Lady Byron Vindicated

When the conversation as to events was over, as I stood musing, I said, ‘Have you no evidence that he repented?’ and alluded to the mystery of his death, and the message be endeavoured to utter.

She answered quickly, and with great decision, that whatever might have been his meaning at that hour, she felt sure he had finally repented; and added with great earnestness, ‘I do not believe that any child of the heavenly Father is ever left to eternal sin.’

I said that such a hope was most delightful to my feelings, but that I had always regarded the indulgence of it as a dangerous one.

Her look, voice, and manner, at that moment, are indelibly fixed in my mind.  She looked at me so sadly, so firmly, and said,—

‘Danger, Mrs. Stowe!  What danger can come from indulging that hope, like the danger that comes from not having it?’

I said in my turn, ‘What danger comes from not having it?’

‘The danger of losing all faith in God,’ she said, ‘all hope for others, all strength to try and save them.  I once knew a lady,’ she added, ‘who was in a state of scepticism and despair from belief in that doctrine.  I think I saved her by giving her my faith.’

I was silent; and she continued: ‘Lord Byron believed in eternal punishment fully: for though he reasoned against Christianity as it is commonly received, he could not reason himself out of it; and I think it made him desperate.  He used to say, “The worst of it is I do believe.”  Had he seen God as I see him, I am sure his heart would have relented.’

She went on to say, that his sins, great as they were, admitted of much palliation and excuse; that he was the child of singular and ill-matched parents; that he had an organisation originally fine, but one capable equally of great good or great evil; that in his childhood he had only the worst and most fatal influences; that he grew up into manhood with no guide; that there was everything in the classical course of the schools to develop an unhealthy growth of passion, and no moral influence of any kind to restrain it; that the manners of his day were corrupt; that what were now considered vices in society were then spoken of as matters of course among young noblemen; that drinking, gaming, and licentiousness everywhere abounded and that, up to a certain time, he was no worse than multitudes of other young men of his day,—only that the vices of his day were worse for him.  The excesses of passion, the disregard of physical laws in eating, drinking, and living, wrought effects on him that they did not on less sensitively organised frames, and prepared him for the evil hour when he fell into the sin which shaded his whole life.  All the rest was a struggle with its consequences,—sinning more and more to conceal the sin of the past.  But she believed he never outlived remorse; that he always suffered; and that this showed that God had not utterly forsaken him.  Remorse, she said, always showed moral sensibility, and, while that remained, there was always hope.

She now began to speak of her grounds for thinking it might be her duty fully to publish this story before she left the world.

First she said that, through the whole course of her life, she had felt the eternal value of truth, and seen how dreadful a thing was falsehood, and how fearful it was to be an accomplice in it, even by silence.  Lord Byron had demoralised the moral sense of England, and he had done it in a great degree by the sympathy excited by falsehood.  This had been pleaded in extenuation of all his crimes and vices, and led to a lowering of the standard of morals in the literary world.  Now it was proposed to print cheap editions of his works, and sell them among the common people, and interest them in him by the circulation of this same story.

She then said in effect, that she believed in retribution and suffering in the future life, and that the consequences of sins here follow us there; and it was strongly impressed upon her mind that Lord Byron must suffer in looking on the evil consequences of what he had done in this life, and in seeing the further extension of that evil.

‘It has sometimes strongly appeared to me,’ she said, ‘that he cannot be at peace until this injustice has been righted.  Such is the strong feeling that I have when I think of going where he is.’

These things, she said, had led her to inquire whether it might not be her duty to make a full and clear disclosure before she left the world.

Of course, I did not listen to this story as one who was investigating its worth.  I received it as truth.  And the purpose for which it was communicated was not to enable me to prove it to the world, but to ask my opinion whether she should show it to the world before leaving it.  The whole consultation was upon the assumption that she had at her command such proofs as could not be questioned.

Concerning what they were I did not minutely inquire: only, in answer to a general question, she said that she had letters and documents in proof of her story.  Knowing Lady Byron’s strength of mind, her clear-headedness, her accurate habits, and her perfect knowledge of the matter, I considered her judgment on this point decisive.

I told her that I would take the subject into consideration, and give my opinion in a few days.  That night, after my sister and myself had retired to our own apartment, I related to her the whole history, and we spent the night in talking of it.  I was powerfully impressed with the justice and propriety of an immediate disclosure; while she, on the contrary, represented the painful consequences that would probably come upon Lady Byron from taking such a step.

Before we parted the next day, I requested Lady Byron to give me some memoranda of such dates and outlines of the general story as would enable me better to keep it in its connection; which she did.

On giving me the paper, Lady Byron requested me to return it to her when it had ceased to be of use to me for the purpose indicated.

Accordingly, a day or two after, I enclosed it to her in a hasty note, as I was then leaving London for Paris, and had not yet had time fully to consider the subject.

