‘His allusions to me in “Childe Harold” are cruel and cold, but with such a semblance as to make me appear so, and to attract all sympathy to himself. It is said in this poem that hatred of him will be taught as a lesson to his child. I might appeal to all who have ever heard me speak of him, and still more to my own heart, to witness that there has been no moment when I have remembered injury otherwise than affectionately and sorrowfully.
‘It is not my duty to give way to hopeless and wholly unrequited affection; but, so long as I live, my chief struggle will probably be not to remember him too kindly. I do not seek the sympathy of the world, but I wish to be known by those whose opinion is valuable and whose kindness is dear to me. Among such, my dear Lady Anne, you will ever be remembered by your truly affectionate
‘A. BYRON.’
On this letter I observe Lord Lindsay remarks that it shows a noble but rather severe character, and a recent author has remarked that it seemed to be written rather in a ‘cold spirit of criticism.’ It seems to strike these gentlemen as singular that Lady Byron did not enjoy the poem! But there are two remarkable sentences in this letter which have escaped the critics hitherto. Lord Byron, in this, the Third Canto of ‘Childe Harold,’ expresses in most affecting words an enthusiasm of love for his sister. So long as he lived he was her faithful correspondent; he sent her his journals; and, dying, he left her and her children everything he had in the world. This certainly seems like an affectionate brother; but in what words does Lady Byron speak of this affection?
‘I had heard he was the best of brothers, the most generous of friends. I thought these feelings only required to be warmed and cherished into more diffusive benevolence. THESE OPINIONS ARE ERADICATED, AND COULD NEVER RETURN BUT WITH THE DECAY OF MEMORY.’ Let me ask those who give this letter as a proof that at this time no idea such as I have stated was in Lady Byron’s mind, to account for these words. Let them please answer these questions: Why had Lady Byron ceased to think him a good brother? Why does she use so strong a word as that the opinion was eradicated, torn up by the roots, and could never grow again in her except by decay of memory?
And yet this is a document Lord Lindsay vouches for as authentic, and which he brings forward in defence of Lord Byron.
Again she says, ‘Though he would not suffer me to remain his wife, he cannot prevent me from continuing his friend.’ Do these words not say that in some past time, in some decided manner, Lord Byron had declared to her his rejection of her as a wife? I shall yet have occasion to explain these words.
Again she says, ‘I silenced accusations by which my conduct might have been more fully justified.’
The people in England who are so very busy in searching out evidence against my true story have searched out and given to the world an important confirmation of this assertion of Lady Byron’s.
It seems that the confidential waiting-maid who went with Lady Byron on her wedding journey has been sought out and interrogated, and, as appears by description, is a venerable, respectable old person, quite in possession of all her senses in general, and of that sixth sense of propriety in particular, which appears not to be a common virtue in our days.
As her testimony is important, we insert it just here, with a description of her person in full. The ardent investigators thus speak: —
‘Having gained admission, we were shown into a small but neatly furnished and scrupulously clean apartment, where sat the object of our visit. Mrs. Mimms is a venerable-looking old lady, of short stature, slight and active appearance, with a singularly bright and intelligent countenance. Although midway between eighty and ninety years of age, she is in full possession of her faculties, discourses freely and cheerfully, hears apparently as well as ever she did, and her sight is so good that, aided by a pair of spectacles, she reads the Chronicle every day with ease. Some idea of her competency to contribute valuable evidence to the subject which now so much engages public attention on three continents may be found from her own narrative of her personal relations with Lady Byron. Mrs. Mimms was born in the neighbourhood of Seaham, and knew Lady Byron from childhood. During the long period of ten years she was Miss Milbanke’s lady’s-maid, and in that capacity became the close confidante of her mistress. There were circumstances which rendered their relationship peculiarly intimate. Miss Milbanke had no sister or female friend to whom she was bound by the ties of more than a common affection; and her