Lady Byron Vindicated

One last little incident is cherished as most expressive of her.  When it became time for me to leave, she took me in her carriage to the station.  As we were almost there, I missed my gloves, and said, ‘I must have left them; but there is not time to go back.’

With one of those quick, impulsive motions which were so natural to her in doing a kindness, she drew off her own and said, ‘Take mine if they will serve you.’

I hesitated a moment; and then the thought, that I might never see her again, came over me, and I said, ‘Oh, yes! thanks.’  That was the last earthly word of love between us.  But, thank God, those who love worthily never meet for the last time: there is always a future.

CHAPTER II.  LADY BYRON’S STORY AS TOLD ME

I now come to the particulars of that most painful interview which has been the cause of all this controversy.  My sister and myself were going from London to Eversley to visit the Rev. C. Kingsley.  On our way, we stopped, by Lady Byron’s invitation, to lunch with her at her summer residence on Ham Common, near Richmond; and it was then arranged, that on our return, we should make her a short visit, as she said she had a subject of importance on which she wished to converse with me alone.

On our return from Eversley, we arrived at her house in the morning.

It appeared to be one of Lady Byron’s well days.  She was up and dressed, and moved about her house with her usual air of quiet simplicity; as full of little acts of consideration for all about her as if they were the habitual invalids, and she the well person.

There were with her two ladies of her most intimate friends, by whom she seemed to be regarded with a sort of worship.  When she left the room for a moment, they looked after her with a singular expression of respect and affection, and expressed freely their admiration of her character, and their fears that her unselfishness might be leading her to over-exertion.

After lunch, I retired with Lady Byron; and my sister remained with her friends.  I should here remark, that the chief subject of the conversation which ensued was not entirely new to me.  In the interval between my first and second visits to England, a lady who for many years had enjoyed Lady Byron’s friendship and confidence, had, with her consent, stated the case generally to me, giving some of the incidents: so that I was in a manner prepared for what followed.

Those who accuse Lady Byron of being a person fond of talking upon this subject, and apt to make unconsidered confidences, can have known very little of her, of her reserve, and of the apparent difficulty she had in speaking on subjects nearest her heart.

Her habitual calmness and composure of manner, her collected dignity on all occasions, are often mentioned by her husband, sometimes with bitterness, sometimes with admiration.  He says, ‘Though I accuse Lady Byron of an excess of self-respect, I must in candour admit that, if ever a person had excuse for an extraordinary portion of it, she has; as, in all her thoughts, words, and deeds, she is the most decorous woman that ever existed, and must appear, what few I fancy could, a perfectly refined gentlewoman, even to her femme de chambre.’

This calmness and dignity were never more manifested than in this interview.  In recalling the conversation at this distance of time, I cannot remember all the language used.  Some particular words and forms of expression I do remember, and those I give; and in other cases I give my recollection of the substance of what was said.

There was something awful to me in the intensity of repressed emotion which she showed as she proceeded.  The great fact upon which all turned was stated in words that were unmistakable:—

‘He was guilty of incest with his sister!’

She here became so deathly pale, that I feared she would faint; and hastened to say, ‘My dear friend, I have heard that.’  She asked quickly, ‘From whom?’ and I answered, ‘From Mrs. –;’ when she replied, ‘Oh, yes!’ as if recollecting herself.

I then asked her some questions; in reply to which she said, ‘I will tell you.’

She then spoke of her first acquaintance with Lord Byron; from which I gathered that she, an only child, brought up in retirement, and living much within herself, had been, as deep natures often were, intensely stirred by his poetry; and had felt a deep interest in him personally, as one that had the germs of all that is glorious and noble.

When she was introduced to him, and perceived his admiration of herself, and at last received his offer, although deeply moved, she doubted her own power to be to him all that a wife should be.  She declined his offer, therefore, but desired to retain his friendship.  After this, as she said, a correspondence ensued, mostly on moral and literary subjects; and, by this correspondence, her interest in him was constantly increased.

At last, she said, he sent her a very beautiful letter, offering himself again.  ‘I thought,’ she added, ‘that it was sincere, and that I might now show him all I felt.  I wrote just what was in my heart.

‘Afterwards,’ she said, ‘I found in one of his journals this notice of my letter: “A letter from Bell,—never rains but it pours.”’

