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ASTARTE 
 
ANNE ISABELLA MILBANKE WHEN ABOUT 
 TEN YEARS OLD 
 
 Ajier Hoppner 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 A FRAGMENT OF TRUTH CONCERNING 
 
 GEORGE GORDON BYRON, SIXTH 
 
 LORD BYRON 
 
 RECORDED BY HIS GRANDSON 
 
 RALPH MILBANKE, EARL OF LOVELACE 
 
 NEW EDITION • WITH MANY 
 
 ADDITIONAL LETTERS • EDITED 
 
 BY MARY COUNTESS OF LOVELACE 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CHRISTOPHERS 
 
 MCMXXI 
 
/'A 
 l9Qi 
 
 ^So^rj^A 
 
 -i'c 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY THE EDITOR 
 
 THE original edition of " Astarte," so named after the 
 character in Byron's " Manfred," appeared first in 
 the year 1905. The author had intended to write for 
 private circulation only, desiring above all things to avoid 
 the possibility of making money out- of the story of his 
 ancestors, but he found it necessary to protect the copy- 
 right of his book by going through the form of publica- 
 tion. Out of two hundred copies printed a small number 
 only were sold to approved purchasers, selected from a 
 long list of applicants. The remainder were given away. 
 The few copies that have since then from time to time 
 reached the auction room have realised very high prices. 
 
 " Astarte " has therefore been read hitherto by 
 comparatively few persons, but it is known by hearsay 
 to a great many. It has-been almost inevitably misre- 
 presented as an immoral book, unnecessarily raking up 
 a half-forgotten scandal. Those who know the pain and 
 travail of mind with which it was produced, and how 
 distasteful to the author was the duty of clearing away 
 once for all the cloud of calumnies and injustices which 
 had settled round certain facts, feel that the time has 
 come for defending his memory. His book shall speak 
 for itself. He had always foreseen that it must sooner 
 or later be g|ven to a wider public. In his own preface 
 he said : 
 
 " Apocryphal personalities about the Byrons were 
 what forced the preparation of ' Astarte ' ; and some 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 preliminary notice has been taken of that swollen 
 triumph of deception which seemed everlasting, though 
 doomed to burst by dint of time. This is done in the 
 first two chapters, headed : ' Lady Byron's Policy of 
 Silence,' and ' Informers and Defamers.' They are not 
 quite in their right place at the beginning, and I should 
 have liked to transfer their substance, somewhat com- 
 pressed and fortified, to an appendix, instead of leaving 
 them in front of the essential part of the history. The 
 change could not now be made without considerable 
 inconvenience, but it is recommended that the second 
 part of ' Astarte ' be read before looking at Chapters I 
 and II of the First Part." 
 
 In the opinion of various good judges of literature, 
 and especially of the late William De Morgan, a life-long 
 friend of the author, " Astarte " had suffered from the 
 inclusion of certain extraneous matter. This was of two 
 kinds : first, an unnecessary arnount of detail about 
 individuals who were concerned with the records of 
 Byron's life immediately after his death ; and second, 
 a considerable mass of quotation, consisting largely of 
 extracts from French sources, dealing principally with 
 Byron and the epoch of the French Restoration. This 
 last, mainly collected in the Appendices of the Original 
 Edition, is excellent reading for lovers of literature, but 
 it is not of the highest relevance. 
 
 I have acted on this opinion, but only with the 
 greatest caution. In the first two chapters only of the 
 Original Edition, "Lady Byron's Policy of Silence" 
 and " Informers and Defamers," I have made a strictly 
 limited number of excisions, and I have adopted Love- 
 lace's own suggestion in the passage above quoted, and 
 have printed these two chapters and the following one 
 "When we Dead Awake," after Part II. instead of 
 before it ; Chapters I. to V. of this edition comprise 
 
 vi 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 what was originally Part II. The change certainly 
 makes for greater clearness. Apart from these slight 
 alterations, the text is exactly as given in the original 
 edition. At the close of that text I have introduced 
 much important new matter which I will describe 
 later. 
 
 " Astarte " is not so much a narrative as a commentary 
 upon events and discussions very familiar to the writer's 
 own generation. As these cannot be equally familiar 
 to the present one, I give the following explanation : 
 
 When, in the year 1816, Lord Byron, then at the 
 height of his fame, separated from his young wife — after 
 only twelve months of married life — the sensation created 
 in the social and literary world was immense. No 
 reason for their parting being made public by either side, 
 speculations and rumours of every kind were rife. The 
 most serious of the latter was to the effect that a guilty 
 connection existed between Byron and his own half- 
 sister, Augusta (Byron), wife of Colonel George Leigh, 
 and mother of several children. This rumour, supported 
 by the theme of Byron's " Manfred," was discredited at 
 the time and for many years afterwards by the conduct 
 of Lady Byron, who continued apparently to keep up 
 an affectionate intimacy with Mrs. Leigh, and never 
 by word or deed confirmed the accusations against her 
 and Lord Byron. In the course of years these accusa- 
 tions were forgotten by all save a very few persons, 
 possessed of real information. Mrs. Leigh died in 1851 
 and Lady Byron in i860. In 1869, nine years after the 
 latter event, Mrs. Beecher Stowe electrified the reading 
 world both in England and America by the announcement 
 that Lady Byron had (a few years before her death) 
 confided to her that the story of the guilt of Byron and 
 Augusta was in fact true. 
 
 Many persons now alive must remember the hubbub 
 
 vii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 caused by this publication,^ and the storm of obloquy 
 that was poured out in the press not only upon Mrs. Stowe 
 but upon the memory of Lady Byron, whose confidence 
 had been thus unscrupulously betrayed. For many 
 years speculations upon the " Byron Mystery " con- 
 tinued to be published in innumerable forms, and the 
 defenders of Lord Byron — often obviously insincere — 
 revelled in accusations against Lady Byron, alternately 
 of malicious calumny or of an insanely morbid imagina- 
 tion. " Astarte " is the answer to these accusations. 
 
 Those who wish to study the life of Byron should 
 read the recent excellent biography of him, written 
 by Ethel Colburne Mayne,^ the only " Life " which 
 gives a really comprehensive and impartial picture 
 of the poet and his surroundings. The monumental 
 edition of Lord Byron's " Letters and Journals," 
 edited by Rowland Prothero,^ is of course, well known 
 to students. Moore's " Life," apart from other faults, is 
 written from very insufficient materials, and is now quite 
 superseded. 
 
 The original narrative of " Astarte " ends with 
 Chapter VIII. Immediately after this, and before the 
 Appendices, will be found in Chapters IX., X. and 
 XL a number of new letters, chosen and collated by 
 me from original documents in my possession. These 
 are : — 
 
 I. Some of the correspondence between Lady Byron, 
 Mrs. Leigh and Mrs. Villiers^in 1816, hitherto unpub- 
 lished, but occasionally quoted from in Chapter III., 
 pp. 60 to 66. 
 
 1 "The True Story of Lady Byron's Life," by Harriet Beecher Stowe, 
 Macmillan's Magazine, September, 1869 : published simultaneously in the 
 Atlantic Monthly. 
 
 2 " Byron," by Ethel Colburne Mayne. Methuen. 1912. 
 ' Now Lord Ernie. 
 
 ♦ Hon. Therese Parker, daughter of first Lord Boringdon, and wife of the Hon. 
 George ViUiers. See note, Chapter IIL, p. 57. 
 
 viii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 2. An inscription apparently sent by Augusta to 
 Byron with a lock of hair, and endorsed by him. 
 