mother, whatever other excellent qualities she may have possessed, was too high-spirited and too hasty in temper to attract the sympathies of the young. Some months before Miss Milbanke was married to Lord Byron, Mrs. Mimms had quitted her service on the occasion of her own marriage with Mr. Mimms; but she continued to reside in the neighbourhood of Seaham, and remained on the most friendly terms with her former mistress. As the courtship proceeded, Miss Milbanke concealed nothing from her faithful attendant; and when the wedding-day was fixed, she begged Mrs. Mimms to return and fulfil the duties of lady’s-maid, at least during the honeymoon. Mrs. Mimms at the time was nursing her first child, and it was no small sacrifice to quit her own home at such a moment, but she could not refuse her old mistress’s request. Accordingly, she returned to Seaham Hall some days before the wedding, was present at the ceremony, and then preceded Lord and Lady Byron to Halnaby Hall, near Croft, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, one of Sir Ralph Milbanke’s seats, where the newly married couple were to spend the honeymoon. Mrs. Mimms remained with Lord and Lady Byron during the three weeks they spent at Halnaby Hall, and then accompanied them to Seaham, where they spent the next six weeks. It was during the latter period that she finally quitted Lady Byron’s service; but she remained in the most friendly communication with her ladyship till the death of the latter, and for some time was living in the neighbourhood of Lady Byron’s residence in Leicestershire, where she had frequent opportunities of seeing her former mistress. It may be added that Lady Byron was not unmindful of the faithful services of her friend and attendant in the instructions to her executors contained in her will. Such was the position of Mrs. Mimms towards Lady Byron; and we think no one will question that it was of a nature to entitle all that Mrs. Mimms may say on the subject of the relations of Lord and Lady Byron to the most respectful consideration and credit.’
Such is the chronicler’s account of the faithful creature whom nothing but intense indignation and disgust at Mrs. Beecher Stowe would lead to speak on her mistress’s affairs; but Mrs. Beecher Stowe feels none the less sincere respect for her, and is none the less obliged to her for having spoken. Much of Mrs. Mimms’s testimony will be referred to in another place; we only extract one passage, to show that while Lord Byron spent his time in setting afloat slanders against his wife, she spent hers in sealing the mouths of witnesses against him.
Of the period of the honeymoon Mrs. Mimms says: —
‘The happiness of Lady Byron, however, was of brief duration; even during the short three weeks they spent at Halnaby, the irregularities of Lord Byron occasioned her the greatest distress, and she even contemplated returning to her father. Mrs. Mimms was her constant companion and confidante through this painful period, and she does not believe that her ladyship concealed a thought from her. With laudable reticence, the old lady absolutely refuses to disclose the particulars of Lord Byron’s misconduct at this time; she gave Lady Byron a solemn promise not to do so.
* * * *
‘So serious did Mrs. Mimms consider the conduct of Lord Byron, that she recommended her mistress to confide all the circumstances to her father, Sir Ralph Milbanke, a calm, kind, and most excellent parent, and take his advice as to her future course. At one time Mrs. Mimms thinks Lady Byron had resolved to follow her counsel and impart her wrongs to Sir Ralph; but on arriving at Seaham Hall her ladyship strictly enjoined Mrs. Mimms to preserve absolute silence on the subject — a course which she followed herself; — so that when, six weeks later, she and Lord Byron left Seaham for London, not a word had escaped her to disturb her parents’ tranquillity as to their
daughter’s domestic happiness. As might be expected, Mrs. Mimms bears the warmest testimony to the noble and lovable qualities of her departed mistress. She also declares that Lady Byron was by no means of a cold temperament, but that the affectionate impulses of her nature were checked by the unkind treatment she experienced from her husband.’
We have already shown that Lord Byron had been, ever since his separation, engaged in a systematic attempt to reverse the judgment of the world against himself, by making converts of all his friends to a most odious view of his wife’s character, and inspiring them with the zeal of propagandists to spread these views through society. We have seen how he prepared partisans to interpret the Fourth Canto of ‘Childe Harold.’
