Lady Byron Vindicated

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  When at last she spoke, Christopher North says 'she astonished the world.' Calm, clear, courageous, exact as to time, date, and circumstance, was that first testimony, backed by the equally clear testimony of Dr. Lushington.

  It showed that her secret had been kept even from her parents. In words precise, firm, and fearless, she says, 'If these statements on which Dr. Lushington and Sir Samuel Romilly formed their opinion were false, the responsibility and the odium should rest with me only.' Christopher North did not pretend to disbelieve this statement. He breathed not a doubt of Lady Byron's word. He spoke of the crime indicated, as one which might have been foul as the grave's corruption, unforgivable as the sin against the Holy Ghost. He rebuked the wife for bearing this testimony, even to save the memory of her dead father and mother, and, in the same breath, declared that she ought now to go farther, and speak fully the one awful word, and then—'a mitigated sentence, or eternal silence!'

  But Lady Byron took no counsel with the world, nor with the literary men of her age. One knight, with some small remnant of England's old chivalry, set lance in rest for her: she saw him beaten back unhorsed, rolled in the dust, and ingloriously vanquished, and perceived that henceforth nothing but injury could come to any one who attempted to speak for her.

  She turned from the judgments of man and the fond and natural hopes of human nature, to lose herself in sacred ministries to the downcast and suffering. What nobler record for woman could there be than that which Miss Martineau has given?

  Particularly to be noted in Lady Byron was her peculiar interest in reclaiming fallen women. Among her letters to Mrs. Prof. Follen, of Cambridge, was one addressed to a society of ladies who had undertaken this difficult work. It was full of heavenly wisdom and of a large and tolerant charity. Fénelon truly says, it is only perfection that can tolerate imperfection; and the very purity of Lady Byron's nature made her most forbearing and most tender towards the weak and the guilty. This letter, with all the rest of Lady Byron's, was returned to the hands of her executors after her death. Its publication would greatly assist the world in understanding the peculiarities of its writer's character.

  Lady Byron passed to a higher life in 1860. {105} After her death, I looked for the publication of her Memoir and Letters as the event that should give her the same opportunity of being known and judged by her life and writings that had been so freely accorded to Lord Byron.

  She was, in her husband's estimation, a woman of genius. She was the friend of many of the first men and women of her times, and corresponded with them on topics of literature, morals, religion, and, above all, on the benevolent and philanthropic movements of the day, whose principles she had studied with acute observation, and in connection with which she had acquired a large experience.

  The knowledge of her, necessarily diffused by such a series of letters, would have created in America a comprehension of her character, of itself sufficient to wither a thousand slanders.

  Such a Memoir was contemplated. Lady Byron's letters to Mrs. Follen were asked for from Boston; and I was applied to by a person in England, who I have recently learned is one of the existing trustees of Lady Byron's papers, to furnish copies of her letters to me for the purpose of a Memoir. Before I had time to have copies made, another letter came, stating that the trustees had concluded that it was best not to publish any Memoir of Lady Byron at all.

  This left the character of Lady Byron in our American world precisely where the slanders of her husband, the literature of the Noctes Club, and the unanimous verdict of May Fair as recorded by 'Blackwood,' had placed it.

  True, Lady Byron had nobly and quietly lived down these slanders in England by deeds that made her name revered as a saint among all those who valued saintliness.

  But in France and Italy, and in these United States, I have had abundant opportunity to know that Lady Byron stood judged and condemned on the testimony of her brilliant husband, and that the feeling against her had a vivacity and intensity not to be overcome by mere allusions to a virtuous life in distant England.

  This is strikingly shown by one fact. In the American edition of Moore's 'Life of Byron,' by Claxton, Remsen, and Haffelfinger, Philadelphia, 1869, which I have been consulting, Lady Byron's statement, which is found in the Appendix of Murray's standard edition, is entirely omitted. Every other paper is carefully preserved. This one incident showed how the tide of sympathy was setting in this New World. Of course, there is no stronger power than a virtuous life; but, for a virtuous life to bear testimony to the world, its details must be told, so that the world may know them.