 3. The full text of some of Byron's letters to Augusta, 
 1816 to 1823, and three letters to Lady Byron. 
 
 I have included these in response to a generally ex- 
 pressed criticism to the effect that the narrative of 
 " Astarte " was not sufficiently supported by documents. 
 They by no means exhaust the evidence to the same effect 
 in my hands. Lovelace had been much influenced by 
 Sir Leslie Stephen's wish that he should print as few as 
 possible of " poor Mrs. Leigh's very painful letters," and 
 he also realised that any short selections from the corre- 
 spondence of the three women above described could not 
 be convincing. Perhaps only those who have read in its 
 entirety this long series of letters, which continued at 
 irregular intervals from 1816 to 1851, continually touch- 
 ing on the same problems as developed by time, can 
 realise its full significance. In addition, these letters 
 will answer, I think finally, one of the principal objec- 
 tions to the argument of " Astarte," made especially by 
 women, that Lady Byron could not have continued to 
 show affection, or even pity, for Augusta, if at the time 
 she had really believed in her guilt. Many years later, 
 questioned about these things by the friend of her old 
 age, Frederick Robertson, the great preacher. Lady 
 Byron said, " I loved her, and I love her still ! " From 
 this long series of letters and from other correspondence 
 in his possession, the author drew his appreciations of 
 character and many sidelights upon events. His main 
 narrative is founded upon Lady Byron's " Statements." 
 For a full description of these see Note to page 21. 
 This and all other notes added by the Editor to the 
 original matter of " Astarte " are printed in square 
 brackets. 
 
 The most just criticism of " Astarte " was that it 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Perhaps it would have been better never to publish 
 any thing about Lord Byron when he was dead ; but 
 after a heavy accumulation of coarse misrepresentation, 
 the dark night of his real history seems less suffocating 
 than the poison of flatteries and familiarities in apo- 
 cryphal compilations. 
 
 The work of invention did not stop at Lord Byron, but 
 was indulged in against Lady Byron with at least equal 
 profusion ; and in addition to a natural wish that 
 unveracities may burst, there are strong reasons for 
 establishing her truth and honour against the unmeasured 
 imposture of certain accusers. Her own authority for 
 such a refutation exists in a paper of directions signed 
 1 8th February, 1850, as well as in the provisions 
 of her will, drawn up in i860. The document of 
 1850 is quoted on page 158. I am in possession 
 of the original manuscripts subject to those trusts, 
 and it is in exercise of the responsibility attached 
 that " Astarte " has been compiled from the documents 
 thus authenticated. 
 
 I have not sought for information outside the papers 
 held on this fiduciary tenure. Of all the books about 
 Lord Byron, I have referred only to those which 
 date far back. I am not familiar with things published 
 about him for some fifteen or twenty years past. 
 Nothing has appeared that I should have sanctioned 
 or condoned. In the absence of acknowledged power 
 to prohibit, I did not care to examine. My duties 
 are not to search for information from sources I 
 mistrust ; and it is unnecessary for me to investi- 
 gate the character of books made up by strangers 
 with uncertain ingredients ; therefore I do not read 
 them. 
 
 On receipt of apphcations to edit poetry or prose of 
 Lord Byron's, I intimated that I would endeavour to 
 deal with the materials that might be forthcoming if 
 they were all placed unreservedly in my hands. Of 
 course I declined to engage myself specifically whilst 
 utterly unacquainted with the manuscripts which must 
 
PREFACE 
 
 have been submitted to me before I could formulate a 
 scheme. Those papers, etc., never were intrusted to me 
 for inspection, and, so far as I was concerned, all pro- 
 posals connected with them naturally fell to the ground. 
 I had refused to pledge myself beforehand what I should 
 put in or leave out, as to which my own discretion had 
 to be absolute. I also declared that I could sanction no 
 rivalries, competitions, and contests amongst publishers 
 or editors. All these communications led to funda- 
 mental disagreement, and negociations were closed with 
 mutually unsatisfactory impressions.^ My principal 
 object would have been to avoid any hasty measure 
 of excessive production, and to moderate the burst of 
 superfluous activity upon Lord Byron. I never could 
 have been a vassal to foreign schemes, however 
 masterful in themselves or meritorious in the eyes of 
 promoters. 
 
 The most essential facts of this fragment of his- 
 tory will be found in pages 33-100,^ which comprise 
 Chapters II, III, and IV of " Astarte." Sir Leslie 
 Stephen's remarks on the documents contained in those 
 chapters are also worthy of attention and are quoted at 
 pages 1 79-1 81. He authorized this use of his letters and 
 gave leave to mention how they came to be written. 
 His spirit of equity and peace is now inaccessible to 
 consultations, but it may be hoped that the reference 
 to him at page 176 would not have been found incorrect 
 or improper, though he could hardly sanction some of 
 the other pages in this book. It will be seen that, while 
 
 ^ [It is fair to say that Mr. Murray has given an account of the transactions 
 between himself and the author of " Astarte " which differs in many respects 
 from the above. Lovelace never saw this rejoinder. His own position in 
 regard to the " Letters and Journals," edited by R. E. Prothero (Lord Ernie), 
 is explained in Chapter VIL of my Memoir, " Ralph Earl of Lovelace." I can 
 say from my own knowledge that the reference on the preceding page to " books 
 made up by strangers " was of a very general character, and was written in 
 allusion to many and various publications. — Ed.] 
 
 " [See Introduction. In the text of this Preface the numbers of the pages 
 referred to have been altered to correspond with those of the present 
 edition.. They still, however, comprise Chapters II., III. and IV. of the 
 present volume.- — Ed.] 
 
 xiii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 what strangers may say. I put on record certain 
 facts and repudiate those deceptions which I ought to 
 notice. 
 
 Having done so, nothing is further from my mind 
 than to take part in discussion ; and I shall adhere in 
 silence to what I have written. 
 
 L. 
 
 July 31, 1905. 
 
TO 
 M. C. L. 
 
 IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF STEADY SYMPATHY AND EN- 
 COURAGEMENT, AND EQUALLY NECESSARY CRITICISM, 
 WITHOUT WHICH THIS ANXIOUS DUTY, IMPOSSIBLE 
 TO NEGLECT AND HARDLY MORE POSSIBLE 
 TO EXECUTE, COULD PERHAPS NEITHER 
 HAVE BEEN UNDERTAKEN NOR 
 CARRIED THROUGH. 
 
