Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron

by Stephanie Barron

  Did I detect a menace in these words, so carelessly spoken? But Byron was no longer attending to the Captain; his ire was fleeting. He rose unsteadily to his feet and demanded of Mona, like a weary child, “Where is Davies? And where has Jane got to?”

  I flushed as he uttered my name, but he referred, of course, to Lady Oxford. I did not exist for Lord Byron this evening, and was woman enough to feel a pang. The greater writer than he, however, overcame it.

  “I believe she is in the ballroom, observing the dancing,” Desdemona faltered. “George—are you unwell? Shall I summon Swithin?”

  But Lord Byron’s smouldering gaze had fixed on three men who were advancing across the card room towards our party. They were not dressed for a ball, and their countenances were stolid and unreadable. Constables at the beck and call of Sir Harding Cross, and I did not mistake.

  “George Gordon, Lord Byron?” the chief of the three intoned.

  “That is my name,” his lordship replied; “but I did not give you leave to make free with it.” And he snapped his fingers beneath the constable’s nose.

  The fellow’s countenance did not alter; he might have been confronting a mad dog, run loose on the shingle. “It is my duty,” he said, “to arrest you, sir, on the charge of murder.”

  At which his lordship knocked the poor fellow down.

  THE ASSEMBLY ROOMS FELL SILENT AS BYRON WAS dragged away—all of Brighton horrified, as it seemed, by the sudden plummet of its favoured comet. The moment his lordship’s black head disappeared from the main staircase, however, the orchestra struck up a tune—the old chestnut, “Lady o’ the Timmer Lands.” A few couples moved hesitantly to the floor, and soon the scene was one of gaiety; Lady Oxford did not faint, but continued talking with deliberate animation to Sir John and the man named Hodge; and I found my brother Henry hastening towards me from the supper room. The Earl of Swithin was hard on his heels.

  Mona pulled at Swithin’s sleeve with urgency. “Do something, Charles! They cannot simply throw Byron in gaol!”

  “It may be the safest place for him, Mona,” her husband replied grimly.

  “Is the whole town so opposed to the notion of innocence?”

  “The Regent is—and that must be enough for the magistrate. I have been talking with Old HardCross.” The Earl’s eyes flicked dispassionately towards my brother. “The intelligence the magistrate received this afternoon, of a tunnel leading from the Marine Pavilion to the King’s Arms—or, not to put too fine a point upon it, from the Regent’s home to a place of murder—has animated His Royal Highness as nothing else should. He is demanding a swift period to the Twining business. Sir Harding assures me that nothing shall equal his efforts to set the Prince’s mind at ease; and therefore, it is to be hoped Byron will hang for the corpse found in his rooms, and there is to be an end of it.”

  “But that is unjust!” Mona cried. “That is … that is criminal, Charles!”

  “I am mortified,” Henry said in a low voice. “To think that Byron’s liberty is denied him—that his very life might be laid at my door—when my only object in speaking with the magistrate was the achievement of justice!”

  “I believe we should collect our party and return home,” the Earl said gently. “We can do nothing more here.”

  “Where have they taken him?” I asked.

  “To Brighton Camp. He is to be held under the armed guard of the Regent’s own—the 10th Hussars.”

  My eyes drifted across the room, and observed Captain Viscount Morley, his military helmet hiding his golden curls, slipping neatly out of the room.

  I could not think a barracks the safest gaol for Byron.

  FRIDAY, 14 MAY 1813 BRIGHTON

  I HAD BEEN DRESSED ONLY A QUARTER-HOUR THIS MORNING, and was taking tea and toast in the private parlour set aside for Henry’s and my use, when the Countess of Swithin sent up her card—followed hard on its heels by the Countess herself.

  “We must corner her,” Desdemona cried as she sailed into the room, a perfect picture in straw-coloured linen trimmed in dull rose, “and make her tell us what she knows.”

  “Who?”

  “Caro Lamb, of course!” She drew off her bonnet and gloves, and set about prosaically pouring herself a cup of tea. “You cannot think how low poor Jane Harley is become. She is certain Byron will hang, and is torn between a jealous desire to see him do so—born of her discovery of his passion for Miss Twining—and outright despair at the World’s Loss. She persists in believing him a genius, tho’ the rest of us are inclined to consider him out of his wits.” Mona took a sip of scalding tea, and grimaced.

