong,
Betrayed too early, and beguiled too long,’

was petrified at last!

[Pg 265] ‘Yet tempests wear, and lightning cleaves the rock;
If such his heart, so shattered it the shock.
There grew one flower beneath its rugged brow,
Though dark the shade—it sheltered—saved till now.
The thunder came—that bolt hath blasted both,
The Granite’s firmness, and the Lily’s growth:
The gentle plant hath left no leaf to tell
Its tale, but shrunk and withered where it fell;
And of its cold protector, blacken round
But shivered fragments on the barren ground!’

In moments of deep emotion, even the most reticent of men may sometimes reveal themselves. ‘The Giaour,’ ‘The Bride of Abydos,’ and ‘The Corsair,’ formed a trilogy, through which the tragedy of Byron’s life swept like a musical theme. Those poems acted like a recording instrument which, by registering his transient moods, was destined ultimately to betray a secret which he had been at so much pains to hide. In ‘The Giaour’ we see remorse for a crime, which he was at first willing to expiate in sorrow and repentance. In ‘The Bride of Abydos’ we find him, in an access of madness and passion, proposing to share the fate of his victim, if she will but consent to fly with him. Happily for both, Mary would never have consented to an act of social suicide. In ‘The Corsair’ we behold his dreams dispelled by the death of his Love and the hope of better years.

‘He asked no question—all were answered now!’

With the dramatic fate of Medora the curtain falls, and the poet, in whom

‘I suoi pensieri in lui dormir non ponno,’

crosses the threshold of a new life. He reappears later on the scene of all his woes, a broken, friendless stranger, in the person of Lara—that last phase, in which the poet discloses his identity with characteristic[Pg 266] insouciance, brings the tragedy abruptly to a close.[45]

On January 6, 1814, Byron wrote a remarkable letter to Moore, at that time in Nottinghamshire:

Byron here refers to ‘The Corsair,’ which he dedicated to Thomas Moore. In order to understand this letter, it may be inferred that one of the letters he had written to his lady-love had remained so long unanswered that Byron feared it might have fallen into her husband’s hands. Writing to Moore on the following day, Byron says:

An undated letter from Mary Chaworth, preserved among the Byron letters in Mr. Murray’s possession, seems to belong to this period:

On or about January 7, 1814, Byron writes to his sister Augusta in reference to Mary Chaworth:

[Pg 268]Five days later Byron again writes to Augusta Leigh:

Medora was born on or about April 15, 1814. ‘Lara’ was written between May 4 and 14. The opening lines, which would have set every tongue wagging, were withheld from publication until January, 1887. They were written in London early in May, and were addressed to the mother of Medora:

‘When thou art gone—the loved, the lost—the one
Whose smile hath gladdened, though perchance undone—
Whose name too dearly cherished to impart
Dies on the lip, but trembles in the heart;
Whose sudden mention can almost convulse,
And lightens through the ungovernable pulse—
Till the heart leaps so keenly to the word
We fear that throb can hardly beat unheard—[48]
Then sinks at once beneath that sickly chill
That follows when we find her absent still.
When thou art gone—too far again to bless—
Oh! God—how slowly comes Forgetfulness!
Let none complain how faithless and how brief
The brain’s remembrance, or the bosom’s grief,
Or ere they thus forbid us to forget
Let Mercy strip the memory of regret;
Yet—selfish still—we would not be forgot,
[Pg 269]What lip dare say—“My Love—remember not”?
Oh! best—and dearest! Thou whose thrilling name
My heart adores too deeply to proclaim—
My memory, almost ceasing to repine,
Would mount to Hope if once secure of thine.
Meantime the tale I weave must mournful be—
As absence to the heart that lives on thee!’

Lord Lovelace has told us that ‘nothing is too stupid for belief.’ We are disposed to agree with him, especially as he produces these lines in support of his accusation against Augusta Leigh. The absurdity of supposing that they were addressed to Byron’s sister appears to us to be so evident that it seems unnecessary to waste words in disputation. There is abundant proof that during this period Mrs. Leigh and Byron were in constant correspondence, and that he visited her almost daily during her simulated confinement and convalescence. When Murray sent her some books to while away the time, Byron wrote (April 9) on her behalf to thank him. And finally, as Augusta Leigh had no intention whatever of leaving London, she could in no sense have been ‘the lost one’ whose prospective departure filled Byron with despair. The poet and his sister—whom he was accustomed to address as ‘Goose’[49]—were then, and always, on most familiar terms. The ‘mention of her name’ (which was often on his lips) would certainly not have convulsed him, nor have caused his heart to beat so loudly that he feared lest others should hear it! The woman to whom those lines were addressed was Mary Chaworth, whose condition induced him, on April 18, to begin a fragment entitled ‘Magdalen’—she of whom he wrote on May 4:

‘I speak not—I trace not—I breathe not thy name—
There is Love in the sound—there is Guilt in the fame.’

[Pg 270]Lord Lovelace, in his impetuosity, and with very imperfect knowledge of Byron’s life-story, ties every doubtful scrap of his grandfather’s poetry into his bundle of proofs against Augusta Leigh, without perceiving any discrepancy in the nature of his evidence. A moment’s reflection might have convinced him that the lines we have quoted could not, by any possibility, have applied to one whom he subsequently addressed as:

‘My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine;
*******
Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun,
I had been better than I now can be;
The passions which have torn me would have slept;
I had not suffered, and thou hadst not wept.’

It must be admitted that Byron, through indiscreet confidences and reckless mystifications, was partly the cause of the suspicions which afterwards fell upon his sister. Lady Byron has left it on record that Byron early in 1814—before the birth of Medora—told Lady Caroline Lamb that a woman he passionately loved was with child by him, and that if a daughter was born it should be called Medora.[50] At about the same time ‘he advanced, at Holland House, the most extraordinary theories about the relations of brother and sister, which originated the reports about Mrs. Leigh.’

That, after ninety years, such nonsense should be regarded as evidence against a woman so well known in the society of her day as was Mrs. Leigh, justifies[Pg 271] our concurrence with Lord Lovelace’s opinion that ‘nothing is too stupid for belief.’

It appears that one day Lady Byron was talking to her husband about ‘Lara,’ which seemed to her to be ‘like the darkness in which one fears to behold spectres.’ This bait was evidently too tempting for Byron to resist. He replied: ‘“Lara”—there’s more in that than in any of them.’ As he spoke he shuddered, and turned his eyes to the ground.

Before we examine that poem to see how much it may contain of illuminating matter, we will touch upon a remark Byron made to his wife, which Lord Lovelace quotes without perceiving its depth and meaning. We will quote ‘Astarte’:

This is perfectly true. Byron proposed to Miss Milbanke in 1812. If she had married him then, he would not have renewed his intimacy with Mary Chaworth in June, 1813. There would have been no heart-hunger, no misery, no remorse, and, in short, no inspiration for ‘The Giaour,’ ‘The Bride,’ ‘The Corsair,’ and ‘Lara.’ Miss Milbanke’s refusal of his offer of marriage in 1812 rankled long in Byron’s mind, and provoked those ungenerous reproaches which have been, with more or less exaggeration, reported by persons in Lady Byron’s confidence. The mischief was done between the date of Miss Milbanke’s refusal and her acceptance of his offer, which occurred after the fury of his passion for Mary Chaworth had burnt itself out. No blame attaches to Lady Byron for this misfortune. When Byron first proposed, her affections[Pg 272] were elsewhere engaged; she could not, therefore, dispose of her heart to him. When she at last accepted him, it was too late for happiness.

In a letter which Byron wrote to Miss Milbanke previous to his marriage,[51] he unconsciously prophesied the worst:

When Byron said that he had doubts whether the past would not eventually reflect injuriously upon his future wife, he referred, not to Augusta Leigh, but to his fatal intercourse with Mary Chaworth. The following sentences taken from Mrs. Leigh’s letters to Francis Hodgson, who knew the truth, prove that the mystery only incidentally affected Augusta. The letters were written February, 1816.

These are the expressions, not of a person connected with a tragedy, but rather of one who was a spectator of it. Every impartial person must see that. When, on another occasion, Byron told his wife[Pg 273] that he wished he had gone abroad—as he had intended—in June, 1813, he undoubtedly implied that the fatal intimacy with Mary Chaworth would have been avoided. This seems so clear to us that we are surprised that Byron’s statement on the subject of his poems should have made no impression on the mind of Lord Lovelace, and should have elicited nothing from him in ‘Astarte,’ except the banale suggestion that Byron’s literary activity must have been accidental!

Lara, like Conrad, is a portion of Byron himself, and the poem opens with his return to Newstead after some bitter experiences, at which he darkly hints:

‘Short was the course his restlessness had run,
But long enough to leave him half undone.’

He tells us that ‘Another chief consoled his destined bride.’ ‘One is absent that most might decorate that gloomy pile.’

‘Why slept he not when others were at rest?
Why heard no music, and received no guest?
All was not well, they deemed—but where the wrong?
Some knew perchance.’

In stanzas 17, 18, and 19, Byron draws a picture of himself, so like that his sister remarked upon it in a letter to Hodgson. After telling us that ‘his heart was not by nature hard,’ he says that

‘His blood in temperate seeming now would flow:
Ah! happier if it ne’er with guilt had glowed,
But ever in that icy smoothness flowed!’

The poet tells us that after Lara’s death he was mourned by one whose quiet grief endured for long.

‘Vain was all question asked her of the past,
And vain e’en menace—silent to the last.’

‘Why did she love him? Curious fool!—be still—
[Pg 274]Is human love the growth of human will?
To her he might be gentleness; the stern
Have deeper thoughts than your dull eyes discern,
And when they love, your smilers guess not how
Beats the strong heart, though less the lips avow.
They were not common links, that formed the chain
That bound to Lara Kaled’s heart and brain;
But that wild tale she brooked not to unfold,
And sealed is now each lip that could have told.
********
‘The tempest of his heart in scorn had gazed
On that the feebler Elements hath raised.
The Rapture of his Heart had looked on high,
And asked if greater dwelt beyond the sky:
Chained to excess, the slave of each extreme,
How woke he from the wildness of that dream!
Alas! he told not—but he did awake
To curse the withered heart that would not break.’

On September 8, 1814, four months after Byron had finished ‘Lara,’ while he was at Newstead with his sister and her children—the little Medora among them—he wrote his fragment ‘Harmodia.’ The rough draft was given after his marriage to Lady Byron, who had no idea to what it could possibly refer. When the scandal about Augusta was at its height, this fragment was impounded among other incriminating documents, and eventually saw the light in ‘Astarte.’ Lord Lovelace was firmly convinced that it was addressed to Augusta Leigh!

Between September 7 and 15 Byron and Mary Chaworth were considering the desirability of marriage for Byron, and letters were passing between the distracted poet and two young ladies—Miss Milbanke and another—with that object in view. Although Byron was still in love with Mary Chaworth, he had come to understand that her determination to break the dangerous intimacy was irrevocable, so he resolved to follow her advice and marry. The tone of his letter[Pg 275] to Moore, written on September 15, shows that he was not very keen about wedlock. He was making plans for a journey to Italy in the event of his proposal being rejected.

It is possible that, in a conversation between Mary and himself, the former may have spoken of the risks they had incurred in the past, and of her resolve never to transgress again. To which Byron replied:

Harmodia.
‘The things that were—and what and whence are they?
Those clouds and rainbows of thy yesterday?
Their path has vanish’d from th’ eternal sky,
And now its hues are of a different dye.
Thus speeds from day to day, and Pole to Pole,
The change of parts, the sameness of the whole;
And all we snatch, amidst the breathing strife,
But gives to Memory what it takes from Life:
Despoils a substance to adorn a shade—
And that frail shadow lengthens but to fade.
Sun of the sleepless! Melancholy Star!
Whose tearful beam shoots trembling from afar—
That chang’st the darkness thou canst not dispel—
How like art thou to Joy, remembered well!
Such is the past—the light of other days
That shines, but warms not with its powerless rays—
A moonbeam Sorrow watcheth to behold,
Distinct, but distant—clear, but death-like cold.

‘Oh! as full thought comes rushing o’er the Mind
Of all we saw before—to leave behind—
Of all!—but words, what are they? Can they give
A trace of truth to thoughts while yet they live?
No—Passion—Feeling speak not—or in vain—
The tear for Grief—the Groan must speak for Pain—
Joy hath its smile—and Love its blush and sigh—
Despair her silence—Hate her lip and eye—
These their interpreters, where deeply lurk—
The Soul’s despoilers warring as they work—
The strife once o’er—then words may find their way,
Yet how enfeebled from the forced delay!

[Pg 276]‘But who could paint the progress of the wreck—
Himself still clinging to the dangerous deck?
Safe on the shore the artist first must stand,
And then the pencil trembles in his hand.’

When, four years later, Byron was writing the first canto of ‘Don Juan,’ with feelings chastened by suffering and time, he recurred to that period—never effaced from his memory—the time when he wrote:

‘When thou art gone—the loved—the lost—the one
Whose smile hath gladdened—though, perchance, undone!’

Time could not change the feelings of his youth, nor keep his thoughts for long from the object of his early love.

‘They tell me ’tis decided you depart:
’Tis wise—’tis well, but not the less a pain;
I have no further claim on your young heart,
Mine is the victim, and would be again:
To love too much has been the only art
I used.’

‘I loved, I love you, for this love have lost
State, station, Heaven, Mankind’s, my own esteem,
And yet can not regret what it hath cost,
So dear is still the memory of that dream;
Yet, if I name my guilt, ’tis not to boast,
None can deem harshlier of me than I deem.’

‘All is o’er
For me on earth, except some years to hide
My shame and sorrow deep in my heart’s core:
These I could bear, but cannot cast aside
The passion which still rages as before—
And so farewell—forgive me, love me—No,
That word is idle now—but let it go.’
*******
‘My heart is feminine, nor can forget—
To all, except one image, madly blind;
So shakes the needle, and so stands the pole,
As vibrates my fond heart to my fixed soul.’

[Pg 277]It was early in 1814 that Byron also wrote his farewell verses to Mary Chaworth, which appeared in the second edition of ‘The Corsair’:

I.
‘Farewell! if ever fondest prayer
For other’s weal availed on high,
Mine will not all be lost in air,
But waft thy name beyond the sky.
’Twere vain to speak—to weep—to sigh:
Oh! more than tears of blood can tell,
When wrung from Guilt’s expiring eye,
Are in that word—Farewell! Farewell!

II.
‘These lips are mute, these eyes are dry;
But in my breast, and in my brain,
Awake the pangs that pass not by,
The thought that ne’er shall sleep again.
My soul nor deigns nor dares complain,
Though Grief and Passion there rebel:
I only know we loved in vain—
I only feel—Farewell! Farewell!’

Even in the ‘Hebrew Melodies,’ which were probably begun in the autumn of 1814, and finished after Byron’s marriage in January, 1815, there are traces of that deathless remorse and love, whose expression could not be altogether repressed. We select some examples at random. In the poem ‘Oh, snatched away in Beauty’s bloom,’ the poet had added two verses which were subsequently suppressed:

‘Nor need I write to tell the tale,
My pen were doubly weak.
Oh! what can idle words avail,
Unless my heart could speak?

‘By day or night, in weal or woe,
That heart, no longer free,
Must bear the love it cannot show,
And silent turn for thee.’

[Pg 278]In ‘Herod’s Lament for Mariamne’ we find:

‘She’s gone, who shared my diadem;
She sunk, with her my joys entombing;
I swept that flower from Judah’s stem,
Whose leaves for me alone were blooming;
And mine’s the guilt, and mine the Hell,
This bosom’s desolation dooming;
And I have earned those tortures well,
Which unconsumed are still consuming!’

While admitting that Byron’s avowed object was to portray the remorse of Herod, we suspect that the haunting image of one so dear to him—one who had suffered through guilt which he so frequently deplored in verse—must have been in the poet’s mind when these lines were written.

On January 17, 1814, Byron went to Newstead with Augusta Leigh, and stayed there one month.

On the following day Byron wrote to his friend Wedderburn Webster:

This strange apology for what might have been considered a very natural act of neighbourly friendship, inevitably reminds us of a French proverb, Qui s’excuse s’accuse. It is worthy of note that, after Byron had been[Pg 279] ten days at Newstead with his sister, he wrote to his lawyer—who must have been surprised at the irrelevant information—to say that Augusta Leigh was ‘in the family way.’ The significance of this communication has hitherto passed unnoticed. We gather from Byron’s letters that he was much depressed by Mary Chaworth’s state of health, involving all the risks of discovery.

Soon after his return to London Byron wrote to Moore: ‘Seriously, I am in what the learned call a dilemma, and the vulgar, a scrape....’

Moore took care, with his asterisks, that we should not know the nature of that scrape, which certainly had nothing to do with his ‘Lines to a Lady Weeping’ which appeared in the first edition of ‘The Corsair.’ If the reader has any doubts on this point, let him refer to Byron’s letters to Murray, notably to that one in which the angry poet protests against the suppression of those lines in the second edition of ‘The Corsair’:

Moore’s asterisks veiled the record of a deeper scrape, as Byron’s letter to him, written three weeks later, plainly show.

On April 10, 1814, Byron wrote in his journal:

The latter portion of the journal at this period is much mutilated. There is a gap between April 10 and 19, when, four days after the birth of Medora, he writes in deep dejection:

It was at this time that Byron wrote the following lines, in which he tells Mary Chaworth that all danger of the discovery of their secret is over:

‘There is no more for me to hope,
There is no more for thee to fear;
And, if I give my sorrow scope,
That sorrow thou shalt never hear.
Why did I hold thy love so dear?
Why shed for such a heart one tear?
Let deep and dreary silence be
My only memory of thee!
When all are fled who flatter now,
Save thoughts which will not flatter then;
And thou recall’st the broken vow
To him who must not love again—
Each hour of now forgotten years
Thou, then, shalt number with thy tears;
And every drop of grief shall be
A vain remembrancer of me!’

On May 4, 1814, Byron sent to Moore the following verses. We quote from Lady Byron’s manuscript:

‘I speak not—I trace not—I breathe not thy name—
[Pg 281]There is love in the sound—there is Guilt in the fame—
But the tear which now burns on my cheek may impart
The deep thoughts that dwell in that silence of heart.

‘Too brief for our passion—too long for our peace—
Was that hour—can its hope—can its memory cease?
We repent—we abjure—we will break from our chain:
We must part—we must fly to—unite it again!

‘Oh! thine be the gladness—and mine be the Guilt!
Forgive me—adored one—forsake if thou wilt—
But the heart which is thine shall expire undebased,
And Man shall not break it whatever thou mayst.

‘Oh! proud to the mighty—but humble to thee
This soul in its bitterest moment shall be,
And our days glide as swift—and our moments more sweet
With thee at my side—than the world at my feet.

‘One tear of thy sorrow—one smile of thy love—
Shall turn me or fix—shall reward or reprove—
And the heartless may wonder at all I resign:
Thy lip shall reply—not to them—but to mine.’

These verses were not published until Byron had been five years in his grave. They tell the story plainly, and the manuscript in Mr. Murray’s possession speaks plainer still. Before Byron gave the manuscript to his wife, he erased the following lines:

‘We have loved—and oh! still, my adored one, we love!’

‘Oh! the moment is past when that passion might cease.’

‘But I cannot repent what we ne’er can recall.’

After Medora’s birth Byron became more and more dejected, and on April 29 he wrote a remarkable letter to Murray, enclosing a draft to redeem the copyrights of his poems, and releasing Murray from his engagement to pay £1,000, agreed on for ‘The Giaour’ and ‘The Bride of Abydos.’ Byron was evidently afraid that Mr. Chaworth Musters would discover the truth, and that a duel and disgrace would be the inevitable consequence.

Two days later Byron seems to have conquered his immediate apprehensions, and, in reply to an appeal from Murray, writes:

It had evidently dawned on Byron’s mind that a sudden suppression of his poems would have aroused public curiosity, and that a motive for his action would either have been found or invented. This would have been fatal to all concerned. If trouble were to come, it would be wiser not to meet it halfway. Happily, the birth of Medora passed unnoticed.

As time wore on, Byron’s hopes that Mary would relent grew apace. But he was doomed to disappointment. Mary Chaworth had the courage and the wisdom[Pg 283] to crush a love so disastrous to both. Byron in his blindness reproached her:

‘Thou art not false, but thou art fickle.’

He tells her that he would despise her if she were false; but he knows that her love is sincere:

‘When she can change who loved so truly!’

‘Ah! sure such grief is Fancy’s scheming,
And all the Change can be but dreaming!’

He could not believe that her resolve was serious. Time taught him better. Love died, and friendship took its place. The same love that tempted her to sin was that true love that works out its redemption.