 XVU 
 
PAGE 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION BY EDITOR . . v 
 
 PREFACE xi 
 
 CHAPTER I. Byron Characteristics . . i 
 
 Byron's levity, wit and constitutional melancholy. Volup- 
 tuous pessimism. Ferocity. Celtic descent. A man of the 
 past, though destroyer of everything. No prophet of per- 
 fectibility. Of the family of another Celt : — Rene. Byron, 
 with Voltaire, laughs away the religious terror. A labyrinth 
 of contradictions. Byron considers himself an instance of 
 Fichte's theory of two states of existence, of an immutable self 
 contemplating almost with wonder the transient and frantic 
 self. Admiration for Napoleon's superiority to human sym- 
 pathy. Dramatic mobility. Lively interest in his own 
 defects and " consequent slowness in amending them." 
 Goethe on Byron. " Eyes the open portals of the sun " but 
 slightly dissimilar-^-the right eye rather smaller. Descrip- 
 tions by Coleridge, Moore, Medwin, Sir Thomas Lawrence, 
 and Chantrey. Terrifying " under look " like " ces regards 
 qui traversent la t^te " of Napoleon. Superstitious horror 
 felt by some for Lord Byron. Southey mistrusts him like a 
 tiger. He is shunned by the English abroad. Elizabeth 
 Hervey's consternation at his coming to Coppet. Chastity 
 and sobriety thought ridiculous in Byron's time. Signs of 
 death in his skull and heart. Goethe on Byron's exile. 
 Goethe's wonderful insight about Byron. Literary composi- 
 tion not natural to Byron — a true poet only on subjects iden- 
 tified with himself. Resemblance between his smile and 
 Buonaparte's. More sayings of Goethe's about Byron's un- 
 conscious beauties and everlasting negation. Byron's poems 
 felt to be confidential disclosures with special meaning to the 
 initiated. He considers Lady Byron as a fated instrument 
 for his destruction. Augusta Byron's disposition, abomin- 
 able marriage, life struggles, plausibility, equivocations, 
 disasters and death. 
 
 xix 62 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER II. Three Stages of Lord Byron's 
 Life ...-•• -33 
 
 Augusta goes to Lord Byron in London, June, 1813. Their 
 intended journey to Sicily (she in Lady Oxford's place), relin- 
 quished by Lady Melbourne's advice. Byron's confidences 
 about everything to Lady Melbourne and others. His reckless 
 speeches in general society. Reports against Augusta's 
 character. Byron talks about her and shows her letters to 
 other women. His promises of amendment when the mar- 
 riage with Lady Melbourne's niece was arranged. One exist- 
 ing babyish letter from Augusta to Byron, written nineteen 
 days before his marriage. His anger after his marriage when 
 he felt thwarted by his wife and sister. He sends Lady Byron 
 away from his house. Lady Byron arrives at Kirkby and 
 her mother goes to London for a week of consultations. 
 Byron's frantic mood. Demand made to him for a separa- 
 tion. Uproar and reports. Weakness and good intentions of 
 Mrs. Leigh in 1815. Lady Byron goes to her father in London 
 and sees Dr. Lushington. Prevailing reports about Mrs. 
 Leigh, and guarded disclaimers by Lady Byron. Unsuccess- 
 ful mediations of Lord Holland and Mr. Wilmot to settle 
 terms of separation. Signed and attested statement by Dr. 
 Lushington and others of the position between Lady Byron 
 and Mrs. Leigh in March, 1816. Mrs. Leigh moves from Lord 
 Byron's house to St. James's Palace on March 16. On 
 March 17 Hobhouse obtains Byron's consent to principle 
 of separation. Delays and incidents. Byron's farewell letter 
 to his wife on Easter Sunday. He signs separation and leaves 
 England for ever. 
 
 CHAPTER III. " Manfred " . . . .5^ 
 
 Desolation of Lady Byron's life. Intolerable situation 
 with Augusta of tacitly suspended communication. Lady 
 Byron takes upon herself to write and announce to Augusta 
 loss of confidence in character. Augusta in her letters of 
 June, July, and August, 1816, attempts no denial and sub- 
 mits to Lady Byron's changed opinion. Persistent reports. 
 Desperation of Augusta. Lady Byron helps to rehabilitate 
 Augusta in society when there were fears that Augusta would 
 be driven to follow Byron abroad. Uselessness of Augusta's 
 rescue. Lady Byron meets Augusta in London in September 
 and receives explicit oral confession of former circumstances. 
 Augusta also admits her guilt to Mrs. Villiers. Augusta not 
 allowed to be Ada's godmother or to see much of the child. 
 Under Lady Byron's influence Augusta writes coldly to 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER III.— continued. 
 
 Byron. His resentment against every one and revenge in 
 " Manfred." Extracts from " Manfred." Parallel passages 
 from letters. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. Some Correspondence of 
 Augusta Byron . . . . .81 
 
 Lord Byron's letter of May 17, 1819, to Augusta. An 
 open avowal of inextinguishable passion which he says will 
 drive him to destruction. Augusta was the only object that 
 cost him a tear. He will never quite forgive her for that pre- 
 cious piece of reformation and her new resolution, when, after 
 his marriage with that infamous fiend who drove him from 
 the country, Augusta refused to continue to love him as she 
 had loved him. Augusta transmits Byron's letter to Lady 
 Byron for advice. The letter considered as proof of reforma- 
 tion as well as of the prior connection. Feeling of the Victim 
 at being wholly in his power — aware of the precipice on 
 which she stands. Correspondence on Byron's threatened 
 return in December, 1819. Lady Byron expresses anxiety to 
 support and comfort Augusta " in the recovered path of 
 virtue " but gives an emphatic warning that Augusta's 
 remorse could only be aggravated by meeting Byron again, 
 and that such meeting would put an end to further intercourse 
 between the sisters-in-law. Progress of estrangement between 
 Mrs. Leigh and Lady Byron. 
 
 CHAPTER V. Some Correspondence of Anne 
 Isabella Byron ...... loi 
 
 Byron offers his memoirs for perusal by Lady Byron. She 
 sketches a stern answer, about which she consults Colonel 
 Doyle and Dr. Lushington. Lushlngton objects to direct 
 communication from Lady Byron to Lord Byron. Disclo- 
 sure of everything which Mrs. Leigh was most desirous to 
 conceal, conceived by Lushington to be inevitable result of 
 publication. Colonel Doyle wishes Lord Byron to be made 
 aware of the extent of information possessed by Lady Byron. 
 Very laconic answer of refusal to inspect memoir decided on, 
 and close of subject. Lord Byron writes again to Lady Byron 
 asking for future kindness to Augusta. Lady Byron's very 
 last letter to him answering that the past should not prevent 
 her from befriending Augusta Leigh, and that if that assu- 
 rance could tend to calm his mind, she would no longer with- 
 hold it. Lord Byron's letter acknowledging Lady Byron's 
 
 xxi 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER W .—continued. 
 
 harsh but not unfeeling communication. He declares that 
 Augusta's life and his was over when Lady Byron's and his 
 began : " when one ceased the other began— and now both 
 are closed." Byron's life part of the vanished pagan world. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. Lady Byron's Policy of 
 
 Silence . . . . ■ • • ^'S 
 
 Lord Byron's life of no public import, and should not have 
 been told. Mysterious interest of the separation. Weariness 
 and oblivion of the subject in England. Byron's revolu- 
 tionary and deicide attitude. Byron biographies condemned 
 by Lord John Russell, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Canning, 
 Hobhouse and Lord Byron himself. Had written his own 
 memoirs on purpose to prevent others from writing about 
 him. Precipitate and treacherous destruction of those 
 memoirs. A Government Critic and Spy on the contents 
 of the memoirs. Gilford described by Hazlitt, Shelley, 
 etc. Scott's moral laxity about Byron contrasted with 
 Wordsworth's abhorrence. Byron memoirs nowhere coarse 
 but for a few pages in the second part, about adventures at 
 Venice after 1816. Not burnt for or by Lady Byron. 
 Conflict of evidence as to Mrs. Leigh's implication in the 
 memoirs. Mrs. Leigh's approval of the destruction and 
 Lady Byron's ignorance. False charge against Lady 
 Byron of compUcity in the act. Fictitious importance 
 given to Guiccioli. Nemesis of passion. Byron goes to the 
 East to die, drawn by destiny rather than Greece : Jata 
 viam inveniunt. The English cared little and heard over- 
 much about Byron and his grave. Lord Byron's unlucky 
 familiarities and correspondences with parasites. Con- 
 sequent posthumous traffic. Deteriorating influences on 
 Lord Byron. Many of the worst and none of the best 
 of his letters published. Fallacies and hallucinations 
 that causes of Lady Byron's separation had been unknown 
 to Lord Byron, were unrecorded, intangible, non-existent. 
 He was neutralized out of identity. Complete records 
 of grounds of separation have been kept. He was already 
 informed of all that his wife could have told him, and 
 as thoroughly and ably advised as she, by lawyers and 
 friends. Her wish to be forgotten after his death. She 
 could have dispelled the hideous popular delusion about 
 herself. But she had promised to befriend tlie person 
 represented as Astarte. Other reasons for siienqe. The 
 death of her daughter following that of Astarte makes a 
 
 xxii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER Yl.— continued. 
 