  “Swithin went this morning to appeal to Old HardCross for the setting of bail, and the release of his lordship into our own household—bail to be paid by Swithin, of course—but Sir Harding refused. He had the sheer effrontery to say that he regards Byron as excessively dangerous, on account of his knocking down that constable last evening; and in the next breath, told Swithin that he now believes Caro Lamb’s testimony at the inquest!—For you will recall she claimed Byron spent the remainder of the night at the Pavilion, in her arms, and not at Scrope Davies’s at all. Anybody in Brighton might know her for a liar—except, it would seem, Sir Harding Cross.”

  “I am sure she offered her testimony then with the intention of protecting Lord Byron—by swearing to his presence, and offering an alibi, when he might have been anywhere,” I said thoughtfully. “The discovery of the tunnel leading out of the Pavilion, however, has secured the noose around his lordship’s neck. Sir Harding need look no further. Miss Twining’s body is believed to have found its way to Byron’s rooms at the Arms through the cunning tunnel that commences in the Regent’s wine cellars; Lady Caroline swears Byron was at the Pavilion during the critical hours of the murder and disposal of Miss Twining’s body—and therefore, Lord Byron shall be found guilty of having drowned the girl he passionately loved. Nobody seems to give a ha’porth of interest in why he should be moved to do so, however.”

  “What I chiefly wish to know,” Mona retorted, “is what Caroline was doing Monday night—or Tuesday morning, whichever you will—when she claims to have been making passionate love to his lordship! She has never said why she parted from Miss Twining in that churlish way. Even a Ponsonby born and bred should never behave so ill as to send a child of fifteen alone out into the night. I believe the lady prevaricates. I smell deceit in Caro Lamb at fifty paces, and I am determined to know the whole.”

  “You intend to summon her to Marine Parade?”

  “Not at all!” Mona set her cup on its saucer with an audible ring. “We shall beard her ladyship in her bower! Do you not believe the answer to the entire affair lies within the Pavilion itself?”

  “I do. It is the last place Miss Twining was seen, and whence her body was certainly conveyed to the Arms. That cannot have happened without someone—guest or servant—noting a disturbance. I have been working upon my brother to use his influence with Lord Moira, in order to gain some entry there. For myself, I should dearly like to meet with George Hanger again.”

  Mona look startled. “I cannot think why! Odious man. And his teeth are wooden. But you need no other entrée when I am with you, my dear—let us go at once, if you have quite finished your breakfast!”

  I had quite finished my breakfast. It remained only to scrawl a hurried note to Henry, who had—at my behest—presented himself in full mourning dress at Catherine Twining’s funeral. The service was even now commencing, at the small chapel belonging to the 10th Hussars, so beloved of the Twining family; and Mr. Hendred Smalls should be presiding. It was not the service he had anticipated enjoying with young Catherine—and I wondered how he should get through it without breaking down entirely. But I must await Henry’s account. I put on my bonnet—and was away with Mona on the instant.

  “I WISH THAT I WERE DEAD,” LADY CAROLINE OFFERED IN a thread-like whisper.

  The sentiment should not be unexpected in one who has tumbled from a powerful young horse
to the hard ground of the Downs, and sustained a considerable bruising, if not a cracked rib or two; but Lady Caroline exhibited no evidence of physical injury from her escapade at the race-meeting two days previous, and appeared already to have forgot the sad despatching of the black colt.

  “—Drowned, preferably, as the Other was,” she persisted. “I tried to allow the waters to o’erwhelm me, as he sailed on, indifferent—but I was cheated of Death. O, to be dying!”

  “—or at the very least, declining,” Mona returned cordially. “On the whole, I think you should prefer declining, my dear—I really do. It is less absolute than death, and therefore offers greater scope for the imagination—one might persist in one’s decline, with periodic episodes of rallying—one might alternately raise and dash the hopes of such gentlemen as place wagers on these things at White’s, from week to week. Whereas with death, you know, the curtain is rung down quite definitely on your drama.”