Between April 15 and 21, 1816, before signing the deed of separation, Byron went into the country to take leave of Mary Chaworth. It was their last meeting, and the parting must have been a sad one. The hopes that Mary had formed for his peace and happiness in marriage had suddenly been dashed to the ground. And now he was about to leave England under a cloud, which threatened for a time to overwhelm them both. A terrible anxiety as to the issue of investigations, which were being made into his conduct previous to and during his marriage, oppressed her with the gravest apprehension. Everything seemed to depend upon the silence both of Byron and Augusta. Under this awful strain the mind of Mary Chaworth was flickering towards collapse. By the following verses, which must have been written soon after their final meeting, we find Byron,

‘Seared in heart—and lone—and blighted,’

reproaching, with a lover’s injustice, the woman he[Pg 284] adored, for that act of renunciation which, under happier auspices, might have proved his own salvation:

I.
‘When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

II.
‘The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow—
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

III.
‘They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me—
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

IV.
‘In secret we met—
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.’

[Pg 285]In the first draft Byron had written, after the second verse, the following words:

‘Our secret lies hidden,
But never forgot.’

In ‘Fare Thee Well,’ written on March 17, 1816, there are only four lines which have any bearing on the point under consideration.

Byron tells his wife that if she really knew the truth, if every inmost thought of his breast were bared before her, she would not have forsaken him.

That is true. Lady Byron might, in time, have forgiven everything if the doctors had been able to declare that her husband was not wholly accountable for his actions. But when they pronounced him to be of sound mind, and, as will be seen presently, she subsequently convinced herself that he had committed, and might even then be committing adultery with his sister under her own roof, she resolved never again to place herself in his power. If, in the early stages of disagreement, without betraying Mary Chaworth, it could have been avowed that Mrs. Leigh was not the mother of Medora, Lady Byron might not have seen in her husband’s strange conduct towards herself ‘signs of a deep remorse.’ She would certainly have been far more patient under suffering, and the separation might have been avoided. But this avowal was impracticable. Augusta had committed herself too far for that, and the idle gossip of her servants subsequently convinced Lady Byron that Byron was the father of Augusta’s child. It is clear that neither Augusta nor Byron made any attempts to remove those suspicions; in fact, they acted in a manner most certain to confirm them. Whether the secret, which they had pledged themselves to keep, could[Pg 286] long have been withheld from Lady Byron, if matters had been patched up, is doubtful. Meanwhile, as everything depended on premat nox alta, they dared not risk even a partial avowal of the truth.

The separation was inevitable, and in this case it was eternal. It is hard to believe that there had ever been any real love on either side. Under these circumstances we feel sure that any attempts at reconciliation would have ended disastrously for both. Byron’s love for Mary Chaworth was strong as death. Many waters could not have quenched it, ‘neither could the floods drown it.’

The last verses written by Byron before he left England for ever were addressed to his sister. The deed of separation had been signed, and Augusta Leigh, who had stood at his side in those dark hours when all the world had forsaken him, was about to leave London.

‘When all around grew drear and dark,
And Reason half withheld her ray—
And Hope but shed a dying spark
Which more misled my lonely way;
When Fortune changed, and Love fled far,
And Hatred’s shafts flew thick and fast,
Thou wert the solitary star
Which rose, and set not to the last.
And when the cloud upon us came
Which strove to blacken o’er thy ray—
Then purer spread its gentle flame
And dashed the darkness all away.
Still may thy Spirit dwell on mine,
And teach it what to brave or brook—
There’s more in one soft word of thine
Than in the world’s defied rebuke.
******
Then let the ties of baffled love
Be broken—thine will never break;
Thy heart can feel.’

[Pg 287]These ingenuous words show that Byron’s affection for his sister, and his gratitude for her loyalty, were both deep and sincere. If, as Lord Lovelace asserts, Byron had been her lover, we know enough of his character to be certain that he would never have written these lines. He was not a hypocrite—far from it—and it was foreign to his naturally combative nature to attempt to conciliate public opinion. These lines were written currente calamo, and are only interesting to us on account of the light they cast upon the situation at the time of the separation. Evidently Byron had heard a rumour of the baseless charge that was afterwards openly made. He reminds Augusta that a cloud threatened to darken her existence, but the bright rays of her purity dispelled it. He hopes that even in absence she will guide and direct him as in the past; and he compliments her by saying that one word from her had more influence over him than the whole world’s censure. Although his love-episode with Mary was over, yet so long as Augusta loves him he will still have something to live for, as she alone can feel for him and understand his position.

In speaking of his sister, in the third canto of ‘Childe Harold,’ he says:

‘For there was soft Remembrance, and sweet Trust
In one fond breast, to which his own would melt.’

‘And he had learned to love—I know not why,
For this in such as him seems strange of mood—
The helpless looks of blooming Infancy,
Even in its earliest nurture; what subdued,
To change like this, a mind so far imbued
With scorn of man, it little boots to know;
But thus it was; and though in solitude
Small power the nipped affections have to grow,
In him this glowed when all beside had ceased to glow.’

[Pg 288]If these words bear any significance, Byron must mean that, since the preceding canto of ‘Childe Harold’ was written, he had formed (learned to love) a strong attachment to some child, and, in spite of absence, this affection still glowed. That child may possibly have been Ada, as the opening lines seem to suggest. But this is not quite certain. According to Lord Lovelace, Byron never saw his child after January 3, 1816, when the babe was only twenty-four days old. Byron himself states that it was not granted to him ‘to watch her dawn of little joys, or hold her lightly on his knee, and print on her soft cheek a parent’s kiss.’ All this, he tells us, ‘was in his nature,’ but was denied to him. His sole consolation was the hope that some day Ada would learn to love him. On the other hand, the child mentioned in ‘Childe Harold’ had won his love by means which ‘it little boots to know.’ If Byron had alluded to his daughter Ada, there need have been no ambiguity. Possibly the child here indicated may have been little Medora, then three years old, with whom he had often played, and who was then living with that sister of ‘Soft Remembrance and sweet Trust.’

If that conjecture be correct, this is the only allusion to Medora in Byron’s poetry. But she is indicated in prose. In reference to the death of one of Moore’s children, Byron wrote (February 2, 1818):

In the one before Moore will have recognized Medora. In spite of the ‘scarlet cloak and double figure,’ Moore[Pg 289] had no belief in the story that Byron became a father while at Harrow School!

‘The Dream,’ which was written in July, 1816, is perhaps more widely known than any of Byron’s poems. Its theme is the remembrance of a hopeless passion, which neither Time nor Reason could extinguish. Similar notes of lamentation permeate most of his poems, but in ‘The Dream’ Byron, for the first time, takes the world into his confidence, and tells his tale of woe with such distinctness that we realize its truth, its passion, and its calamity. The publication of that poem was an indiscretion which must have been very disconcerting to his sister. Fortunately, it had no disastrous consequences. It apparently awakened no suspicions, and its sole effect was to incense Mary Chaworth’s husband, who, in order to stop all prattle, caused the ‘peculiar diadem of trees’ to be cut down. In Byron’s early poems we see how deeply Mary Chaworth’s marriage affected him; but this was known only to a small circle of Southwell friends. In ‘The Dream’ we realize that she was in fact a portion of his life, and that his own marriage had not in the least affected his feelings towards her. He had tried hard to forget her, but in vain; she was his destiny. Whether Byron, when he wrote this poem, had any idea of publishing it to the world is not known. It may possibly have been written to relieve his overburdened mind, and would not have seen the light but for Lady Byron’s treatment of Mrs. Leigh on the memorable occasion when she extracted, under promise of secrecy, the so-called ‘Confession,’ to which we shall allude presently. In any case, Byron became aware of what had happened in September, 1816. In some lines addressed to his[Pg 290] wife, he tells her that she bought others’ grief at any price, adding:

‘The means were worthy, and the end is won;
I would not do by thee as thou hast done.’

Possibly, Byron may have thought that the publication of this poem would act as a barb, and would wound Lady Byron’s stubborn pride. Its appearance in the circumstances was certainly contra bonos mores, but we must remember that ‘men in rage often strike those who wish them best.’ Whatever may have been Byron’s intention, ‘The Dream’ affords a proof that Mary Chaworth was never long absent from his thoughts. At this time, when he felt a deep remorse for his conduct towards Mary Chaworth, he asks himself:

‘What is this Death? a quiet of the heart?
The whole of that of which we are a part?
For Life is but a vision—what I see
Of all which lives alone is Life to me,
And being so—the absent are the dead
Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread
A dreary shroud around us, and invest
With sad remembrancers our hours of rest.
The absent are the dead—for they are cold,
And ne’er can be what once we did behold;
And they are changed, and cheerless,—or if yet
The unforgotten do not all forget,
Since thus divided—equal must it be
If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea;
It may be both—but one day end it must
In the dark union of insensate dust.’

It was at this time also that Byron wrote his ‘Stanzas to Augusta,’ which show his complete confidence in her loyalty:

‘Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
[Pg 291]Though tempted, thou never couldst shake;
Though trusted, thou didst not betray me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, ’twas not to defame me,
Nor, mute, that the world might belie.’

Byron’s remorse also found expression in ‘Manfred,’ where contrition is but slightly veiled by words of mysterious import, breathed in an atmosphere of mountains, magic, and ghost-lore. People in society, whose ears had been poisoned by insinuations against Mrs. Leigh, and who knew nothing of Byron’s intercourse with Mary Chaworth, came to the conclusion that ‘Manfred’ revealed a criminal attachment between Byron and his sister. Byron was aware of this, and, conscious of his innocence, held his head in proud defiance, and laughed his enemies to scorn. He did not deign to defend himself; and the public—forgetful of the maxim that where there is a sense of guilt there is a jealousy of drawing attention to it—believed the worst. When a critique of ‘Manfred,’ giving an account of the supposed origin of the story, was sent to Byron, he wrote to Murray:

‘The conjecturer is out, and knows nothing of the matter. I had a better origin than he can devise or divine for the soul of him.’

That was the simple truth. The cruel allegation against Mrs. Leigh seemed to be beneath contempt. As Sir Egerton Brydges pointed out at the time, Byron, being of a strong temperament, did not reply to the injuries heaped upon him by whining complaints and cowardly protestations of innocence; he became desperate, and broke out into indignation, sarcasm, and exposure of his opponents, in a manner so severe as to seem inexcusably cruel to those who did not realize the provocation. It was ‘war to the knife,’ and Byron had the best of it.

[Pg 292]We propose to examine ‘Manfred’ closely, to see whether Astarte in any degree resembles the description which Lord Lovelace has given of Augusta Leigh.

Manfred tells us that his slumbers are ‘a continuance of enduring thought,’ since that ‘all-nameless hour’ when he committed the crime for which he suffers. He asks ‘Forgetfulness of that which is within him—a crime which he cannot utter.’ When told by the Seven Spirits that he cannot have self-oblivion, Manfred asks if Death would give it to him; and receives the sad reply that, being immortal, the spirit after death cannot forget the past.

Eventually the Seventh Spirit—typifying, possibly, a Magdalen—appears before Manfred, in the shape of a beautiful woman.

‘Manfred. Oh God! if it be thus, and thou
Art not a madness and a mockery,
I yet might be most happy.’

When the figure vanishes, Manfred falls senseless. In the second act, Manfred, in reply to the chamois-hunter, who offers him a cup of wine, says:

‘Away, away! there’s blood upon the brim!
Will it then never—never sink in the earth?
’Tis blood—my blood! the pure warm stream
Which ran in the veins of my fathers, and in ours
When we were in our youth, and had one heart,
And loved each other as we should not love,
And this was shed: but still it rises up.
Colouring the clouds that shut me out from Heaven.’

One may well wonder what all this has to do with Augusta. The blood that ran in Byron’s veins also ran in the veins of Mary Chaworth, and that blood, shed by Byron’s kinsman, had caused a feud, which was not broken until Byron came upon the scene, and fell hopelessly in love with ‘the last of a time-honoured[Pg 293] race.’ Byron from his boyhood always believed that there was a blood-curse upon him.

When, two years later, he wrote ‘The Duel’ (December, 1818), he again alludes to the subject:

‘I loved thee—I will not say how,
Since things like these are best forgot:
Perhaps thou mayst imagine now
Who loved thee and who loved thee not.
And thou wert wedded to another,
And I at last another wedded:
I am a father, thou a mother,
To strangers vowed, with strangers bedded.
***** *
‘Many a bar, and many a feud,
Though never told, well understood,
Rolled like a river wide between—
And then there was the curse of blood,
Which even my Heart’s can not remove.
***** *
‘I’ve seen the sword that slew him; he,
The slain, stood in a like degree
To thee, as he, the Slayer stood
(Oh, had it been but other blood!)
In Kin and Chieftainship to me.
Thus came the Heritage to thee.’

Clearly, then, the Spirit, which appeared to Manfred in the form of a beautiful female figure, was Mary Chaworth; the crime for which he suffered was his conduct towards her; and the blood, which his fancy beheld on the cup’s brim, was the blood of William Chaworth, which his predecessor, Lord Byron, had shed. When asked by the chamois-hunter whether he had wreaked revenge upon his enemies, Manfred replies:

‘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.’

[Pg 294]In speaking of the ‘core of his heart’s grief,’ Manfred says:

‘Yet there was One—
She was like me in lineaments—her eyes—
Her hair—her features—all, to the very tone
Even of her voice, they said were like to mine;
But softened all, and tempered into beauty:
She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings,[52]
The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mind
To comprehend the Universe: nor these
Alone, but with them gentler powers than mine,
Pity, and smiles, and tears—which I had not;
And tenderness—but that I had for her;
Humility—and that I never had.
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.’

In order to appreciate the absurdity of connecting this description with Augusta, we will quote her noble accuser, Lord Lovelace:

In fact,

‘She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings,
The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mind
To comprehend the Universe.’

Lord Lovelace further tells us that Augusta Leigh ‘had a refined species of comic talent’; that she was[Pg 295] ‘strangely insensible to the nature and magnitude of the offence in question [incest] even as an imputation;’ and that ‘there was apparently an absence of all deep feeling in her mind, of everything on which a strong impression could be made.’ We are also told that ‘Byron, after his marriage, generally spoke of Augusta as “a fool,” with equal contempt of her understanding and principles.’

In short, Byron’s description of the woman, whom he had ‘destroyed,’ resembles Augusta Leigh about as much as a mountain resembles a haystack. How closely Manfred’s description resembles Mary Chaworth will be seen presently. Augusta Leigh had told Byron that, in consequence of his conduct, Mary Chaworth was out of her mind.

Manfred says that if he had never lived, that which he loved had still been living:

‘... Had I never loved,
That which I love would still be beautiful,
Happy, and giving happiness. What is she?
What is she now? A sufferer for my sins—
A thing I dare not think upon—or nothing.’

When Nemesis asks Manfred whom he would ‘uncharnel,’ he replies:

‘One without a tomb—
Call up Astarte.’

The name, of course, suggests a star. As we have seen, Byron often employed that metaphor in allusion to Mary Chaworth.

When the phantom of Astarte rises, Manfred exclaims:

‘Can this be death? there’s bloom upon her cheek;
But now I see it is no living hue,
But a strange hectic.’
[Pg 296]

He is afraid to look upon her; he cannot speak to her, and implores Nemesis to intercede:

‘Bid her speak—
Forgive me, or condemn me.’

Nemesis tells him that she has no authority over Astarte:

‘She is not of our order, but belongs
To the other powers.’[53]

The fine appeal of Manfred cannot have been addressed by Byron to his sister:

‘Hear me, hear me—
Astarte! my belovéd! speak to me:
I have so much endured—so much endure—
Look on me! the grave hath not changed thee more
Than I am changed for thee. Thou lovedst me
Too much, as I loved thee: we were not made
To torture thus each other—though it were
The deadliest sin to love as we have loved.
Say that thou loath’st me not—that I do bear
This punishment for both—that thou wilt be
One of the blesséd—and that I shall die.
*******
‘I cannot rest.
I know not what I ask, nor what I seek:
I feel but what thou art, and what I am;
And I would hear yet once before I perish
The voice which was my music[54]—speak to me!
*******
Speak to me! I have wandered o’er the earth,
And never found thy likeness.’

When Manfred implores Astarte to forgive him, she is silent. It is not a matter for forgiveness. He entreats her to speak to him, so that he may once more hear that sweet voice, even though it be for[Pg 297] the last time. The silence is broken by the word ‘Farewell!’ Manfred, whose doom is sealed, cries in agony:

‘What I have done is done; I bear within
A torture which could nothing gain (from others).
The Mind, which is immortal, makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts,—
Is its own origin of ill and end—
And its own place and time:
I was my own destroyer, and will be
My own hereafter...
The hand of Death is on me...
All things swim around me, and the Earth
Heaves, as it were, beneath me. Fare thee well!’

So far as we know, there is nothing in the whole length of this poem to suggest anything abnormal; and it is hard to understand what resemblance Byron’s contemporaries could have discovered between the Astarte of ‘Manfred’ and Augusta Leigh! Enough has been quoted to show that Byron was not thinking of his sister when he wrote ‘Manfred,’ but of her whose life he had blasted, and whose ‘sacred name’ he trembled to reveal.

In April, 1817, Byron was informed by Mrs. Leigh that Mary Chaworth and her husband had made up their differences. The ‘Lament of Tasso’ was written in that month, and Byron’s thoughts were occupied, as usual, with the theme of all his misery.

‘That thou wert beautiful, and I not blind,
Hath been the sin that shuts me from mankind;
But let them go, or torture as they will,
My heart can multiply thine image still;
Successful Love may sate itself away;
The wretched are the faithful; ’tis their fate
To have all feeling, save the one, decay,
And every passion into one dilate,
As rapid rivers into Ocean pour;
But ours is fathomless, and hath no shore.’

[Pg 298]In ‘Mazeppa’ Byron tells how he met ‘Theresa’ in that month of June, and how ‘through his brain the thought did pass that there was something in her air which would not doom him to despair.’ This incident is again referred to in ‘Don Juan.’ The Count Palatine is, probably, intended as a sketch of Mary’s husband.

‘The Duel,’ which was written in December, 1818, is addressed to Mary Chaworth:

‘I loved thee—I will not say how,
Since things like these are best forgot.’

Byron alludes to ‘the curse of blood,’ with, ‘many a bar and many a feud,’ which ‘rolled like a wide river between them’:

‘Alas! how many things have been
Since we were friends; for I alone
Feel more for thee than can be shown.’

In the so-called ‘Stanzas to the Po,’ we find the same prolonged note of suffering. Writing to Murray (May 8, 1820), Byron says:

In view of the secrecy which Byron consistently observed, respecting his later intimacy with Mary Chaworth, the publication of these verses would have been highly indiscreet. They were written in June, 1819, after Mary had for some time been reconciled to her husband. She was then living with him at Colwick Hall, near Nottingham.

Ostensibly these stanzas form an apostrophe to the River Po, and the ‘lady of the land’ was, of course, the Guiccioli. Medwin, to whom Byron gave the poem,[Pg 299] believed that the river apostrophized by the poet was the River Po, whose ‘deep and ample stream’ was ‘the mirror of his heart.’ But it seems perfectly clear that, if this poem referred only to the Countess Guiccioli, there could have been no objection to its publication in England. The reading public in those days knew nothing of Byron’s liaisons abroad, and his mystic allusion to foreign rivers and foreign ladies would have left the British public cold.

A scrutiny of these perplexing stanzas suggests that they were adapted, from a fragment written in early life, to meet the conditions of 1819. Evidently Mary Chaworth was once more ‘the ocean to the river of his thoughts,’ and the stream indicated in the opening stanza was not the Po, but the River Trent, which flows close to the ancient walls of Colwick, where ‘the lady of his love’ was then residing. To assist the reader, we insert the poem, having merely transposed three stanzas to make its purport clearer

I.
‘River, that rollest by the ancient walls,
Where dwells the Lady of my love, when she
Walks by the brink, and there perchance recalls
A faint and fleeting memory of me:

II.
‘She will look on thee—I have looked on thee,
Full of that thought: and from that moment ne’er
Thy waters could I dream of, name, or see
Without the inseparable sigh for her!

III.
‘But that which keepeth us apart is not
Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth,
But the distraction of a various lot,
As various the climates of our birth.
[Pg 300]
IV.
‘What if thy deep and ample stream should be
A mirror of my heart, where she may read
The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!

V.
‘What do I say—a mirror of my heart?
Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong?
Such as my feelings were and are, thou art;
And such as thou art were my passions long.

VI.
‘Time may have somewhat tamed them—not for ever;
Thou overflowest thy banks, and not for aye
Thy bosom overboils, congenial river!
Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away:

VII.
‘But left long wrecks behind, and now again,
Borne on our old unchanged career, we move:
Thou tendest wildly onwards to the main,
And I,—to loving one I should not love.

VIII.
‘My blood is all meridian; were it not,
I had not left my clime, nor should I be,
In spite of tortures, ne’er to be forgot,
A slave again to Love—at least of thee.