 great change. Age and infirmity having come, Lady 
 Byron leaves her papers to be dealt with by trustees, 
 who indefinitely postpone the work. 
 
 CHAPTER Vn. Informers and Defamers . 143 
 
 Guiccioli, " Temple Bar " and Mrs. Beecher Stowe in 1869. 
 Abraham Hayward retained for " Quarterly Review " to 
 divert suspicion from Mrs. Leigh by the blackest imputations 
 against Lady Byron. False pretence of ugliness as a certifi- 
 cate of character. Mrs. Leigh really a delightful woman, 
 whose pagan charm was masked under the " Chichester 
 Gospel." Startling intimations by Byron in verse of the 
 truth about Astarte. Frequency of violations of the pro- 
 hibited degree in his time. Vengeance of " Le Stryge " on 
 the "purple-lined palace of sweet sin." Byron's last in- 
 audible message to his wife. A HeUogabalus of the Old 
 Bailey on " accomplished hypocrites." Deadlock of Lady 
 Byron's trustees. Her directions about papers. Fidelity of 
 her friends. Mrs. Barwell's letter to Mrs. De Morgan ; 
 mention, of "Saturday Review," articles. Relations 
 between Lady Byron and Mrs. Leigh in 1815 and 1816. 
 Gross misuse of letters from Lady Byron selected by Mrs. 
 Leigh for her own exculpation. Lady Byron's kind feehngs 
 and uncertain knowledge of Mrs. Leigh's real circumstances 
 in January, 1816, did not amount to evidence for or against 
 any thing or any one. Obstacles to justice and long-con- 
 tinued misrepresentations. Incestuous charge preferred 
 against SheUey and his sister Elizabeth by " Quarterly 
 Review " itself (and without proof) as a fair argument against 
 atheists, though strictly forbidden to discovery by a wife. 
 Fall of Lord Byron's fame brings heavier loads of Byronese 
 refuse on the market and fails to stop damnatory language 
 against Lady Byron. Lies cannot be endured for ever. 
 
 CHAPTER Vni. " When we Dead Awake " . 175 
 
 A resurrection of Byron ghosts. Sir Leslie Stephen's frank 
 recognition of truth, after being misled partly from natural 
 antipathy to the whol^ subject. His outline of the real case. 
 All material circumstances here included without reserve 
 though limited compass. Points in Lady Byron's character. 
 Excessive renunciation of world. Descriptions by Ticknor, 
 etc. Severe and Utopian ideals. [Note by H. de F. 
 Montgomery.] Adoption of Pascal's system : " Vous ne 
 serez point dans les plaisirs empestes, dans la gloire, dans 
 
 xxiii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 CHAPTER VIII.— continued. 
 
 les delices.— J'aurais bient6t quitte les plaisirs, disent-ils, 
 si j'avais la foi.— Et moi je vous dis : Vous auriez bient6t 
 la foi si vous aviez quitte les plaisirs. Or, c'est a vous 
 a commencer. II est vrai qu'il y a de la peine en entrant 
 dans la piete ; mais cette peine ne vient pas du bien qui 
 commence d'etre en nous, mais du mal qui y est encore." 
 Intense pity for the wretched, sympathy with the calum- 
 niated, suffering and oppressed. Readiness to learn from 
 experience. Sternness, fortitude, generosity, coolness of 
 judgipent, strength of affection. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. Additional Letters : From 
 Anne Isabella Byron, Augusta Leigh and 
 Therese Villiers . . . . -197 
 
 Explanation by Editor. May 6 to May 23, 1816 : 
 Correspondence between Lady Byron and Mrs. Villiers about 
 Mrs. Leigh. June 3 : Important letter of Lady Byron to 
 Mrs. Leigh about future limitation of intercourse. June 6 : 
 Mrs. Leigh's answer. June 4 to July 3 : More letters 
 between Lady Byron and Mrs. Villiers, and between Lady 
 Byron and Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 CHAPTER X. Additional Letters : From 
 Anne Isabella Byron, Augusta Leigh and 
 Therese Villiers (continued) . . . 226 
 
 July 8, 1816 : Lady Byron communicates to Mrs. Villiers 
 her " very great comfort and strong hopes " as to Mrs. 
 Leigh's repentance. July 9 : Mrs. Villiers' answer. July 1 1 
 to 17 : Letters between Lady Byron and Mrs. Leigh. July 18 : 
 Long letter from Mrs. Villiers to Lady Byron describing Mrs. 
 Leigh's state of mind. July 20 to Aug. 17 : More letters 
 between Lady Byron and both the others. Aug. 31 : Lady 
 Byron comes to London. Her memorandum. Short notes 
 between her and Mrs. Leigh subsequent to their interview. 
 Sept. 14 and 15 : Letters between Lady Byron and Mrs. 
 Villiers. Sept. 17 : Letter from Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron, 
 " My Guardian Angel ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XI. Additional Letters : Byron 
 and Augusta . . . . . .263 
 
 Nov. 29, 181 3 : Mrs. Leigh's inscription on a lock of her 
 hair sent to Lord Byron. Aug. 27 to Oct. i, 1816 : Lord 
 Byron's letters to Mrs. Leigh from Diodati. Oct. 15 to 28 : 
 Do. do. from Milan. Dec. 18, 1816, to Feb. 25, 1817 : From 
 
 xxiv 
 
CONTENTS 
 CHAPTER XI.— continued. 
 
 Venice. May lo, 1817 : From Rome. June 3, 1817 : From 
 Venice, with facsimile of signature. June 19, 1 8 17, to July, 
 1819 : From Venice. July 20, 1819 : Lord Byron to Lady 
 Byron from Ravenna. Sept. 10, 1819 : Fragment of letter 
 to Mrs. Leigh. Nov. 28 and Dec. 4, 1819 : To Mrs. Leigh 
 from Venice. Dec. 31, 1 819 : To Lady Byron from Ravenna. 
 Aug. 19, 1820, to Dec. 21, 1820 : To Mrs. Leigh from Ravenna. 
 Jan. II, 1821 : To Lady Byron from Ravenna. June 22, 
 Sept. 13 and Oct. 5, 1821 : To Mrs. Leigh from Ravenna. 
 March 4, 1822 : Do. from Pisa. Oct. 12, 1822 : From Genoa. 
 Jan. 27 and June 23, 1823 : From Genoa. Oct. 8, 1823 : 
 [From Cephalonia ?]. 
 