  Suppose the memoirs of Clarkson and Wilberforce had been suppressed after their death, how soon might the coming tide have wiped out the record of their bravery and philanthropy! Suppose the lives of Francis Xavier and Henry Martyn had never been written, and we had lost the remembrance of what holy men could do and dare in the divine enthusiasm of Christian faith! Suppose we had no Fénelon, no Book of Martyrs!

  Would there not be an outcry through all the literary and artistic world if a perfect statue were allowed to remain buried for ever because some painful individual history was connected with its burial and its recovery? But is not a noble life a greater treasure to mankind than any work of art?

  We have heard much mourning over the burned Autobiography of Lord Byron, and seen it treated of in a magazine as 'the lost chapter in history.' The lost chapter in history is Lady Byron's Autobiography in her life and letters; and the suppression of them is the root of this whole mischief.

  We do not in this intend to censure the parties who came to this decision.

  The descendants of Lady Byron revere her memory, as they have every reason to do. That it was their desire to have a Memoir of her published, I have been informed by an individual of the highest character in England, who obtained the information directly from Lady Byron's grandchildren.

  But the trustees in whose care the papers were placed drew back on examination of them, and declared, that, as Lady Byron's papers could not be fully published, they should regret anything that should call public attention once more to the discussion of her history.

  Reviewing this long history of the way in which the literary world had treated Lady Byron, we cannot wonder that her friends should have doubted whether there was left on earth any justice, or sense that anything is due to woman as a human being with human rights. Evidently this lesson had taken from them all faith in the moral sense of the world. Rather than re-awaken the discussion, so unsparing, so painful, and so indelicate, which had been carried on so many years around that loved form, now sanctified by death, they sacrificed the dear pleasure of the memorials, and the interests of mankind, who have an indefeasible right to all the help that can be got from the truth of history as to the living power of virtue, and the reality of that great victory that overcometh the world.

  There are thousands of poor victims suffering in sadness, discouragement, and poverty; heart-broken wives of brutal, drunken husbands; women enduring nameless wrongs and horrors which the delicacy of their sex forbids them to utter,—to whom the lovely letters lying hidden away under those seals might bring courage and hope from springs not of this world.

  But though the friends of Lady Byron, perhaps from despair of their kind, from weariness of the utter injustice done her, wished to cherish her name in silence, and to confine the story of her virtues to that circle who knew her too well to ask a proof, or utter a doubt, the partisans of Lord Byron were embarrassed with no such scruple.

  Lord Byron had artfully contrived during his life to place his wife in such an antagonistic position with regard to himself, that his intimate friends were forced to believe that one of the two had deliberately and wantonly injured the other. The published statement of Lady Byron contradicted boldly and point-blank all the statement of her husband concerning the separation; so that, unless she was convicted as a false witness, he certainly was.

  The best evidence of this is Christopher North's own shoc
ked, astonished statement, and the words of the Noctes Club.

  The noble life that Lady Byron lived after this hushed every voice, and silenced even the most desperate calumny, while she was in the world. In the face of Lady Byron as the world saw her, of what use was the talk of Clytemnestra, and the assertion that she had been a mean, deceitful conspirator against her husband's honour in life, and stabbed his memory after death?

  But when she was in her grave, when her voice and presence and good deeds no more spoke for her, and a new generation was growing up that knew her not; then was the time selected to revive the assault on her memory, and to say over her grave what none would ever have dared to say of her while living.

  During these last two years, I have been gradually awakening to the evidence of a new crusade against the memory of Lady Byron, which respected no sanctity,—not even that last and most awful one of death.

  Nine years after her death, when it was fully understood that no story on her side or that of her friends was to be forthcoming, then her calumniators raked out from the ashes of her husband's sepulchre all his bitter charges, to state them over in even stronger and more indecent forms.

