Lady Byron Vindicated

‘I proceed to deal more generally with Mr. Moore’s book.  You speak, Mr. Moore, against Lord Byron’s censurers in a tone of indignation which is perfectly lawful towards calumnious traducers, but which will not terrify me, or any other man of courage who is no calumniator, from uttering his mind freely with regard to this part of your hero’s conduct.  I question your philosophy in assuming that all that is noble in Byron’s poetry was inconsistent with the possibility of his being devoted to a pure and good woman; and I repudiate your morality for canting too complacently about “the lava of his imagination,” and the unsettled fever of his passions, being any excuses for his planting the tic douloureux of domestic suffering in a meek woman’s bosom.

‘These are hard words, Mr. Moore; but you have brought them on yourself by your voluntary ignorance of facts known to me; for you might and ought to have known both sides of the question; and, if the subject was too delicate for you to consult Lady Byron’s confidential friends, you ought to have had nothing to do with the subject.  But you cannot have submitted your book even to Lord Byron’s sister, otherwise she would have set you right about the imaginary spy, Mrs. Clermont.’

Campbell now goes on to print, at his own peril, he says, and without time to ask leave, the following note from Lady Byron in reply to an application he made to her, when he was about to review Moore’s book, for an ‘estimate as to the correctness of Moore’s statements.’

The following is Lady Byron’s reply:—

‘DEAR MR. CAMPBELL,—In taking up my pen to point out for your private information[22 - ‘I (Campbell) had not time to ask Lady Byron’s permission to print this private letter; but it seemed to me important, and I have published it meo periculo.’] those passages in Mr. Moore’s representation of my part of the story which were open to contradiction, I find them of still greater extent than I had supposed; and to deny an assertion here and there would virtually admit the truth of the rest.  If, on the contrary, I were to enter into a full exposure of the falsehood of the views taken by Mr. Moore, I must detail various matters, which, consistently with my principles and feelings, I cannot under the existing circumstances disclose.  I may, perhaps, convince you better of the difficulty of the case by an example: It is not true that pecuniary embarrassments were the cause of the disturbed state of Lord Byron’s mind, or formed the chief reason for the arrangements made by him at that time.  But is it reasonable for me to expect that you or any one else should believe this, unless I show you what were the causes in question? and this I cannot do.

    ‘I am, etc.,
    ‘A. I. NOEL BYRON.’

Campbell then goes on to reprove Moore for his injustice to Mrs. Clermont, whom Lord Byron had denounced as a spy, but whose respectability and innocence were vouched for by Lord Byron’s own family; and then he pointedly rebukes one false statement of great indelicacy and cruelty concerning Lady Byron’s courtship, as follows:—

‘It is a further mistake on Mr. Moore’s part, and I can prove it to be so, if proof be necessary, to represent Lady Byron, in the course of their courtship, as one inviting her future husband to correspondence by letters after she had at first refused him.  She never proposed a correspondence.  On the contrary, he sent her a message after that first refusal, stating that he meant to go abroad, and to travel for some years in the East; that he should depart with a heart aching, but not angry; and that he only begged a verbal assurance that she had still some interest in his happiness.  Could Miss Milbanke, as a well-bred woman, refuse a courteous answer to such a message?  She sent him a verbal answer, which was merely kind and becoming, but which signified no encouragement that he should renew his offer of marriage.

‘After that message, he wrote to her a most interesting letter about himself,—about his views, personal, moral, and religious,—to which it would have been uncharitable not to have replied.  The result was an insensibly increasing correspondence, which ended in her being devotedly attached to him.  About that time, I occasionally saw Lord Byron; and though I knew less of him than Mr. Moore, yet I suspect I knew as much of him as Miss Milbanke then knew.  At that time, he was so pleasing, that, if I had had a daughter with ample fortune and beauty, I should have trusted her in marriage with Lord Byron.

‘Mr. Moore at that period evidently understood Lord Byron better than either his future bride or myself; but this speaks more for Moore’s shrewdness than for Byron’s ingenuousness of character.