 NOTES BY THE EDITOR 
 
 I. Mr. Edgcumbe's Theory 
 II. A Portrait Mis-named Lady Byron 
 
 III. Byron's Hair .... 
 
 IV. Mary Anne Clermont . 
 
 APPENDIX A 
 
 Extract fromr Colonel Francis Hastings Doyle's letter to 
 Robert John Wilmot Horton, May 18, 1825. Colonel 
 Doyle's evidence that the Byron Memoirs were burnt with- 
 out Lady Byron's participation or knowledge. 
 
 APPENDIX B 328 
 
 " I speak not — I trace not — I breathe not thy name "— 
 from manuscript that belonged to Lady Byron. 
 
 APPENDIX C 329 
 
 Opening lines to Lara— to Azora — from manuscript that 
 belonged to Lady Byron. 
 
 APPENDIX D 330 
 
 Stanzas to Augusta. 
 
 APPENDIX E 331 
 
 Extract from " Childe Harold," Canto 3 — Rhine Lines 
 
 318 
 321 
 322 
 
 327 
 
 (with lilies of the valley). 
 
 XXV 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 APPENDIX F 333 
 
 Epistle to Augusta. 
 
 APPENDIX G 336 
 
 Stanzas to [Augusta] — from Miss Mercer Elphin- 
 
 stone's copy. 
 
 APPENDIX H 
 
 Omitted. See Introduction, p. vi. 
 
 APPENDIX I AND J 338 
 
 Extracts from the " Saturday Review," September 4 to 
 December 25, 1869. 
 
 APPENDIX K 356 
 
 Chronology of Persons and Events mentioned in this 
 History. 
 
 XXVI 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Anne Isabella Milbanke when about io years 
 OLD, after Hoppner . Frofttispiece 
 
 Augusta's Seal from Letter to Byron of 
 December, 1814 . Woodcut on title-page 
 
 Lord Byron, after a Painting given by him to 
 Dr. Drury on leaving Harrow. Artist 
 UNKNOWN ..... 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 14 
 
 Augusta Leigh, fiiom a Sketch by George 
 
 Hayter, 1812 ...... 26 
 
 Lord Byron, aged about 20, from a Minia- 
 ture BELONGING TO HIS SiSTER AuGUSTA, 
 BOUGHT AFTER HER DEATH BY LaDY NoEL 
 
 Byron ... . ... 38 
 
 Lord Byron, from a Miniature formerly 
 belonqing to his sister augusta, painted 
 BY J. Holmes in 1814 . . . -78 
 
 Anne Isabella Milbanke in her 2oth year, 
 AFTER Miniature by George Hayter. (The 
 first sitting for this likeness was on March 10, 
 181 2, [Sir] G. Hayter being then only 19, 
 though he had exhibited miniatures at the 
 Academy as early as 1809) . . . .184 
 XXV ii 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 Augusta Leigh, from Miniature by J. Holmes 234 
 
 Lord Byron in Albanian Dress : Posthumous 
 
 Portrait by Thomas Phillips, R.A. . 300 
 
 FACSIMILES OF LETTERS 
 
 Letter of June 3RD, 1817 (with signature) . 264 
 „ ,, September 2Ist, 181 8 (with no 
 
 signature) ...... 2Q2 
 
 xxvni 
 
EXPLANATION 
 
 CAPTAIN JOHN BYRON, son of Admiral the 
 Hon. John Byron, married first, 1779, Amelia, 
 Baroness Conyers in her own right, divorced wife of the 
 Marquis of Carmarthen. Of tins marriage was born in 
 January, 1784, Augusta Mary Byron, and her mother 
 died in giving her birth. In 1785 Captain John Byron 
 married secondly Catherine Gordon of Gight, who on 
 22 January, 1788, brought into the world George Gordon, 
 afterwards sixth Lord Byron. Captain Byron died in 
 1 791. The children of these two marriages were hardly 
 at all companions in childhood. The girl was brbught 
 up by her maternal grandmother. Dowager Countess of 
 Holdernesse. The boy was with his mother or at school. 
 In 1807 Augusta Mary Byron married her cousin. Colonel 
 George Leigh ; and it was not till she had been some 
 years a wife and mother that she and her half-brother 
 saw each other with any frequency. For further details 
 see chronological table. Appendix K. 
 
 XXIX 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 spaces resound with their laughter, but " a deep abiding 
 sadness always filled his heart "—in common with 
 another incomplete man of action, Mazzini — who as a 
 poet and a thinker was not without affinity to Byron. 
 They both, " with a few exceptions, despised the 
 present generation." ^ Mazzini found his only con- 
 solation amidst the selfishness and stupidity, the deformi- 
 ties and disasters of humanity of the present, in visions 
 and prophecies of restoration to a lost ideal in an 
 immeasurably remote future. Byron saw in his imagina- 
 tion an incommensurable void gaping beneath over- 
 hanging ledges upon which he was perched, with no 
 possible descent. Bulging precipices drop beneath him 
 to uplands glowing in the tints of June. A sunny mirage 
 from the chasm between his feet becomes the vision of 
 the optimist dreamer, but Byron well knows that no 
 living foot can ever plant itself upon that paradise, the 
 flight to which seems so easy,^ and he takes refuge from 
 the terror of the abyss in formidable flashes of laughter, 
 in fleeting agitations, diversions and illusions. " He 
 gives the tumultuous eagerness of action and the fixed , 
 despair of thought," said HazUtt.^ 
 
 It was noticed * that his feelings, even when most ^ 
 " soft and voluptuous," are " tinged with the same shade 
 of sorrow which gives character and harmony " to the 
 lines : 
 
 " It is the hour when from the boughs 
 The nightingale's high note is heard ; 
 It is the hour when lover's vows 
 Seem sweet in every whispered word." 
 
 ' " Personal Recollections of Mazzini," by M. Blind (" Fortnightly Review," 
 May, 1891, p. 708). 
 
 * " Ye crags upon whose extreme edge 
 I stand, and on the torrent's brink beneath 
 Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs 
 In dizziness of distance ; 
 
 Beautiful I 
 How beautiful is all this visible world I 
 How glorious in its action and itself I " 
 
 " Manfred," Act I, Sc. 2. 
 ^ On the Living Poets. 
 
 * In the " Edinburgh Review." 
 
BYRON CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 Dramatic and voluptuous pessimism seems to have 
 been inborn in him — a sensuous and poetical leaning, 
 which excited unbounded scorn for the unctuous opti- 
 mism which flatters social democracy — the ragged 
 sovereign who exceeds even oriental desp6ts and gods 
 in his taste for compliments. This and certain bitter 
 personal recollections — unavowed wounded feelings — 
 impelled him to burning words of acute hatred/ thus 
 exhausting revenge, for never was language of extreme 
 violence more severed from vindictiveness in action. 
 Ferocity there was in him. A display of moral baseness, 
 of human infamy caught in the act, stirred him to fierce 
 transports of delight. Such cruel rejoicing over the 
 ignominy of man is said to be the resurrection of an ape 
 or tiger ancestor. Unregenerate love of torture has 
 been refined into sardonic exultation at men's vileness. 
 
 It may be that Lord Byron was peculiarly a re-incar- 
 nation of cosmic man, similar in this to Napoleon, who, 
 as was said by Madame de Stael, Stendhal, and Byron 
 himself,^ was a mediaeval Italian risen from the bones 
 of the dead. 
 
