Byron: The Last Phase

CHAPTER V

On December 31, 1819, Byron wrote a letter to his wife. The following is an extract:

‘Augusta can tell you all about me and mine, if you think either worth the inquiry. The object of my writing is to come. It is this: I saw Moore three months ago, and gave to his care a long Memoir, written up to the summer of 1816, of my life, which I had been writing since I left England. It will not be published till after my death; and, in fact, it is a Memoir, and not “Confessions.” I have omitted the most important and decisive events and passions of my existence, not to compromise others. But it is not so with the part you occupy, which is long and minute; and I could wish you to see, read, and mark any part or parts that do not appear to coincide with the truth. The truth I have always stated – but there are two ways of looking at it, and your way may be not mine. I have never revised the papers since they were written. You may read them and mark what you please. I wish you to know what I think and say of you and yours. You will find nothing to flatter you; nothing to lead you to the most remote supposition that we could ever have been – or be happy together. But I do not choose to give to another generation statements which we cannot arise from the dust to prove or disprove, without letting you see fairly and fully what I look upon you to have been, and what I depict you as being. If, seeing this, you can detect what is false, or answer what is charged, do so; your mark shall not be erased. You will perhaps say, Why write my life? Alas! I say so too. But they who have traduced it, and blasted it, and branded me, should know that it is they, and not I, are the cause. It is no great pleasure to have lived, and less to live over again the details of existence; but the last becomes sometimes a necessity, and even a duty. If you choose to see this, you may; if you do not, you have at least had the option.’

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.

‘I foresee,’ she wrote to Colonel Doyle, ‘from the transmission of such a letter … this consequence: that an unreserved disclosure from Mrs. Leigh to him being necessitated, they would combine together against me, he being actuated by revenge, she by fear; whereas, from her never having dared to inform him that she has already admitted his guilt to me with her own, they have hitherto been prevented from acting in concert.’

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:

‘My information previous to my separation was derived either directly from Lord Byron, or from my observations on that part of his conduct which he exposed to my view. The infatuation of pride may have blinded him to the conclusions which must inevitably be established by a long series of circumstantial evidences.’

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:

‘Reluctant as I have ever been to bring my domestic concerns before the public, and anxious as I have felt to save from ruin a near connection of his, I shall feel myself compelled by duties of primary importance, if he perseveres in accumulating injuries upon me, to make a disclosure of the past in the most authentic form.’

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:

‘As to Augusta * * * *, whatever she is, or may have been, you have never had reason to complain of her; on the contrary, you are not aware of the obligations under which you have been to her. Her life and mine – and yours and mine – were two things perfectly distinct from each other; when one ceased the other began, and now both are closed.’

Lord Lovelace seeks to make much out of that statement, and says in ‘Astarte’:

‘It is evident, from the allusion in this letter, that Byron had become thoroughly aware of the extent of Lady Byron’s information, and did not wish that she should be misled. He probably may have heard from Augusta herself that she had admitted her own guilt, together with his, to Lady Byron.’

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; 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:

‘Lady Byron had an ill-conditioned mind, preying upon itself, till morbid delusion was the result. If not, she was an accomplished hypocrite, regardless of truth, and to whose statements no credit whatever ought to be attached.’

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.

‘The causes of this suspicion,’ she writes, ‘did not amount to proof … and I considered that, whilst a possibility of innocence existed, every principle of duty and humanity forbade me to act as if Mrs. Leigh was actually guilty, more especially as any intimation of so heinous a crime, even if not distinctly proved, must have seriously affected Mrs. Leigh’s character and happiness.’

Exactly one month after Lady Byron had written those words, her husband addressed her in the following terms:

‘I have just parted from Augusta – almost the last being you had left me to part with, and the only unshattered tie of my existence. Wherever I may go, and I am going far, you and I can never meet again in this world, nor in the next. Let this content or atone. If any accident occurs to me, be kind to her; if she is then nothing, to her children.’

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.

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 contemporaries) was an abandoned woman, Lord Lovelace says:

‘A real reformation, according to Christian ideals, would not merely have driven Byron and Augusta apart from each other, but expelled them from the world of wickedness, consigned them for the rest of their lives to strict expiation and holiness. But this could never be; and in the long-run her flight to an outcast life would have been a lesser evil than the consequences of preventing it. The fall of Mrs. Leigh would have been a definite catastrophe, affecting a small number of people for a time in a startling manner. The disaster would have been obvious, but partial, immediately over and ended… She would have lived in open revolt against the Christian standard, not in secret disobedience and unrepentant hypocrisy.’

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 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,

‘judged by the light of nature, a heroism and sincerity of united fates and doom would have seemed, beyond all comparison, purer and nobler than what they actually drifted into. By the social code, sin between man and woman can never be blotted out, as assuredly it is the most irreversible of facts. Nevertheless, societies secretly respect, though they excommunicate, those rebel lovers who sacrifice everything else, but observe a law of their own, and make a religion out of sin itself, by living it through with constancy.’

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.

‘Byron,’ he tells us, ‘was ready to sacrifice everything for Augusta, and to defy the world with her. If this had not been prevented [the italics are ours], he would have been a more poetical figure in history than as the author of “Manfred.”’

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

‘was not spared misery or degradation by being preserved from flagrant acts; for nothing could be more wretched than her subsequent existence; and far from growing virtuous, she went farther down without end temporally and spiritually.’

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!’

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?

‘If Augusta had fled to Byron in exile, and was seen with him as et soror et conjux, the victory remained with Lady Byron, solid and final. This was the solution hoped for by Lady Byron’s friends, Lushington and Doyle, as well as Lady Noel.’

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 and Augusta immediately after the separation, we are told in ‘Astarte’ that