This plan of solemn and heroic accusation was the first public attack on his wife. Next we see him commencing a scurrilous attempt to turn her to ridicule in the First Canto of ‘Don Juan.’
It is to our point now to show how carefully and cautiously this Don Juan campaign was planned.
Vol. IV. p.138, we find Letter 325 to Mr. Murray: —
’Venice: January 25, 1819.
‘You will do me the favour to print privately, for private distribution, fifty copies of “Don Juan.” The list of the men to whom I wish it presented I will send hereafter.’
The poem, as will be remembered, begins with the meanest and foulest attack on his wife that ever ribald wrote, and puts it in close neighbourhood with scenes which every pure man or woman must feel to be the beastly utterances of a man who had lost all sense of decency. Such a potion was too strong to be administered even in a time when great license was allowed, and men were not over-nice. But Byron chooses fifty armour-bearers of that class of men who would find indecent ribaldry about a wife a good joke, and talk about the ‘artistic merits’ of things which we hope would make an honest boy blush.
At this time he acknowledges that his vices had brought him to a state of great exhaustion, attended by such debility of the stomach that nothing remained on it; and adds, ‘I was obliged to reform my way of life, which was conducting me from the yellow leaf to the ground with all deliberate speed.’ But as his health is a little better he employs it in making the way to death and hell elegantly easy for other young men, by breaking down the remaining scruples of a society not over-scrupulous.
Society revolted, however, and fought stoutly against the nauseous dose. His sister wrote to him that she heard such things said of it that she never would read it; and the outcry against it on the part of all women of his acquaintance was such that for a time he was quite overborne; and the Countess Guiccioli finally extorted a promise from him to cease writing it. Nevertheless, there came a time when England accepted ‘Don Juan,’ — when Wilson, in the ‘Noctes Ambrosianae,’ praised it as a classic, and took every opportunity to reprobate Lady Byron’s conduct. When first it appeared the ‘Blackwood’ came out with that indignant denunciation of which we have spoken, and to which Byron replied in the extracts we have already quoted. He did something more than reply. He marked out Wilson as one of the strongest literary men of the day, and set his ‘initiated’ with their documents to work upon him.
One of these documents to which he requested Wilson’s attention was the private autobiography, written expressly to give his own story of all the facts of the marriage and separation.
In the indignant letter he writes Murray on the ‘Blackwood’ article, Vol. IV., Letter 350 — under date December 10, 1819 — he says: —
‘I sent home for Moore, and for Moore only (who has my journal also), my memoir written up to 1816, and I gave him leave to show it to whom he pleased, but not to publish on any account. You may read it, and you may let Wilson read it if he likes — not for his public opinion, but his private, for I like the man, and care very little about the magazine. And I could wish Lady Byron herself to read it, that she may have it in her power to mark any thing mistaken or misstated. As it will never appear till after my extinction, it would be but fair she should see it; that is to say, herself willing. Your “Blackwood” accuses me of treating women harshly; but I have been their martyr; my whole life has been sacrificed to them and by them.’
It was a part of Byron’s policy to place Lady Byron in positions before the world where she could not speak, and where her silence would be set down to her as haughty, stony indifference and obstinacy. Such was the pretended negotiation through Madame de Staël, and such now this apparently fair and generous offer to let Lady Byron see and mark this manuscript.
The little Ada is now in her fifth year — a child of singular sensibility and remarkable mental powers — one of those exceptional children who are so perilous a charge for a mother.
Her husband proposes this artful snare to her, — that she shall mark what is false in a statement which is all built on a damning lie, that she cannot refute over that daughter’s head, — and which would perhaps be her ruin to discuss.
Hence came an addition of two more documents, to be used ‘privately among friends,’ and which ‘Blackwood’ uses after Lady Byron is safely out of the world to cast ignominy on her grave — the wife’s letter, that of a mother standing at bay for her daughter, knowing that she is dealing with a desperate, powerful, unscrupulous enemy.
’Kirkby Mallory: March 10, 1820.
