Lady Byron Vindicated

‘MY DEAR MRS. STOWE,—Messrs. Chambers liked the proposal to publish the Kansas Letters.  The more the public know of these matters, the better prepared they will be for your book.  The moment for its publication seems well chosen.  There is always in England a floating fund of sympathy for what is above the everyday sordid cares of life; and these better feelings, so nobly invested for the last two years in Florence Nightingale’s career, are just set free.  To what will they next be attached?  If you can lay hold of them, they may bring about a deeper abolition than any legislative one,—the abolition of the heart-heresy that man’s worth comes, not from God, but from man.

‘I have been obliged to give up exertion again, but hope soon to be able to call and make the acquaintance of your daughters.  In case you wish to consult H. Martineau’s pamphlets, I send more copies.  Do not think of answering: I have occupied too much of your time in reading.

    ‘Yours affectionately,
    ‘A. I. NOEL BYRON.’

As soon as a copy of ‘Dred’ was through the press, I sent it to her, saying that I had been reproved by some excellent people for representing too faithfully the profane language of some of the wicked characters.  To this she sent the following reply:—

‘Your book, dear Mrs. Stowe, is of the little leaven kind, and must prove a great moral force; perhaps not manifestly so much as secretly.  And yet I can hardly conceive so much power without immediate and sensible effects: only there will be a strong disposition to resist on the part of all hollow-hearted professors of religion, whose heathenisms you so unsparingly expose.  They have a class feeling like others.

‘To the young, and to those who do not reflect much on what is offered to their belief, you will do great good by showing how spiritual food is often adulterated.  The bread from heaven is in the same case as bakers’ bread.

‘If there is truth in what I heard Lord Byron say, that works of fiction live only by the amount of truth which they contain, your story is sure of a long life.  Of the few critiques I have seen, the best is in “The Examiner.”  I find an obtuseness as to the spirit and aim of the book, as if you had designed to make the best novel of the season, or to keep up the reputation of one.  You are reproached, as Walter Scott was, with too much scriptural quotation; not, that I have heard, with phrases of an opposite character.

‘The effects of such reading till a late hour one evening appeared to influence me very singularly in a dream.  The most horrible spectres presented themselves, and I woke in an agony of fear; but a faith still stronger arose, and I became courageous from trust in God, and felt calm.  Did you do this?  It is very insignificant among the many things you certainly will do unknown to yourself.  I know more than ever before how to value communion with you.  I have sent Robertson’s Sermons for you; and, with kind regards to your family, am

    ‘Yours affectionately,
    ‘A. I. NOEL BYRON.’

I was struck in this note with the mention of Lord Byron, and, the next time I saw her, alluded to it, and remarked upon the peculiar qualities of his mind as shown in some of his more serious conversations with Dr. Kennedy.

She seemed pleased to continue the subject, and went on to say many things of his singular character and genius, more penetrating and more appreciative than is often met with among critics.

I told her that I had been from childhood powerfully influenced by him; and began to tell her how much, as a child, I had been affected by the news of his death,—giving up all my plays, and going off to a lonely hillside, where I spent the afternoon thinking of him.  She interrupted me before I had quite finished, with a quick, impulsive movement.  ‘I know all that,’ she said: ‘I heard it all from Mrs. –; and it was one of the things that made me wish to know you.  I think you could understand him.’  We talked for some time of him then; she, with her pale face slightly flushed, speaking, as any other great man’s widow might, only of what was purest and best in his works, and what were his undeniable virtues and good traits, especially in early life.  She told me many pleasant little speeches made by him to herself; and, though there was running through all this a shade of melancholy, one could never have conjectured that there were under all any deeper recollections than the circumstances of an ordinary separation might bring.

Not many days after, with the unselfishness which was so marked a trait with her, she chose a day when she could be out of her room, and invited our family party, consisting of my husband, sister, and children, to lunch with her.

What showed itself especially in this interview was her tenderness for all young people.  She had often enquired after mine; asked about their characters, habits, and tastes; and on this occasion she found an opportunity to talk with each one separately, and to make them all feel at ease, so that they were able to talk with her.  She seemed interested to point out to them what they should see and study in London; and the charm of her conversation left on their minds an impression that subsequent years have never effaced.  I record this incident, because it shows how little Lady Byron assumed the privileges or had the character of an invalid absorbed in herself, and likely to brood over her own woes and wrongs.

Here was a family of strangers stranded in a dull season in London, and there was no manner of obligation upon her to exert herself to show them attention.  Her state of health would have been an all-sufficient reason why she should not do it; and her doing it was simply a specimen of that unselfish care for others, even down to the least detail, of which her life was full.

A little while after, at her request, I went, with my husband and son, to pass an evening at her house.

There were a few persons present whom she thought I should be interested to know,—a Miss Goldsmid, daughter of Baron Goldsmid, and Lord Ockham, her grandson, eldest son and heir of the Earl of Lovelace, to whom she introduced my son.