IX.
‘The current I behold will sweep beneath
Her native walls,[55] and murmur at her feet;
Her eyes will look on thee, when she shall breathe
The twilight air, unharmed by summer’s heat.

X.
‘Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream.
Yes, they will meet the wave I gaze on now:
Mine cannot witness, even in a dream,
That happy wave repass me in its flow!
[Pg 301]
XI.
‘The wave that bears my tears returns no more:
Will she return by whom that wave shall sweep?
Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore,
I near thy source, she by the dark-blue deep.[56]

XII.
‘A stranger loves the Lady of the land,
Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood
Is all meridian, as if never fanned
By the bleak wind that chills the polar flood.

XIII.
‘’Tis vain to struggle—let me perish young—
Live as I lived, and love as I have loved;
To dust if I return, from dust I sprung,
And then, at least, my heart can ne’er be moved.’

In the first stanza, Byron says that when his lady-love walks by the river’s brink ‘she may perchance recall a faint and fleeting memory’ of him. Those words, which might have been applicable to Mary Chaworth, whom he had not seen for at least three years, could not possibly refer to a woman from whom he had been parted but two short months, and with whom he had since been in constant correspondence. Only a few days before these verses were written, Countess Guiccioli had told him by letter that she had prepared all her relatives and friends to expect him at Ravenna. There must surely have been something more than ‘a faint and fleeting’ memory of Byron in the mind of the ardent Guiccioli. In the second[Pg 302] stanza, Byron, in allusion to the river he had in his thoughts, says:

Now, while there was nothing whatever to connect the River Po with tender recollections, there was Byron’s association in childhood with the River Trent, a memory inseparable from his boyish love for Mary Chaworth.

‘But in his native stream, the Guadalquivir,
Juan to lave his youthful limbs was wont;
And having learnt to swim in that sweet river
Had often turned the art to some account.’

In the fourth stanza we perceive that the poet, while thinking of the Trent, ‘betrays his thoughts’ to the Po, a river as wild and as swift as his native stream.

The ninth stanza has puzzled commentators exceedingly. It has been pointed out that the River Po does not sweep beneath the walls of Ravenna. That is, of course, indisputable. But Byron, in all probability, did not then know the exact course of that river, and blindly followed Dante’s geographical description, and almost used his very words:

‘Siede la terra, dove nata fui,
Su la marina dove il Po discende,
Per aver pace co’ seguaci sui.’

It is, of course, well known that the Po branches off into two streams to the north-west of Ferrara, and flows both northward and southward of that city. The southern portion—the Po di Primaro—is fed by four affluents—the Rheno, the Savena, the Santerno, and the Lamone—and flows into the Adriatic south[Pg 303] of Comachio, about midway between that place and Ravenna. It was obviously to the Po di Primaro that Dante referred when he wrote seguaci sui.

Unless Francesca was born close to the mouth of the Po, which is not impossible, Byron erred in good company. In any case, we may fairly plead poetic licence. That Byron crossed the Po di Primaro as well as the main river admits of no doubt.

In the eleventh stanza Byron is wondering what will be the result of his journey? Will the Guiccioli return to him? Will all be well with the lovers, or will he return to Venice alone? In his fancy they are both wandering on the banks of that river. He is near its source, where the Po di Primaro branches off near Pontelagascuro, while she was on the shore of the Adriatic.

The twelfth stanza would perhaps have been clearer if the first and second lines had been,

‘A stranger, born far beyond the mountains,
Loves the Lady of the land,’

which was Byron’s meaning. The poet excuses himself for his fickleness on the plea that ‘his blood is all meridian’—in short, that he cannot help loving someone. But we plainly see that his love for Mary Chaworth was still paramount. ‘In spite of tortures ne’er to be forgot’—tortures of which we had a glimpse in ‘Manfred’—he was still her slave. Finally, Byron tells us that it was useless to struggle against the misery his heart endured, and that all his hopes were centred on an early death.

The episode of Francesca and Paolo had made a deep impression on Byron. He likened it to his unfortunate adventure with Mary Chaworth in June and July, 1813. In ‘The Corsair’—written after their[Pg 304] intimacy had been broken off—Byron prefixes to each canto a motto from ‘The Inferno’ which seemed to be appropriate to his own case. In the first canto we find:

‘Nessun maggior dolore,
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria.’

In the second canto:

‘Conoscesti i dubbiosi desire?’

In the third canto:

‘Come vedi—ancor non m’ abbandona.’

That Byron had Francesca in his mind when he wrote the stanzas to the Po seems likely; and in the letter which he wrote to Mary from Venice, in the previous month, he compares their misfortunes with those of Paolo and Francesca in plain words.[57]

‘Don Juan’ was begun in the autumn of 1818. That poem, Byron tells us, was inspired almost entirely by his own personal experience. Perhaps he drew a portrait of Mary Chaworth when he described Julia:

‘And she
Was married, charming, chaste, and twenty-three.’

When they parted in 1809, that was exactly Mary’s age.

On a summer’s eve in the month of June, Juan and Julia met:

‘How beautiful she looked! her conscious heart
Glowed in her cheek, and yet she felt no wrong.’

For her husband she had honour, virtue, truth, and love. The sun had set, and the yellow moon arose high in the heavens:

‘There is a dangerous silence in that hour,
A stillness which leaves room for the full soul.’

Several weeks had passed away:

‘Julia, in fact, had tolerable grounds,—
Alfonso’s loves with Inez were well known.’

Then came the parting note:

‘They tell me ’tis decided you depart:
’Tis wise—’tis well, but not the less a pain;
I have no further claim on your young heart,
Mine is the victim, and would be again:
To love too much has been the only art
I used.’

Julia tells Juan that she loved him, and still loves him tenderly:

‘I loved, I love you, for this love have lost
State, station, Heaven, mankind’s, my own esteem,
And yet cannot regret what it hath cost,
So dear is still the memory of that dream.’

‘All is o’er
For me on earth, except some years to hide
My shame and sorrow deep in my heart’s core.’

The seal to this letter was a sunflower—Elle vous suit partout. It may be mentioned here that Byron had a seal bearing this motto.

[Pg 306]When Juan realized that the parting was final, he exclaims:

‘No more—no more—oh! never more, my heart,
Canst thou be my sole world, my universe!
Once all in all, but now a thing apart,
Thou canst not be my blessing or my curse:
The illusion’s gone for ever.’

In the third canto we have a hint of Byron’s feelings after his wife had left him:

‘He entered in the house no more his home,
A thing to human feelings the most trying,
And harder for the heart to overcome,
Perhaps, than even the mental pangs of dying;
To find our hearthstone turned into a tomb,
And round its once warm precincts palely lying
The ashes of our hopes.’

‘But whatsoe’er he had of love reposed
On that beloved daughter; she had been
The only thing which kept his heart unclosed
Amidst the savage deeds he had done and seen,
A lonely pure affection unopposed:
There wanted but the loss of this to wean
His feelings from all milk of human kindness,
And turn him like the Cyclops mad with blindness.’

In the fourth canto we are introduced to Haidée, who resembled Lambro in features and stature, even to the delicacy of their hands. We are told that owing to the violence of emotion and the agitation of her mind she broke a bloodvessel, and lay unconscious on her couch for days. Like Astarte in ‘Manfred,’ ‘her blood was shed: I saw, but could not stanch it’:

‘She looked on many a face with vacant eye,
On many a token without knowing what:
She saw them watch her without asking why,
And recked not who around her pillow sat.
******* [Pg 307]
‘Anon her thin wan fingers beat the wall
In time to the harper’s tune: he changed the theme
And sang of Love; the fierce name struck through all
Her recollection; on her flashed the dream
Of what she was, and is, if ye could call
To be so being; in a gushing stream
The tears rushed forth from her o’erclouded brain,
Like mountain mists at length dissolved in rain.’

‘Short solace, vain relief! Thought came too quick,
And whirled her brain to madness.’

‘She died, but not alone; she held within,
A second principle of Life, which might
Have dawned a fair and sinless child of sin;
But closed its little being without light.’

‘Thus lived—thus died she; never more on her
Shall Sorrow light, or Shame.’

In the fifth canto, written in 1820, after the ‘Stanzas to the Po,’ we find Byron once more in a confidential mood:

‘I have a passion for the name of “Mary,”
For once it was a magic sound to me;
And still it half calls up the realms of Fairy,
Where I beheld what never was to be;
All feelings changed, but this was last to vary
A spell from which even yet I am not quite free.’

And there is a sigh for Mary Chaworth in the following lines:

‘To pay my court, I
Gave what I had—a heart; as the world went, I
Gave what was worth a world; for worlds could never
Restore me those pure feelings, gone for ever.
’Twas the boy’s mite, and like the widow’s may
Perhaps be weighed hereafter, if not now;
But whether such things do or do not weigh,
All who have loved, or love, will still allow
Life has naught like it.’

Early in 1823, little more than a year before his death, Byron refers to ‘the fair most fatal Juan ever[Pg 308] met.’ Under the name of the Lady Adeline, this most fatal fair one is introduced to the reader:

‘Although she was not evil nor meant ill,
Both Destiny and Passion spread the net
And caught them.’

‘Chaste she was, to Detraction’s desperation,
And wedded unto one she had loved well.’

‘The World could tell
Nought against either, and both seemed secure—
She in her virtue, he in his hauteur.’

Here we have a minute description of Newstead Abbey, the home of the ‘noble pair,’ where Juan came as a visitor:

‘What I throw off is ideal—
Lowered, leavened, like a history of Freemasons,
Which bears the same relation to the real
As Captain Parry’s Voyage may do to Jason’s.
The grand Arcanum’s not for men to see all;
My music has some mystic diapasons;
And there is much which could not be appreciated
In any manner by the uninitiated.’

Adeline, we are told, came out at sixteen:

‘At eighteen, though below her feet still panted
A Hecatomb of suitors with devotion,
She had consented to create again
That Adam called “The happiest of Men.”’

It will be remembered that when Mary Chaworth married she was exactly eighteen. Her husband was:

‘Tall, stately, formed to lead the courtly van
On birthdays. The model of a chamberlain.’

‘But there was something wanting on the whole—
don’t know what, and therefore cannot tell—
Which pretty women—the sweet souls!—call Soul.
Certes it was not body; he was well
Proportioned, as a poplar or a pole,
A handsome man.’

[Pg 309]This description would answer equally well for ‘handsome Jack Musters,’ who married Mary Chaworth. Adeline, we are told, took Juan in hand when she was about seven-and-twenty. That was Mary’s age in 1813. But this may have been a mere coincidence.

Now, when once Adeline had taken an interest in anything, her impressions grew, and gathered as they ran, like growing water, upon her mind. The more so, perhaps, because she was not at first too readily impressed. She did not know her own heart:

‘I think not she was then in love with Juan:
If so, she would have had the strength to fly
The wild sensation, unto her a new one:
She merely felt a common sympathy
In him.’

‘She was, or thought she was, his friend—and this
Without the farce of Friendship, or romance
Of Platonism.’

‘Few of the soft sex,’ says Byron, ‘are very stable in their resolves.’ She had heard some parts of Juan’s history; ‘but women hear with more good humour such aberrations than we men of rigour’:

‘Adeline, in all her growing sense
Of Juan’s merits and his situation,
Felt on the whole an interest intense—
Partly perhaps because a fresh sensation,
[Pg 310]Or that he had an air of innocence,
Which is for Innocence a sad temptation—
As Women hate half-measures, on the whole,
She ’gan to ponder how to save his soul.’

After a deal of thought, ‘she seriously advised him to get married.’

‘There was Miss Millpond, smooth as summer’s sea,
That usual paragon, an only daughter,
Who seemed the cream of Equanimity,
Till skimmed—and then there was some milk and water,
With a slight shade of blue too, it might be
Beneath the surface.’

The mention of Aurora Raby, to whom Juan in the first instance proposed, and by whom he was refused, suggests an incident in his life which is well known. Aurora was very young, and knew but little of the world’s ways. In her indifference she confounded him with the crowd of flatterers by whom she was surrounded. Her mind appears to have been of a serious caste; with poetic vision she ‘saw worlds beyond this world’s perplexing waste,’ and

‘those worlds
Had more of her existence; for in her
There was a depth of feeling to embrace
Thoughts, boundless, deep, but silent too as Space.’

She had ‘a pure and placid mien’; her colour was ‘never high,’

‘Though sometimes faintly flushed—and always clear
As deep seas in a sunny atmosphere.’

We cannot be positive, but perhaps Byron had Aurora Raby in his mind when he wrote:

‘I’ve seen some balls and revels in my time,
And stayed them over for some silly reason,
And then I looked (I hope it was no crime)
To see what lady best stood out the season;
[Pg 311]And though I’ve seen some thousands in their prime
Lovely and pleasing, and who still may please on,
I never saw but one (the stars withdrawn)
Whose bloom could after dancing dare the Dawn.’[58]

Perhaps Aurora Raby may have been drawn from his recollection of Miss Mercer Elphinstone, who afterwards married Auguste Charles Joseph, Comte de Flahaut de la Billarderie, one of Napoleon’s Aides-de-Camp, then an exile in England. This young lady was particularly gracious to Byron at Lady Jersey’s party, when others gave him a cold reception. We wonder how matters would have shaped themselves if she had accepted the proposal of marriage which Byron made to her in 1814! But it was not to be. That charming woman passed out of his orbit, and as he waited upon the shore, gazing at the dim outline of the coast of France, the curtain fell upon the first phase of Byron’s existence. The Pilgrim of Eternity stood on the threshold of a new life:

‘Between two worlds life hovers like a star,
’Twixt Night and Morn, upon the horizon’s verge.
How little do we know that which we are!
How less what we may be! The eternal surge
Of Time and Tide rolls on and bears afar
Our bubbles; as the old burst, new emerge,
Lashed from the foam of Ages.’

And after eight years of exile, in his ‘Last Words on Greece,’ written in those closing days at Missolonghi, with the shadow of Death upon him, his mind reverts to one whom, in 1816, he had called ‘Soul of my thought’:

‘What are to me those honours or renown
Past or to come, a new-born people’s cry?
Albeit for such I could despise a crown
[Pg 312]Of aught save laurel, or for such could die.
I am a fool of passion, and a frown
Of thine to me is as an adder’s eye—
To the poor bird whose pinion fluttering down
Wafts unto death the breast it bore so high—
Such is this maddening fascination grown,
So strong thy magic or so weak am I.’

‘The flowers and fruits of Love are gone; the worm,
The canker, and the grief, are mine alone!’

 

 

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[Pg 313]

PART III

‘ASTARTE’

‘The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.’ Shakespeare: Julius Cæsar.

[Pg 314]

 

[Pg 315]

CHAPTER I

From the moment when Lord Byron left England until the hour of his death, the question of his separation from his wife was never long out of his thoughts. He was remarkably communicative on the subject, and spoke of it constantly, not only to Madame de Staël, Hobhouse, Lady Blessington, and Trelawny, but, as we have seen, even in casual conversation with comparative strangers. There is no doubt that he felt himself aggrieved, and bitterly resented a verdict which he knew to be unjust. In a pamphlet which was subsequently suppressed, written while he was at Ravenna, Byron sums up his own case. In justice to one who can no longer plead his own cause, we feel bound to transcribe a portion of his reply to strictures on his matrimonial conduct, which appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine:

Byron knew of the charge that had been whispered against his sister and himself, and, knowing it to be false, it stung him to the heart. And yet he dared not speak, because a solution of the mystery that surrounded the separation from his wife would have involved the betrayal of one whom he designated as the soul of his thought:

‘Invisible but gazing, as I glow
Mixed with thy spirit, blended with thy birth,
And feeling still with thee in my crush’d feelings dearth.’

Augusta Leigh, the selfless martyr, the most loyal friend that Byron ever possessed, his ‘tower of strength in the hour of need,’ assisted her brother, so to speak, to place the pack on a false scent, and the whole field blindly followed. There never was a nobler example of self-immolation than that of the sister who bravely endured the odium of a scandal in which she had no part. For Byron’s sake she was content to suffer intensely during her lifetime; and after she had ceased to feel, her name was branded by Lady Byron and her descendants with the mark of infamy.

A curious feature in the case is that, with few exceptions, those who knew Byron and Mrs. Leigh intimately came gradually to accept the story which Lady Caroline Lamb had insidiously whispered, a libel which flourished exceedingly in the noxious vapours of a scandal-loving age. As Nature is said to abhor a vacuum, so falsehood rushed in to fill the void which silence caused.

It is with a deep searching of heart and with great reluctance that we re-open this painful subject.

[Pg 318]The entire responsibility must rest with the late Lord Lovelace, whose loud accusation against Byron’s devoted sister deprives us of any choice in the matter.

In order to understand the full absurdity of the accusation brought against Augusta Leigh, we have but to contrast the evidence brought against her in ‘Astarte’ with allusions to her in Byron’s poems, and with the esteem in which she was held by men and women well known in society at the time of the separation.

Lord Stanhope, the historian, in a private letter written at the time of the Beecher Stowe scandals, says:

Frances, Lady Shelley, a woman of large experience, penetration, and sagacity, whose husband was a personal friend of the Prince Regent, stated in a letter to the Times that Mrs. Leigh was like a mother to Byron, and when she knew her intimately—at the time of the separation—was ‘not at all an attractive person.’ Her husband was very fond of her, and had a high opinion of her.

These impressions are confirmed by all those friends[Pg 319] and acquaintances of Mrs. Leigh who were still living in 1869.

In 1816 Augusta Leigh was a married woman of thirty-two years of age, and the mother of four children. She had long been attached to the Court, moved in good society, and was much liked by those who knew her intimately. Since her marriage in 1807 she had been more of a mother than a sister to Byron, and her affection for him was deep and sincere. She made allowances for his frailties, bore his uncertain temper with patience, and was never afraid of giving him good advice. In June, 1813, she tried to save him from the catastrophe which she foresaw; and having failed, she made the supreme sacrifice of her life, by adopting his natural child, thus saving the reputation of a woman whom her brother sincerely loved. Henceforward, under suspicions which must have been galling to her pride, she faced the world’s ‘speechless obloquy,’ heedless of consequences. In the after-years, when great trouble fell upon her through the misconduct of that adopted child, she bore her sorrows in silence. Among those who were connected with Byron’s life, Hobhouse, Hodgson, and Harness—three men of unimpeachable character—respected and admired her to the last.

Such, then, was the woman who was persecuted during her lifetime and slandered in her grave. Her traducers at first whispered, and afterwards openly stated, not only that she had committed incest with her brother, but that she had employed her influence over him to make a reconciliation with his wife impossible.

If that were so, it is simply inconceivable that Hobhouse should have remained her lifelong friend.[Pg 320] His character is well known. Not only his public but much of his private life is an open book. As a gentleman and a man of honour he was above suspicion. From his long and close intimacy with Byron, there were but few secrets between them; and Hobhouse undoubtedly knew the whole truth of the matter between Byron and his sister. He was Byron’s most trusted friend during life, and executor at his death.

It has never been disputed that, at the time of the separation, Hobhouse demanded from Lady Byron’s representative a formal disavowal of that monstrous charge; otherwise the whole matter would be taken into a court of law. He would allow no equivocation. The charge must either be withdrawn, then and there, or substantiated in open court. When Lady Byron, through her representative, unreservedly disavowed the imputation, Byron was satisfied, and consented to sign the deed of separation.

Six months after Byron left England, Hobhouse visited him in Switzerland; and on September 9, 1816, he wrote as follows to Augusta Leigh:

[Pg 321]This letter shows, not only that the writer was firmly convinced of Mrs. Leigh’s innocence, but that he was afraid lest Lady Byron would worm the real secret out of Byron’s sister, by appealing, through acts of kindness, to her sense of gratitude. He knew that Mrs. Leigh had a very difficult part to perform. Her loyalty to Byron and Mary Chaworth had already borne a severe test, and he wished her to realize how much depended on her discretion.

The task of keeping in touch with Lady Byron, without dispelling her illusions, was so trying to Augusta Leigh’s naturally frank nature as almost to drive her to despair. Lady Byron, knowing that Byron was in constant correspondence with his sister, asked permission to read his letters, and it was difficult, without plausible excuse, to withhold them. Byron’s correspondence was never characterized by reticence. He invariably unburdened his mind, heedless of the effect which his words might have upon those to whom his letters were shown. In these circumstances Mrs. Leigh was kept in a fever of apprehension as to what Lady Byron might glean, even from the winnowed portions which, from time to time, were submitted for her perusal.

It has since transpired that, without Augusta’s knowledge, Lady Byron kept a copy of everything that was shown to her.

It appears from ‘Astarte’ that, in the early part of September, 1816, Augusta Leigh underwent a rigorous cross-examination—not only from Lady Byron, but from inquisitive acquaintances, who were determined to extract from her replies proofs of her guilt.