  “Catherine Twining is dead, and all the world can talk of nothing but her,” Caro said petulantly; “Catherine Twining is Leila, and George is forever writing verses to her! I wish I were dead.”

  “I should like to slap you.” Mona’s tone was all bored indignation. “You have only to hurl yourself into the sea, you ghoulish creature, without Swithin there to save you, to make an end of it. But tell us what we wish to know, first. You might then be comforted in your final moments, in the knowledge that you have been the salvation of Lord Byron. We shall promise to tell everyone so.”

  Caro Lamb turned doe eyes, brimful of tragedy, upon the Countess. “You are excessively unkind. Why do you hate me so, Mona? Why does the entire world hate me? Is it because I was fortunate enough to have been loved by him?”

  We were perched on a scattering of uncomfortable chairs, done in the Chinese stile with hard wooden backs, intended to suggest bamboo, in a small saloon that faced a prettyish wilderness running down to the shingle. It was a bright morning, and a stiff wind tossed the branches of the trees; Lady Caroline had adopted a pose by the French windows, and kept her profile turned firmly to best advantage.

  “Not at all,” Mona replied cheerfully. “I expect it is because you are so tiresome, Caro. Now, you will have heard that his lordship has been taken to Brighton Camp, where he is held under armed guard, pending the next sitting of the Assizes—which in this part of the world are to be in two weeks’ time. The magistrate, Sir Harding Cross, has told Swithin that he should not have taken his lordship up, but for your testimony—your insistence at the inquest, Caro, that his lordship was in your rooms for the better part of Monday night.”

  “Tuesday morning,” I interjected.

  “Very well,” Mona said crossly. “You take my point, I hope. It is because of your … embroidering, your … penchant for the high dramatic … that Sir Harding may insist Lord Byron was at the Pavilion. Which is the very last place any of his friends should wish him to have been.”

  “Why?” Caro demanded in a throbbing accent. “Why, Mona? Because they are determined to despise me, and my love for him? I am not ashamed of it! I am not ashamed of having felt that pure, elevating passion which …”

  “Can you apprehend nothing, you wretched woman, but your own interest in this affair?” the Countess cried in exasperation. “It has nothing to do with you, Caro, excepting in that you have lied—and Byron shall certainly hang because of it!”

  Lady Caroline’s gaze slid back, unseeing, to the windows. “I did not lie.”

  There was a palpitating silence. Mona turned a puzzled look upon me, and lifted her shoulders in mute interrogation.

  “I should never lie where Byron is concerned,” Caro murmured dreamily. “That should be to dishonour the sacred nature of our bond.”

  I rose, and crossed to where she stood. “You insist upon his lordship’s having been here in the early hours of Tuesday morning?”

  Caroline Lamb smiled at me, then—a faint, absent, half-crazed smile. “Of course he was,” she said. “Why do you think Catherine Twining ran away, all by herself, without the slightest escort? It was because he followed her here, of course—and the goosecap was terrified of him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  A Matter of Questions

  FRIDAY, 14 MAY 1813

  BRIGHTON, CONT.

  “I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN SHE WOULD NOT LIE ABOUT anything to do with Byron—and that Scrope Davies should.” Mona spoke gloomily as we quitted Caro Lamb’s rooms. “Swithin said Davies would do anything to save his friend’s skin—stand buff was the revolting Eton-schoolboy phrase he used.”

  We had persisted in talking with Caro Lamb for a quarter-hour after her flat declaration, in an attempt to shake her from her appalling ground, but she would have none of it—nor of us. Her narrative consisted of the following:

  Of course Byron had quitted the Assembly at her appearance; he could not bear to see her dancing—particularly if the dance was a waltz, and as she recalled, a waltz was being struck up within minutes of her arrival. She had expected Byron to lie in wait for her, however—or for Catherine Twining, it made no odds—because he could not bear to allow Caro the triumph of driving him out of Society, and must always have the final word. By adopting Catherine—of whose existence Caro had known already from her spies, as Lady Oxford had not—she had ensured that Byron would follow them both. And indeed, his lordship had braved the Pavilion itself—where Prinny had never yet invited him, due to their mutual dislike—on the strength of his acquaintance with Lady Caroline. Byron merely informed the footmen who awaited the late return of the Regent’s guests that Lady Caro had pressed him to drink tea with her after the Assembly—and as Lady Caro had already brought Miss Twining up to her boudoir, the footmen assumed Byron was expected as well.