‘It is more for Lord Byron’s sake than for his widow’s that I resort not to a more special examination of Mr. Moore’s misconceptions.  The subject would lead me insensibly into hateful disclosures against poor Lord Byron, who is more unfortunate in his rash defenders than in his reluctant accusers.  Happily, his own candour turns our hostility from himself against his defenders.  It was only in wayward and bitter remarks that he misrepresented Lady Byron.  He would have defended himself irresistibly if Mr. Moore had left only his acknowledging passages.  But Mr. Moore has produced a “Life” of him which reflects blame on Lady Byron so dexterously, that “more is meant than meets the ear.”  The almost universal impression produced by his book is, that Lady Byron must be a precise and a wan, unwarming spirit, a blue-stocking of chilblained learning, a piece of insensitive goodness.

‘Who that knows Lady Byron will not pronounce her to be everything the reverse?  Will it be believed that this person, so unsuitably matched to her moody lord, has written verses that would do no discredit to Byron himself; that her sensitiveness is surpassed and bounded only by her good sense; and that she is

‘“Blest with a temper, whose unclouded ray
Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day”?

‘She brought to Lord Byron beauty, manners, fortune, meekness, romantic affection, and everything that ought to have made her to the most transcendent man of genius—had he been what he should have been—his pride and his idol.  I speak not of Lady Byron in the commonplace manner of attesting character: I appeal to the gifted Mrs. Siddons and Joanna Baillie, to Lady Charlemont, and to other ornaments of their sex, whether I am exaggerating in the least when I say, that, in their whole lives, they have seen few beings so intellectual and well-tempered as Lady Byron.

‘I wish to be as ingenuous as possible in speaking of her.  Her manner, I have no hesitation to say, is cool at the first interview, but is modestly, and not insolently, cool: she contracted it, I believe, from being exposed by her beauty and large fortune, in youth, to numbers of suitors, whom she could not have otherwise kept at a distance.  But this manner could have had no influence with Lord Byron; for it vanishes on nearer acquaintance, and has no origin in coldness.  All her friends like her frankness the better for being preceded by this reserve.  This manner, however, though not the slightest apology for Lord Byron, has been inimical to Lady Byron in her misfortunes.  It endears her to her friends; but it piques the indifferent.  Most odiously unjust, therefore, is Mr. Moore’s assertion, that she has had the advantage of Lord Byron in public opinion.  She is, comparatively speaking, unknown to the world; for though she has many friends, that is, a friend in everyone who knows her, yet her pride and purity and misfortunes naturally contract the circle of her acquaintance.

‘There is something exquisitely unjust in Mr. Moore comparing her chance of popularity with Lord Byron’s, the poet who can command men of talents,—putting even Mr. Moore into the livery of his service,—and who has suborned the favour of almost all women by the beauty of his person and the voluptuousness of his verses.  Lady Byron has nothing to oppose to these fascinations but the truth and justice of her cause.

‘You said, Mr. Moore, that Lady Byron was unsuitable to her lord: the word is cunningly insidious, and may mean as much or as little as may suit your convenience.  But, if she was unsuitable, I remark that it tells all the worse against Lord Byron.  I have not read it in your book (for I hate to wade through it); but they tell me that you have not only warily depreciated Lady Byron, but that you have described a lady that would have suited him.  If this be true, “it is the unkindest cut of all,”—to hold up a florid description of a woman suitable to Lord Byron, as if in mockery over the forlorn flower of virtue that was drooping in the solitude of sorrow.

‘But I trust there is no such passage in your book.  Surely you must be conscious of your woman, with her ‘virtue loose about her, who would have suited Lord Byron,” to be as imaginary a being as the woman without a head.  A woman to suit Lord Byron!  Poo, poo!  I could paint to you the woman that could have matched him, if I had not bargained to say as little as possible against him.

‘If Lady Byron was not suitable to Lord Byron, so much the worse for his lordship; for let me tell you, Mr. Moore, that neither your poetry, nor Lord Byron’s, nor all our poetry put together, ever delineated a more interesting being than the woman whom you have so coldly treated.  This was not kicking the dead lion, but wounding the living lamb, who was already bleeding and shorn, even unto the quick.  I know, that, collectively speaking, the world is in Lady Byron’s favour; but it is coldly favourable, and you have not warmed its breath.  Time, however, cures everything; and even your book, Mr. Moore, may be the means of Lady Byron’s character being better appreciated.