‘I received your letter of January 1, offering to my perusal a Memoir of part of your life. I decline to inspect it. I consider the publication or circulation of such a composition at any time as prejudicial to Ada’s future happiness. For my own sake, I have no reason to shrink from publication; but, notwithstanding the injuries which I have suffered, I should lament some of the consequences.
’A. Byron.
‘To Lord Byron.’
Lord Byron, writing for the public, as is his custom, makes reply: —
’Ravenna: April 3, 1820.
‘I received yesterday your answer, dated March 10. My offer was an honest one, and surely could only be construed as such even by the most malignant casuistry. I could answer you, but it is too late, and it is not worth while. To the mysterious menace of the last sentence, whatever its import may be — and I cannot pretend to unriddle it — I could hardly be very sensible even if I understood it, as, before it can take place, I shall be where “nothing can touch him further.” . . . I advise you, however, to anticipate the period of your intention, for, be assured, no power of figures can avail beyond the present; and if it could, I would answer with the Florentine: —
‘“Ed io, che posto son con loro in croce
. . . . . e certo
La fiera moglie, più ch’altro, mi nuoce.”
’BYRON.
‘To Lady Byron.’
Two things are very evident in this correspondence: Lady Byron intimates that, if he publishes his story, some consequences must follow which she shall regret.
Lord Byron receives this as a threat, and says he doesn’t understand it. But directly after he says, ‘Before IT can take place, I shall be,’ etc.
The intimation is quite clear. He does understand what the consequences alluded to are. They are evidently that Lady Byron will speak out and tell her story. He says she cannot do this till after he is dead, and then he shall not care. In allusion to her accuracy as to dates and figures, he says: ‘Be assured no power of figures can avail beyond the present’ (life); and then ironically advises her to anticipate the period, — i.e. to speak out while he is alive.
In Vol. VI. Letter 518, which Lord Byron wrote to Lady Byron, but did not send, he says: ‘I burned your last note for two reasons, — firstly, because it was written in a style not very agreeable; and, secondly, because I wished to take your word without documents, which are the resources of worldly and suspicious people.’
It would appear from this that there was a last letter of Lady Byron to her husband, which he did not think proper to keep on hand, or show to the ‘initiated’ with his usual unreserve; that this letter contained some kind of pledge for which he preferred to take her word
, without documents.
Each reader can imagine for himself what that pledge might have been; but from the tenor of the three letters we should infer that it was a promise of silence for his lifetime, on certain conditions, and that the publication of the autobiography would violate those conditions, and make it her duty to speak out.
This celebrated autobiography forms so conspicuous a figure in the whole history, that the reader must have a full idea of it, as given by Byron himself, in Vol. IV. Letter 344, to Murray: —
‘I gave to Moore, who is gone to Rome, my life in MS., — in seventy-eight folio sheets, brought down to 1816 . . . also a journal kept in 1814. Neither are for publication during my life, but when I am cold you may do what you please. In the mean time, if you like to read them you may, and show them to anybody you like. I care not. . . .’
He tells him also: —
‘You will find in it a detailed account of my marriage and its consequences, as true as a party concerned can make such an account.’
Of the extent to which this autobiography was circulated we have the following testimony of Shelton Mackenzie, in notes to ‘The Noctes’ of June 1824.
In ‘The Noctes’ Odoherty says: —
‘The fact is, the work had been copied for the private reading of a great lady in Florence.’
The note says: —
‘The great lady in Florence, for whose private reading Byron’s autobiography was copied, was the Countess of Westmoreland. . . . Lady Blessington had the autobiography in her possession for weeks, and confessed to having copied every line of it. Moore remonstrated, and she committed her copy to the flames, but did not tell him that her sister, Mrs. Home Purvis, now Viscountess of Canterbury, had also made a copy! . . . From the quantity of copy I have seen, — and others were more in the way of falling in with it than myself, — I surmise that at least half a dozen copies were made, and of these five are now in existence. Some particular parts, such as the marriage and separation, were copied separately; but I think there cannot be less than five full copies yet to be found.’
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 802