  There seems to be reason to think that the materials supplied by Lord Byron for such a campaign yet exist in society.

  To 'The Noctes' of November 1824, there is the following note apropos to a discussion of the Byron question:—

  'Byron's Memoirs, given by him to Moore, were burned, as everybody knows. But, before this, Moore had lent them to several persons. Mrs. Home Purvis, afterwards Viscountess of Canterbury, is known to have sat up all one night, in which, aided by her daughter, she had a copy made. I have the strongest reason for believing that one other person made a copy; for the description of the first twenty-four hours after the marriage ceremonial has been in my hands. Not until after the death of Lady Byron, and Hobhouse, who was the poet's literary executor, can the poet's Autobiography see the light; but I am certain it will be published.'

  Thus speaks Mackenzie in a note to a volume of 'The Noctes,' published in America in 1854. Lady Byron died in 1860.

  Nine years after Lady Byron's death, when it was ascertained that her story was not to see the light, when there were no means of judging her character by her own writings, commenced a well-planned set of operations to turn the public attention once more to Lord Byron, and to represent him as an injured man, whose testimony had been unjustly suppressed.

  It was quite possible, supposing copies of the Autobiography to exist, that this might occasion a call from the generation of to-day, in answer to which the suppressed work might appear. This was a rather delicate operation to commence; but the instrument was not wanting. It was necessary that the subject should be first opened by some irresponsible party, whom more powerful parties might, as by accident, recognise and patronise, and on whose weakness they might build something stronger.

  Just such an instrument was to be found in Paris. The mistress of Lord Byron could easily be stirred up and flattered to come before the world with a book which should re-open the whole controversy; and she proved a facile tool. At first, the work appeared prudently in French, and was called 'Lord Byron jugé par les Témoins de sa Vie,' and was rather a failure. Then it was translated into English, and published by Bentley.

  The book was inartistic, and helplessly, childishly stupid as to any literary merits,—a mere mass of gossip and twaddle; but after all, when one remembers the taste of the thousands of circulating-library readers, it must not be considered the less likely to be widely read on that account. It is only once in a century that a writer of real genius has the art to tell his story so as to take both the cultivated few and the average many. De Foe and John Bunyan are almost the only examples. But there is a certain class of reading that sells and spreads, and exerts a vast influence, which the upper circles of literature despise too much ever to fairly estimate its power.

  However, the Guiccioli book did not want for patrons in the high places of literature. The 'Blackwood'—the old classic magazine of England; the defender of conservatism and aristocracy; the paper of Lockhart, Wilson, Hogg, Walter Scott, and a host of departed grandeurs—was deputed to usher into the world this book, and to recommend it and its author to the Christian public of the nineteenth century.

  The following is the manner in which 'Blackwood' calls attention to it:—

  'One of the most beautiful of the songs of Béranger is that addressed to his Lisette, in which he pictures her, in old age, narrating to a younger generation the loves of their youth; decking his portrait with flowers at each returning spring, and reciting the verses that had been inspired by her vanished charms:—

  'Lorsque les yeux chercheront sous vos rides

  Les traits charmants qui m'auront inspiré,

  Des doux récits les jeunes gens avides,

  Diront: Quel fut cet ami tant pleuré?

  De men amour peignez, s'il est possible,

  Vardeur, l'ivresse, et même les soupçons,

  Et bonne vieille, an coin d'un feu paisible

  De votre ami répétez les chansons.

  “On vous dira: Savait-il être aimable?

  Et sans rougir vous direz: Je l'aimais.

  D'un trait méchant se montra-t-il capable?

