Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Before we proceed to lay that poem before the reader we will refresh his memory with some particulars of the tragedy of Æschylus, which Lord Byron selected as the exact parallel and proper illustration of his wife’s treatment of himself. In his letters and journals he often alludes to her as Clytemnestra, and the allusion has run the round of a thousand American papers lately, and been read by a thousand good honest people, who had no very clear idea who Clytemnestra was, and what she did which was like the proceedings of Lady Byron. According to the tragedy, Clytemnestra secretly hates her husband Agamemnon, whom she professes to love, and wishes to put him out of the way that she may marry her lover, Ægistheus. When her husband returns from the Trojan war she receives him with pretended kindness, and officiously offers to serve him at the bath. Inducing him to put on a garment, of which she had adroitly sewed up the sleeves and neck so as to hamper the use of his arms, she gives the signal to a concealed band of assassins, who rush upon him and stab him. Clytemnestra is represented by Æschylus as grimly triumphing in her success, which leaves her free to marry an adulterous paramour.

  ‘I did it, too, in such a cunning wise,

  That he could neither ‘scape nor ward off doom.

  I staked around his steps an endless net,

  As for the fishes.’

  In the piece entitled ‘Lines on hearing Lady Byron is ill,’ Lord Byron charges on his wife a similar treachery and cruelty. The whole poem is in Murray’s English edition, Vol. IV. . Of it we quote the following. The reader will bear in mind that it is addressed to Lady Byron on a sick-bed: —

  ‘I am too well avenged, but ‘t was my right;

  Whate’er my sins might be, thou wert not sent

  To be the Nemesis that should requite,

  Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument.

  Mercy is for the merciful! If thou

  Hast been of such, ‘t will be accorded now.

  Thy nights are banished from the realms of sleep,

  For thou art pillowed on a curse too deep;

  Yes! they may flatter thee, but thou shalt feel

  A hollow agony that will not heal.

  Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap

  The bitter harvest in a woe as real.

  I have had many foes, but none like thee;

  For ‘gainst the rest myself I could defend,

  And be avenged, or turn them into friend;

  But thou, in safe implacability,

  Hast naught to dread, — in thy own weakness shielded,

  And in my love, which hath but too much yielded,

  And spared, for thy sake, some I should not spare.

  And thus upon the world, trust in thy truth,

  And the wild fame of my ungoverned youth, —

  On things that were not and on things that are, —

  Even upon such a basis thou halt built

  A monument whose cement hath been guilt!

  The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord,

  And hewed down with an unsuspected sword

  Fame, peace, and hope, and all that better life

  Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart,

  Might yet have risen from the grave of strife

  And found a nobler duty than to part.

  But of thy virtues thou didst make a vice,

  Trafficking in them with a purpose cold,

  And buying others’ woes at any price,

  For present anger and for future gold;

  And thus, once entered into crooked ways,

  The early truth, that was thy proper praise,

  Did not still walk beside thee, but at times,

  And with a breast unknowing its own crimes,

  Deceits, averments incompatible,

  Equivocations, and the thoughts that dwell

  In Janus spirits, the significant eye

  That learns to lie with silence, the pretext

  Of prudence with advantages annexed,

  The acquiescence in all things that tend,

  No matter how, to the desired end, —

  All found a place in thy philosophy.

  The means were worthy and the end is won.

  I would not do to thee as thou hast done.’

  Now, if this language means anything, it means, in plain terms, that, whereas, in her early days, Lady Byron was peculiarly characterised by truthfulness, she has in her recent dealings with him acted the part of a liar, — that she is not only a liar, but that she lies for cruel means and malignant purposes, — that she is a moral assassin, and her treatment of her husband has been like that of the most detestable murderess and adulteress of ancient history, that she has learned to lie skilfully and artfully, that she equivocates, says incompatible things, and crosses her own tracks, — that she is double-faced, and has the art to lie even by silence, and that she has become wholly unscrupulous, and acquiesces in anything, no matter what, that tends to the desired end, and that end the destruction of her husband. This is a brief summary of the story that Byron made it his life’s business to spread through society, to propagate and make converts to during his life, and which has been in substance reasserted by ‘Blackwood’ in a recent article this year.

  Now, the reader will please to notice that this poem is dated in September 1816, and that on the 29th of March of that same year, he had thought proper to tell quite another story. At that time the deed of separation was not signed, and negotiations between Lady Byron, acting by legal counsel, and himself were still pending. At that time, therefore, he was standing in a community who knew all he had said in former days of his wife’s character, who were in an aroused and excited state by the fact that so lovely and good and patient a woman had actually been forced for some unexplained cause to leave him. His policy at that time was to make large general confessions of sin, and to praise and compliment her, with a view of enlisting sympathy. Everybody feels for a handsome sinner, weeping on his knees, asking pardon for his offences against his wife in the public newspapers.

  The celebrated ‘Fare thee well,’ as we are told, was written on the 17th of March, and accidentally found its way into the newspapers at this time ‘through the imprudence of a friend whom he allowed to take a copy.’ These ‘imprudent friends’ have all along been such a marvellous convenience to Lord Byron.

