Lady Byron Vindicated

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Nothing more than this letter from Lady Byron is necessary to substantiate the fact, that she did not leave her husband, but was driven from him,—driven from him that he might give himself up to the guilty infatuation that was consuming him, without being tortured by her imploring face, and by the silent power of her presence and her prayers.

  For a long time before this, she had seen little of him. On the day of her departure, she passed by the door of his room, and stopped to caress his favourite spaniel, which was lying there; and she confessed to a friend the weakness of feeling a willingness even to be something as humble as that poor little creature, might she only be allowed to remain and watch over him. She went into the room where he and the partner of his sins were sitting together, and said, 'Byron, I come to say goodbye,' offering, at the same time, her hand.

  Lord Byron put his hands behind him, retreated to the mantel-piece, and, looking on the two that stood there, with a sarcastic smile said, 'When shall we three meet again?' Lady Byron answered, 'In heaven, I trust'. And those were her last words to him on earth.

  Now, if the reader wishes to understand the real talents of Lord Byron for deception and dissimulation, let him read, with this story in his mind, the 'Fare thee well,' which he addressed to Lady Byron through the printer:—

  'Fare thee well; and if for ever,

  Still for ever fare thee well!

  Even though unforgiving, never

  'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.

  Would that breast were bared before thee

  Where thy head so oft hath lain,

  While that placid sleep came o'er thee

  Thou canst never know again!

  Though my many faults defaced me,

  Could no other arm be found

  Than the one which once embraced me

  To inflict a careless wound?'

  The re-action of society against him at the time of the separation from his wife was something which he had not expected, and for which, it appears, he was entirely unprepared. It broke up the guilty intrigue and drove him from England. He had not courage to meet or endure it. The world, to be sure, was very far from suspecting what the truth was: but the tide was setting against him with such vehemence as to make him tremble every hour lest the whole should be known; and henceforth, it became a warfare of desperation to make his story good, no matter at whose expense.

  He had tact enough to perceive at first that the assumption of the pathetic and the magnanimous, and general confessions of faults, accompanied with admissions of his wife's goodness, would be the best policy in his case. In this mood, he thus writes to Moore:—

  'The fault was not in my choice (unless in choosing at all); for I do not believe (and I must say it in the very dregs of all this bitter business) that there ever was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder, or a more amiable, agreeable being than Lady Byron. I never had, nor can have, any reproach to make her while with me. Where there is blame, it belongs to myself.'

  As there must be somewhere a scapegoat to bear the sin of the affair, Lord Byron wrote a poem called 'A Sketch,' in which he lays the blame of stirring up strife on a friend and former governess of Lady Byron's; but in this sketch he introduces the following just eulogy on Lady Byron:—

  'Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind

  Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind,

  Deceit infect not, near contagion soil,

  Indulgence weaken, nor example spoil,

  Nor mastered science tempt her to look down

  On humbler talents with a pitying frown,

  Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain,

  Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain,

  Nor fortune change, pride raise, nor passion bow,

  Nor virtue teach austerity,—till now;

  Serenely purest of her sex that live,

  But wanting one sweet weakness,—to forgive;

  Too shocked at faults her soul can never know,

  She deemed that all could be like her below:

  Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue's friend;

  For Virtue pardons those she would amend.'

  In leaving England, Lord Byron first went to Switzerland, where he conceived and in part wrote out the tragedy of 'Manfred.' Moore speaks of his domestic misfortunes, and the sufferings which he underwent at this time, as having influence in stimulating his genius, so that he was enabled to write with a greater power.

  Anybody who reads the tragedy of 'Manfred' with this story in his mind will see that it is true.

  The hero is represented as a gloomy misanthrope, dwelling with impenitent remorse on the memory of an incestuous passion which has been the destruction of his sister for this life and the life to come, but which, to the very last gasp, he despairingly refuses to repent of, even while he sees the fiends of darkness rising to take possession of his departing soul. That Byron knew his own guilt well, and judged himself severely, may be gathered from passages in this poem, which are as powerful as human language can be made; for instance this part of the 'incantation,' which Moore says was written at this time:—

  'Though thy slumber may be deep,

  Yet thy spirit shall not sleep:

  There are shades which will not vanish;

  There are thoughts thou canst not banish.

  By a power to thee unknown,

  Thou canst never be alone:

  Thou art wrapt as with a shroud;

  Thou art gathered in a cloud;

  And for ever shalt thou dwell

  In the spirit of this spell.

  . . . .

  From thy false tears I did distil

  An essence which had strength to kill;

  From thy own heart I then did wring

  The black blood in its blackest spring;

  From thy own smile I snatched the snake,

  For there it coiled as in a brake;

  From thy own lips I drew the charm

  Which gave all these their chiefest harm:

  In proving every poison known,

  I found the strongest was thine own.