 The influence of Lord Byron's descent upon his 
 ambiguity and mobility of character has been too much 
 overlooked. By his fathers he was the offspring of the 
 
 ^ " He who wishes for ' a curse to kill with' may find it in Lord Byron's 
 writings. Yet he has beauty lurking underneath his strength, tenderness 
 sometimes joined with the phrenzy of despair. A flash of golden light some- 
 times follows from a stroke of his pencil, like a falling meteor. The flowers 
 that adorn his poetry bloom over charnel-houses and the grave 1 " (Hazlitt, 
 " Lecture on Living Poets"). 
 
 ^ He said to Lady Byron at Seaham in February, 1815 : "Bonaparte's 
 conduct since his fall is to be traced entirely to the Italian character — for a 
 ! Frenchman or Englishman would have shot himself. An Italian will persevere 
 — waiting for any chance or change." 
 
 At Elba Napoleon wrote : " Ne m'^tant pas donnd la vie, je ne me I'oterai 
 pas non plus, tant qu'elle voudra bien de moi " (Chateaubriand, " Memoires 
 d'Outre-Tombe "). 
 
 It has been recorded, however, that Napoleon tried inefiectually at Fontaine- 
 bleau to poison himself. 
 
 Chateaubriand wrote : " Chez Napoleon, la grandeur du coeur ne r^pondait 
 pas ^ la largeur de la tSte : ses querelles avec les Anglais sont diplorables ; elles 
 r^voltent Lord Byron. Comment daigna-t-il honorer d'un mot ses geSliers ? " 
 
 Hazlitt's " Lecture on Living Poets " quarrels with Lord Byron for " writing 
 both for and against Buonaparte." 
 
 5 B 2 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 him from childhood, and devastated the Hves of himself 
 and those near him — made him a destroyer of all he could 
 reach in private or public. 
 
 " But still there is power ; and power rivets attention 
 and forces admiration. ' He hath a demon ' ; and that 
 is the next thing to being full of the God. His brow 
 collects the scattered gloom : his eye flashes livid fire 
 that withers and consumes. But still we watch the 
 progress of the scathing bolt with interest, and mark 
 the ruin it leaves behind with awe." ^ 
 
 Though it is hardly, if at all, mentioned, he must 
 have read " Rene," wherein Chateaubriand idealized 
 the morbid passion of the revolutionary generation. 
 Byron was curiously addicted to imitating anything that 
 might impress him as a literary image of himself. It 
 is a remarkable coincidence that the remorse of Rene was 
 caused by guilt with a sort of prototype of Astarte. 
 Chateaubriand gave an interesting explanation of the 
 logical necessity to connect the fatal career of Rene 
 with the forbidden relationships. And undoubtedly 
 that particular defiance of perpetual law was character- 
 istic of the age of the French Revolution. ^ 
 
 1 Hazlitt, "Lecture on Living Poets." Mr. Birrell ("William Hazlitt") 
 refers to Lord Byron's greatness as a destroyer : 
 
 " Just as a mournful Scotch proprietor judges of the strength of a gale of 
 wind by walking through his plantations after it has dropped, and ' moaning 
 the expense ' of many a fallen tree, so it is only by reading the lives and letters 
 of his astonished contemporaries and immediate successors that you are able 
 to form some estimate of the power of Byron." 
 
 ^ The atmosphere at that time was prolific of such reports and of a curious 
 latitude of opinion and language. 
 
 Madame de Stael's perfectly legitimate though exaggerated sentiment about 
 her father was sometimes singularly expressed. Necker died April loth, 1804; 
 and in the autumn his daughter published a book on his domestic life and 
 character, in which she expressed the wish that she could have been a contem- 
 porary of his youth, and actually wrote : " Nos destinies auraient pu s'unir 
 pour toujours 1 " 
 
 In some indiscreet confidences, of about 1S03, to Madame de Rtousat, 
 Josephine spoke of Bonaparte as another Caligula : " N'avait-il pas siduit ses 
 soeurs, les uncs apres les autres ? " (" Memoirs of Mme. de Rimusat," i. 204). 
 This might have been suggested by : " Cum omnibus sororibus suis stupri 
 consuetudinem fecit " (Suetonius, " Caligula," xxiii.). In the spirit 0! 
 " Memento, ait, omnia mihi et in omnes liceri " (Suetonius, " Caligula," xxix.) 
 Bonaparte used to say : " Je ne suis pas un homme comrae un autre, et les loii 
 
 6 
 
BYRON CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 Manfred, with all its underlying reality, was in litera- 
 ture but a Rene in slight disguise. ^ Rene was Chateau- 
 briand himself, Amelie was Lucile, that charming sister 
 in whom was embodied all the genius of Rene in the ideal 
 and innocent perfection of nature and sincerity. She 
 could not write, but only feel and die.^ The question : 
 What was the mystery ? Was there a mystery about 
 Lucile ? can be answered fearlessly : There is nothing to 
 deform the pure and touching portrait of Lucile in the 
 " Memoires d'Outre Tombe," so fugitive in its vivid 
 melancholy. There the resemblance between Manfred 
 and Rene ends. Amelie escapes all comparison with 
 Astarte.^ 
 
 de morale ou de convenance ne peuvent 4tre faites pour moi " (" Madame de 
 Rimusat," i. 278). 
 
 A report about Bonaparte and his youngest sister Caroline (born at Ajaccio, 
 March 25th, 1782, married to Joachim Murat January 20th, 1800, died at 
 Florence May i8th, 1839) was one principal reason for the alienation of the 
 First Consul from General Moreau. Madame Moreau's mother, during a visit 
 to Malmaison, made some sarcastic allusions to the story, which could never be 
 forgiven by Bonaparte. 
 
 The twelve Caesars were sacred beings while Napoleon ruled. It was 
 seditious to speak evil of masters of the world. The providential judgments 
 of Tacitus were resented by Napoleon like a condemnation of himself. Chateau 
 briand's sentence : " C'eat en vain que Neron prospere, Tacite est d^ja n^ dans 
 I'empire, . . . et dija I'integre Providence a livr6 k un enfant obscur la gloire 
 du maitre du monde," in 1807 caused the suppression of " le Mercure," — orders 
 being nearly given also to arrest the writer. Napoleon said : " Chateaubriand 
 croit-il que je suis un imbecile, que je ne le comprends pas I Je le ferai sabrer 
 sur les marches des Tuileries." 
 
 1 " ' Manfred n'est qu'un Ren^ hablll6 k la Shakespeare ' (ChSnedolU). Le 
 mot est bien dit si Ton n'en abuse pas " (Sainte Beuve, " Chateaubriand et son 
 groupe litt^raire sous I'empire," Quinzieme Lejon, p. 364). 
 
 Beranger said that Byron was of the family of Ren^. Villemain wrote of 
 Byron in the " Biographie Universelle " ? " Quelques pages incomparables de 
 Rene avaient ^puisi ce caractere po^tique. Je ne sais si Byron les imitait ou 
 les renouvelait de ginie." 
 