I had heard much of the eccentricities of this young nobleman, and was exceedingly struck with his personal appearance.  His bodily frame was of the order of the Farnese Hercules,—a wonderful development of physical and muscular strength.  His hands were those of a blacksmith.  He was broadly and squarely made, with a finely-shaped head, and dark eyes of surpassing brilliancy.  I have seldom seen a more interesting combination than his whole appearance presented.

When all were engaged in talking, Lady Byron came and sat down by me, and glancing across to Lord Ockham and my son, who were talking together, she looked at me, and smiled.  I immediately expressed my admiration of his fine eyes and the intellectual expression of his countenance, and my wonder at the uncommon muscular development of his frame.

She said that that of itself would account for many of Ockham’s eccentricities.  He had a body that required a more vigorous animal life than his station gave scope for, and this had often led him to seek it in what the world calls low society; that he had been to sea as a sailor, and was now working as a mechanic on the iron work of ‘The Great Eastern.’  He had laid aside his title, and went in daily with the other workmen, requesting them to call him simply Ockham.

I said that there was something to my mind very fine about this, even though it might show some want of proper balance.

She said he had noble traits, and that she felt assured he would yet accomplish something worthy of himself.  ‘The great difficulty with our nobility is apt to be, that they do not understand the working-classes, so as to feel for them properly; and Ockham is now going through an experience which may yet fit him to do great good when he comes to the peerage.  I am trying to influence him to do good among the workmen, and to interest himself in schools for their children.  I think,’ she added, ‘I have great influence over Ockham,—the greater, perhaps, that I never make any claim to authority.’

This conversation is very characteristic of Lady Byron as showing her benevolent analysis of character, and the peculiar hopefulness she always had in regard to the future of every one brought in connection with her.  Her moral hopefulness was something very singular; and in this respect she was so different from the rest of the world, that it would be difficult to make her understood.  Her tolerance of wrong-doing would have seemed to many quite latitudinarian, and impressed them as if she had lost all just horror of what was morally wrong in transgression; but it seemed her fixed habit to see faults only as diseases and immaturities, and to expect them to fall away with time.

She saw the germs of good in what others regarded as only evil.  She expected valuable results to come from what the world looked on only as eccentricities;[31 - See her character of Dr. King, Part III.] and she incessantly devoted herself to the task of guarding those whom the world condemned, and guiding them to those higher results of which she often thought that even their faults were prophetic.

Before I quit this sketch of Lady Byron as I knew her, I will give one more of her letters.  My return from that visit in Europe was met by the sudden death of the son mentioned in the foregoing account.  At the time of this sorrow, Lady Byron was too unwell to write to me.  The letter given alludes to this event, and speaks also of two coloured persons of remarkable talent, in whose career in England she had taken a deep interest.  One of them is the ‘friend’ she speaks of.

    ‘LONDON, Feb. 6, 1859.

DEAR MRS. STOWE,—I seem to feel our friend as a bridge, over which our broken outward communication can be renewed without effort.  Why broken?  The words I would have uttered at one time were like drops of blood from my heart.  Now I sympathise with the calmness you have gained, and can speak of your loss as I do of my own.  Loss and restoration are more and more linked in my mind, but “to the present live.”  As long as they are in God’s world they are in ours.  I ask no other consolation.

‘Mrs. W–’s recovery has astonished me, and her husband’s prospects give me great satisfaction.  They have achieved a benefit to their coloured people.  She had a mission which her burning soul has worked out, almost in defiance of death.  But who is “called” without being “crucified,” man or woman?  I know of none.

‘I fear that H. Martineau was too sanguine in her persuasion that the slave power had received a serious check from the ruin of so many of your Mammon-worshippers.  With the return of commercial facilities, that article of commerce will again find purchasers enough to raise its value.  Not that way is the iniquity to be overthrown.  A deeper moral earthquake is needed.[32 - Alluding to the financial crisis in the United States in 1857.]  We English had ours in India; and though the cases are far from being alike, yet a consciousness of what we ought to have been and ought to be toward the natives could not have been awakened by less than the reddened waters of the Ganges.  So I fear you will have to look on a day of judgment worse than has been painted.

‘As to all the frauds and impositions which have been disclosed by the failures, what a want of the sense of personal responsibility they show.  It seems to be thought that “association” will “cover a multitude of sins;” as if “and Co.” could enter heaven.  A firm may be described as a partnership for lowering the standard of morals.  Even ecclesiastical bodies are not free from the “and Co.;” very different from “the goodly fellowship of the apostles.”

