by Thomas Moore
“I shall be very glad to see you, if you like to call, though I am at present contending with ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,’ some of which have struck at me from a quarter whence I did not indeed expect them — But, no matter, ‘there is a world elsewhere,’ and I will cut my way through this as I can.
“If you write to Moore, will you tell him that I shall answer his letter the moment I can muster time and spirits? Ever yours,
“BN.”
The rumours of the separation did not reach me till more than a week afterwards, when I immediately wrote to him thus:— “I am most anxious to hear from you, though I doubt whether I ought to mention the subject on which I am so anxious. If, however, what I heard last night, in a letter from town, be true, you will know immediately what I allude to, and just communicate as much or as little upon the subject as you think proper; — only something I should like to know, as soon as possible, from yourself, in order to set my mind at rest with respect to the truth or falsehood of the report.” The following is his answer: —
LETTER 233. TO MR. MOORE.
“February 29. 1816.
“I have not answered your letter for a time; and, at present, the reply to part of it might extend to such a length, that I shall delay it till it can be made in person, and then I will shorten it as much as I can.
“In the mean time, I am at war ‘with all the world and his wife;’ or rather, ‘all the world and my wife’ are at war with me, and have not yet crushed me, — whatever they may do. I don’t know that in the course of a hair-breadth existence I was ever, at home or abroad, in a situation so completely uprooting of present pleasure, or rational hope for the future, as this same. I say this, because I think so, and feel it. But I shall not sink under it the more for that mode of considering the question — I have made up my mind.
“By the way, however, you must not believe all you hear on the subject; and don’t attempt to defend me. If you succeeded in that, it would be a mortal, or an immortal, offence — who can bear refutation? I have but a very short answer for those whom it concerns; and all the activity of myself and some vigorous friends have not yet fixed on any tangible ground or personage, on which or with whom I can discuss matters, in a summary way, with a fair pretext; — though I nearly had nailed one yesterday, but he evaded by — what was judged by others — a satisfactory explanation. I speak of circulators — against whom I have no enmity, though I must act according to the common code of usage, when I hit upon those of the serious order.
“Now for other matters — poesy, for instance. Leigh Hunt’s poem is a devilish good one — quaint, here and there, but with the substratum of originality, and with poetry about it, that will stand the test. I do not say this because he has inscribed it to me, which I am sorry for, as I should otherwise have begged you to review it in the Edinburgh. It is really deserving of much praise, and a favourable critique in the E.R. would but do it justice, and set it up before the public eye where it ought to be.
“How are you? and where? I have not the most distant idea what I am going to do myself, or with myself — or where — or what. I had, a few weeks ago, some things to say that would have made you laugh; but they tell me now that I must not laugh, and so I have been very serious — and am.
“I have not been very well — with a liver complaint — but am much better within the last fortnight, though still under Iatrical advice. I have latterly seen a little of * * * *
“I must go and dress to dine. My little girl is in the country, and, they tell me, is a very fine child, and now nearly three months old. Lady Noel (my mother-in-law, or, rather, at law) is at present overlooking it. Her daughter (Miss Milbanke that was) is, I believe, in London with her father. A Mrs. C. (now a kind of housekeeper and spy of Lady N.’s) who, in her better days, was a washerwoman, is supposed to be — by the learned — very much the occult cause of our late domestic discrepancies.
“In all this business, I am the sorriest for Sir Ralph. He and I are equally punished, though magis pares quam similes in our affliction. Yet it is hard for both to suffer for the fault of one, and so it is — I shall be separated from my wife; he will retain his.
“Ever,” &c.