There was through her habitual calm a shade of womanly indignation as she spoke these words; but it was gone in a moment.  I said, ‘And did he not love you, then?’  She answered, ‘No, my dear: he did not love me.’

‘Why, then, did he wish to marry you?’  She laid her hand on mine, and said in a low voice, ‘You will see.’

She then told me, that, shortly after the declared engagement, he came to her father’s house to visit her as an accepted suitor.  The visit was to her full of disappointment.  His appearance was so strange, moody, and unaccountable, and his treatment of her so peculiar, that she came to the conclusion that he did not love her, and sought an opportunity to converse with him alone.

She told him that she saw from his manner that their engagement did not give him pleasure; that she should never blame him if he wished to dissolve it; that his nature was exceptional; and if, on a nearer view of the situation, he shrank from it, she would release him, and remain no less than ever his friend.

Upon this, she said, he fainted entirely away.

She stopped a moment, and then, as if speaking with great effort, added, ‘Then I was sure he must love me.’

‘And did he not?’ said I.  ‘What other cause could have led to this emotion?’

She looked at me very sadly, and said, ‘Fear of detection.’

‘What!’ said I, ‘did that cause then exist?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it did.’  And she explained that she now attributed Lord Byron’s great agitation to fear, that, in some way, suspicion of the crime had been aroused in her mind, and that on this account she was seeking to break the engagement.  She said, that, from that moment, her sympathies were aroused for him, to soothe the remorse and anguish which seemed preying on his mind, and which she then regarded as the sensibility of an unusually exacting moral nature, which judged itself by higher standards, and condemned itself unsparingly for what most young men of his times regarded as venial faults.  She had every hope for his future, and all the enthusiasm of belief that so many men and women of those times and ours have had in his intrinsic nobleness.  She said the gloom, however, seemed to be even deeper when he came to the marriage; but she looked at it as the suffering of a peculiar being, to whom she was called to minister.  I said to her, that, even in the days of my childhood, I had heard of something very painful that had passed as they were in the carriage, immediately after marriage.  She then said that it was so; that almost his first words, when they were alone, were, that she might once have saved him; that, if she had accepted him when he first offered, she might have made him anything she pleased; but that, as it was, she would find she had married a devil.

The conversation, as recorded in Lady Anne Barnard’s Diary, seems only a continuation of the foregoing, and just what might have followed upon it.

I then asked how she became certain of the true cause.

She said, that, from the outset of their married life, his conduct towards her was strange and unaccountable, even during the first weeks after the wedding, while they were visiting her friends, and outwardly on good terms.  He seemed resolved to shake and combat both her religious principles and her views of the family state.  He tried to undermine her faith in Christianity as a rule of life by argument and by ridicule.  He set before her the Continental idea of the liberty of marriage; it being a simple partnership of friendship and property, the parties to which were allowed by one another to pursue their own separate individual tastes.  He told her, that, as he could not be expected to confine himself to her, neither should he expect or wish that she should confine herself to him; that she was young and pretty, and could have her lovers, and he should never object; and that she must allow him the same freedom.

She said that she did not comprehend to what this was tending till after they came to London, and his sister came to stay with them.

At what precise time the idea of an improper connection between her husband and his sister was first forced upon her, she did not say; but she told me how it was done.  She said that one night, in her presence, he treated his sister with a liberty which both shocked and astonished her.  Seeing her amazement and alarm, he came up to her, and said, in a sneering tone, ‘I suppose you perceive you are not wanted here.  Go to your own room, and leave us alone.  We can amuse ourselves better without you.’

She said, ‘I went to my room, trembling.  I fell down on my knees, and prayed to my heavenly Father to have mercy on them.  I thought, “What shall I do?”’

I remember, after this, a pause in the conversation, during which she seemed struggling with thoughts and emotions; and, for my part, I was unable to utter a word, or ask a question.

She did not tell me what followed immediately upon this, nor how soon after she spoke on the subject with either of the parties.  She first began to speak of conversations afterwards held with Lord Byron, in which he boldly avowed the connection as having existed in time past, and as one that was to continue in time to come; and implied that she must submit to it.  She put it to his conscience as concerning his sister’s soul, and he said that it was no sin, that it was the way the world was first peopled: the Scriptures taught that all the world descended from one pair; and how could that be unless brothers married their sisters? that, if not a sin then, it could not be a sin now.