On reviewing my note, I can recall that then the whole history appeared to me like one of those singular cases where unnatural impulses to vice are the result of a taint of constitutional insanity.  This has always seemed to me the only way of accounting for instances of utterly motiveless and abnormal wickedness and cruelty.  These my first impressions were expressed in the hasty note written at the time:—

    ‘LONDON, Nov. 5, 1856.

‘DEAREST FRIEND,—I return these.  They have held mine eyes waking!  How strange! how unaccountable!  Have you ever subjected the facts to the judgment of a medical man learned in nervous pathology?

‘Is it not insanity?

“Great wits to madness nearly are allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.”

‘But my purpose to-night is not to write you fully what I think of this matter.  I am going to write to you from Paris more at leisure.’

The rest of the letter was taken up in the final details of a charity in which Lady Byron had been engaged with me in assisting an unfortunate artist.  It concludes thus:—

‘I write now in all haste, en route for Paris.  As to America, all is not lost yet.[36 - Alluding to Buchanan’s election.]  Farewell!  I love you, my dear friend, as never before, with an intense feeling I cannot easily express.  God bless you!

    ‘H. B. S.’

The next letter is as follows:—

    ‘Paris, Dec. 17, 1856.

‘DEAR LADY BYRON,—The Kansas Committee have written me a letter desiring me to express to Miss – their gratitude for the five pounds she sent them.  I am not personally acquainted with her, and must return these acknowledgments through you.

‘I wrote you a day or two since, enclosing the reply of the Kansas Committee to you.

‘On that subject on which you spoke to me the last time we were together, I have thought often and deeply.

‘I have changed my mind somewhat.  Considering the peculiar circumstances of the case, I could wish that the sacred veil of silence, so bravely thrown over the past, should never be withdrawn during the time that you remain with us.

‘I would say, then, Leave all with some discreet friends, who, after both have passed from earth, shall say what was due to justice.

‘I am led to think this by seeing how low, how unjust, how unworthy, the judgments of this world are; and I would not that what I so much respect, love, and revere should be placed within reach of its harpy claw, which pollutes what it touches.

‘The day will yet come which will bring to light every hidden thing.  “There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known;” and so justice will not fail.

‘Such, my dear friend, are my thoughts; different from what they were since first I heard that strange, sad history.  Meanwhile, I love you ever, whether we meet again on earth or not.

    ‘Affectionately yours,
    ‘H. B. S.’

The following letter will here be inserted as confirming a part of Lady Byron’s story:—

TO THE EDITOR OF ‘MACMILLAN’S MAGAZINE.’

‘SIR,—I trust that you will hold me excused from any desire to be troublesome, or to rush into print.  Both these things are far from my wish.  But the publication of a book having for its object the vindication of Lord Byron’s character, and the subsequent appearance in your magazine of Mrs. Stowe’s article in defence of Lady Byron, having led to so much controversy in the various newspapers of the day, I feel constrained to put in a few words among the rest.

‘My father was intimately acquainted with Lady Byron’s family for many years, both before and after her marriage; being, in fact, steward to Sir Ralph Milbanke at Seaham, where the marriage took place; and, from all my recollections of what he told me of the affair (and he used often to talk of it, up to the time of his death, eight years ago), I fully agree with Mrs. Stowe’s view of the case, and desire to add my humble testimony to the truth of what she has stated.

‘Whilst Byron was staying at Seaham, previous to his marriage, he spent most of his time pistol-shooting in the plantations adjoining the hall, often making use of his glove as a mark; his servant being with him to load for him.

‘When all was in readiness for the wedding-ceremony (which took place in the drawing-room of the hall), Byron had to be sought for in the grounds, where he was walking in his usual surly mood.

‘After the marriage, they posted to Halnaby Lodge in Yorkshire, a distance of about forty miles; to which place my father accompanied them, and he always spoke strongly of Lady Byron’s apparent distress during and at the end of the journey.

‘The insulting words mentioned by Mrs. Stowe were spoken by Byron before leaving the park at Seaham; after which he appeared to sit in moody silence, reading a book, for the rest of the journey.  At Halnaby, a number of persons, tenants and others, were met to cheer them on their arrival.  Of these he took not the slightest notice, but jumped out of the carriage, and walked away, leaving his bride to alight by herself.  She shook hands with my father, and begged that he would see that some refreshment was supplied to those who had thus come to welcome them.

‘I have in my possession several letters (which I should be glad to show to anyone interested in the matter) both from Lady Byron, and her mother, Lady Milbanke, to my father, all showing the deep and kind interest which they took in the welfare of all connected with them, and directing the distribution of various charities, etc.  Pensions were allowed both to the old servants of the Milbankes and to several poor persons in the village and neighbourhood for the rest of their lives; and Lady Byron never ceased to take a lively interest in all that concerned them.