In my reply to this letter, written a few days after, there is a passage which (though containing an opinion it might have been more prudent, perhaps, to conceal,) I feel myself called upon to extract on account of the singularly generous avowal, — honourable alike to both the parties in this unhappy affair, — which it was the means of drawing from Lord Byron. The following are my words:— “I am much in the same state as yourself with respect to the subject of your letter, my mind being so full of things which I don’t know how to write about, that I too must defer the greater part of them till we meet in May, when I shall put you fairly on your trial for all crimes and misdemeanors. In the mean time, you will not be at a loss for judges, nor executioners either, if they could have their will. The world, in their generous ardour to take what they call the weaker side, soon contrive to make it most formidably the strongest. Most sincerely do I grieve at what has happened. It has upset all my wishes and theories as to the influence of marriage on your life; for, instead of bringing you, as I expected, into something like a regular orbit, it has only cast you off again into infinite space, and left you, I fear, in a far worse state than it found you. As to defending you, the only person with whom I have yet attempted this task is myself; and, considering the little I know upon the subject, (or rather, perhaps, owing to this cause,) I have hitherto done it with very tolerable success. After all, your choice was the misfortune. I never liked, — but I’m here wandering into the απορρητα, and so must change the subject for a far pleasanter one, your last new poems, which,” &c. &c.
The return of post brought me the following answer, which, while it raises our admiration of the generous candour of the writer, but adds to the sadness and strangeness of the whole transaction.
LETTER 234. TO MR. MOORE.
“March 8. 1816.
“I rejoice in your promotion as Chairman and Charitable Steward, &c. &c. These be dignities which await only the virtuous. But then, recollect you are six and thirty, (I speak this enviously — not of your age, but the ‘honour — love — obedience — troops of friends,’ which accompany it,) and I have eight years good to run before I arrive at such hoary perfection; by which time, — if I am at all, — it will probably be in a state of grace or progressing merits.
“I must set you right in one point, however. The fault was not — no, nor even the misfortune — 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 and agreeable being than Lady B. I never had, nor can have, any reproach to make her, while with me. Where there is blame, it belongs to myself, and, if I cannot redeem, I must bear it.
“Her nearest relatives are a * * * * — my circumstances have been and are in a state of great confusion — my health has been a good deal disordered, and my mind ill at ease for a considerable period. Such are the causes (I do not name them as excuses) which have frequently driven me into excess, and disqualified my temper for comfort. Something also may be attributed to the strange and desultory habits which, becoming my own master at an early age, and scrambling about, over and through the world, may have induced. I still, however, think that, if I had had a fair chance, by being placed in even a tolerable situation, I might have gone on fairly. But that seems hopeless, — and there is nothing more to be said. At present — except my health, which is better (it is odd, but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for the time) — I have to battle with all kinds of unpleasantnesses, including private and pecuniary difficulties, &c. &c.
“I believe I may have said this before to you, but I risk repeating it. It is nothing to bear the privations of adversity, or, more properly, ill fortune; but my p
ride recoils from its indignities. However, I have no quarrel with that same pride, which will, I think, buckler me through every thing. If my heart could have been broken, it would have been so years ago, and by events more afflicting than these.
“I agree with you (to turn from this topic to our shop) that I have written too much. The last things were, however, published very reluctantly by me, and for reasons I will explain when we meet. I know not why I have dwelt so much on the same scenes, except that I find them fading, or confusing (if such a word may be) in my memory, in the midst of present turbulence and pressure, and I felt anxious to stamp before the die was worn out. I now break it. With those countries, and events connected with them, all my really poetical feelings begin and end. Were I to try, I could make nothing of any other subject, and that I have apparently exhausted. ‘Wo to him,’ says Voltaire, ‘who says all he could say on any subject.’ There are some on which, perhaps, I could have said still more: but I leave them all, and too soon.
“Do you remember the lines I sent you early last year, which you still have? I don’t wish (like Mr. Fitzgerald, in the Morning Post) to claim the character of ‘Vates’ in all its translations, but were they not a little prophetic? I mean those beginning, ‘There’s not a joy the world can,’ &c. &c., on which I rather pique myself as being the truest, though the most melancholy, I ever wrote.