  But the question met him on all sides, What is the matter? This wife you have declared the brightest, sweetest, most amiable of beings, and against whose behaviour as a wife you actually never had nor can have a complaint to make, — why is she now all of a sudden so inflexibly set against you?

  This question required an answer, and he answered by writing another poem, which also accidentally found its way into the public prints. It is in his ‘Domestic Pieces,’ which the reader may refer to at the end of this volume, and is called ‘A Sketch.’

  There was a most excellent, respectable, well-behaved Englishwoman, a Mrs. Clermont, who had been Lady Byron’s governess in her youth, and was still, in mature life, revered as her confidential friend. It appears that this person had been with Lady Byron during a part of her married life, especially the bitter hours of her lonely child-bed, when a young wife so much needs a sympathetic friend. This Mrs. Clermont was the person selected by Lord Byron at this time to be the scapegoat to bear away the difficulties of the case into the wilderness.

  We are informed in Moore’s Life what a noble pride of rank Lord Byron possessed, and how when the headmaster of a school, against whom he had a pique, invited him to dinner, he declined, saying, ‘To tell you the truth, Doctor, if you should come to Newstead, I shouldn’t think of inviting you to dine with me, and so I don’t care to dine with you here.’ Different countries, it appears, have different standards as to good taste; Moore gives this as an amusing instance of a young lord’s spirit.

  Accordingly, his first attack against this ‘lady,’ as we Americans should call her, consists in gross statements concerning her having been born poor and in an inferior rank. He begins by stat
ing that she was

  ‘Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred,

  Promoted thence to deck her mistress’ head;

  Next — for some gracious service unexpressed

  And from its wages only to be guessed —

  Raised from the toilet to the table, where

  Her wondering betters wait behind her chair.

  With eye unmoved and forehead unabashed,

  She dines from off the plate she lately washed:

  Quick with the tale, and ready with the lie,

  The genial confidante and general spy, —

  Who could, ye gods! her next employment guess, —

  An only infant’s earliest governess!

  What had she made the pupil of her art

  None knows; but that high soul secured the heart,

  And panted for the truth it could not hear

  With longing soul and undeluded ear!’

  The poet here recognises as a singular trait in Lady Byron her peculiar love of truth, — a trait which must have struck everyone that had any knowledge of her through life. He goes on now to give what he certainly knew to be the real character of Lady Byron: —

  ‘Foiled was perversion by that youthful mind,

  Which flattery fooled not, baseness could not blind,

  Deceit infect not, nor contagion soil,

  Indulgence weaken, or example spoil,

  Nor mastered science tempt her to look down

  On humbler talent with a pitying frown,

  Nor genius swell, nor beauty render vain,

  Nor envy ruffle to retaliate pain.’

  We are now informed that Mrs. Clermont, whom he afterwards says in his letters was a spy of Lady Byron’s mother, set herself to make mischief between them. He says: —

  ‘If early habits, — those strong links that bind

  At times the loftiest to the meanest mind,

  Have given her power too deeply to instil

  The angry essence of her deadly will;

  If like a snake she steal within your walls,

  Till the black slime betray her as she crawls;

  If like a viper to the heart she wind,

  And leaves the venom there she did not find, —

  What marvel that this hag of hatred works

  Eternal evil latent as she lurks.’

  The noble lord then proceeds to abuse this woman of inferior rank in the language of the upper circles. He thus describes her person and manner: —

  ‘Skilled by a touch to deepen scandal’s tints

  With all the kind mendacity of hints,

  While mingling truth with falsehood, sneers with smiles,

  A thread of candour with a web of wiles;

  A plain blunt show of briefly-spoken seeming,

  To hide her bloodless heart’s soul-harden’d scheming;

  A lip of lies; a face formed to conceal,

  And without feeling mock at all who feel;

  With a vile mask the Gorgon would disown, —

  A cheek of parchment and an eye of stone.

  Mark how the channels of her yellow blood

  Ooze to her skin and stagnate there to mud,

  Cased like the centipede in saffron mail,

  Or darker greenness of the scorpion’s scale, —

  (For drawn from reptiles only may we trace

  Congenial colours in that soul or face,)

  Look on her features! and behold her mind

  As in a mirror of itself defined:

  Look on the picture! deem it not o’ercharged

  There is no trait which might not be enlarged.’

  The poem thus ends: —

  ‘May the strong curse of crushed affections light

  Back on thy bosom with reflected blight,

  And make thee in thy leprosy of mind

  As loathsome to thyself as to mankind!

  Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate,

  Black — as thy will for others would create;

  Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust,

  And thy soul welter in its hideous crust.

  O, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed,

  The widowed couch of fire, that thou hast spread

  Then when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with prayer,

  Look on thy earthly victims — and despair!

  Down to the dust! and as thou rott’st away,

  Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay.

  But for the love I bore and still must bear

  To her thy malice from all ties would tear,

  Thy name, — thy human name, — to every eye

  The climax of all scorn, should hang on high,

  Exalted o’er thy less abhorred compeers,

  And festering in the infamy of years.’