 * " On a entendu . . . d'admirables pages de Lucille sa soeur, V Amelie de 
 Rene, g^nie de m^lancolie ^gal au sien, qui aurait eu I'art, si elle avait voulu, mais 
 elle pratiqua la sensibility plut6t que de la d^peindre. Inquiete, malheureuse 
 d'imagination et assi^g^e de terreurs presque comme Jean-Jacques elle se d^vora. 
 Ce que Ren6 a dit, elle I'a fait. Quelqu'un entendant ces lettres de Lucile 
 regrettait qu'elle n'eut pas ^crit. — Laissez done, r^pondit un plus sage, laissez 
 un peu de sensibility k Vital de nature et d'entiere sincerity ; il en faut aussi 
 comme cela ; on n'a pas de regret k avoir : a chacun son r61e ; ils se le sont 
 partagi ; il a ^crit pour elle, elle est morte pour lui " (Sainte Beuve, " Chateau- 
 briand et son groupe," etc., Troisieme Leipon, p. 97). 
 
 ' " Amdie avait refu de la nature quelque chose de divin ; son ame avait les 
 mimes graces innocentes que son corps ; la douceur de ses sentiments ^tait 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Augusta was not the heir of Lucile, though Byron 
 inherited Rene's ennui and rherie — ^his romantic volup- 
 tuousness, his extreme violence against political rulers, 
 his disbelief in almost everything.^ 
 
 Chateaubriand excepted honour and religion,— if he 
 really excepted religion. Miss Randall said (see Moore's 
 Diary) that Chateaubriand took up religion as Byron 
 took up wickedness — as a subject — ^without either of 
 them having much of the spirit of the subject chosen in 
 his heart ; it was for external application, if it could 
 stop there, but the adoption of religion or wickedness 
 as a practice, as it were not seriously, may affect the 
 experimenter much more than skin deep. 
 
 Byron had been worked hard at Calvinistic religion 
 in childhood, and the first thing he did on becoming his 
 own master was to put all that aside with the profane 
 grin of "an unbelieving schoolboy " (Moore's phrase). 
 Much greater men than he have failed to shake off that 
 iron-bound theology after a lifetime of study ; and Byron, 
 who had not studied at all (beyond the ennui he suffered 
 from the Bible in infancy), came without effort to 
 the same conclusions as Hume or Lucretius. Renan 
 might say : " Let us not hasten to acknowledge Byron 
 
 infinie ; il n'y avait rien que de suave et d'un peu reveur dans son esprit ; on 
 eut dit que son coeur sa pens^e et sa voix soupiraient comme de concert ; elle 
 tenait de la femme la timidity et 1' amour, et de I'Ange la purete et la m^lodie." — 
 " Une question qu'on voudrait repousser se glisse malgr^ nous : Ren6 est bien 
 Ren6, Am^lie est bien Lucile ; qu'est-ce done ? et qu'y a-t-il eu de r^el au fond 
 dans le reste du mystere f Poete, comment donner a deviner de telles situations, 
 si elles ont eu quelque chose de vrai ? Comment les donner a supposer, si elles 
 sont un rSve ? " (Saint Beuve, " Chateaubriand et son groupe," etc., Troisieme 
 Le^on, p. 94). 
 
 1 " Notre d^faut capital est I'ennui, le dugout de tout et le doute perp^tuel." 
 " L'homme sage et inconsoli de ce siecle sans conviction ne rencontre un 
 miserable repos que dans I'atheisme politique. Que les jeunes generations se 
 bercent d'esp^rances, avant de toucher au but, elles attendront de longues 
 anndes. Les ages vont au nivellement giniral, mais ils ne hatent point leur 
 marche i I'appel de nos d^sirs. Le Temps est une sorte d'Etemit^ appropri^e 
 aux choses mortelles ; il compte pour rien les races et leurs douleurs dans les 
 ceuvres qu'il accomplit." 
 
 " Le ciel fait rarement naitre ensemble l'homme qui veut et l'homme qui pent. 
 En fin de compte, est-il aujourd'hui une chose pour laquelle on voulut se donner 
 la peine de sortlr de son lit f On s'endort au bruit des royaumes tomb^s pendant 
 la nuit, et que Ton balaie chaque matin devant nos portes " (" Congr^s de 
 V^rone "). 
 
 8 
 
BYRON CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 as greater than St. Augustine, Pascal, Calvin, or 
 Dr. Chalmers. It is not e\Aery child of the gutter 
 who has the right of Lucretius to profess himself an 
 atheist." ^ 
 
 But, after all, the world owes something to the 
 unbelieving schoolboy, to flippant urchins who laughed 
 away, or helped to " laugh away hope " ^ of hell, made 
 tangible in dominion of the saints, pious founders of an 
 earthly hell. Without the obscene laughter of Voltaire, 
 who knew nothing and taught nothing, stakes and 
 faggots might have continued till now. The imp Byron 
 (as Lady Holland called him) and the ape Voltaire * 
 were partly in the right against churches without God 
 and kings above the law. One may regret some things, 
 but not everything, in what Renan called " I'effroyable 
 aventure du moyen age." * 
 
 1 " De ce qu'un gamin de Paris dcarte par une plaisanterie des croyances dont 
 la raison d'un Pascal ne r^ussit pas h se d^gager, il ne faut cependant pas conclure 
 que Gavroche est sup^rieur a Pascal. Je I'avoue, je me sens parfois humili^ qu'il 
 m'ait fallu cinq ou six ans de recherches ardentes,rh^breu, les langues sdmitiques, 
 GeseniuSj Ewald, pour arriver juste au r^sultat que ce petit drole atteint tout 
 d'abord. . . . Non, je ne veux pas croire que mes labeurs aient 6ti vains, ni 
 qu'en th^ologie on puisse avoir raison a aussi bon march^ que le croient les 
 rieurs. En r^alit6, peu de personiies ont le droit de ne pas croire au christianisme. 
 Si tons savaient combien le filet tissi par les th^ologiens est solide, comme il est 
 difficile d'en rompre les mailles, quelle Erudition on y a d^ploy^e, quelle habitude 
 il faut pour d^nouer tout cela I " (" Souvenirs d'enfance," pp. 133, 134). 
 
 ^ A phrase of Lord Byron, often quoted by Lady Byron. 
 
 ' Haydon marked " the cutting satire, the dreadful -wit, the sneering chuckle 
 of Voltaire " — " charitable from contempt, blasphemous from envy, pious from 
 fear, and foul from a disgust at human nature." "It was as if a wrinkled fiend 
 had put his grinning and ghastly face into a summer cloud, and changed its 
 silvery sunniness into a black, heavy, suffocating vapour." (Life, ii. 71.) 
 " The Excursion " has : " a fond, a vain old man." 
 
 * " Je me reproche quelquefois d' avoir contribu^ au triomphe de M. Homais 
 (the Voltairean apothecary in ' Madame Bovary ') sur son cur6. Que voulez- 
 vous ? c'est M. Homais qui a raison. Sans M. Homais nous serions tous bruMs 
 vifs. Mais, je le r^pite, quand on s'est donn^ bien du mal pour trouver la 
 v6rit4, il en coute d'avouer que ce sont les frivoles, ceux qui sont bien r^solus k 
 ne lire jamais saint Augustin ou saint Thomas d'Aquin, qui sont les vrais sages. 
 Gavroche et M. Homais arrivant d'embl^e et avec si peu de peine au dernier 
 mot de la philosophie 1 c'est bien dur k penser " (" Souvenirs d'enfance "). 
 