  By thy cold breast and serpent smile,

  By thy unfathomed gulfs of guile,

  By that most seeming virtuous eye,

  By thy shut soul's hypocrisy,

  By the perfection of thine art

  Which passed for human thine own heart,

  By thy delight in other's pain,

  And by thy brotherhood of Cain,

  I call upon thee, and compel

  Thyself to be thy proper hell!'

  Again: he represents Manfred as saying to the old abbot, who seeks to bring him to repentance,—

  'Old man, there is no power in holy men,

  Nor charm in prayer, nor purifying form

  Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast,

  Nor agony, nor greater than all these,

  The innate tortures of that deep despair,

  Which is remorse without the fear of hell,

  But, all in all sufficient to itself,

  Would make a hell of heaven, can exorcise

  From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense

  Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge

  Upon itself: there is no future pang

  Can deal that justice on the self-condemned

  He deals on his own soul.'

  And when the abbot tells him,

  'All this is well;

  For this will pass away, and be succeeded

  By an auspicious hope, which shall look up

  With calm assurance to that blessed place

  Which all who seek may win, whatever be

  Their earthly errors,'

  he answers,

  'It is too late.'

  Then the old abbot soliloquises:—

  'This should have been a noble creature: he

  Hath all the energy which would have made

  A goodly frame of glorious elements,

  Had they been wisely mingled; as it is,
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  It is an awful chaos,—light and darkness,

  And mind and dust, and passions and pure thoughts,

  Mixed, and contending without end or order.'

  The world can easily see, in Moore's Biography, what, after this, was the course of Lord Byron's life; how he went from shame to shame, and dishonour to dishonour, and used the fortune which his wife brought him in the manner described in those private letters which his biographer was left to print. Moore, indeed, says Byron had made the resolution not to touch his lady's fortune; but adds, that it required more self-command than he possessed to carry out so honourable a purpose.

  Lady Byron made but one condition with him. She had him in her power; and she exacted that the unhappy partner of his sins should not follow him out of England, and that the ruinous intrigue should be given up. Her inflexibility on this point kept up that enmity which was constantly expressing itself in some publication or other, and which drew her and her private relations with him before the public.

  The story of what Lady Byron did with the portion of her fortune which was reserved to her is a record of noble and skilfully administered charities. Pitiful and wise and strong, there was no form of human suffering or sorrow that did not find with her refuge and help. She gave not only systematically, but also impulsively.

  Miss Martineau claims for her the honour of having first invented practical schools, in which the children of the poor were turned into agriculturists, artizans, seamstresses, and good wives for poor men. While she managed with admirable skill and economy permanent institutions of this sort, she was always ready to relieve suffering in any form. The fugitive slaves William and Ellen Crafts, escaping to England, were fostered by her protecting care.

  In many cases where there was distress or anxiety from poverty among those too self-respecting to make their sufferings known, the delicate hand of Lady Byron ministered to the want with a consideration which spared the most refined feelings.

  As a mother, her course was embarrassed by peculiar trials. The daughter inherited from the father not only brilliant talents, but a restlessness and morbid sensibility which might be too surely traced to the storms and agitations of the period in which she was born. It was necessary to bring her up in ignorance of the true history of her mother's life; and the consequence was that she could not fully understand that mother.

  During her early girlhood, her career was a source of more anxiety than of comfort. She married a man of fashion, ran a brilliant course as a gay woman of fashion, and died early of a lingering and painful disease.

  In the silence and shaded retirement of the sick-room, the daughter came wholly back to her mother's arms and heart; and it was on that mother's bosom that she leaned as she went down into the dark valley. It was that mother who placed her weak and dying hand in that of her Almighty Saviour.

  To the children left by her daughter, she ministered with the faithfulness of a guardian angel; and it is owing to her influence that those who yet remain are among the best and noblest of mankind.

  The person whose relations with Byron had been so disastrous, also, in the latter years of her life, felt Lady Byron's loving and ennobling influences, and, in her last sickness and dying hours, looked to her for consolation and help.

  There was an unfortunate child of sin, born with the curse upon her, over whose wayward nature Lady Byron watched with a mother's tenderness. She was the one who could have patience when the patience of every one else failed; and though her task was a difficult one, from the strange abnormal propensities to evil in the object of her cares, yet Lady Byron never faltered, and never gave over, till death took the responsibility from her hands.

  During all this trial, strange to say, her belief that the good in Lord Byron would finally conquer was unshaken.

  To a friend who said to her, 'Oh! how could you love him?' she answered briefly, 'My dear, there was the angel in him.' It is in us all.