“What a scrawl have I sent you! You say nothing of yourself, except that you are a Lancasterian churchwarden, and an encourager of mendicants. When are you out? and how is your family? My child is very well and flourishing, I hear; but I must see also. I feel no disposition to resign it to the contagion of its grandmother’s society, though I am unwilling to take it from the mother. It is weaned, however, and something about it must be decided. Ever,” &c.
Having already gone so far in laying open to my readers some of the sentiments which I entertained, respecting Lord Byron’s marriage, at a time when, little foreseeing that I should ever become his biographer, I was, of course, uninfluenced by the peculiar bias supposed to belong to that task, it may still further, perhaps, be permitted me to extract from my reply to the foregoing letter some sentences of explanation which its contents seemed to me to require.
“I had certainly no right to say any thing about the unluckiness of your choice, though I rejoice now that I did, as it has drawn from you a tribute which, however unaccountable and mysterious it renders the whole affair, is highly honourable to both parties. What I meant in hinting a doubt with respect to the object of your selection did not imply the least impeachment of that perfect amiableness which the world, I find, by common consent, allows to her. I only feared that she might have been too perfect — too precisely excellent — too matter-of-fact a paragon for you to coalesce with comfortably; and that a person whose perfection hung in more easy folds about her, whose brightness was softened down by some of ‘those fair defects which best conciliate love,’ would, by appealing more dependently to your protection, have stood a much better chance with your good nature. All these suppositions, however, I have been led into by my intense anxiety to acquit you of any thing like a capricious abandonment of such a woman; and, totally in the dark as I am with respect to all but the fact of your separation, you cannot conceive the solicitude, the fearful solicitude, with which I look forward to a history of the transaction from your own lips when we meet, — a history in which I am sure of, at least, one virtue — manly candour.”
With respect to the causes that may be supposed to have led to this separation, it seems needless, with the characters of both parties before our eyes, to go in quest of any very remote or mysterious reasons to account for it. I have already, in some observations on the general character of men of genius, endeavoured to point out those peculiarities, both in disposition and habitudes, by which, in the far greater number of instances, they have been found unfitted for domestic happiness. Of these defects, (which are, as it were, the shadow that genius casts, and too generally, it is to be feared, in proportion to its stature,) Lord Byron could not, of course, fail to have inherited his share, in common with all the painfully-gifted class to which he belonged. How thoroughly, with respect to one attribute of this temperament which he possessed, — one, that “sicklies o’er” the face of happiness itself, — he was understood by the person most interested in observing him, will appear from the following anecdote, as related by himself.
“People have wondered at the melancholy which runs through my writings. Others have wondered at my personal gaiety. But I recollect once, after an hour in which I had been sincerely and particularly gay and rather brilliant, in company, my wife replying to me when I said (upon her remarking my high spirits), ‘And yet, Bell, I have been called and miscalled melancholy — you must have seen how falsely, frequently?’— ‘No, Byron,’ she answered, ‘it is not so: at heart you are the most melancholy of mankind; and often when apparently gayest.’”
To these faults and sources of faults inherent, in his own sensitive nature, he added also many of those which a long indulgence of self-will generates, — the least compatible, of all others, (if not softened down, as they were in him, by good nature,) with that system of mutual concession and sacrifice by which the balance of domestic peace is maintained. When we look back, indeed, to the unbridled career, of which this marriage was meant to be the goal, — to the rapid and restless course in which his life had run along, like a burning train, through a series of wanderings, adventures, successes, and passions, the fever of all which was still upon him, when, with the same headlong recklessness, he rushed into this marriage, — it can but little surprise us that, in the space of one short year, he should not have been able to recover all at once from his bewilderment, or to settle down into that tame level of conduct which the close observers of his every action required. As well might it be expected that a steed like his own Mazeppa’s,
“Wild as the wild deer and untaught, With spur and bridle undefiled— ’Twas but a day he had been caught,”
should stand still, when reined, without chafing or champing the bit.