  “Was it not brave of him?” she suggested in her habitually ardent tone. “But in truth, I believe he would brave anything when the desire to see me overtakes him. Tho’ he professes to hate my very existence, he cannot quite live without me, you know—he is continually answering my letters, and stealing away to see me, under the very nose of my repulsive mother-in-law, Lady Melbourne. I believe it is the challenge he enjoys, as well as the delicious deceit.”

  I reflected that her ladyship understood the motives of her erstwhile lover very well; and decided to ignore, for the moment, Byron’s intentions on that evening. Of greater import were his actions, and the approximate times at which they had taken place.

  “At what hour did his lordship put in an appearance?” I asked.

  Lady Caroline shrugged. “I could not possibly tell you the time. Time is mutable; it expands or contracts depending on the degree of boredom one suffers; in Byron’s presence, it is precious—and horrifyingly fleet.”

  Desdemona sighed. “Give over, Caro, do—this is important.”

  Lady Caroline lifted her shoulders once more. She was still directing her speeches to the French windows.

  “You quitted the Assembly at one o’clock in the morning, near as makes no odds,” I said. “Byron left the King’s Arms half an hour later, according to the publican’s assurances, which I myself received. His lordship is supposed to have reached Scrope Davies’s lodgings at a quarter to two—the same time at which Catherine Twining was observed by an undergroom to be crossing the Pavilion grounds alone. In order to credit your explanation, we must believe Mr. Davies to have lied—but recollect the evidence of his servants. Not all of them may be paid off, in a matter of murder.”

  “You appear to have a higher regard for a menial’s sense of delicacy than I,” Caro told me, “but even if you will have them all be honest, I see no great difficulty. Recollect you are speaking of a publican’s clock, in stating the moment of Lord Byron’s departure.”

  I stared at her in puzzlement an instant, until comprehension dawned. Mr. Tolliver’s clock should never run so true to the hour as the Regent’s great instrument above the stables, which should be calibrated with a precision unequaled anywhere but at Greenwich. Tho’ the King’s Arms clock
be wound of necessity each day, it must lose time over the twenty-four hours, and was thus, as was common among publick-house instruments, generally set a quarter-hour ahead, so that guests might not miss their stage-coaches, nor Tolliver his hour of closing. When Lord Byron and Scrope Davies thought themselves to be quitting the Arms at half past one, they were undoubtedly doing so at a quarter past—or thereabouts. Miss Twining, however, had certainly quitted the Pavilion at a quarter to two. Nobody, at the inquest or thereafter, had considered of the customs obtaining among publick-house clocks.

  “We have been very stupid,” Desdemona observed.

  “I had assumed it to be a habit with you,” Caro replied distantly. “Take the statements of the servants, for example. Undoubtedly they were asked when their master and his guests returned home; and undoubtedly they told the time as they knew it—conceiving of the guest as being proved in the fact of George’s valet. Where George himself might be was none of their concern; it is not their place to know. I think the matter readily explains itself.”

  Undoubtedly, we must speak with Scrope Davies, I thought despairingly; there remained his insistence that he had sat up drinking wine with Byron until three. I should have to employ Henry or Lord Swithin—who knew him best—in the task of wringing out the truth. But that was another interview; we were still confronting Lady Caroline.

  “What occurred when Byron ascended to your boudoir?”

  For the first time, her ladyship quitted the windows. She settled herself on a divan, crossing her legs beneath her and taking up a gentleman’s long clay smoking pipe, in which she proceeded to tamp a bit of tobacco. The Countess and I were forced to endure a tedious interval while Lady Caroline engaged in all the business of lighting this, and encouraging it to exude an acrid blue smoke, which she then deeply inhaled, closing her eyes with bliss as she did so—until the eyelids fluttered open once more, and the huge, light-coloured orbs settled upon me unerringly.