Lord Lovelace, on Lady Byron’s authority, states that between August 31 and September 14 (the precise[Pg 322] date is not given) Augusta confessed to Lady Byron that she had committed incest with her brother previous to his marriage. This strange admission, which we are told had been long expected, seems to have completely satisfied Lady Byron. After having promised to keep her secret inviolate, she wrote to several of her friends, and told them that Augusta had made ‘a full confession of her guilt.’ There had been no witnesses at the meeting between these two ladies, and the incriminating letters, which Lord Lovelace says Mrs. Leigh wrote to Lady Byron, are not given in ‘Astarte’! But in 1817 Lady Byron, referring to these meetings, says: ‘She acknowledged that the verses, “I speak not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name,”’ were addressed to her.’

Augusta was certainly in an awkward predicament. By adopting Medora she had, at considerable personal risk, saved the reputation of Mary Chaworth. If she had now told the whole truth—namely, that Medora was merely her daughter by adoption—she would have been pressed to prove it by divulging the identity of that child’s mother. This was of course impossible. Not only would she have mortally offended Byron, and have betrayed his trust in her, but the fortune which by his will would devolve upon her children must have passed into other hands. For those reasons it was indispensable that the truth should be veiled. As to Mrs. Leigh’s alleged statement that the lines, ‘I speak not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name,’—were addressed to her, we say nothing. By that portion of her so-called ‘confession’ we may gauge the value of the rest. That Lady Byron should have been thus deceived affords a strong proof of her gullibility. There is nothing to show exactly what[Pg 323] passed at these remarkable interviews. We know that Augusta’s statements, made orally, were subsequently written down from memory; because Lady Byron told one of her friends that she had sent the said ‘confession’ to the Lord Chancellor (Eldon), ‘as a bar to any future proceedings that might be taken by Lord Byron to obtain the custody of Ada.’

It is clear that Mrs. Leigh’s communication would never have been made except under a promise of secrecy. She did not suspect the treachery which Lady Byron contemplated, and thought that she might safely encourage her delusions. Perhaps she divined that Lady Byron had already convinced herself that Medora was Byron’s child. At any rate, she knew enough of Lady Byron to be certain that there would be no peace until that lady had satisfied herself that her suspicions were well founded. Unhappily for Mrs. Leigh, Hobhouse’s warning arrived too late; her ruse failed, and her reputation suffered during life. Although she was destined to bear the stigma of a crime of which she was innocent, she never wavered, and died with her secret unrevealed. Lady Byron, with all her ingenuity, never divined the truth. Towards the close of her life she became uneasy in her mind, and died under the impression that ‘Augusta had made a fool of her.’

Immediately after Mrs. Leigh’s interviews with Lady Byron she wrote to Byron, and revealed the state of affairs. That, at the same time, she reproached him for the troubles he had brought upon her is evident from Byron’s journal of September 29:

It was at this time, also, that Byron thought that the ‘Epistle to Augusta’—sent to Murray on August 28—had better not be published. It did not, in fact, see the light until 1830. Lady Byron’s conduct in this business affected him profoundly, and his feelings towards her changed completely. He was also angry with Augusta for a time, and told her that it was

In spite of Lady Byron’s prejudice against Mrs. Leigh, as time went on she gradually realized that her sister-in-law’s so-called ‘confession’ was not consistent either with her known disposition, her reputation in society, or with her general conduct. In order to satisfy her conscience, Lady Byron, in April, 1851, arranged a meeting with Mrs. Leigh at Reigate. Clearly, it was Lady Byron’s purpose to obtain a full confession from Mrs. Leigh of the crime which she had long suspected. Lady Byron came to Reigate accompanied by the Rev. Frederick Robertson of Brighton, who happened then to be her spiritual adviser. This time Augusta Leigh’s ‘confession’ was to be made before an unimpeachable witness, who would keep a record of what passed. It deeply mortified Lady Byron to find that Mrs. Leigh—far from making any ‘confession’—appeared before her in ‘all the pride of innocence,’ and, after saying that she had[Pg 325] always been loyal to Byron and his wife, and had never tried to keep them apart, told Lady Byron that Hobhouse—who was still living—had expressed his opinion that Lady Byron had every reason to be grateful to Mrs. Leigh; for she not only risked the loss of property, but what was much dearer to her, Byron’s affection.[60]

Alas, the bubble had burst! The confession, upon which the peace of Lady Byron’s conscience depended, was transformed into an avowal of innocence, which no threats could shake, no arguments could weaken, and no reproaches divert.

 

 

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[Pg 326]

CHAPTER II

It is because ‘Astarte’ is a pretentious and plausible record of fallacies that the present writer feels bound to take note of its arguments.

In order to avoid circumlocution and tedious excursions over debatable ground, we will assume that the reader is tolerably well acquainted with literature relating to the separation of Lord and Lady Byron.

It would certainly have been better if the details of Byron’s quarrel with his wife had been ignored. Prior to the publication of Mrs. Beecher Stowe’s articles, in 1869, the greatest tenderness had been shown towards Lady Byron by all writers upon Byron’s career and poetry, and by all those who alluded to his unhappy marriage. Everyone respected Lady Byron’s excellent qualities, and no one accused her of any breach of faith in her conduct towards either her husband or his sister. Lady Byron was generally regarded as a virtuous and high-minded woman, with a hard and cold disposition, but nothing worse was said or thought of her, and the world really sympathized with her sorrows.

But when her self-imposed silence was broken by Mrs. Beecher Stowe, and Byron stood publicly accused on Lady Byron’s authority of an odious crime which she had never attempted to prove during the poet’s[Pg 327] lifetime, there arose a revulsion of feeling against her memory. It was generally felt, after the suffering and the patience of a lifetime, that Lady Byron might well have evinced a deeper Christian spirit at its close.

As time went on, the memory of this untoward incident gradually faded away, and the present generation thought little of the rights or wrongs of a controversy which had moved their forefathers so deeply. The dead, so to speak, had buried their dead, and all would soon have been forgotten. Unfortunately, the late Lord Lovelace, a grandson of Lady Byron, goaded by perusal of the attacks made upon Lady Byron’s memory, after Mrs. Beecher Stowe’s revelations in 1869, was induced in 1905 to circulate among ‘those who, for special reasons, ought to have the means of acquainting themselves with the true position of Lord and Lady Byron,’ a work entitled ‘Astarte,’ which is mainly a compilation of letters and data, skilfully selected for the purpose of defaming his grandfather.

After informing the reader that ‘the public of this age would do well to pay no attention to voluminous complications and caricatures of Lord Byron,’ Lord Lovelace gaily proceeds, on the flimsiest of evidence, to blast, not only Byron’s name, but also the reputation of the poet’s half-sister, Augusta Leigh.

After telling the world that Byron ‘after his death was less honoured than an outcast,’ Lord Lovelace endeavours to justify the public neglect to honour the remains of a great national poet by accusing Byron of incest. Lord Lovelace’s claim to have been the sole depositary of so damning a secret is really comical, because, as a matter of fact, he never knew the truth at all. He thought that he had only, like Pandora, to open his box for all the evil to fly out, forgetting that[Pg 328] Truth has an awkward habit of lying at the bottom. He seems, however, to have had some inkling of this, for he is careful to remind us that ‘Truth comes in the last, and very late, limping along on the arm of Time.’

In support of a theory which is supposed to be revealed by his papers, Lord Lovelace declares that a solution of Byron’s mystery may be found in his poems, and he fixes on ‘Manfred’ for the key. The haunting remorse of Manfred is once more trotted out to prove that Byron committed incest. There is nothing new in this ‘nightmare of folly,’ for Byron himself was well aware of the interpretation placed upon that poem by his contemporaries.

Manfred is certainly the revelation of deep remorse, but the crime for which he suffers had no connection with Augusta Leigh. Lord Lovelace says that ‘the germ of this nightmare in blank verse was in the actual letters of the living Astarte.’ The statement may be true; but he was certainly not in a position to prove it, for he knew not, to the last hour of his life, who the living Astarte was.

It is a sad story that should never have been told, and the present writer regrets that circumstances should have compelled him to save the reputation of one good woman by revealing matters affecting the misfortunes of another. But the blame must lie with those inconsiderate, ignorant, and prejudiced persons who, in an attempt to justify Lady Byron’s conduct, cruelly assailed the memory of one who

‘When fortune changed—and love fled far,
And hatred’s shafts flew thick and fast,’

was the solitary star which rose, and set not to the last.

[Pg 329]On January 2, 1815, Lord and Lady Byron were married at Seaham. The little that is known of their married life may be found in letters and memoranda of people who were in actual correspondence with them, and the details which we now give from various sources are necessary to a better understanding of the causes which led to a separation between husband and wife in January, 1816.

According to a statement made by Lady Byron to her friend Lady Anne Barnard, shortly after a rumour of the separation spread in London, there never was any real love on either side. The following passages are taken from some private family memoirs written by Lady Anne herself:

There is enough evidence in the above statement to show that a separation between Lord and Lady Byron was inevitable. Byron’s temper, always capricious, became ungovernable under the vexatious exigencies of his financial affairs. Several executions had taken place in their house during the year, and it is said that even the beds upon which they slept were in the possession of the bailiffs.

It has been shown by those who knew Byron well that he was never suited to the married state. His temperament was an obstacle to happiness in marriage. He lacked the power of self-command, and the irritation produced by the shattered state of his fortune drove him at times to explosions, which were very like madness. We have an example of this in his conduct one night in Ithaca, when his companions were afraid to enter his room. Lady Byron could not meet these explosions in any effectual manner. The more fiercely he vented his exasperation, the colder she became. Lady Byron, like her husband, was a spoilt child who set her own self-will against his. If she had possessed more tact and deeper affections, she might possibly have managed him. We frankly admit that Byron’s conduct during this period was not calculated to win the love and respect of any woman. During his mad moods he did his utmost to blacken his own character, and it is not surprising that Lady Byron, who had heard much of his conduct before marriage, implicitly believed him. His so-called ‘mystifications’ were all taken seriously. She was,[Pg 332] moreover, of a jealous nature, and Byron delighted to torment her by suggestions of immorality which had no foundation in fact. In such a character as Lady Byron’s, a hint was enough to awaken the darkest suspicions, and when an impression had been stamped on her mind it was impossible to remove it. Byron, of course, fanned the flame, for he was bored to death in the bonds of wedlock, and we are inclined to believe that he did many outrageous things in order to drive his wife on the road to a separation. When the moment came he was sorry, but he certainly brought matters designedly to a crisis. His sister Augusta was much in favour of his marriage, and had strong hopes that happiness was in store for them, as the following letter will show:

On March 18, 1815, Augusta Leigh again writes to Byron’s friend, the Rev. Francis Hodgson, from Six Mile Bottom:

On March 31, 1815, Mrs. Leigh again writes to Hodgson:

Augusta’s next letter is written from 13, Piccadilly Terrace, on April 29, 1815, about three weeks after her arrival there on a visit to the Byrons. It also is addressed to Hodgson, and conveys the following message from Byron:

At the end of June, 1815, Augusta Leigh ended her visit, and returned to Six Mile Bottom. There seems to have been some unpleasantness between Augusta and Lady Byron during those ten weeks.

Two months later, on September 4, 1815, Augusta Leigh writes again to Hodgson:

On November 15, 1815, Augusta Leigh arrived at 13, Piccadilly Terrace, on a long visit.

It cannot have been a pleasant experience for Augusta Leigh, this wretched period which culminated in a dire catastrophe for all concerned. Lord Lovelace tells us that, when Mrs. Leigh came to stay with them in November, Byron ‘seemed much alienated from his sister, and was entirely occupied with women at the theatre.’ And yet

What may have given rise to these suspicions is not recorded—probably Byron’s mystifications, which were all taken seriously. But there is no attempt to deny the fact that, during this painful time, Lady Byron owed deep gratitude to Mrs. Leigh, who had faithfully striven to protect her when ill and in need of sympathy. It was during this period that Lady Byron wrote the following cryptic note to Byron’s sister:

On December 10, 1815, Lady Byron gave birth to a daughter. Lord Lovelace says:

The next day Lady Byron replied in writing as follows: ‘I shall obey your wishes, and fix the earliest day that circumstances will admit for leaving London.’

Consequently she quitted London on January 15, 1816. Soon after Lady Byron’s arrival at Kirkby, her mother drew from her some of the circumstances of her misery. Lady Byron then told her mother that she believed her life would be endangered by a return to her husband. She expressed an opinion that Byron was out of his mind, although he seemed competent to transact matters connected with his business affairs. Lady Noel, naturally, took her daughter’s part entirely, and went to London to seek legal advice. During her stay in London, Lady Noel saw Augusta Leigh and George Byron, who agreed with her that every endeavour should be made to induce Byron to agree to a separation. She also consulted Sir Samuel Romilly, Sergeant Heywood, Dr. Lushington, and Colonel Francis Doyle, an old friend of the Milbanke family. They all agreed that a separation was necessary. It was perhaps a very natural view to take of a marriage which had run its short course so tempestuously, but there were no grounds other than incompatibility of temperament upon which to base that conclusion.

[Pg 339]Byron, says Lord Lovelace,[61] ‘was very changeable at this time, sometimes speaking kindly of his wife—though never appearing to wish her to return—and the next hour he would say that the sooner Lady Byron’s friends arranged a separation, the better.’

This statement is a fair example of the manner in which Lord Lovelace handles his facts and documents. Mr. Hobhouse, who was in a position to know the truth, has recently shown that Byron was very anxious for his wife’s return, was indeed prepared to make great sacrifices to attain that object, and resolutely opposed the wishes of those persons who tried to arrange a legal separation. It was not until Lady Byron herself reminded him of a promise which he had once made to her that, ‘when convinced her conduct had not been influenced by others, he should not oppose her wishes,’ that he consented to sign the deed of separation. He had done enough to show that he was not afraid of any exposure which might have affected his honour, and was willing, if necessary, to go into a court of law, but he could not resist the petition of his wife.[62] It is also extremely improbable that Byron should, ‘towards the end of January, have spoken of proposing a separation himself,’ in view of the letters which he wrote to his wife on February 5, and February 8 following.[63]

On February 2 Sir Ralph Noel, under legal advice, wrote a stiff letter requiring a separation. Byron at that time positively refused to accept these terms. The whole affair then became publicly known. Every kind of report was spread about him, and especially[Pg 340] the scandal about Augusta was noised abroad by Lady Caroline Lamb and Mr. Brougham. There can be no doubt whatever that Byron heard of this report, and paid very little attention to it. He found out then, or soon afterwards, how the scandal arose.

Lady Byron’s relations were bent on arranging an amicable separation. Should Byron persist in his refusal, it was intended to institute a suit in the Ecclesiastical Court to obtain a divorce on the plea of adultery and cruelty. There is reason to believe that a charge of adultery could not have been substantiated at that time.

Meanwhile, Lady Byron, who had lately acquired some documents, which were unknown to her when she left her husband on January 15,[64] came to London on February 22, and had a long private conversation with Dr. Lushington. She then showed him two packets of letters which Mrs. Clermont had abstracted from Byron’s writing-desk. Lady Byron received those letters some time between February 14 and 22, 1816. One packet contained missives from a married lady, with whom Byron had been intimate previous to his marriage. It appears that Lady Byron—whose notions of the ordinary code of honour were peculiar—sent those letters to that lady’s husband, who, like a sensible man, threw them into the fire. Of the other packet we cannot speak so positively. It probably comprised letters from Augusta Leigh, referring to the child Medora.[65] Such [Pg 341]expressions as ‘our child’ or ‘your child’ would have fallen quite naturally from her pen under the circumstances. It is easy to imagine the effect of some such words upon the suspicious mind of Lady Byron. By Mrs. Clermont’s masterful stroke of treachery, strong presumptive evidence was thus brought against Augusta Leigh. The letters undoubtedly convinced Dr. Lushington that incest had taken place, and he warned Lady Byron against any personal intercourse with Mrs. Leigh. He at the same time advised her to keep her lips closed until Augusta had of her own free will confessed; and pointed out to Lady Byron that, ‘while proofs and impressions were such as left no doubt on her mind, they were decidedly not such as could have been brought forward to establish a charge of incest, in the event of Lady Byron being challenged to bring forward the grounds of her imputation.’[66]

From that moment all Lady Byron’s wiles were employed to extract a confession from Augusta Leigh, which would have gone far to justify Lady Byron’s conduct in leaving her husband. Soon after this momentous interview with Dr. Lushington, an ugly rumour was spread about town affecting Mrs. Leigh’s character.

Lord Lovelace says:

This, by the nature of her agreement with Byron, was impossible, and Mrs. Clermont’s treachery held her in a vice.

[Pg 342]During January and February, 1816, Lady Byron, who strongly suspected Mrs. Leigh’s conduct to have been disloyal to herself, wrote the most affectionate letters to that lady.

It is only fair to remind the reader that, when these letters were written, Lady Byron had not consulted Dr. Lushington. We are inclined to think that the last letter was written on the day when she received Mrs. Clermont’s ‘proofs.’ Meanwhile, Augusta, unconscious that an avalanche of scandal threatened to[Pg 344] sweep her reputation into an abyss, was catching at every straw that might avert a catastrophe. Her thoughts turned to Hodgson, whose noble character, sound common-sense, and affection for Byron, were undoubted. It was possible, she thought, that the ruin and destruction which she dreaded for her brother might be averted through the advice and assistance of an honourable man of the world. In that wild hope the following letters were written:

Hodgson at once responded to this appeal by taking the first stage-coach to London, where the next letter was addressed to him at his lodgings near Piccadilly:

Immediately after the interview, which took place on the day after the last note was written, Hodgson, feeling that nothing could be lost and that much might be gained by judicious remonstrance, resolved to hazard an appeal to Lady Byron’s feelings—with what success will be seen from her ladyship’s reply. It is impossible to over-estimate the combined tact and zeal displayed by Hodgson in this most delicate and difficult matter.

Lady Byron’s answer was as follows:

It is most unfortunate that the second letter which Hodgson wrote on this most distressing occasion is lost, but some clue to its contents may be gathered from Lady Byron’s reply:

It is worthy of note that Lady Byron, two days after her interview with Lushington, here states that, in the event of ‘an amicable arrangement’ (an amicable separation) being arrived at, it would not destroy the opening for reconciliation. This is an extraordinary[Pg 352] statement, because, as we have seen, Dr. Lushington absolutely declined to be a party to any such step. On March 14 Lady Byron signed a declaration, giving her reasons for the separation, as will be seen presently.

On March 16 Augusta Leigh returned to her apartments in St. James’s Palace, and on the following day Byron consented to a separation from his wife. On April 8 Lady Jersey gave a party in honour of Byron, and to show her sympathy for him in his matrimonial troubles. Both Byron and Augusta were present, but it was a cold and spiritless affair, and nothing came of this attempt to stem the tide of prejudice.

On April 14 Augusta parted for ever from her brother, and retired into the country, her health broken down by the worry and anxiety of the past three months. On April 21 and 22, 1816, the deed of separation was signed by both Lord and Lady Byron. On April 23 Byron left London, and travelled to Dover accompanied by his friends Hobhouse and Scrope-Davies. On the 25th he embarked for Ostend, unable to face the consequences of his quarrel with his wife.

 

 

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[Pg 353]

CHAPTER III

The publication of ‘Astarte’ has had one good result; it has placed beyond question the precise nature of Lady Byron’s complaints against her husband. On March 14, 1816, Lady Byron was induced by Dr. Lushington to draw up and sign a statement which would be useful if her conduct should at any future time be criticized.

We place the entire document before the reader, just as it appears in Lord Lovelace’s book:

One month later, on April 14, Byron writes a letter to his wife, who was staying at an hotel in London, in which he says that he has just parted from Augusta:

There are two points in this letter which deserve notice. In the first place Byron intimates that he has made a will in favour of Augusta and her children, as prior to his marriage. This would insure that Medora would be amply provided for. In addition to this, Byron had already given his sister £3,000 in May, 1814, within one month of Medora’s birth. In reply to her scruples, Byron writes: ‘Consider the children, and my Georgina in particular—in short, I need say no more.’

In the second place, we appeal to any unprejudiced person whether it is likely that Byron would have made to his wife an especial appeal on behalf of Augusta, if he had not had a clear conscience as to his relations with her? That he had a clear conscience cannot be doubted, and Augusta never hesitated in private intercourse with Lady Byron to speak on that painful subject. To quote Lord Lovelace:

Augusta tried to make Lady Byron speak out, and say that she did not believe the reports against her, but in vain. Lady Byron, having once conceived a notion of Augusta’s guilt, would not change her opinion, and was far too honest to dissemble. She[Pg 357] found refuge in flight, not daring to show to Augusta the letters which had been abstracted from Byron’s desk by Mrs. Clermont. In vain Mrs. Villiers and Wilmot urged Lady Byron to avow to Augusta the information of which they were in possession. Lady Byron would not produce her so-called ‘proofs,’ and said that ‘she would experience pain in throwing off a person she had loved, and from whom she had received kindness.’