  March 16, 1816.

  Now, on the 29th of March 1816, this was Lord Byron’s story. He states that his wife had a truthfulness even from early girlhood that the most artful and unscrupulous governess could not pollute, — that she always panted for truth, — that flattery could not fool nor baseness blind her, — that though she was a genius and master of science, she was yet gentle and tolerant, and one whom no envy could ruffle to retaliate pain.

  In September of the same year she is a monster of unscrupulous deceit and vindictive cruelty. Now, what had happened in the five months between the dates of these poems to produce such a change of opinion? Simply this: —

  1st. The negotiation between him and his wife’s lawyers had ended in his signing a deed of separation in preference to standing a suit for divorce.

  2nd. Madame de Staël, moved by his tears of anguish and professions of repentance, had offered to negotiate with Lady Byron on his behalf, and had failed.

  The failure of this application is the only apology given by Moore and Murray for this poem, which gentle Thomas Moore admits was not in quite as generous a strain as the ‘Fare thee well.’

  But Lord Byron knew perfectly well, when he suffered that application to be made, that Lady Byron had been entirely convinced that her marriage relations with him could never be renewed, and that duty both to man and God required her to separate from him. The allowing the negotiation was, therefore, an artifice to place his wife before the public in the attitude of a hard-hearted, inflexible woman; her refusal was what he knew beforehand must inevitably be the result, and merely gave him capital in the sympathy of his friends, by which they should be brought to tolerate and accept the bitter accusations of this poem.

  We have recently heard it asserted that this last-named piece of poetry was the sudden offspring of a fit of ill-temper, and was never intended to be published at all. There were certainly excellent reasons why his friends should have advised him not to publish it at that time. But that it was read with sympathy by the circle of his intimate friends, and believed by them, is evident from the frequency with which allusions to it occur in his confidential letters to them.

  About three months after, under date March 10, 1817, he writes to Moore: ‘I suppose now I shall never be able to shake off my sables in public imagination, more particularly since my moral —— clove down my fame.’ Again to Murray in 1819, three years after, he says: ‘I never hear anything of Ada, the little Electra of Mycenae.’

  Electra was the daughter of Clytemnestra, in the Greek poem, who lived to condemn her wicked mother, and to call on her brother to avenge the father. There was in this mention of Electra more than meets the ear. Many passages in Lord Byron’s poetry show that he intended to make this daughter a future partisan against her mother, and explain the awful words he is stated in Lady Anne Barnard’s diary to have used when first he looked on his little girl,—’What an instrument of torture I have gained in you!’

  In a letter to Lord Blessington, April 6, 1823, he says, speaking of Dr. Parr: — {22a}

  ‘He did me the honour once to be a patron of mine, though a great friend of the other branch of the house of Atreus, and the Greek teacher, I believe, of my moral Clyt
emnestra. I say moral because it is true, and is so useful to the virtuous, that it enables them to do anything without the aid of an Ægistheus.’

  If Lord Byron wrote this poem merely in a momentary fit of spleen, why were there so many persons evidently quite familiar with his allusions to it? and why was it preserved in Murray’s hands? and why published after his death? That Byron was in the habit of reposing documents in the hands of Murray, to be used as occasion offered, is evident from a part of a note written by him to Murray respecting some verses so intrusted: ‘Pray let not these versiculi go forth with my name except to the initiated.’ {22b}

  Murray, in publishing this attack on his wife after Lord Byron’s death, showed that he believed in it, and, so believing, deemed Lady Byron a woman whose widowed state deserved neither sympathy nor delicacy of treatment. At a time when every sentiment in the heart of the most deeply wronged woman would forbid her appearing to justify herself from such cruel slander of a dead husband, an honest, kind-hearted, worthy Englishman actually thought it right and proper to give these lines to her eyes and the eyes of all the reading world. Nothing can show more plainly what this poem was written for, and how thoroughly it did its work! Considering Byron as a wronged man, Murray thought he was contributing his mite towards doing him justice. His editor prefaced the whole set of ‘Domestic Pieces’ with the following statements: —

  ‘They all refer to the unhappy separation, of which the precise causes are still a mystery, and which he declared to the last were never disclosed to himself. He admitted that pecuniary embarrassments, disordered health, and dislike to family restraints had aggravated his naturally violent temper, and driven him to excesses. He suspected that his mother-in-law had fomented the discord, — which Lady Byron denies, — and that more was due to the malignant offices of a female dependant, who is the subject of the bitterly satirical sketch.

  * * * *

  ‘To these general statements can only be added the still vaguer allegations of Lady Byron, that she conceived his conduct to be the result of insanity, — that, the physician pronouncing him responsible for his actions, she could submit to them no longer, and that Dr. Lushington, her legal adviser, agreed that a reconciliation was neither proper nor possible. No weight can be attached to the opinions of an opposing counsel upon accusations made by one party behind the back of the other, who urgently demanded and was pertinaciously refused the least opportunity of denial or defence. He rejected the proposal for an amicable separation, but consented when threatened with a suit in Doctors’ Commons.’