    ‘THOMAS CAMPBELL.’

Here is what seems to be a gentlemanly, high-spirited, chivalric man, throwing down his glove in the lists for a pure woman.

What was the consequence?  Campbell was crowded back, thrust down, overwhelmed, his eyes filled with dust, his mouth with ashes.

There was a general confusion and outcry, which reacted both on him and on Lady Byron.  Her friends were angry with him for having caused this re-action upon her; and he found himself at once attacked by Lady Byron’s enemies, and deserted by her friends.  All the literary authorities of his day took up against him with energy.  Christopher North, professor of moral philosophy in the Edinburgh University, in a fatherly talk in ‘The Noctes,’ condemns Campbell, and justifies Moore, and heartily recommends his ‘Biography,’ as containing nothing materially objectionable on the score either of manners or morals.  Thus we have it in ‘The Noctes’ of May 1830:—

‘Mr. Moore’s biographical book I admired; and I said so to my little world, in two somewhat lengthy articles, which many approved, and some, I am sorry to know, condemned.’

On the point in question between Moore and Campbell, North goes on to justify Moore altogether, only admitting that ‘it would have been better had he not printed any coarse expression of Byron’s about the old people;’ and, finally, he closes by saying,—

‘I do not think that, under the circumstances, Mr. Campbell himself, had he written Byron’s “Life,” could have spoken, with the sentiments he then held, in a better, more manly, and more gentlemanly spirit, in so far as regards Lady Byron, than Mr. Moore did: and I am sorry he has been deterred from “swimming” through Mr. Moore’s work by the fear of “wading;” for the waters are clear and deep; nor is there any mud, either at the bottom or round the margin.’

Of the conduct of Lady Byron’s so-called friends on this occasion it is more difficult to speak.

There has always been in England, as John Stuart Mill says, a class of women who glory in the utter self-abnegation of the wife to the husband, as the special crown of womanhood.  Their patron saint is the Griselda of Chaucer, who, when her husband humiliates her, and treats her as a brute, still accepts all with meek, unquestioning, uncomplaining devotion.  He tears her from her children; he treats her with personal abuse; he repudiates her,—sends her out to nakedness and poverty; he installs another mistress in his house, and sends for the first to be her handmaid and his own: and all this the meek saint accepts in the words of Milton,—

‘My guide and head,
What thou hast said is just and right.’

Accordingly, Miss Martineau tells us that when Campbell’s defence came out, coupled with a note from Lady Byron,—

‘The first obvious remark was, that there was no real disclosure; and the whole affair had the appearance of a desire, on the part of Lady Byron, to exculpate herself, while yet no adequate information was given.  Many, who had regarded her with favour till then, gave her up so far as to believe that feminine weakness had prevailed at last.’

The saint had fallen from her pedestal! She had shown a human frailty!  Quite evidently she is not a Griselda, but possessed with a shocking desire to exculpate herself and her friends.

Is it, then, only to slandered men that the privilege belongs of desiring to exculpate themselves and their families and their friends from unjust censure?

Lord Byron had made it a life-long object to vilify and defame his wife.  He had used for that one particular purpose every talent that he possessed.  He had left it as a last charge to Moore to pursue the warfare after death, which Moore had done to some purpose; and Christopher North had informed Lady Byron that her private affairs were discussed, not only with the whisky-toddy of the Noctes Club, but in every drawing-room in May Fair; and declared that the ‘Dear Duck’ letter, and various other matters, must be explained, and urged somebody to speak; and then, when Campbell does speak with all the energy of a real gentleman, a general outcry and an indiscriminate mêlée is the result.

The world, with its usual injustice, insisted on attributing Campbell’s defence to Lady Byron.

The reasons for this seemed to be, first, that Campbell states that he did not ask Lady Byron’s leave, and that she did not authorise him to defend her; and, second, that, having asked some explanations from her, he prints a note in which she declines to give any.