  It was in this angel that she had faith. It was for the deliverance of this angel from degradation and shame and sin that she unceasingly prayed. She read every work that Byron wrote—read it with a deeper knowledge than any human being but herself could possess. The ribaldry and the obscenity and the insults with which he strove to make her ridiculous in the world fell at her pitying feet unheeded.

  When he broke away from all this unworthy life to devote himself to a manly enterprise for the redemption of Greece, she thought that she saw the beginning of an answer to her prayers. Even although one of his latest acts concerning her was to repeat to Lady Blessington the false accusation which made Lady Byron the author of all his errors, she still had hopes from the one step taken in the right direction.

  In the midst of these hopes came the news of his sudden death. On his death-bed, it is well-known that he called his confidential English servant to him, and said to him, 'Go to my sister; tell her—Go to Lady Byron,—you will see her,—and say'—

  Here followed twenty minutes of indistinct mutterings, in which the names of his wife, daughter, and sister, frequently occurred. He then said, 'Now I have told you all.'

  'My lord,' replied Fletcher, 'I have not understood a word your lordship has been saying.'

  'Not understand me!' exclaimed Lord Byron with a look of the utmost distress: 'what a pity! Then it is too late,—all is over!' He afterwards, says Moore, tried to utter a few words, of which none were intelligible except 'My sister—my child.'

  When Fletcher returned to London, Lady Byron sent for him, and walked the room in convulsive struggles to repress her tears and sobs, while she over and over again strove to elicit something from him which should enlighten her upon what that last message had been; but in vain: the gates of eternity were shut in her face, and not a word had passed to tell her if he had repented.

  For all that, Lady Byron never doubted his salvation. Ever before her, during the few remaining years of her widowhood, was the image of her husband, purified and ennobled, with the shadows of earth for ever dissipated, the stains of sin for ever removed; 'the angel in him,' as she expressed it, 'made perfect, according to its divine ideal.'

  Never has more divine strength of faith and love existed in woman. Out of the depths of her own loving and merciful nature, she gained such views of the divine love and mercy as made all hopes possible. There was no soul of whose future Lady Byron despaired,—such was her boundless faith in the redeeming power of love.

  After Byron's death, the life of this delicate creature—so frail in body that she seemed always hovering on the brink of the eternal world, yet so strong in spirit, and so unceasing in her various ministries of mercy—was a miracle of mingled weakness and strength.

  To talk with her seemed to the writer of this sketch the nearest possible approach to talking with one of the spirits of the just made perfect.

  She was gentle, artless; approachable as a little child; with ready, outflowing sympathy for the cares and sorrows and interests of all who approached her; with a naïve and gentle playfulness, that adorned, without hiding, the breadth and strength of her mind; and, above all, with a clear, divining, moral discrimination; never mistaking wrong for right in the slightest shade, yet with a mercifulness that made allowance for every weakness, and pitied every sin.

  There was so much of Christ in her, that to have seen her seemed to be to have drawn near to heaven. She was one of those few whom absence cannot estrange from friends; whose mere presence in this world seems always a help to every generous thought, a strength to every good purpose, a comfort in every sorrow.

  Living so near the confines of the spiritual world, she seemed already to see into it: hence the words of comfort which she addressed to a friend who had lost a son:—

  'Dear friend, remember, as long as our loved ones are in God's world, they are in ours.'

  * * * * *

  It has been thought by some friends who have read the proof-sheets of the foregoing that the author should give more specifically her authority for these statements.

>   The circumstances which led the writer to England at a certain time originated a friendship and correspondence with Lady Byron, which was always regarded as one of the greatest acquisitions of that visit.

  On the occasion of a second visit to England, in 1856, the writer received a note from Lady Byron, indicating that she wished to have some private, confidential conversation upon important subjects, and inviting her, for that purpose, to spend a day with her at her country-seat near London,

  The writer went and spent a day with Lady Byron alone; and the object of the invitation was explained to her. Lady Byron was in such a state of health, that her physicians had warned her that she had very little time to live. She was engaged in those duties and retrospections which every thoughtful person finds necessary, when coming deliberately, and with open eyes, to the boundaries of this mortal life.

  At that time, there was a cheap edition of Byron's works in contemplation, intended to bring his writings into circulation among the masses; and the pathos arising from the story of his domestic misfortunes was one great means relied on for giving it currency.

  Under these circumstances, some of Lady Byron's friends had proposed the question to her, whether she had not a responsibility to society for the truth; whether she did right to allow these writings to gain influence over the popular mind by giving a silent consent to what she knew to be utter falsehoods.

  Lady Byron's whole life had been passed in the most heroic self-abnegation and self-sacrifice: and she had now to consider whether one more act of self-denial was not required of her before leaving this world; namely, to declare the absolute truth, no matter at what expense to her own feelings.