I immediately said, ‘Why, Lady Byron, those are the very arguments given in the drama of “Cain.”’

‘The very same,’ was her reply.  ‘He could reason very speciously on this subject.’  She went on to say, that, when she pressed him hard with the universal sentiment of mankind as to the horror and the crime, he took another turn, and said that the horror and crime were the very attraction; that he had worn out all ordinary forms of sin, and that he ‘longed for the stimulus of a new kind of vice.’  She set before him the dread of detection; and then he became furious.  She should never be the means of his detection, he said.  She should leave him; that he was resolved upon: but she should always bear all the blame of the separation.  In the sneering tone which was common with him, he said, ‘The world will believe me, and it will not believe you.  The world has made up its mind that “By” is a glorious boy; and the world will go for “By,” right or wrong.  Besides, I shall make it my life’s object to discredit you: I shall use all my powers.  Read “Caleb Williams,”[35 - This novel of Godwin’s is a remarkably powerful story.  It is related in the first person by the supposed hero, Caleb Williams.  He represents himself as private secretary to a gentleman of high family named Falkland.  Caleb accidentally discovers that his patron has, in a moment of passion, committed a murder.  Falkland confesses the crime to Caleb, and tells him that henceforth he shall always suspect him, and keep watch over him.  Caleb finds this watchfulness insupportable, and tries to escape, but without success.  He writes a touching letter to his patron, imploring him to let him go, and promising never to betray him.  The scene where Falkland refuses this is the most highly wrought in the book.  He says to him, “Do not imagine that I am afraid of you; I wear an armour against which all your weapons are impotent.  I have dug a pit for you: and whichever way you move, backward or forward, to the right or the left, it is ready to swallow you.  Be still!  If once you fall, call as loud as you will, no man on earth shall hear your cries: prepare a tale however plausible or however true, the whole world shall execrate you for an impostor.  Your innocence shall be of no service to you.  I laugh at so feeble a defence.  It is I that say it: you may believe what I tell you.  Do you know, miserable wretch!” added he, stamping on the ground with fury, “that I have sworn to preserve my reputation, whatever be the expense; that I love it more than the whole world and its inhabitants taken together? and do you think that you shall wound it?”  The rest of the book shows how this threat was executed.] and you will see that I shall do by you just as Falkland did by Caleb.’

I said that all this seemed to me like insanity.  She said that she was for a time led to think that it was insanity, and excused and pitied him; that his treatment of her expressed such hatred and malignity, that she knew not what else to think of it; that he seemed resolved to drive her out of the house at all hazards, and threatened her, if she should remain, in a way to alarm the heart of any woman: yet, thinking him insane, she left him at last with the sorrow with which anyone might leave a dear friend whose reason was wholly overthrown, and to whom in this desolation she was no longer permitted to minister.

I inquired in one of the pauses of the conversation whether Mrs. Leigh was a peculiarly beautiful or attractive woman.

‘No, my dear: she was plain.’

‘Was she, then, distinguished for genius or talent of any kind?’

‘Oh, no!  Poor woman! she was weak, relatively to him, and wholly under his control.’

‘And what became of her?’ I said.

‘She afterwards repented, and became a truly good woman.’  I think it was here she mentioned that she had frequently seen and conversed with Mrs. Leigh in the latter part of her life; and she seemed to derive comfort from the recollection.

I asked, ‘Was there a child?’  I had been told by Mrs. – that there was a daughter, who had lived some years.

She said there was one, a daughter, who made her friends much trouble, being of a very difficult nature to manage.  I had understood that at one time this daughter escaped from her friends to the Continent, and that Lady Byron assisted in efforts to recover her.  Of Lady Byron’s kindness both to Mrs. Leigh and the child, I had before heard from Mrs. –, who gave me my first information.

It is also strongly impressed on my mind, that Lady Byron, in answer to some question of mine as to whether there was ever any meeting between Lord Byron and his sister after he left England, answered, that she had insisted upon it, or made it a condition, that Mrs. Leigh should not go abroad to him.