We know not how a lady could more gently yet firmly decline to make a gentleman her confidant than in this published note of Lady Byron; and yet, to this day, Campbell is spoken of by the world as having been Lady Byron’s confidant at this time.  This simply shows how very trustworthy are the general assertions about Lady Byron’s confidants.

The final result of the matter, so far as Campbell was concerned, is given in Miss Martineau’s sketch, in the following paragraph:—

‘The whole transaction was one of poor Campbell’s freaks.  He excused himself by saying it was a mistake of his; that he did not know what he was about when he published the paper.’

It is the saddest of all sad things to see a man, who has spoken from moral convictions, in advance of his day, and who has taken a stand for which he ought to honour himself, thus forced down and humiliated, made to doubt his own better nature and his own honourable feelings, by the voice of a wicked world.

Campbell had no steadiness to stand by the truth he saw.  His whole story is told incidentally in a note to ‘The Noctes,’ in which it is stated, that in an article in ‘Blackwood,’ January 1825, on Scotch poets, the palm was given to Hogg over Campbell; ‘one ground being, that he could drink “eight and twenty tumblers of punch, while Campbell is hazy upon seven.”’

There is evidence in ‘The Noctes,’ that in due time Campbell was reconciled to Moore, and was always suitably ashamed of having tried to be any more generous or just than the men of his generation.

And so it was settled as a law to Jacob, and an ordinance in Israel, that the Byron worship should proceed, and that all the earth should keep silence before him.  ‘Don Juan,’ that, years before, had been printed by stealth, without Murray’s name on the title-page, that had been denounced as a book which no woman should read, and had been given up as a desperate enterprise, now came forth in triumph, with banners flying and drums beating.  Every great periodical in England that had fired moral volleys of artillery against it in its early days, now humbly marched in the glorious procession of admirers to salute this edifying work of genius.

‘Blackwood,’ which in the beginning had been the most indignantly virtuous of the whole, now grovelled and ate dust as the serpent in the very abjectness of submission.  Odoherty (Maginn) declares that he would rather have written a page of ‘Don Juan’ than a ton of ‘Childe Harold.’[23 - ‘Noctes,’ July 1822.]  Timothy Tickler informs Christopher North that he means to tender Murray, as Emperor of the North, an interleaved copy[24 - ‘Noctes,’ September 1832.] of ‘Don Juan,’ with illustrations, as the only work of Byron’s he cares much about; and Christopher North, professor of moral philosophy in Edinburgh, smiles approval!  We are not, after this, surprised to see the assertion, by a recent much-aggrieved writer in ‘The London Era,’ that ‘Lord Byron has been, more than any other man of the age, the teacher of the youth of England;’ and that he has ‘seen his works on the bookshelves of bishops’ palaces, no less than on the tables of university undergraduates.’

A note to ‘The Noctes’ of July 1822 informs us of another instance of Lord Byron’s triumph over English morals:—

‘The mention of this’ (Byron’s going to Greece) ‘reminds me, by the by, of what the Guiccioli said in her visit to London, where she was so lionised as having been the lady-love of Byron.  She was rather fond of speaking on the subject, designating herself by some Venetian pet phrase, which she interpreted as meaning “Love-Wife.”’

What was Lady Byron to do in such a world?  She retired to the deepest privacy, and devoted herself to works of charity, and the education of her only child, that brilliant daughter, to whose eager, opening mind the whole course of current literature must bring so many trying questions in regard to the position of her father and mother,—questions that the mother might not answer.  That the cruel inconsiderateness of the literary world added thorns to the intricacies of the path trodden by every mother who seeks to guide, restrain, and educate a strong, acute, and precociously intelligent child, must easily be seen.

What remains to be said of Lady Byron’s life shall be said in the words of Miss Martineau, published in ‘The Atlantic Monthly:’—

‘Her life, thenceforth, was one of unremitting bounty to society administered with as much skill and prudence as benevolence.  She lived in retirement, changing her abode frequently; partly for the benefit of her child’s education and the promotion of her benevolent schemes, and partly from a restlessness which was one of the few signs of injury received from the spoiling of associations with home.