Even had the new condition of life into which he passed been one of prosperity and smoothness, some time, as well as tolerance, must still have been allowed for the subsiding of so excited a spirit into rest. But, on the contrary, his marriage (from the reputation, no doubt, of the lady, as an heiress,) was, at once, a signal for all the arrears and claims of a long-accumulating state of embarrassment to explode upon him; — his door was almost daily beset by duns, and his house nine times during that year in possession of bailiffs; while, in addition to these anxieties and — what he felt still more — indignities of poverty, he had also the pain of fancying, whether rightly or wrongly, that the eyes of enemies and spies were upon him, even under his own roof, and that his every hasty word and look were interpreted in the most perverting light.
As, from the state of their means, his lady and he saw but little society, his only relief from the thoughts which a life of such embarrassment brought with it was in those avocations which his duty, as a member of the Drury Lane Committee, imposed upon him. And here, — in this most unlucky connection with the theatre, — one of the fatalities of his short year of trial, as husband, lay. From the reputation which he had previously acquired for gallantries, and the sort of reckless and boyish levity to which — often in very “bitterness of soul” — he gave way, it was not difficult to bring suspicion upon some of those acquaintances which his frequent intercourse with the green-room induced him to form, or even (as, in one instance, was the case,) to connect with his name injuriously that of a person to whom he had scarcely ever addressed a single word.
Notwithstanding, however, this ill-starred concurrence of circumstances, which might have palliated any excesses either of temper or conduct into which they drove him, it was, after all, I am persuaded, to no such serious causes that the unfortunate alienation, which so soon ended in disunion, is to be traced. “In all the marriages I have ever seen,” says Steele, �
�most of which have been unhappy ones, the great cause of evil has proceeded from slight occasions;” and to this remark, I think, the marriage under our consideration would not be found, upon enquiry, to be an exception. Lord Byron himself, indeed, when at Cephalonia, a short time before his death, seems to have expressed, in a few words, the whole pith of the mystery. An English gentleman with whom he was conversing on the subject of Lady Byron, having ventured to enumerate to him the various causes he had heard alleged for the separation, the noble poet, who had seemed much amused with their absurdity and falsehood, said, after listening to them all,— “The causes, my dear sir, were too simple to be easily found out.”
In truth, the circumstances, so unexampled, that attended their separation, — the last words of the parting wife to the husband being those of the most playful affection, while the language of the deserted husband towards the wife was in a strain, as the world knows, of tenderest eulogy, — are in themselves a sufficient proof that, at the time of their parting, there could have been no very deep sense of injury on either side. It was not till afterwards that, in both bosoms, the repulsive force came into operation, — when, to the party which had taken the first decisive step in the strife, it became naturally a point of pride to persevere in it with dignity, and this unbendingness provoked, as naturally, in the haughty spirit of the other, a strong feeling of resentment which overflowed, at last, in acrimony and scorn. If there be any truth, however, in the principle, that they “never pardon who have done the wrong,” Lord Byron, who was, to the last, disposed to reconciliation, proved so far, at least, his conscience to have been unhaunted by any very disturbing consciousness of aggression.
But though it would have been difficult, perhaps, for the victims of this strife, themselves, to have pointed out any single, or definite, cause for their disunion, — beyond that general incompatibility which is the canker of all such marriages, — the public, which seldom allows itself to be at a fault on these occasions, was, as usual, ready with an ample supply of reasons for the breach, — all tending to blacken the already darkly painted character of the poet, and representing him, in short, as a finished monster of cruelty and depravity. The reputation of the object of his choice for every possible virtue, (a reputation which had been, I doubt not, one of his own chief incentives to the marriage, from the vanity, reprobate as he knew he was deemed, of being able to win such a paragon,) was now turned against him by his assailants, not only in the way of contrast with his own character, but as if the excellences of the wife were proof positive of every enormity they chose to charge upon the husband.