But Lady Byron, conscious of her false position, had recourse to her pen, and wrote a letter to Augusta telling her all that she knew. We are told that Augusta did not attempt to deny the accusation, and admitted everything in her letters of June, July, and August, 1816.

Lord Lovelace coolly says:

We are further told in a footnote (p. 155) that the late Sir Leslie Stephen said it made him quite uncomfortable to read Mrs. Leigh’s letters of humiliation dated 1816. One would have supposed, after such a flourish of trumpets, that Lord Lovelace would have produced those letters! He does nothing of the kind, and expects posterity to accept his ex-parte statements without reserve. Lord Lovelace bids us to believe that it was ‘from the best and kindest motives, and long habit of silence, that Dr. Lushington’s influence was exerted in 1869, to prevent, or at least postpone, revelation.’ The fact is, of course, he kept silence because he well knew that there was nothing in those letters (1813 and 1814) to fix guilt upon Mrs. Leigh.[Pg 358] Lady Byron herself has told us that ‘the causes of her suspicion did not amount to proof, and Lady Byron did not consider herself justified in acting upon these suspicions.’ She further states that ‘the possibility of innocence existed,’ but that

But Lady Byron, under Lushington’s skilful hand, protects herself against the possibility of legal proceedings for defamation of character by these words:

As this statement was made after Lady Byron’s interview with Dr. Lushington (when he decided to take no part in any attempt at reconciliation), it is perfectly clear that the alleged incriminating letters were not considered as conclusive evidence against Mrs. Leigh. Although they were sufficient to detach Lushington from the party of reconciliation, it was not considered wise to produce them as evidence in 1869, at a time when a strong revulsion of feeling had set in against Lady Byron.

The clear legal brain of Sir Alexander Cockburn, trained to appraise evidence, saw through the flimsy pretext which had deceived an equally great lawyer. Time instructs us, and much has come to light in this[Pg 359] so-called ‘Byron mystery,’ since Lady Byron beguiled Lushington. Among other things, we now know, on Lord Lovelace’s authority, that Lady Byron was afraid that her child would be taken from her by Byron, and placed under the care of Mrs. Leigh. We also know, on the authority of Hobhouse,[69] that Lady Byron’s representatives distinctly disavowed, on Lady Byron’s behalf, having spread any rumours injurious to Lord Byron’s character in that respect, and also stated that a charge of incest would not have been made part of her allegations if she had come into court. This disavowal was signed by Lady Byron herself, and was witnessed by Mr. Wilmot. It is certain that Lord Byron would have gone into a court of law to meet that charge, and that he refused to agree to a separation until that assurance had been given. This grave charge was still in abeyance in 1816; it was not safe to speak of it until after Byron’s death, and then only under the seal of secrecy.

It was evident that Lady Byron was clutching at straws to save her child from Mrs. Leigh, and to prevent this it was essential to prove Mrs. Leigh’s unworthiness. In her maternal anxiety she stuck at nothing, and for a time she triumphed. Her private correspondence was drenched with the theme that had impressed Lushington so strongly.

A fortnight after signing her ‘statement,’ Lady[Pg 360] Byron writes to Mrs. George Lamb, in reference to Mrs. Leigh:

Such letters go perilously near that charge which Lady Byron’s representatives had repudiated in the presence of Hobhouse. But Lady Byron was desperate, and her whole case depended on a general belief in that foul accusation. What could not be done openly could be done secretly, and she poisoned the air to save her child.

Colonel Doyle, who seems to have been one of the few on Lady Byron’s side who kept his head, wrote to her on July 9, 1816:

Colonel Doyle, by no means easy in his own mind, again writes to Lady Byron on July 18, 1816:

Here, then, we have a picture of the state of affairs limned by a man who was an accomplice of Lady Byron’s, and who was fully awake to the danger of their position in the event of Byron turning round upon them. The husband might insist upon Lady Byron explaining the grounds of her conduct. In order to make their position secure, it would be, above all things, necessary to obtain a full confession from Mrs. Leigh of her criminal intercourse with Byron. With this end in view, Lady Byron opened a correspondence with Augusta Leigh, and tried to inveigle her into making an admission of her guilt. It was not an easy matter to open the subject, but Lady Byron was not abashed, and, under cover of sundry acts of kindness, tried hard to gain her point. In this game of foils Augusta showed remarkable skill, and seems to have eventually fooled Lady Byron to the top of her bent. No wonder, then, that Mrs. Leigh, accused of an abominable crime by her sister-in-law, should have written to a friend:

[Pg 362]Lady Byron and her friends plied Mrs. Leigh with questions, hoping to gain a confession which would justify their conduct. Lady Noel strongly and repeatedly warned Lady Byron against Mrs. Leigh, who, like a wounded animal, was dangerous. ‘Take care of Augusta,’ she wrote September 7, 1816. ‘If I know anything of human nature, she does and must hate you.’

As a matter of fact, Augusta, while pretending contrition for imaginary sins, revenged herself upon Lady Byron by heightening her jealousy, and encouraging her in the belief that Byron had not only been her lover, but was still appealing to her from abroad. She even went so far as to pretend that she was going to join him, which nearly frightened Mrs. Villiers out of her wits. They lied to Augusta profusely, these immaculate people, and had the meanness to tell her that Byron had betrayed her in writing to two or three women. They probably wished to cause a breach between brother and sister, but Augusta, who pretended to be alarmed by this intelligence, laughed in her sleeve. She knew the truth, and saw through these manœuvres; it was part of her plan to keep Lady Byron on a false scent. ‘I cannot believe my brother to have been so dishonourable,’ was her meek rejoinder, meaning, of course, that it would have been dishonourable for Byron to have defamed one who, having taken his child under her protection, had saved the honour of the woman whom he loved. But Lady Byron regarded Mrs. Leigh’s answer as an admission of guilt, and trumpeted the news to all her friends. Lord Lovelace tells us that Augusta, on August 5, 1816, wrote to Lady Byron a letter, in which she asserted most solemnly that Byron had not been her[Pg 363] friend, and that, though there were difficulties in writing to him, she was determined never to see him again in the way she had done. It is remarkable that the letter to which Lord Lovelace refers is not given in ‘Astarte,’ where one would naturally expect to find it. In order to gauge the impression made upon Augusta’s mind, the reader will do well to consult the letters which she wrote a little later to the Rev. Francis Hodgson, in which she speaks of Byron with the greatest affection.

In another letter to Hodgson she speaks of Ada, and says:

At a time when Byron was accused of having ‘betrayed his sister in writing to two or three women,’ he was writing that well-known stanza in ‘Childe Harold’:

‘But there was one soft breast, as hath been said,
Which unto his was bound by stronger ties
Than the Church links withal; and though unwed,
Yet it was pure—and, far above disguise,
[Pg 364]Had stood the test of mortal enmities
Still undivided, and cemented more
By peril, dreaded most in female eyes;
But this was firm, and from a foreign shore
Well to that heart might his these absent greetings pour.’

And it was in July, 1816, that Augusta’s loyalty to him and to Mary Chaworth moved Byron to write his celebrated ‘Stanzas to Augusta’:

‘Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the Love which my spirit hath painted
It never hath found but in Thee.’

‘Though human, thou didst not betray me;
Though tempted, thou never couldst shake.’

Lord Lovelace claims to have found the key of the Byron mystery in ‘Manfred,’ and employs it as a damning proof against Augusta, with what justice we have seen.

At the time when ‘Manfred’ was begun Mary Chaworth was temporarily insane. The anxiety which she had undergone at the time of Byron’s matrimonial quarrels, when she feared that a public inquiry might disclose her own secret, affected her health. She bore up bravely until after Byron’s departure from England; then, the strain relieved, her mind gave way, and she lived for some time in London, under the care of a doctor. Her illness was kept as secret as possible, but Augusta, who was constantly at her side, informed Byron of her condition.

 

 

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[Pg 365]

CHAPTER IV

There has of late years been a disposition on the part of Byron’s biographers unduly to disparage Moore’s ‘Life of Byron.’ Tastes have changed, and Moore’s patronizing style of reference to ‘his noble friend the noble poet’ does not appeal to the democratic sentiment now prevailing. But, after allowance has been made for Moore’s manner, it cannot be denied that, in consequence of his personal intimacy with Byron, his work must always have a peculiar value and authority. There are, for instance, portions of Moore’s ‘Life’ which are indispensable to those who seek to fathom the depths of Byron’s mind. Moore says that Byron was born with strong affections and ardent passions, and that his life was

Moore assures us that most of Byron’s so-called love-affairs were as transitory as the imaginings that gave them birth.

Every other attachment faded away, but that endured to the end of his stormy life.

In speaking of Byron’s affection for his sister, Moore, who knew all that had been said against Augusta Leigh and Byron, and had read the ‘Memoirs,’ remarked:

When the parting came it was bitter indeed, for she was, says Moore,

Enough has been said to show what kind of woman Augusta was, and it is difficult to understand by what process of reasoning Lord Lovelace persuaded himself that she could have been guilty of the atrocious crime which he lays to her charge. We entirely concur[Pg 367] with Mrs. Villiers, when she wrote to Augusta Leigh (in September, 1816): ‘I consider you the victim to the most infernal plot that has ever entered the heart of man to conceive.’

We must at the same time frankly admit that Augusta, in order to screen Mary Chaworth, did all she could do to keep Lady Byron under a false impression. She seems to have felt so secure in the knowledge of her own innocence that she might afford to allow Lady Byron to think as ill of her as she pleased.

Unfortunately, Augusta, having once entered upon a course of duplicity, was obliged to keep it up by equivocations of all kinds. She went so far as even to show portions of letters addressed to her care, and pretended that they had been written to herself. She seems to have felt no compunction for the sufferings of Lady Byron. She may even have exulted in the pain she inflicted upon that credulous lady, having herself suffered intensely through the false suspicions, and the studied insults heaped upon her by many of Lady Byron’s adherents.

Byron, who was informed of what had been said against his sister by Lady Byron and others, told the world in ‘Marino Faliero’ that he ‘had only one fount of quiet left, and that they poisoned.’ But he was powerless to interfere.

Writing to Moore (September 19, 1818) he said:

[Pg 368]It may be that Augusta avenged her brother tenfold without his knowledge. But she suffered in the process. Lord Lovelace lays great stress upon what he calls ‘the correspondence of 1819,’ in order to show us that Augusta had confessed to the crime of incest. That correspondence is very interesting, not as showing the guilt of Augusta Leigh, but as an example of feminine duplicity in which she was an adept. Augusta was hard pressed indeed for some weapon of offence when she pretended, on June 25, 1819, that she had received the following letter from her brother. She must have been some time in making up her mind to send it, as the letter in question had been in her hands three weeks, having arrived in London on June 4. It may be as well to state that all letters written by Byron to Mary Chaworth passed through Mrs. Leigh’s hands, and were delivered with circumspection.

The terms of this letter, which Lord Lovelace produces as conclusive evidence against Augusta Leigh, deserve attention. At first sight they seem to confirm Lady Byron’s belief that a criminal intercourse had existed between her husband and his sister. But close examination shows that the letter was not written to Mrs. Leigh at all, but to Mary Chaworth.

On the day it was written Byron was at Venice, where he had recently made the acquaintance of the Countess Guiccioli, whom, as ‘Lady of the land,’ he followed to Ravenna a fortnight later. It will be noticed that the date synchronizes with the period when the ‘Stanzas to the Po’ were written. Both letter and poem dwell upon the memory of an unsatisfied passion. The letter bears neither superscription nor signature, both having been erased by Mrs. Leigh before the document reached Lady Byron’s hands. The writer excuses himself for not having written to his correspondent (a) because three years’ absence, (b) total change of scene, and (c) because there is nothing in common between them, except mutual affections and their relationship. Byron could not have excused himself in that manner to a sister, who had much in common with him, and to whom he had written, on an average, twice in every month since he left England. His letters to Augusta entered minutely into all his feelings and actions, and the common bond between them was Ada, whose disposition, appearance, and health, occupied a considerable space in their correspondence.

[Pg 371]Nor would Byron have written in that amatory strain to his dear ‘Goose.’ In the letter which preceded the one we have quoted, Byron begins, ‘Dearest Augusta,’ and ends, ‘I am in health, and yours, B.’ In that which followed it there is nothing in the least effusive. It begins, ‘Dearest Augusta,’ and ends, ‘Yours ever, and very truly, B.’ There are not many of Byron’s letters to Augusta extant. All those which mentioned Medora were either mutilated or suppressed.

For Byron to have given ‘three years’ absence, and a total change of scene,’ as reasons for not having written to his sister for a month or so would have been absurd. But when he said that he had nothing in common with Mary Chaworth, except ‘our affections and our relationship,’ his meaning was—their mutual affections, their kinship, and their common relationship to Medora.

We invite any unprejudiced person to say whether Byron would have been likely to write to a sister, who knew his mind thoroughly, ‘I have never ceased—nor can cease to feel for a moment that perfect and boundless attachment which bound and binds me to you.’ Did not Augusta know very well that he loved and admired her, and that Byron was under the strongest obligations to her for her loyalty at a trying time?

Then, there was the erasure of ‘a short name of three or four letters,’ which might have opened Lady Byron’s eyes to the trick that was being played upon her. Those four letters spelt the name of Mary, and the ‘pretty woman’ to whom Byron had ‘not long ago’ attached himself was the Venetian Marianna (Anglice: Mary Anne) Segati, with whom he formed a liaison from November, 1816, to February 1818.[Pg 372] Augusta would certainly not have understood the allusion.

In this illuminating letter Byron reproaches Mary Chaworth for breaking off her fatal intimacy with him, and for having persuaded him to marry—‘that infamous fiend who drove me from my country, and conspired against my life—by endeavouring to deprive me of all that could render it precious.’ As the person here referred to was, obviously, Augusta herself, this remark could not have been made to her. In speaking of their long separation as a punishment for their sins, he tells Mary Chaworth that, if he ever returns to England, it will be to see her, and that his feelings have undergone no change. It will be observed that Byron begs his correspondent to speak to him only of herself and to say that she loves him! It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that Augusta was the intermediary between Byron and his wife—his confidential agent in purely private affairs. It was to her that he wrote on all matters relating to business transactions with his wife, and from whom he received intelligence of the health and happiness of his daughter. Under those circumstances how could Byron ask Augusta to speak to him of nothing but her love for him?

To show the absurdity of Lord Lovelace’s contention, we insert the letter which Byron wrote to his sister seven months later. Many letters had passed between them during the interval, but we have not been allowed to see them:

It is ridiculous to suppose that these two letters were addressed to the same person. In the one we find the expression of an imperishable attachment, in the other merely commonplace statements. In the first letter Byron says, if ever he returns to England, it will be to see the person to whom he is writing, and that absence has the more deeply confirmed his passion. In the second he tells the lady that he has had his hair cut, and that he was never very willing to revisit Great Britain! And yet, in spite of these inconsistencies, Lady Byron walked into the snare which Augusta had so artfully prepared. In forwarding the amatory epistle to Lady Byron, Augusta tells her to burn it, and says that her brother ‘must surely be considered a maniac’ for having written it, adding, with adroit mystification:

[Pg 374]Augusta did not tell Lady Byron that ‘the unfortunate Being’ was Mary Chaworth, now reconciled to her husband, and that she had withheld Byron’s letter from her, lest her mind should be unsettled by its perusal.

Mrs. Leigh had two excellent reasons for this betrayal of trust. In the first place, she wished Lady Byron to believe that her brother was still making love to her, and that she was keeping her promise in not encouraging his advances. In the second place, she knew that the terms of Byron’s letter would deeply wound Lady Byron’s pride—and revenge is sometimes sweet!

Lady Byron, who was no match for her sister-in-law, had failed to realize the wisdom of her mother’s warning: ‘Beware of Augusta, for she must hate you.’ She received this proof of Augusta’s return to virtue with gratitude, thanked her sincerely, and acknowledged that the terms of Byron’s letter ‘afforded ample testimony that she had not encouraged his tenderness.’ Poor Lady Byron! She deserves the pity of posterity. But she was possessed of common sense, and knew how to play her own hand fairly well. She wrote to Augusta in the following terms:

In suggesting a more open disclosure on Byron’s part, Lady Byron angled for further confidences, so that her evidence against her husband might be [Pg 375]overwhelming. She hoped that his repentant sister might be able to show incriminating letters, which would support the clue found in those missives which Mrs. Clermont had ‘conveyed.’ How little did she understand Augusta Leigh! Never would she have assisted Lady Byron to prejudice the world against her brother, nor would she have furnished Lady Byron with a weapon which might at any moment have been turned against herself.

With the object of proving Augusta’s guilt, the whole correspondence between her and Lady Byron from June 27, 1819, to the end of the following January has been printed in ‘Astarte.’

We have carefully examined it without finding anything that could convict Augusta and Byron. It seems clear that Mrs. Leigh began this correspondence with an ulterior object in view. She wished to win back Lady Byron’s confidence, and to induce her to make some arrangement by which the Leigh children would benefit at Lady Byron’s death, in the event of Byron altering the will he had already made in their favour. She began by asking Lady Byron’s advice as to how she was to answer the ‘Dearest Love’ letter. Lady Byron gave her two alternatives. Either she must tell her brother that, so long as his idea of her was associated with the most guilty feelings, it was her duty to break off all communication; or, if Augusta did not approve of that plan, then it was her duty to treat Byron’s letter with the silence of contempt. To this excellent advice Augusta humbly replied that, if she were to reprove her brother for the warmth of his letter, he might be mortally offended, in which case her children, otherwise unprovided for, would fare badly. But Mrs. Leigh was too diplomatic to convey[Pg 376] that meaning in plain language. Writing June 28, 1819, she says:

We do not remember ever to have read a letter more frankly disingenuous than this. The duplicity lurking in every line shows why the cause of the separation between Lord and Lady Byron has been for so long a mystery. Lady Byron herself was mystified by Augusta Leigh. It certainly was not easy for Lady Byron to gauge the deep deception practised upon her by both her husband and Mrs. Leigh; and yet it is surprising that Lady Byron should not have suspected, in Augusta’s self-depreciation, an element of fraud. Was it likely that Augusta, who had good reason to hate Lady Byron, would have provided her with such damning proofs against her brother and herself, if she had not possessed a clear conscience in the matter? She relied implicitly upon Byron’s letter being destroyed, and so worded her own that it would be extremely difficult for anyone but Lady Byron to understand what she was writing about. It will be noticed that no names are mentioned in any of her missives. People are referred to either as ‘maniacs,’ ‘victims,’ ‘unfortunate objects,’ or as ‘that most detestable woman, your relation[Pg 378] by marriage,’ which, in a confidential communication to a sister-in-law, would be superfluous caution were she really sincere. But, after the separation period, Mrs. Leigh was never sincere in her intercourse with Lady Byron. Through that lady’s unflattering suspicions, Augusta had suffered ‘too much to be forgiven.’ Lady Byron, on the other hand, with very imperfect understanding of her sister-in-law’s character, was entirely at her mercy. To employ a colloquialism, the whole thing was a ‘blind,’ devised to support Augusta’s rôle as a repentant Magdalen; to attract compassion, perhaps even pecuniary assistance; and, above all, to shield the mother of Medora. The ruse was successful. Lady Byron saw a chance of eventually procuring, in the handwriting of her husband, conclusive evidence of his crime. In her letter of June 27, 1819, to Mrs. Leigh, she conveyed a hint that Byron might be lured to make ‘a more unequivocal disclosure than has yet been made.’

Lady Byron, it must be remembered, craved incessantly for documentary proofs, which might be produced, if necessary, to justify her conduct. It is significant that at the time of writing she possessed no evidence, except the letters which Mrs. Clermont had purloined from Byron’s writing-desk, and these were pronounced by Lushington to be far from conclusive.

Mrs. Leigh seems to have enjoyed the wrigglings of her victim on the hook. ‘Decision was never my forte,’ she writes to Lady Byron: ‘one ought to act right, and leave the issue to Providence.’

The whole episode would be intensely comical were it not so pathetic. As might have been expected, Lady Byron eventually suffered far more than the woman she had so cruelly wounded. Augusta seems coolly to[Pg 379] suggest that her brother might ‘out of revenge’ (because his sister acted virtuously?) publish to the world his incestuous intercourse with her! Could anyone in his senses believe such nonsense? Augusta hints that then Lady Byron would be able to procure a divorce; and, as Lady Noel was still alive, Byron would not be able to participate in that lady’s fortune at her death.

The words, ‘There seem so many reasons why he should for his own sake abstain for the present from gratifying his revenge ... it would surely be ruin to all his prospects,’ are plain enough. Even if there had been anything to disclose, Byron would never have wounded that sister who stood at his side at the darkest hour of his life, who had sacrificed herself in order to screen his love for Mary Chaworth, and who was his sole rock of refuge in this stormy world. But it was necessary to show Lady Byron that she was standing on the brink ‘of a precipice.’