  Avec orgueil vous répondrez: Jamais!'“

  'This charming picture,' 'Blackwood' goes on to say, 'has been realised in the case of a poet greater than Béranger, and by a mistress more famous than Lisette. The Countess Guiccioli has at length given to the world her “Recollections of Lord Byron.” The book first appeared in France under the title of “Lord Byron jugé par les Témoins de sa Vie,” without the name of the countess. A more unfortunate designation could hardly have been selected. The “witnesses of his life” told us nothing but what had been told before over and over again; and the uniform and exaggerated tone of eulogy which pervaded the whole book was fatal to any claim on the part of the writer to be considered an impartial judge of the wonderfully mixed character of Byron.

  'When, however, the book is regarded as the avowed production of the Countess Guiccioli, it derives value and interest from its very faults. {113} There is something inexpressibly touching in the picture of the old lady calling up the phantoms of half a century ago; not faded and stricken by the hand of time, but brilliant and gorgeous as they were when Byron, in his manly prime of genius and beauty, first flashed upon her enraptured sight, and she gave her whole soul up to an absorbing passion, the embers of which still glow in her heart.

  'To her there has been no change, no decay. The god whom she worshipped with all the ardour of her Italian nature at seventeen is still the “Pythian of the age” to her at seventy. To try such a book by the ordinary canons of criticism would be as absurd as to arraign the authoress before a jury of British matrons, or to prefer a bill of indictment against the Sultan for bigamy to a Middlesex grand jury.'

  This, then, is the introduction which one of the oldest and most classical periodicals of Great Britain gives to a very stupid book, simply because it was written by Lord Byron's mistress. That fact, we are assured, lends grace even to its faults.

  Having brought the authoress upon the stage, the review now goes on to define her position, and assure the Christian world that

  'The Countess Guiccioli was the daughter of an impoverished noble. At the age of sixteen, she was taken from a convent, and sold as third wife to the Count Guiccioli, who was old, rich, and profligate. A fouler prostitution never profaned the name of marriage. A short time afterwards, she accidentally met Lord Byron. Outraged and rebellious nature vindicated itself in the deep and devoted passion with which he inspired her. With the full assent of husband, father, and brother, and in compliance with the usages of Italian society, he was shortly afterwards installed in the office, and invested with all the privileges, of her “Cavalier Servente.”'

  It has been asserted that the Marquis de Boissy, the late husband of this Guiccioli lady, was in the habit of introducing he
r in fashionable circles as 'the Marquise de Boissy, my wife, formerly mistress to Lord Byron'! We do not give the story as a verity; yet, in the review of this whole history, we may be pardoned for thinking it quite possible.

  The mistress, being thus vouched for and presented as worthy of sympathy and attention by one of the oldest and most classic organs of English literature, may now proceed in her work of glorifying the popular idol, and casting abuse on the grave of the dead wife.

  Her attacks on Lady Byron are, to be sure, less skilful and adroit than those of Lord Byron. They want his literary polish and tact; but what of that? 'Blackwood' assures us that even the faults of manner derive a peculiar grace from the fact that the narrator is Lord Byron's mistress; and so we suppose the literary world must find grace in things like this:—

  'She has been called, after his words, the moral Clytemnestra of her husband. Such a surname is severe: but the repugnance we feel to condemning a woman cannot prevent our listening to the voice of justice, which tells us that the comparison is still in favour of the guilty one of antiquity; for she, driven to crime by fierce passion overpowering reason, at least only deprived her husband of physical life, and, in committing the deed, exposed herself to all its consequences; while Lady Byron left her husband at the very moment that she saw him struggling amid a thousand shoals in the stormy sea of embarrassments created by his marriage, and precisely when he more than ever required a friendly, tender, and indulgent hand to save him.

  'Besides, she shut herself up in silence a thousand times more cruel than Clytemnestra's poniard: that only killed the body; whereas Lady Byron's silence was destined to kill the soul,—and such a soul!—leaving the door open to calumny, and making it to be supposed that her silence was magnanimity destined to cover over frightful wrongs, perhaps even depravity. In vain did he, feeling his conscience at ease, implore some inquiry and examination. She refused; and the only favour she granted was to send him, one fine day, two persons to see whether he were not mad.