‘The better class of young gentlemen in England are seized with a mediaeval mania, to which Ruskin has contributed much.  The chief reason for regretting it is that taste is made to supersede benevolence.  The money that would save thousands from perishing or suffering must be applied to raise the Gothic edifice where their last prayer may be uttered.  Charity may be dead, while Art has glorified her.  This is worse than Catholicism, which cultivates heart and eye together.  The first cathedral was Truth, at the beginning of the fourth century, just as Christianity was exchanging a heavenly for an earthly crown.  True religion may have to cast away the symbol for the spirit before “the kingdom” can come.

‘While I am speculating to little purpose, perhaps you are doing—what?  Might not a biography from your pen bring forth again some great, half-obscured soul to act on the world?  Even Sir Philip Sidney ought to be superseded by a still nobler type.

‘This must go immediately, to be in time for the bearer, of whose meeting with you I shall think as the friend of both.  May it be happy!

    ‘Your affectionate
    ‘A. I. N. B.’

One letter more from Lady Byron I give,—the last I received from her:—

    LONDON, May 3, 1859.

DEAR FRIEND,—I have found, particularly as to yourself, that, if I did not answer from the first impulse, all had evaporated.  Your letter came by ‘The Niagara,’ which brought Fanny Kemble to learn the loss of her best friend, the Miss F– whom you saw at my house.

‘Her death, after an illness in which she was to the last a minister of good to others, is a soul-loss to me also; and your remarks are most appropriate to my feelings.  I have been taught, however, to accept survivorship; even to feel it, in some cases, Heaven’s best blessing.

‘I have an intense interest in your new novel.[33 - ‘The Minister’s Wooing.’]  More power in these few numbers than in any of your former writings, relating, at least, to my own mind.  It would amuse you to hear my granddaughter and myself attempting to foresee the future of the love-story; being, for the moment, quite persuaded that James is at sea, and the minister about to ruin himself.  We think that Mary will labour to be in love with the self-devoted man, under her mother’s influence, and from that hyper-conscientiousness so common with good girls; but we don’t wish her to succeed.  Then what is to become of her older lover?  Time will show.

‘The lady you desired to introduce to me will be welcomed as of you.  She has been misled with respect to my having any house in Yorkshire (New Leeds).  I am in London now to be of a little use to A–; not ostensibly, for I can neither go out, nor give parties: but I am the confidential friend to whom she likes to bring her social gatherings, as she can see something of the world with others.  Age and infirmity seem to be overlooked in what she calls the harmony between us,—not perfect agreement of opinion (which I should regret, with almost fifty years of difference), but the spirit-union: can you say what it is?

‘I am interrupted by a note from Mrs. K–.  She says that she cannot write of our lost friend yet, though she is less sad than she will be.  Mrs. F– may like to hear of her arrival, should you be in communication with our friend.  She is the type of youth in age.

‘I often converse with Miss S–, a judicious friend of the W–s, about what is likely to await them.  She would not succeed here as well as where she was a novelty.  The character of our climate this year has been injurious to the respiratory organs; but I hope still to serve them.

‘I have just missed Dale Owen, with whom I wished to have conversed on spiritualism.[34 - See her letter on spiritualistic phenomena, Part III.]  Harris is lecturing here on religion.  I do not hear him praised.

‘People are looking for helps to believe, everywhere but in life,—in music, in architecture, in antiquity, in ceremony; and upon all these is written, “Thou shalt not believe.”  At least, if this be faith, happier the unbeliever.  I am willing to see through that materialism; but, if I am to rest there, I would rend the veil.

‘June 1.

‘The day of the packet’s sailing.  I shall hope to be visited by you here.  The best flowers sent me have been placed in your little vases, giving life to the remembrance of you, though not, like them, to pass away.

    ‘Ever yours,
    ‘A. I. NOEL BYRON.’

Shortly after, I was in England again, and had one more opportunity of resuming our personal intercourse.  The first time that I called on Lady Byron, I saw her in one of those periods of utter physical exhaustion to which she was subject on account of the constant pressure of cares beyond her strength.  All who knew her will testify, that, in a state of health which would lead most persons to become helpless absorbents of service from others, she was assuming burdens, and making outlays of her vital powers in acts of love and service, with a generosity that often reduced her to utter exhaustion.  But none who knew or loved her ever misinterpreted the coldness of those seasons of exhaustion.  We knew that it was not the spirit that was chilled, but only the frail mortal tabernacle.  When I called on her at this time, she could not see me at first; and when, at last, she came, it was evident that she was in a state of utter prostration.  Her hands were like ice; her face was deadly pale; and she conversed with a restraint and difficulty which showed what exertion it was for her to keep up at all.  I left as soon as possible, with an appointment for another interview.  That interview was my last on earth with her, and is still beautiful in memory.  It was a long, still summer afternoon, spent alone with her in a garden, where we walked together.  She was enjoying one of those bright intervals of freedom from pain and languor, in which her spirits always rose so buoyant and youthful; and her eye brightened, and her step became elastic.