It is plain that Augusta was getting nervous about her brother’s attachment to the Guiccioli, a liaison[Pg 380] which might end in trouble; and if that lady was avaricious (which she was not) Byron might be induced to alter his will (made in 1815), by which he left all his share in the property to Augusta’s children. With a mother’s keen eye to their ultimate advantage, she tried hard to make their position secure, so that, in the event of Byron changing his mind, Lady Byron might make suitable provision for them. It was a prize worth playing for, and she played the game for all it was worth. ‘Leaving her babes to Providence’ was just the kind of sentiment most likely to appeal to Lady Byron who did, in a measure, respond to Augusta’s hints. In a letter (December 23, 1819) Lady Byron writes:

There was at this time a strong probability of Byron’s return to England. Lady Byron tried to extract from Augusta a promise that she would not see him. Augusta fenced with the question, until, when driven into a corner, she was compelled to admit that it would be unnatural to close the door against her brother. Lady Byron was furious:

It might have been supposed that Lady Byron, in 1816, after Augusta’s so-called ‘confession,’ would have kept her secret inviolate. That had been a condition precedent; without it Augusta would not have ventured to deceive even Lady Byron. It appears from the following note, written by Lady Byron to Mrs. Villiers, that Augusta’s secret had been confided to the tender mercies of that lady. On January 26, 1820, Lady Byron writes:

Verily, Augusta had been playing with fire!

 

 

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[Pg 382]

CHAPTER V

On December 31, 1819, Byron wrote a letter to his wife. The following is an extract:

The receipt of this letter gave Lady Byron the deepest concern, and, in the impulse of a moment, she drafted a reply full of bitterness and defiance. But Dr. Lushington persuaded her—not without a deal of trouble—to send an answer the terms of which, after considerable delay, were arranged between them. The letter in question has already appeared in Mr. Prothero’s ‘Letters and Journals of Lord Byron,’[77] together with Byron’s spirited rejoinder of April 3, 1820.

Lord Lovelace throws much light upon the inner workings of Lady Byron’s mind at this period. That she should have objected to the publication of Byron’s memoirs was natural; but, instead of saying this in a few dignified sentences, Lady Byron parades her wrongs, and utters dark hints as to the possible complicity of Augusta Leigh in Byron’s mysterious scheme of revenge. Dr. Lushington at first thought that it would be wiser and more diplomatic to beg Byron’s sister to dissuade him from publishing his memoirs, but Lady Byron scented danger in that course.

Byron was, of course, well acquainted with what had passed between his wife and Augusta Leigh. It could not have been kept from him, even if there had been any reason for secrecy. He knew that his sister had been driven to admit that Medora was his child, thus implying the crime of which she had been suspected. There was nothing, therefore, for Augusta to fear from him. She dreaded a public scandal, not so much on her own account as ‘for the sake of others.’ For that reason she tried to dissuade her brother from inviting a public discussion on family matters. There was no reason why Augusta should ‘combine’ with Byron against his hapless wife!

The weakness of Lady Byron’s position is admitted by herself in a letter dated January 29, 1820:

Oh, the pity of it all! There was something demoniacal in Byron’s treatment of this excellent woman. Perhaps it was all very natural under the circumstances. Lady Byron seemed to invite attack at every conceivable moment, and did not realize that a wounded tiger is always dangerous. This is the way in which she spoke of Augusta to Colonel Doyle:

Lady Byron’s grandiloquent phrase had no deeper meaning than this: that she was willing to accuse Augusta Leigh on the strength of ‘a long series of circumstantial evidences.’ We leave it for lawyers to say whether that charge could have been substantiated in the event of Mrs. Leigh’s absolute denial, and her disclosure of all the circumstances relating to the birth of Medora.

In the course of the same year (1820) Augusta, having failed to induce Lady Byron to make a definite statement as to her intentions with regard to the Leigh children, urged Byron to intercede with his wife in their interests. He accordingly wrote several times to Lady Byron, asking her to be kind to Augusta—in other words, to make some provision for her children. It seemed, under all circumstances, a strange request to make, but Byron’s reasons were sound. In accordance with the restrictions imposed by his marriage settlement, the available portion of the funds would revert to Lady Byron in the event of his predeceasing her. Lady Byron at first made no promise to befriend Augusta’s children; but later she wrote to say that the past would not prevent her from befriending Augusta Leigh and her children ‘in any future circumstances which may call for my assistance.’

In thanking Lady Byron for this promise, Byron writes:

Lord Lovelace seeks to make much out of that statement, and says in ‘Astarte’:

What naïveté! Byron’s meaning is perfectly clear. Whatever she was, or may have been—whatever her virtues or her sins—she had never wronged Lady Byron. On the contrary, she had, at considerable risk to herself, interceded for her with her brother, when the crisis came into their married life. Byron’s intercourse with his sister had never borne any connection with his relations towards his wife—it was a thing apart—and at the time of writing was closed perhaps for ever. He plainly repudiates Lady Byron’s cruel suspicions of a criminal intercourse having taken place during the brief period of their married existence. He could not have spoken in plainer language without indelicacy, and yet, so persistent was Lady Byron in her evil opinion of both, these simple straightforward words were wholly misconstrued. Malignant casuistry could of course find a dark hint in the sentence, ‘When one ceased, the other began’; but the mind must indeed be prurient that could place the worst construction upon the expression of so palpable a fact. It was not Lady Byron’s intention to complain of things that had taken place previous to her marriage;[Pg 387] her contention had always been that she separated from her husband in consequence of his conduct while under her own roof. When, in 1869, all the documentary evidence upon which she relied was shown to Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, that great lawyer thus expressed his opinion of their value:

Lord Lovelace tells us that all the charges made against Lady Byron in 1869 (when the Beecher Stowe ‘Revelations’ were published) would have collapsed ‘if all her papers had then been accessible and available’; and that Dr. Lushington, who was then alive, ‘from the best and kindest motives, and long habit of silence,’ exerted his influence over the other trustees to suppress them! Why, we may ask, was this? The answer suggests itself. It was because he well knew that there was nothing in those papers to fix guilt upon Mrs. Leigh. It must not be forgotten that Dr. Lushington, in 1816, expressed his deliberate opinion that the proofs were wholly insufficient to sustain a charge of incest. In this connection Lady Byron’s written statement, dated March 14, 1816, is most valuable.

[Pg 388]Exactly one month after Lady Byron had written those words, her husband addressed her in the following terms:

It was, as we have seen, five years before Lady Byron could bring herself to make any reply to this appeal. How far she fulfilled the promise then made, ‘to befriend Augusta Leigh and her children in any future circumstances which might call for her assistance,’ may be left to the imagination of the reader. We can find no evidence of it in ‘Astarte’ or in the ‘Revelations’ of Mrs. Beecher Stowe.

 

 

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[Pg 389]

CHAPTER VI

In order to meet the charges which the late Lord Lovelace brought against Mrs. Leigh in ‘Astarte,’ we have been compelled to quote rather extensively from its pages. In the chapter entitled ‘Manfred’ will be found selections from a mass of correspondence which, without qualification or comment, might go far to convince the reader. Lord Lovelace was evidently ‘a good hater,’ and he detested the very name of Augusta Leigh with all his heart and soul. There was some reason for this. She had, in Lord Lovelace’s opinion, ‘substituted herself for Lord Byron’s right heirs’ (‘Astarte,’ p. 125). It was evidently a sore point that Augusta should have benefited by Lord Byron’s will. Lord Lovelace forgot that Lady Byron had approved of the terms of her husband’s will, and that Lady Byron’s conduct had not been such as to deserve any pecuniary consideration at Lord Byron’s death. But impartiality does not seem to have been Lord Lovelace’s forte. Having made up his mind that Mrs. Leigh was guilty, he selected from his papers whatever might appear most likely to convict her. But the violence of his antagonism has impaired the value of his contention; and the effect of his arguments is very different from that which he intended. Having satisfied himself that Mrs. Leigh (though liked and respected by her [Pg 390]contemporaries) was an abandoned woman, Lord Lovelace says:

Poor Mrs. Leigh! and was it so bad as all that? Had she committed incest with her brother after the separation of 1816? Did she follow Byron abroad ‘in the dress of a page,’ as stated by some lying chronicler from the banks of the Lake of Geneva? Did Byron come to England in secret at some period between 1816 and 1824? If not, what on earth is the meaning of this mysterious homily? Does Lord Lovelace, in the book that survives him, wish the world to believe that Lady Byron prevented Augusta from deserting her husband and children, and flying into Byron’s arms in a ‘far countree’? If that was the author’s intention, he has signally failed. There never was a moment, since the trip abroad was abandoned in 1813, when Augusta had the mind to join her brother in his travels. There is not a hint of any such wish in any document published up to the present time. Augusta, who was undoubtedly innocent, had suffered enough from the lying reports that had been spread about town by Lady Caroline Lamb, ever to wish for another[Pg 391] dose of scandal. If the Lovelace papers contain any hint of that nature, the author of ‘Astarte’ would most assuredly have set it forth in Double Pica. It is a baseless calumny.

In Lord Lovelace’s opinion,

These be perilous doctrines, surely! But how do those reflections apply to the case of Byron and his sister? The hypothesis may be something like this: Byron and his sister commit a deadly sin. They are found out, but their secret is kept by a select circle of their friends. They part, and never meet again in this world. The sin might have been forgiven, or at least condoned, if they had ‘observed a law of their own’—in other words, ‘gone on sinning.’ Why? because ‘societies secretly respect rebel lovers.’ But these wretches had not the courage of their profligacy; they parted and sinned no more, therefore they were ‘unrepentant hypocrites.’ The ‘heroism and sincerity of united fates and doom’ was denied to them, and no one would ever have suspected them of such a crime, if Lady Byron and Lord Lovelace had not betrayed them. What pestilential rubbish! One wonders how a man of Lord Lovelace’s undoubted ability could have sunk to bathos of that kind.

It is clear, then, that in Lord Lovelace’s opinion Byron and Augusta were prevented by someone from becoming poetical figures. Who was that guardian angel? Lady Byron, of course!

Now, what are the facts? Byron parted from his sister on April 14, 1816, nine days prior to his own departure from London. They never met again. There was nothing to ‘prevent’ them from being together up to the last moment if they had felt so disposed. Byron never disguised his deep and lasting affection for Augusta, whom in private he called his ‘Dear Goose,’ and in public his ‘Sweet Sister.’ There was no hypocrisy on either side—nothing, in short, except the prurient imagination of a distracted wife, aided and abetted by a circle of fawning gossips.

It is a lamentable example of how public opinion may be misdirected by evidence, which Horace would have called Parthis mendacior.

Lord Lovelace comforts himself by the reflection that Augusta

Now, that is very strange! How could Augusta have gone farther down spiritually after Byron’s departure? According to Lord Lovelace, ‘Character regained was the consummation of Mrs. Leigh’s ruin!’

[Pg 393]Mrs. Leigh must have been totally unlike anyone else, if character regained proved her ruin. There must be some mistake. No, there it is in black and white. ‘Her return to outward respectability was an unmixed misfortune to the third person through whose protection it was possible.’

This cryptic utterance implies that Mrs. Leigh’s respectability was injurious to Lady Byron. Why?

So the cat is out of the bag at last! It having been impossible for Lady Byron to bring any proof against Byron and his sister which would have held water in a law-court, her friends and her legal adviser hoped that Augusta would desert her husband and children, and thus furnish them with evidence which would justify their conduct before the world. But Augusta was sorry not to be able to oblige them. This was a pity, because, according to Lord Lovelace, who was the most ingenuous of men: ‘Their triumph and Lady Byron’s justification would have been complete, and great would have been their rejoicing.’

Well, they made up for it afterwards, when Byron and Augusta were dead; after those memoirs had been destroyed which, in Byron’s words, ‘will be a kind of guide-post in case of death, and prevent some of the lies which would otherwise be told, and destroy some which have been told already.’

In allusion to the meetings between Lady Byron[Pg 394] and Augusta immediately after the separation, we are told in ‘Astarte’ that

This was great presumption on Mrs. Leigh’s part, after all the pains they had taken to make her uncomfortable. Lady Byron, we are told by Lord Lovelace, could no longer bear the false position, and ‘before leaving London she went to the Hon. Mrs. Villiers—a most intimate friend of Augusta’s’—and deliberately poisoned her mind. That which she told Mrs. Villiers is not stated; but we infer that Lady Byron retailed some of the gossip that had reached her through one of Mrs. Leigh’s servants who had overheard part of a conversation between Augusta and Byron shortly after Medora’s birth. After the child had been taken to St. James’s Palace, Byron often went there. It is likely that Augusta had been overheard jesting with Byron about his child. We cannot be sure of this; but, at any rate, some such expression, if whispered in Lady Byron’s ears, would be sufficient to confirm her erroneous belief.

Mrs. Villiers, we are told, began from this time to be slightly prejudiced against Augusta. She believed her to be absolutely pure, but with lax notions of morality. This sounds like a contradiction in terms, but so it was; and through the wilful misrepresentation of Lady Byron and her coterie, Augusta’s[Pg 395] best friend was lured from her allegiance. Mrs. Villiers was also informed of something else by Wilmot-Horton, another friend of Lady Byron’s. The plot thickened, and, without any attempt being made to arrive at the truth, Augusta’s life became almost unbearable. No wonder the poor woman said in her agony: ‘None can know how much I have suffered from this unhappy business, and, indeed, I have never known a moment’s peace, and begin to despair for the future.’

The ‘unhappy business’ was, of course, her unwise adoption of Medora. Through that error of judgment she was doomed to plod her way to the grave, suspected by even her dearest friend, and persecuted by the Byron family. Mrs. Villiers was a good woman and scented treason. She boldly urged Lady Byron to avow to Augusta the information of which she was in possession. But Lady Byron was at first afraid to run the risk. She knew very well the value of servants’ gossip, and feared the open hostility of Augusta if she made common cause with Byron. This much she ingenuously avowed in a letter to Dr. Lushington. But, upon being further pressed, she consented to write to Augusta and announce what she had been told. We have no doubt that the letter was written with great care, after consultation with Colonel Doyle and Lushington, and that the gossip was retailed with every outward consideration for Augusta’s feelings. Whatever was said, and there is no evidence of it in ‘Astarte,’ we are there told that ‘Augusta did not attempt to deny it, and, in fact, admitted everything in subsequent letters to Lady Byron during the summer of 1816.’ Lord Lovelace ingenuously adds: ‘It is unnecessary to produce them here, as their contents are[Pg 396] confirmed and made sufficiently clear by the correspondence of 1819, in another chapter.’

It is very strange that Lord Lovelace, who is not thrifty in his selections, should have withheld the only positive proof of Augusta’s confession known to be in existence. His reference to the letters of 1819, which he publishes, is a poor substitute for the letters themselves. The only letter which affords any clue to the mystery is the ‘Dearest Love’ letter, dated May 17, 1819, which we have quoted in a previous chapter. The value of that letter, as evidence against Augusta, we have already shown. When compared with the letter which Byron wrote to his sister on June 3, 1817—a year after he had parted from her—the conclusion that the incriminating letter is not addressed to Augusta at all, forces itself irresistibly upon the mind. As an example of varying moods, it is worth quoting:

It is really laughable to suppose that the writer of the above extract could have written to the same lady two years later in the following strain:

But Lord Lovelace found no difficulty in believing that the letter in question sealed the fate of Augusta[Pg 397] Leigh. In the face of such a document, Lord Lovelace thought that a direct confession in Augusta’s handwriting would be superfluous, and Sir Leslie Stephen had warned him against superfluity!

Colonel Doyle, an intimate friend of Lady Byron, seems to have been the only man on her side of the question—not even excepting Lushington—who showed anything approaching to common sense. He perceived that Lady Byron, by avowing the grounds of her suspicions to Mrs. Leigh, had placed herself in an awkward position. He foresaw that this avowal would turn Mrs. Leigh into an enemy, who must sooner or later avenge the insults heaped upon her. On July 9, 1816, Colonel Doyle wrote to Lady Byron:

We have quoted enough to show that, five months after the separation was formally proposed to Lord Byron, they had not sufficient evidence to bring into a court of law. Under those depressing circumstances Lady Byron was urged to induce Augusta to ‘confess’; the conspirators would have been grateful even for an admission of guilt as prior to Lord Byron’s marriage!

Colonel Doyle, as a man of honour, did not wish Lady Byron to rely upon ‘confessions’ made under the seal of secrecy. They had, apparently, been duped on a previous occasion; and, in case Mrs. Leigh were to bring an action against Lady Byron for defamation of character, it would not be advisable to rely, for her[Pg 398] defence, upon letters which were strictly private and confidential. As to Augusta’s ‘admissions,’ made orally and without witnesses, they were absolutely valueless—especially as the conditions under which they were made could not in honour be broken.

Augusta through all this worry fell into a state of deep dejection. She had been accused of a crime which (though innocent) she had tacitly admitted. Her friends were beginning to look coldly upon her, and consequently her position became tenfold more difficult and ‘extraordinary’ than that of her accuser. Perhaps she came to realize the truth of Dryden’s lines:

‘Smooth the descent and easy is the way;
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labour lies.’

Equivocation is a dangerous game.

Lord Lovelace tells us that all the papers concerning the marriage of Lord and Lady Byron have been carefully preserved. ‘They are a complete record of all the causes of separation, and contain full information on every part of the subject.’

We can only say that it is a pity Lord Lovelace should have withheld those which were most likely to prove his case—for example, the letters which Mrs. Leigh wrote to Lady Byron in the summer of 1816. The public have a right to demand from an accuser the grounds of his accusation. Lord Lovelace gives us none. He bids us listen to what he deigns to tell us, and to ask for nothing more. That his case is built upon Lady Byron’s surmises, and upon no more solid foundation, is shown by the following illuminating extract from ‘Astarte’:

If Lady Byron did not seek for information when she plied Augusta with questions, and encouraged her friends to do the same, she must have derived pleasure from torturing her supposed rival. But that is absurd.

In her effort to resist the light, Lady Byron seems to have admirably succeeded. But, in spite of her grandson’s statement, that she employed any great effort to resist the darkness that flowed into her mind we entirely disbelieve. We are rather inclined to think that, in her search for evidence to convict Mrs. Leigh, she would have been very grateful for a farthing rushlight.

We now leave ‘Astarte’ to the judgment of posterity, for whom, in a peculiarly cruel sense, it was originally intended. If in a court of law counsel for the prosecution were to declaim loudly and frequently about[Pg 400] evidence which he does not—perhaps dares not—produce, his harangues would make an unfavourable impression on a British jury. We have no wish to speak ill of the dead, but, in justice to Mrs. Leigh, we feel bound to say that the author of ‘Astarte,’ with all his talk about evidence against Byron and Augusta Leigh, has not produced a scrap of evidence which would have any weight with an impartial jury of their countrymen.

But we will not end upon a jarring note. Let us remember that Lord Lovelace, as Ada’s son, felt an affectionate regard for the memory of Lady Byron. It was his misfortune to imbibe a false tradition, and, while groping his way through the darkness, his sole guide was a packet of collected papers by which his grandmother hoped to justify her conduct in leaving her husband. If Lady Byron had deigned to read Byron’s ‘Memoirs,’ she might have been spared those painful delusions by which her mind was obsessed in later years. That she had ample grounds, in Byron’s extraordinary conduct during the brief period of their intercourse, to separate herself from him is not disputed; but her premises were wrong, and her vain attempt to justify herself by unsupported accusations against Mrs. Leigh has failed.

Her daughter Ada, the mother of Lord Lovelace, had learnt enough of the family history to come to the conclusion (which she decidedly expressed to Mr. Fonblanque) that the sole cause of the separation was incompatibility. There let it rest. The Byron of the last phase was a very different man from the poet of ‘The Dream.’

On the day that Byron was buried at Hucknall-Torkard the great Goethe, in allusion to a letter which[Pg 401] Byron, on the eve of his departure for Greece, had written to him, says:

With these just words it is fitting to draw our subject to a close. The poetic fame of Byron has passed through several phases, and will probably pass through another before his exact position in the poetical hierarchy is determined. But the world’s interest in the man who cheerfully gave his life to the cause of Greek Independence has not declined. Eighty-five years have passed, and Time has gradually[Pg 402] fulfilled the prophecy which inspiration wrung from the anguish of his heart:

‘But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
And my frame perish even in conquering pain;
But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire;
Something unearthly, which they deem not of,
Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre,
Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move
In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of Love.’

 

 

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[Pg 403]

APPENDIX

 

DR. BRUNO’S REPLY TO FLETCHER’S STATEMENT

The following remarks appeared in the Westminster Review, and gave great annoyance to Dr. Millingen, who thought that he had been accused of having caused the death of Byron by putting off, during four successive days, the operation of bleeding:

 

DR. MILLINGEN’S ACCOUNT

There is an entry in Millingen’s ‘Memoirs of Greece’ which has not received the attention it deserves—namely, a request made by Byron on the day before his death. It is given by Millingen in the following words:

‘One request let me make to you. Let not my body be hacked, or be sent to England. Here let my bones moulder. Lay me in the first corner without pomp or nonsense.’

After Byron’s death Millingen informed Gamba of this request, but it was thought that it would be a sacrilege to leave his remains in a place ‘where they might some day become the sport of insulting barbarians.’

 

 

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[Pg 412]

INDEX

Adam, Sir F., High Commissioner of the Ionian islands:
his tribute to Byron’s character, 202

Agraffa, the scene of Cariascachi’s depredations, 162

Allegra, Byron’s natural daughter:
her life and death, 22;
Byron’s feelings for, 35

Americans, Byron on, 131

Anatoliko, Turkish abandonment of, 68

Argostoli, Byron arrives at, 63

Astarte, by Earl of Lovelace. See Lovelace

Augusta, Stanzas and Epistle to, 290, 324, 364


Barnard, Lady Anne, on Byron’s married life, 329 et seq.

Beecher Stowe scandals, 318, 326

Bentham, Jeremy, and Byron, 108 et seq., 119;
amusing anecdote about, 126 et seq.

Berry, Messrs., Byron’s wine merchants:
register of Byron’s weight, 19

Bible, The, Scott’s lines on, 73

Blackwood’s Magazine on Byron, 50, 100, 315, 316

Blaquière, Captain, 48;
sails for England, 64;
describes the return of Hatajè to her parents, 137;
eulogy on Byron, 176, 177, 199 et seq.

Blessington, Lady, Conversations of Lord Byron:
describes Byron, 5, 6;
character and reminiscences of Byron, 34 et seq., 40, 41

Bolivar, The, Byron’s yacht, sold to Lord Blessington, 32;
her end, 33

Botzari, Marco, 48;
his death, 66

Bowring, Mr., hon. secretary to the Greek Committee, 126

Bride of Abydos, The:
what the poem reveals, 240, 259, 260, 262, 265

Brougham, Mr., spreads the scandal, 340

Broughton, Lord (see Hobhouse, John Cam), Recollections of a Long Life, 201, 247 n., 339 n., 340 n., 359 n.

Browne, Hamilton, goes with Byron to Greece, 47, 48;
Byron’s illness, 62;
arrives at Cephalonia, 67

Bruno, Dr., travels with Byron to Greece, 47, 48;
Byron’s illness, 59, 62;
medical discussions with Dr. Stravolemo, 79;
his medical treatment of Byron, 124, 163, 166, 168, 169, 193 et seq.;
accompanies Byron’s body to England, 202;
reply to Fletcher’s statement, 403 et seq.;
Dr. Millingen on, 405 et seq.

Brydges, Sir Egerton, 291

Burdett, Sir Francis, 11, 208

Byron, George Gordon (sixth Lord):
arrival and habits of life at Pisa, 3, 11, 20-22;
personal appearance, 4-7;
evidence as to his lameness, 7, 8, 191;
portraits of, 9, 10;
inherits the Noel property on death of Lady Noel, 10, 11;
the society and influence of the Shelleys, 11 et seq.;
discussion on the most perfect ode produced, 11, 12, 58;
[Pg 413]religion, 13 et seq.;
habit of vaunting his vices, 17, 18, 78;
abstinence, 18;
weight register, 19;
fracas at Pisa and Montenero, 21, 22;
his natural daughter Allegra, 22 et seq.;
effect of Allegra’s death on, 24;
dealings with Leigh Hunt, 26 et seq.;
death of Shelley and Williams, 29, 30;
refuses Shelley’s legacy of £2,000, 32;
leaves Pisa with Countess Guiccioli and goes to Albaro, 32;
sells his yacht The Bolivar, 33;
feelings on his own position, and desire for reconciliation with his wife, 33 et seq.;
admiration for Sir Walter Scott and Shelley, 35;
liaison with Countess Guiccioli, 37, 379, 380;
conduct after separation from his wife, 39 et seq.;
Lady Blessington on, 40;
anomalies, 41;
opinion of his wife, 42;
admiration for his sister, 42;
affection for his child Ada, 43;
craving for celebrity, 45;
takes up the Greek cause, 46;
travels to Greece with money, arms, and retinue, 47;
arrives at Argostoli, 47, 65;
practical sympathy, 48, 67;
an interesting interview with, 48 et seq.;
visits the Fountain of Arethusa, 51-53;
attacks of illness, 51, 52, 59, 62, 63;
excursion to the School of Homer, 54-57;
on the Waverley Novels, 57;
at Vathi, 58;
admiration for Southey, Gifford, and others, 59, 60;
reception at Santa Eufemia, 60;
on actors, 61;
journey over the Black Mountain to Argostoli, 63;
action with regard to dissensions in Greece, 64 et seq.;
resides at Metaxata, 67;
advances £4,000 to the Greeks, 67 et seq.;
appeal to the Greek nation, 69;
motives in coming to Greece, 70, 71, 94;
discussions with Dr. Kennedy on religion, 72 et seq.;
favourite books, 79, 82, 100;
helps to rescue workmen, 80;
sails with money from Zante for Missolonghi to join and help the Greek fleet, 81, 82;
adventurous voyage, 83-86;
reception at Missolonghi, 88;
releases Turkish prisoners, 89, 90, 132;
preparations against Lepanto, 91;
takes 500 Suliotes into his pay, 91;
and Major Parry, 92 et seq., 143;
Turks blockade Missolonghi, 96;
verses on his birthday, 96;
presentiment that he would never leave Greece, and his intentions, 97;
some reminiscences of, 98 et seq.;
wonderful memory, 102;
a popular idol in Greece, 105;
relations with Mavrocordato, 106, 116;
and Colonel Stanhope, 107 et seq., 120, 121, 122;
Jeremy Bentham, 108;
dealings with the press, 112, 113;
views of the politics of Greece, 114;
effective mode of reproof, 117;
on the useless supplies sent by the London Committee, 119;
abandonment of the Lepanto project, 121;
illness and feelings as to death, 122-125;
dismisses the Suliotes, 125, 142;
anecdote of Jerry Bentham’s Cruise, 126 et seq.;
interest in the working classes, 130;
his politics, 131;
on America, 131;
the story of Hatajè, 133 et seq.;
Turkish brig ashore, 139;
firmness and tact in difficulties, 140, 156 et seq.;
desertion of the English artificers, 142, 143;
improvement in his health, 144;
favourite dogs, 145, 227;
daily life, 145, 147;
the unhealthy state of Missolonghi, 146;
bodyguard, 146;
indisposition of, 148;
peasants’ respect for, 149;
no desire for self-aggrandizement in Greece, 151 et seq.;
Greek loan raised in London, 156;
receives the freedom of Missolonghi, 157;
Cariascachi’s treachery, 159 et seq.;
detailed accounts of his last illness, and death, 163 et seq., 192 et seq., 403 et seq.;
eulogies on, 174 et seq., 201, 205;
[Pg 414]Trelawny’s opinion of, 178 et seq.;
effect of his death on Greece, 183 et seq., 201;
the funeral oration, 185;
body conveyed to Zante, and thence to England, 198 et seq.;
arrival of the body in England, 202-204;
character sketch by Colonel Stanhope, 205 et seq.;
funeral procession and burial at Hucknall-Torkard, 215, 216;
what the poems reveal, 219 et seq.;
infatuation for Mary Chaworth, 220 et seq.;
mystery of the Thyrza poems, 221 et seq.;
romantic attachment to Edleston, 222, 223, 230, 231;
anecdote of Mary Chaworth’s gift, 224;
his mother’s death, 227;
on death of his friends, 227, 228;
Childe Harold, 233, 236, 238, 287, 363;
and the Hon. Mrs. George Lamb, 235;
disbelief in existence after death, 239, 240;
in great dejection writes The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, and The Corsair, 240, 256 et seq., 277, 278, 281, 303;
and Lady Webster, 240, 241, 259;
persuaded to give up going abroad, 241, 242;
what he wishes the world to believe about Mary Chaworth, 244, 245;
their meetings after her separation from her husband, 246, 258 et seq.;
remorse and parting, 249;
suspense and fear preceding the birth of Medora, 253, 260;
reason of separation from his wife, 255;
reproaches Mary Chaworth, 256, 257;
device for a seal, 261, 267;
remarkable letter to Moore, 266;
birth of Medora, 268;
Lara, 268, 271, 273;
partly the cause of the scandal about Mrs. Leigh, 270;
effect of Miss Milbanke’s first refusal, 271 et seq.;
Harmodia, 274, 275;
Don Juan, 276, 304 et seq.;
Hebrew Melodies, 277;
Herod’s Lament for Mariamne, 278;
his significant communication to his lawyer, 279;
verses to Mary Chaworth, 280, 281;
fear of disgrace, 281;
important correspondence with Murray, 282, 283;
last meeting with Mary Chaworth, 283;
how the secret was kept, 285;
verses to his sister, 286, 287;
The Dream, 289, 290;
Stanzas to Augusta, 290, 364;
Manfred, 291 et seq., 328, 364;
his treatment of the scandal, 291, 317, 320;
The Duel, 293, 298;
The Lament of Tasso, 297;
Stanzas to the Po, 298 et seq., 370;
Last Words on Greece, 311;
on his separation from his wife, 315 et seq.;
Mrs. Leigh’s so-called confession, 319 et seq., 356 et seq., 368;
Epistle to Augusta, 324;
story of his married life, 329 et seq.;
Sir Ralph Noel requires a separation, 339;
Lady Jersey’s party, 352;
parts for the last time from his sister, 352, 366, 392;
consents to separation from his wife, 352;
Lady Byron’s written statement of complaints, 353;
letter to Lady Byron as to his will, 355;
Moore’s life of, 365 et seq.;
writes to Moore about the scandal, 367;
letter supposed to be written to Mary Chaworth, 368 et seq.;
letter compared with one to his sister, 372;
writes to Lady Byron as to the memoir of his life, 382;
asks Lady Byron to make provision for Mrs. Leigh’s children, 385, 388;
Goethe on, 400, 401

Byron, Lord: Letters and Journals of, by Rowland Prothero, 70 n., 256 n., 260 n.;
Life of, by Tom Moore, 365;
Reminiscences of, by G. Finlay, 201;
Sketch of, by Colonel Stanhope, 201

Byron, Captain George (afterwards seventh Lord), 337, 338

Byron, Hon. Augusta. See Leigh, Hon. Mrs. Augusta

Byron, Hon. Augusta Ada (afterwards Lady King and Countess of Lovelace), Byron’s daughter:
[Pg 415]separation from her father, 43, 44, 288;
Hobhouse’s opinion of, 206, 207;
her health, 363

Byron, Lady (formerly Miss Milbanke):
property and settlements on marriage, 10;
married life, 36, 329 et seq.;
her husband’s desire for reconciliation, 36, 46, 206;
on Byron’s religion, 77, 78;
the result of first refusal of Byron, 206, 272;
If I am not happy, it will be my own fault, 216;
on Byron’s poetry, 219;
on his indiscreet confidences, 270;
her conduct after the birth of Medora, 285, 289, 321 et seq.;
interview with Mrs. Leigh at Reigate, 324;
Mrs. Leigh’s long visit to, 336;
birth of a daughter, and her husband’s treatment, 337;
steps for a separation taken, 338, 341, 351, 352, 357, 358;
her treatment of the abstracted letters, 340, 357;
attempts to extract a confession from Mrs. Leigh, 322, 324, 341, 357, 361 et seq.;
letters to Mrs. Leigh, 342, 343, 357;
Hodgson’s appeal to, 346 et seq.;
text of the signed statement of her conduct, 353 et seq.;
Colonel Doyle’s advice, 360;
her husband’s letter to Mary Chaworth, 368 et seq.;
and the prospects of Mrs. Leigh’s children, 380, 385;
confides in Mrs. Villiers, 381;
letter from Byron, 382;
the weakness of her position, 383, 384;
Cockburn’s opinion of, 387;
Lord Lovelace on, 389 et seq.


Campbell, Dr., Presbyterian divine, 55

Campbell, Thomas, Battle of the Baltic, 60

Cariascachi, a Greek chieftain, his treachery, 159 et seq.

Chaworth, Mary (afterwards Mrs. John Musters):
Byron’s infatuation for, and references in his poems to, 220 et seq.;
unhappy married life and separation, 243 et seq.;
weakness and repentance, 245 et seq.;
breakdown of health, and reconciliation with her husband, 251;
describes her own character, 252;
birth of Medora, 254, 268;
how the secret was kept by Mrs. Leigh, 255, 285, 287, 317, 321, 362 et seq.;
letters to Byron, 267, 368 et seq.;
last parting with Byron, 283

Childe Harold, what the poem reveals, 228, 229, 232 et seq., 287, 363

Clairmont, Claire:
her anxiety about her daughter Allegra, 22, 23;
her conduct to Byron, 24, 25

Clare, Lord, and Byron, 208

Clermont, Mrs., 337;
her abstraction of Byron’s letters, 340 et seq., 378

Cockburn, Sir Alexander, Lord Chief Justice, and the Byron mystery, 358;
his opinion of Lady Byron, 387

Coleridge, Ernest Hartley, on identity of Byron’s infatuation, 233, 240, 260

Colocotroni, one of the turbulent capitani, 153

Congreve rockets, 92, 93

Corsair, The, what the poem reveals, 240, 262 et seq., 277, 279


Dacre, Lord, 11

Davies, Scrope B., 98, 352;
Byron’s letter to, 227

Don Juan, what the poem reveals, 219, 276, 304 et seq.

Dowden, Professor, Life of Shelley: on Byron, 13;
the death of Allegra, 23

Doyle, Colonel Francis:
consulted by Lady Byron as to a separation, 338;
signs Lady Byron’s statement of her conduct, 355;
advises Lady Byron to obtain a confession from Mrs. Leigh, 360, 361, 397

Dragomestri, Byron’s visit to, 85

Dream, The, what the poem reveals, 289, 290

Duel, The, the poem’s application to Mary Chaworth, 298
[Pg 416]

Edleston, a chorister at Cambridge:
Byron saves his life and forms a romantic attachment to, 222;
his death, 230, 231

Elphinstone, Miss Mercer, and Byron, 311


Fenton, Captain, 180

Finlay, George, History of Greece:
the siege of Missolonghi, 70;
Byron’s mode of life at Missolonghi, 98 et seq., 148;
on Byron, 176;
Reminiscences of Byron, 201;
Byron’s last illness, 405

Fletcher, Byron’s valet:
Byron’s last ride, 164;
ignorance of the doctors, 165, 166;
Byron’s last illness and death, 170, 171, 252;
his statement, 192 et seq.;
accompanies Byron’s body to England, 202;
Dr. Bruno’s reply to the statement, 403 et seq.;
Dr. Millingen’s account of Byron’s last illness, 405 et seq.

Florida, the brig, brings the loan to Greece, and conveys back Byron’s body, 199 et seq.

Freiber, Dr., German physician, attends Byron, 169


Gamba, Count Pietro:
on Byron’s religious opinions, 16, 17;
fracas at Pisa, 20;
goes to Albaro, 32;
travels with Byron to Greece, 47, 48;
on Byron’s perseverance and discernment, 65;
on Byron’s favourite reading, 79;
Byron’s practical sympathy, 80;
accompanies Byron to Missolonghi, 83;
taken prisoner by the Turks, 84;
release and arrival at Missolonghi, 85;
the General Assembly at Missolonghi, 88;
Byron’s interview with the two privateer sailors, 91;
becomes editor of the Greek Telegraph, 114;
Byron’s illness, 121, 143, 148, 163 et seq.;
arrest of English officers, 157;
Byron’s funeral, 184;
conveys Byron’s body to Zante, 198

Gamba, Count Ruggiero, Byron’s neighbour at Pisa, 3;
leaves Pisa and goes to Montenero, 21;
ordered to leave Montenero, 22;
goes to Albaro, 32;
and Byron, 212

Gamba, Teresa. See Guiccioli, Countess

Gell, Sir William, his writings, 100, 101 n.

George IV. makes ‘equivocation’ the fashion, 17, 18;
and Sir Walter Scott, 53

Giaour, The, what the poem reveals, 240, 256, 257, 265

Gifford, William, Byron’s opinion of, 51, 60

Greece:
Byron sails for, 47;
state of the country and army, 64, 87 et seq., 118, 180;
Byron advances £4,000, 67;
Byron’s appeal to the nation, 69, 70;
preparations against Lepanto, 91;
honours offered to Byron, 151, 152;
Congress at Salona, 153;
Greek loan raised in London, 156;
effect of Byron’s death on, 175 et seq.

Greece, History of, by G. Finlay, 70;
by Mitford, 100

Greek Chronicle:
Byron’s support, 108;
suppression of, 112, 113

Greek Telegraph, 103, 113

Guiccioli, Countess, daughter of Count Ruggiero Gamba:
Byron’s neighbour at Pisa, 3, 4, 20;
describes Byron, 7 et seq.;
on the characters of Shelley and Byron, 14, 15;
on Byron’s conduct towards Allegra, 23;
on Byron’s religion, 74, 78;
anecdote about Mary Chaworth’s ring, 224;
Lady of the Land, 298, 301, 370;
and Mrs. Leigh, 379


Hancock, Charles, Byron’s banker, 82

Hanson, John, Byron’s solicitor, 241, 345, 346

Harmodia, 274, 275

Hatajè, Byron’s kindness to, 133 et seq.

Hay, Captain, fracas at Pisa, 20, 21
[Pg 417]
Hebrew Melodies, 277

Hercules, the, an English brig:
Byron and his suite sail to Greece in it, 47;
Byron lives on board, 64, 65

Herod’s Lament for Mariamne, 278

Hesketh, Mr., 158, 159

Heywood, Sergeant, consulted by Lady Byron, 338

Hobhouse, John Cam (afterwards Lord Broughton):
and Byron, 35;
persuades Byron to burn his journal, 102;
destroys one of Byron’s poems, 208;
Byron’s funeral, 215, 216;
and Lady Byron, 216, 320;
life-long friend of Mrs. Leigh, 319.
See also Broughton, Lord

Hodgson, captain of the Florida, 203

Hodgson, Rev. Francis:
consulted by Mrs. Leigh, 344 et seq.;
appeals to Lady Byron, 346 et seq.

Hodgson, Rev. F., Memoir of, 73 n.

Holmes, Mr. James, his portrait of Byron, 9

Hours of Idleness, what the poem reveals, 220

Hucknall-Torkard, Byron’s burial place, 44

Humphreys, Captain, on state of Greece, 180

Hunt, Sir Aubrey de Vere, 102

Hunt, Leigh:
the story of his literary and money relations with Byron, 26 et seq.;
Byron’s opinion of, 31


Ireland, Dr., Dean of Westminster, refuses burial of Byron in Westminster Abbey, 203


Jersey, Countess of, her party in honour of Byron, 352


Kean, Edmund, actor, Byron’s opinion of, 61

Kemble, John, actor, Byron’s opinion of, 61

Kennedy, Dr., Scottish medical man:
tries to ‘convert’ Byron, 72 et seq.;
and Hatajè, 136;
Lady Byron on, 77

King, Lady. See Byron, Hon. Augusta Ada

Kinnaird, the Hon. Douglas, Byron’s opinion of, 208

Knox, Captain, 51

Knox, Mrs., 50, 54


Lamb, Hon. Mrs. George, and Byron, 235

Lamb, Lady Caroline, spreads the Byron scandal, 270, 317, 340, 390

Lambro, a Suliote chief, 156, 164

Lara, what the poem reveals, 268, 271, 273

Leigh, Hon. Mrs. Augusta, half-sister of Lord Byron:
influence over her brother, 42, 73, 245, 261;
and his poetry, 103;
wishes him to go abroad, 242;
first introduction to, and close intimacy with, Mary Chaworth, 250;
loyalty to her brother and Mary Chaworth, 255, 287, 317, 321;
letters from her brother about Mary Chaworth, 258, 267, 268;
simulated confinement and convalescence, 269;
her brother’s conduct gives colour to the scandal, 270, 279, 285;
letters to Hodgson on the secret, 272, 344 et seq.;
spends a month at Newstead with her brother, 279;
the difficulties of keeping the secret, 285, 317, 362 et seq.;
lines in Childe Harold referring to, 287;
the so-called confession, 289, 322, 324, 325, 341, 357, 361 et seq.;
Stanzas to Augusta, 290, 364;
Lord Lovelace’s opinion of her character, 294, 295;
the accusation dealt with in detail, 318 et seq.;
Lord Stanhope and Frances, Lady Shelley on, 318;
the story of her life, 319;
Hobhouse’s advice to, 320;
difficult position with Lady Byron, 321, 341, 362, 367;
her predicament owing to the adoption of Medora, 322;
Epistle to Augusta, 324;
letters to Hodgson on her brother’s marriage, 332 et seq.;
[Pg 418]a long visit to her brother and Lady Byron, 336;
Lady Byron’s feelings towards her, 336, 337, 342, 343, 360;
Lady Byron’s confinement, 337;
Mrs. Clermont’s treachery, 341;
Lady Jersey’s party, 352;
parts for ever from her brother, 352;
Lady Byron’s written statement, 353 et seq.;
letters to Hodgson on her brother, 362;
her line of conduct to Lady Byron, 362 et seq.;
Moore on Byron’s feelings towards her, 366;
pretends that her brother’s letter to Mary Chaworth was written to herself, 368 et seq.;
a genuine letter, 372;
reply to Lady Byron’s advice, 375 et seq.;
her children’s prospects discussed with Lady Byron, 380, 385;
Lady Byron’s request, 380;
Lord Lovelace on, 389 et seq.

Lepanto, preparations against, 91

Liberal, The, its unsuccessful career, 31, 32

Lion, Byron’s favourite dog, 145, 146

Londos, General Andrea, and Byron, 155

Lovelace, Earl of, Astarte:
Byron’s Thyrza, 234 n.;
accusations against Mrs. Leigh, 249, 269 et seq., 287, 288, 318, 321, 322, 338, 341, 362, 366 et seq., 368 et seq., 385 et seq., 390;
describes Mrs. Leigh’s character, 294;
Manfred, the key of the mystery, 326 et seq., 364;
Byron’s mutability, 339;
Lady Byron’s written statement, 353 et seq.;
important letters from Byron, 368 et seq., 385, 386;
and Lady Byron, 387

Lushington, Dr.:
advises Lady Byron, 338, 351, 352, 357, 358, 383, 387;
his opinion on Byron’s letters abstracted by Mrs. Clermont, 341;
signs Lady Byron’s statement, 353 et seq.


Magdalen, a fragment, 269

Maitland, Sir Thomas, High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, 52, 61;
character and death, 115, 116

Manfred, the supposed key to the mystery, 291 et seq., 328, 364

Marino Faliero, 100

Marshall, Mrs. Julian, Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 178, 180

Masi, Sergeant-Major, fracas at Pisa, 20, 21

Matthews, Charles Skinner, one of Byron’s best friends, his death, 227

Mavrocordato, Prince, Governor-General of Western Greece:
and Byron, 66, 68, 70, 202;
brings the Greek fleet to Missolonghi, 81;
Byron’s arrival at Missolonghi, 85;
Byron’s interview with two privateer sailors, 91;
his jealousy, 105, 106;
infraction of neutrality in Ithaca, 115;
Byron’s opinion of, 116;
opposition by Colonel Stanhope, 119, 153;
and Odysseus, 153 et seq.;
Byron’s last illness and death, 164 et seq.;
effect of Byron’s death on, 177, 202;
Trelawny’s opinion of, 179, 180;
his efforts for Greece, 181;
issues a proclamation on Byron’s death, 183, 184

Medora, birth of, 254, 268;
Childe Harold, 288;
adoption by Mrs. Leigh, 322

Medwin, Captain Thomas:
his description of Byron, 4, 6, 11;
on Byron’s life at Pisa, 20;
The Angler in Wales, 33 n.

Melbourne, Lady, persuades Byron not to go abroad, 242

Metaxata, Byron’s residence at, 65, 79

Meyer, Jean Jacques, editor of the Greek Chronicle, 112

Milbanke, Miss. See Byron, Lady

Milbanke, Sir Ralph, his property, 10

Millingen, Dr.:
on Byron’s character, 95;
on Parry, 96;
Byron a favourite in Greece, 105, 177;
[Pg 419]on the Greek press, 113;
Byron’s illness, 124;
Byron’s kind treatment of Hatajè, 133 et seq.;
on Cariascachi’s treachery, 161;
on Byron’s unhappiness and anxieties, 162;
attends Byron in his last illness and death, 167 et seq., 190, 193 et seq., 403 et seq.;
on Mavrocordato, 181

Missolonghi:
blockade of, 66, 96;
Turks retire from, 70;
Greek squadron at, 81;
description of, 87;
Byron’s arrival and life at, 88, 99;
release of Turkish prisoners, 133;
Turkish brig-of-war runs ashore off, 139;
effect of Byron’s death, 175, 183 et seq.

Mitford, William, History of Greece, 100

Monthly Literary Recreations, 101 n.

Monthly Review, Byron’s reviews in, 100, 101 n.

Moore, Thomas:
letters from Shelley and Byron, 13, 14, 266;
and Byron, 36;
on the Thyrza poems, 229;
Byron’s love for Mary Chaworth, 238, 246, 266, 279;
criticism on his Life of Byron, 365

Moore, Sir John, ode on the death of, 58

Muir, Dr., principal medical officer at Cephalonia, 82

Muir, General Skey, 82

Murray, John, Byron’s publisher:
Byron’s letters to, 30, 31;
Childe Harold, 50;
asks for Byron to be buried in Westminster Abbey, 203;
and Mrs. Leigh, 269;
Byron’s copyrights, 281;
Epistle to Augusta, 324

Musters, John, husband of Mary Chaworth:
the ring incident and engagement, 224, 225;
separation from his wife, 245;
behaviour to his wife, 246;
reconciliation, 251;
cuts down the peculiar diadem of trees, 289


Napier, Colonel, British Resident Governor of Argostoli, 48, 80

Newstead Abbey: sale of, 99;
Byron’s visits, 226, 227

Noel, Lady, Byron’s mother-in-law:
Byron inherits the Noel property on her death, 10;
her bequest of Byron’s portrait, 43 n.;
advice as to her daughter’s separation from Byron, 338;
and Mrs. Leigh, 362

Noel, Sir Ralph, writes to Byron requiring a separation, 339


O’Doherty, Ensign, Byron’s opinion of his poetry, 100

Odysseus, Greek insurgent leader:
his opposition to Mavrocordato, 153;
and Trelawny, 179, 180

Osborne, Lord Sidney, and Sir Thomas Maitland, 115;
goes to Missolonghi, 198;
eulogy of Byron’s conduct in Greece, 201


Parry, Major:
his arrival at Missolonghi, 91, 92;
his peculiarities, 92 et seq.;
practical joke on, 95;
on Byron’s intentions in Greece, 97, 98;
on the relationship between Mavrocordato and Byron, 116;
on Byron’s mode of reproof, 117;
account of Byron’s illness, 121;
anecdote of Jerry Bentham’s Cruise, 126;
Turkish brig-of-war ashore, 139;
artillery at Missolonghi, 144;
on Byron’s mode of life, 145;
on Byron’s power in Greece, 151, 152;
Byron’s last illness and death, 164 et seq., 196;
his opinion of Byron, 175

Phillips, Thomas, his portrait of Byron, 9

Pigot, Elizabeth, Byron’s letters to, 222, 223

Pisa: Shelley’s description of, 3;
Byron’s life at, 20

Po, Stanzas to the, what they reveal, 298 et seq., 370

Pope, Alexander, Homer, 51

Prothero, Rowland E.:
Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, 70 n., 125, 256 n., 260 n., 383
[Pg 420]

Quarterly Review, the, 50, 100


Recollections of a Long Life. See Broughton, Lord

Roberts, Captain, describes the wreck of The Bolivar, 33

Robertson, Rev. Frederick, Lady Byron’s spiritual adviser, 324

Robinson, Crabb, 77

Romilly, Sir Samuel, consulted by Lady Byron, 338


Salona, Congress at, 152, 153

Sanders, Mr. George, painter, his portrait of Byron, 9

Sardanapalus, a tragedy, 101

Sass, Lieutenant, death of, 141

Schilitzy, a Greek, accompanies Byron to Greece, 47

Scott, Captain, commands the Hercules, in which Byron travels to Greece, 47

Scott, Dr., surgeon, and Byron, 54, 58

Scott, Sir Walter:
Byron’s opinion of, 35, 51, 55, 79;
his denial of the authorship of the Waverley Novels, 53

Segati, Marianna, Byron’s liaison with, 371

Shakespeare, William, Byron’s opinion of, 101

Shelley, Percy Bysshe:
describes Pisa, 3;
and Byron, 11 et seq.;
fracas at Pisa, 20, 21;
and Allegra, 22;
leaves Pisa for Lerici, 26;
and Leigh Hunt, 26 et seq.;
his death, 30;
Byron’s opinion of, 30, 35;
his legacy to Byron, 32

Shelley, Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, by Mrs. Julian Marshall, 178

Stanhope, Col. the Hon. Leicester:
arrives in Cephalonia to co-operate with Byron, 68;
on Byron’s character, 78, 174;
begs Byron to come to Missolonghi, 81;
on Byron’s conduct in Greece, 91, 107;
interviews and misunderstandings with Byron, 108 et seq.;
his conduct in Greece, 119, 153;
accompanies Byron’s body to England, 199, 202;
Greece in 1823 and 1824, and Sketch of Byron, 201;
character sketch of Byron, 205 et seq.

Stanhope, Earl, historian, opinion of Mrs. Leigh, 318

Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Mrs. Leigh’s letters, 357

Stowe. See Beecher Stowe

Stravolemo, Dr., physician, and Dr. Bruno, 79

Suliotes:
Byron takes 500 into his pay, 91;
false alarm, 123;
serious fracas, 140;
their dismissal, 142

Swift, William, bootmaker at Southwell, his evidence of Byron’s lameness, 8


Taaffe, Mr., fracas at Pisa, 20, 21

Thomas, Dr., invited to attend Byron in his last illness, 168, 193 et seq.

Thorwaldsen, his marble bust of Byron, 10

Thyrza poems, what they reveal, 221, 232, 235

Tita, Giovanni Battista Falcieri, Byron’s faithful servant, 97, 166, 169 et seq.

Toole, Mr., receives Byron at Santa Eufemia, 60

Trelawny, Edward John:
arrives at Pisa, 4;
describes Byron and his peculiarities, 5, 17, 18;
on Leigh Hunt and Byron, 28;
effect of Shelley’s death, 32;
lays up The Bolivar, 32;
travels with Byron to Greece, 47, 48;
and Byron’s seizure, 62;
mistaken views of Byron’s motives, 64, 65;
unhealthiness of Missolonghi, 87;
his opinion of Byron, 178 et seq.;
and Mavrocordato, 179;
on Byron’s deformity, 191, 192

Tricoupi, Spiridion, pronounces funeral oration over Byron, 185


Vaga, Dr. Lucca, Greek physician, attends Byron in his last illness, 169, 408

Vathi, Byron at, 58
[Pg 421]
Villiers, Hon. Mrs., and Mrs. Leigh, 357, 362, 367;
Lady Byron confides the secret to, 381, 394

Vivian, Charles, his death, 30

Volpiotti, Constantine, spy under Byron’s roof, 162


Watson’s Philip II., 102

Webster, Lady Frances Wedderburn, and Byron, 240, 241, 259

Wentworth, Lord, Byron inherits his property, 10

West, William Edward, American painter, his portrait of Byron, 9

Wildman, Colonel Thomas, 44

Wildman, Mrs., owner of Byron’s boot-trees and the bootmaker’s statement as to Byron’s deformity, 7, 8

Williams, Edward, and Leigh Hunt, 29;
on Byron’s treatment of Mrs. Hunt, 29;
his death, 30

Wilmot, Robert John, signs Lady Byron’s statement, 355, 357, 359

Wilson, John, 60

Wilson, General Sir Robert, known as ‘Jaffa Wilson,’ 110

Wordsworth, William, 60;
Byron reviews his poems, 101 n.


York, Duke of, and Sir Walter Scott, 53

Young, Charles, actor, Byron’s opinion of, 61


Zante, Byron at, 83, 198

 

THE END

 

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD

 

 

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Footnotes:

[1] Medwin, in his book ‘The Angler in Wales,’ vol. ii., p. 211, says: ‘The right foot, as everyone knows, being twisted inwards, so as to amount to what is generally known as a club-foot.’

[2] Letter to Mr. Gisborne, January 12, 1822. Professor Dowden’s ‘Life of Shelley,’ vol. ii., p. 447.

[3] ‘Lord Byron.’

[4] ‘Letters and Journals of Lord Byron,’ edited by Rowland Prothero, vol. vi., appendix iii.

[5] ‘Life of Shelley,’ vol. ii., p. 494.

[6] Henry Dunn kept a British shop at Leghorn.

[7] For Byron’s opinion of Shelley’s poetry, see appendix to ‘The Two Foscari’: ‘I highly admire the poetry of “Queen Mab” and Shelley’s other publications.’

[8] ‘The Angler in Wales,’ by Thomas Medwin, vol. ii., pp. 144-146.

[9] Lady Noel left by her will to the trustees a portrait of Byron, with directions that it was not to be shown to his daughter Ada till she attained the age of twenty-one; but that if her mother were still living, it was not to be so delivered without Lady Byron’s consent.

[10] It was at this time that Byron endeavoured to suppress the fact that he had written ‘The Age of Bronze.’

[11] Dr. Bruno.

[12] Byron’s sobriquet for Walter Scott.

[13] ‘Letters and Journals of Lord Byron,’ edited by Rowland Prothero, vol. vi., p. 259.

[14] ‘Memoir of Rev. F. Hodgson,’ vol. ii., p. 150.

[15] ‘Diary,’ vol. iii., pp. 435, 436.

[16] Parry, p. 170.

[17] Byron wrote a review of Wordsworth’s ‘Poems’ in Monthly Literary Recreations for July, 1807, and a review of Gell’s ‘Geography of Ithaca’ in the Monthly Review for August, 1811.

[18] General Sir Robert Wilson (1777-1849), commonly known as ‘Jaffa Wilson,’ entered Parliament in 1818. Having held Napoleon up to horror and execration for his cruelty at Jaffa, Wilson subsequently became one of his strongest eulogists. Being by nature a demagogue, he posed as a champion in the cause of freedom and civil government; he accused England of injustice and tyranny towards other nations, and prophesied her speedy fall. He warmly espoused the cause of Queen Caroline, and was present at the riot in Hyde Park on the occasion of her funeral, when there was a collision between the Horse Guards and the mob. For his conduct on that occasion, despite a long record of gallant service in the field, Wilson was dismissed the Army in 1821, but was reinstated on the accession of William IV. He appears to have been both foolish and vain, and fond of creating effect. He was constantly brooding over services which he conceived to have been overlooked, and merits which he fancied were neglected. He attached himself to the ultra-radicals, and puffed himself into notoriety by swimming against the stream. A writer in the Quarterly Review (Vol. xix., July, 1818) says: ‘The obliquity of his (Wilson’s) perceptions make his talents worse than useless as a politician, and form, even in his own profession, a serious drawback to energy however great, and to bravery however distinguished.’

[19] High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands.

[20] Acting as Secretary to High Commissioner.

[21] Vol. vi., p. 326.

[22] One of the turbulent capitani who was playing for his own hand. He was at one time a member of the Executive Body, and was afterwards proclaimed by the Legislative Assembly as an enemy of the State.

[23] A leader of Greek insurgents—Byron calls him Ulysses—who broke away from Government control to form an independent party in opposition to Mavrocordato, with whose views Byron sympathized. Trelawny and Colonel Stanhope believed in Odysseus, who after having acquired great influence in Eastern Greece was proclaimed by the Government, imprisoned, and murdered while in captivity.

[24] ‘Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,’ edited by Mrs. Julian Marshall.

[25] For further evidence on this point, see ‘Letters of Lord Byron,’ edited by Rowland Prothero, vol. i., pp. 9-11.

[26] It is difficult to reconcile this with Millingen’s statement.

[27] Edinburgh Review, April, 1871, pp. 294-298.

[28] He succeeded Sir Thomas Maitland as High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands.

[29] This must be taken cum grano salis.

[30] They appear to have met accidentally in Trinity Walks a few days earlier. Edleston did not at first recognize Byron, who had grown so thin.

[31] Edleston, who some time previously had given Byron a ‘Cornelian’ as a parting gift on leaving Cambridge for the vacation.

[32] Edleston had died five months before Byron heard the sad news.

[33] ‘I think it proper to state to you that this stanza alludes to an event which has taken place since my arrival here, and not to the death of any male friend.’—Lord Byron to Mr. Dallas.

[34] That this Thyrza was no passing fancy is proved by Lord Lovelace’s statement in ‘Astarte’ (p. 138): ‘He had occasionally spoken of Thyrza to Lady Byron, at Seaham and afterwards in London, always with strong but contained emotion. He once showed his wife a beautiful tress of Thyrza’s hair, but never mentioned her real name.’

[35] Captain (afterwards Commodore) Walter Bathurst was mortally wounded at the Battle of Navarino, on October 20, 1827.—‘Battles of the British Navy,’ Joseph Allen, vol. ii., p. 518.

[36] The last line was in the first draft.

[37] Medwin (edition of 1824), p. 63.

[38] ‘A power of fascination rarely, if ever, possessed by any man of his age’ (‘Recollections of a Long Life,’ by Lord Broughton, vol. ii., p. 196).

[39] ‘Letters and Journals of Byron,’ vol. iii., p. 406, edited by Rowland E. Prothero.

[40] Moore had rented a cottage in Nottinghamshire, not very remote from Newstead Abbey.

[41] See ‘Letters and Journals of Lord Byron,’ edited by Rowland Prothero, vol. ii., pp. 267, 269, 278, 292.

[42] ‘Had I not written “The Bride” (in four nights), I must have gone mad by eating my own heart—bitter diet.’—‘Journals and Letters,’ vol. ii., p. 321.

[43]

‘Hail be you, Mary, mother and May,
Mild, and meek, and merciable!’
An Ancient Hymn to the Virgin.

[44] Mary was ‘the last of a time-honoured race.’ The line of the Chaworths ended with her.

[45] It will be remembered that Byron had announced ‘The Corsair’ as ‘the last production with which he should trespass on public patience for some years.’ With the loss of Mary’s love his inspiration was gone.

[46]

‘With hackbut bent, my secret stand,
Dark as the purposed deed, I chose,
And mark’d where, mingling in his band,
Trooped Scottish pikes and English bows.’
Sir Walter Scott: Cadyow Castle.

[47] Mary’s allusion to the seal is explained by an entry in Byron’s journal, November 14, 1813. The seal is treasured as a memento of Byron by the Musters family.

[48] No one, we presume, will question the identity of the person mentioned in ‘The Dream’:

‘Upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,
And his cheek change tempestuously—his heart
Unknowing of its cause of agony.’

[49] ‘Astarte,’ p. 134.

[50] Lady Caroline Lamb also asserted that Byron showed her some letters which contained some such expression as this: “Oh! B——, if we loved one another as we did in childhood—then it was innocent.” The reader may judge whether such a remark would be more natural from Augusta, or from Mary Chaworth.

[51] October 14, 1814.

[52] See the poem ‘Remember Him’: ‘Thy soul from long seclusion pure.’

[53]

‘Ophelia. O heavenly powers, restore him!’
Hamlet, Act III., Scene i.

[54]

‘The song, celestial from thy voice,
But sweet to me from none but thine.’
Poetry of Byron, vol. iv.: ‘To Thyrza.’

[55]

‘Siede la terra, dove nata fui,
Su la marina dove il Po discende.’
Inferno, Canto V., 97, 98.

[56] Although not near the source of the Po itself, Byron, at Ferrara, was not very far from the point where the Po di Primaro breaks away from the Po, and, becoming an independent river, flows into the dark blue Adriatic, about midway between Comachio and Ravenna.

[57] Shortly afterwards he translated ‘The Episode of Francesca,’ line for line, into English verse.

[58] ‘Beppo,’ stanza 83.

[59] ‘Astarte,’ p. 166.

[60] Lady Byron and Rev. F. Robertson drew up a memorandum of this conversation, April 8, 1851.

[61] ‘Astarte,’ p. 137.

[62] ‘Recollections of a Long Life,’ by Lord Broughton, vol. ii., p. 297.

[63] Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 219, 239.

[64] ‘Lady Byron said that she founded her determination [to part from her husband] on some communication from London.’—‘Recollections of a Long Life,’ vol. ii., p. 255.

[65] ‘There is reason to believe that Lord Chief Justice Cockburn privately saw letters [in 1869] of 1813 and 1814 which proved the fact of incest, and the overwhelming effect of the evidence therein contained.’—‘Astarte,’ p. 54.

[66] ‘Astarte,’ p. 77.

[67] Hanson.

[68] Leigh.

[69] ‘Recollections of a Long Life,’ vol. ii., p. 303.

[70] A fortnight before writing ‘Stanzas to the Po.’

[71] ‘Short name of three or four letters obliterated.’—‘Astarte,’ p. 180.

[72] Short name of three or four letters obliterated.

[73] Marianna (Anglice: Mary Anne).

[74] Lady Byron (see ‘Astarte,’ p. 166).

[75] His sister’s society.

[76] In case Byron altered his will.

[77] Vol. v., p. 1.

[78] Tinct. chinæ corticis; tinct. cinchonæ.

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