 The redoubtable pen of HazUtt compared Lord Byron to " a solitary peak, all 
 access to which is cut off not more by elevation than distance. He is seated on 
 a lofty eminence, ' cloud-capt,' or reflecting the last rays of setting suns ; . . . 
 and in his poetical moods . . . taking up ordinary men and things with haughty 
 indifference. . . . He exists not by sympathy, but by antipathy." But Hazlitt 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Byron was so complex, contradictory, antithetical, 
 as the craniologists used to say, as to elude analysis. 
 The more his conflicting words and perplexing actions 
 are compiled into books, the more enigmatic, unknow- 
 able, he becomes. He finally remains a riddle in 
 human nature ; its solution is equally impractic- 
 able and unprofitable. Lady Byron once wrote of 
 him (somewhere about 1817) : " His character is a 
 labyrinth ; but no clue would ever find the way to his 
 heart.''^ 
 
 He has been described as having " two selves, one 
 frantic, the other calm, and contemplating almost with 
 wonder the frenzy," as existing " almost in the voice 
 of mankind," and dwelling in cold and remote inac- 
 cessibility to all human sympathy — " natura remota 
 ab nostris rebus seiunctaque longe." 
 
 Lady Blessington reported that he said one day : 
 " You will believe me, what I sometimes believe myself, 
 mad, when I tell you that I seem to have two states of 
 existence, one purely contemplative, during which the 
 crimes, faults, and follies of mankind are laid open to 
 my view (my own forming a prominent object in the 
 picture), and the other active, when I play my part 
 in the drama of life, as if impelled by some power 
 over which I have no control, though the conscious- 
 ness of doing wrong remains. It is as though I had 
 the faculty of discovering error without the power of 
 avoiding it." ^ 
 
 Lady Byron, in the course of 181 8, wrote ^ that " his 
 moralising and prophecies are a curious instance of 
 that judgment which beholds as a spectator the destruc- 
 tive passions with which it is associated. It is an 
 illustration of Fichte's doctrine as represented by 
 Mme. de Stael : ' le Moi qui sert de base ^ tout ; mais 
 
 also commemorates " Byron's glowing rage " and " applies to him more than 
 to any of his contemporaries " Gray's image : " Thoughts that glow, and words 
 that burn." 
 
 1 " Journal of Conversations with Lord Bvron," p. ii8. 
 
 ' In some manuscript notes on " Childe Harold." 
 
 10 
 
BYRON CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 ' il distingue encore dans ce Moi celui qui est passager, 
 ' et celui qui est durable.' " ^ 
 
 1 " De I'AUemagne. Troisieme Partie. Chapitre VII. Des Philosophes les 
 plus c^lebres de I'Allemagne, avant et apr^s Kant." 
 
 Madame de Stael proceeds : " En effet, quand on i6Rich.it sur les operations 
 de I'entendement, on croit assister soi-mSme i sa pens^e, on croit la voir passer 
 comme I'onde, tandis que la portion de soi qui la contemple e.it iramuable. 
 
 " II arrive souvent 4 ceux qui r^unissent un caractdre passionn^ k un esprit 
 observateur, de se regarder souffrir, et de sentir en eux-mSmes un ^tre sup^rieur 
 k sa propre peine, qui la voit, et tour-4-tour la blSme ou la plaint. 
 
 " II s'op^re des changements continuels en nous, par les circonstances 
 ext^rieures de notrc vie, et nianmoins nous avons toujours le sentiment de 
 notre identity. Qu'est-ce done qui atteste cette identity, si ce n'cst le Moi 
 toujours le mSme, qui voit passer devant son tribunal le Moi modifi^ par les 
 impressions ext^rieures ? " 
 
 The minister Ancillon told Ticknor on May 25th, 1836, that when Madame 
 de Stael was at Berlin in 1804, " she had the men of letters of the time as it 
 were trotted up and down before her successively to see their paces. I was 
 present," he went on, " when Fichte's turn came. After talking with him a 
 little while, she said^ ' Now, Mons. Fichte, could you be so kind as to give me, in 
 fifteen minutes or so, a sort of idea or apercu of your system, so that I may 
 know clearly what you mean by your ich, your moi, for I am entirely in the dark 
 about it.' 
 
 " The notion of explaining in a petit quart d'heure, to a person in total darkness, 
 a system which he had been his whole life developing from a single principle 
 within himself, and spinning, as it were, out of his own bowels, till its web 
 embraced the whole universe, was quite shocking to the philosopher's dignity. 
 However, being much pressed, he began, in rather bad French, to do the best 
 he could. But he had not gone more than ten minutes before Madame de Stael, 
 who had followed him with the greatest attention, interrupted him with a 
 countenance full of eagerness and satisfaction : ' Ah I c'est assez, je comprends, 
 je vous comprends parfaitement, Mons. Fichte. Your system is perfectly 
 illustrated by a story in Baron Munchhausen's travels.' Fichte's face looked 
 like a tragedy ; the faces of the rest of the company a good deal like a comedie 
 larmoyante. Madame de Stael heeded neither, but went on : ' For, when the 
 Baron arrived once on the bank of a vast river, where there was neither bridge, 
 nor ferry, nor even a poor boat or raft, he was at first confounded, quite in 
 despair ; until at last his wits coming to his assistance, he took a good hold of his 
 own sleeve and jumped himSelf over to the other side. Now, Mons. Fichte, this, 
 I take it, is just what you have done with your ich, your moi ; n'est-ce pas .' ' 
 
 " There was so much truth in this, and so much aprit, that, of course, the 
 effect was irresistible on all but poor Fichte himself. As for him, he never 
 forgot or forgave Madame de Stael, who certainly, however, had no malicious 
 purpose of offending him, and who, in fact, praised him and his ich most abun- 
 dantly in her De I'Allemagne " {" Life of George Ticknor "). 
 
 Her summary of that system is that " Fichte ne considcre le monde ext^rieur 
 que comme une borne de notre existence, sur laquelle la pens^e travaille. Dans 
 son systeme, cette borne est cr^ee par I'ame elle-meme, dont I'activit^ constante 
 s'exerco sur le tissu qu'elle a formi . . . mais la nature et 1' amour perdent tout 
 leur charme par ce systeme ; car si les objets que nous voyons et les Stres que 
 nous aimons ne sont rien que I'ceuvre de nos idees, c'est I'homrae lui-meme qu'on 
 pent consid^rer comme le grand celibataire des mondes." 
 
 Madame de Stael's tactless wit may be compared to the flash of nonsense in 
 
 II 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 He was an artist in emotion, — one who could only act 
 out sensations that really agitated him ; but his moods 
 were almost as much at command as those of that greatest 
 of all comedians, Napoleon, whose passions certainly 
 existed with extreme violence, and yet he also contrived 
 to act them with dramatic effect calculated to help in his 
 designs. 1 Byron had no hypocrisy, for that, as defined 
 by Hazlitt, " is the setting up a pretention to a feeling 
 you never had and have no wish for." ^ What could 
 be imputed to him was " the voluntary overcharging or 
 prolongation of a real sentiment," in consequence of 
 which, and of the alternations of his dual nature, many 
 were misled about him, and some said he was a prince of 
 duplicity. He adapted himself too conspicuously to the 
 tone of company of the meanest kind. His tumultuous 
 spirits at Kinnaird's brandy parties (presided over by a 
 left-handed Mrs. Kinnaird) were over-acted.^ Those 
 ignoble boon companions deceived themselves when they 
 thought Byron most gay and unconcerned. When he 
 took a part in the low comedy of bad company, his 
 immutable self,' unknown to such bystanders, was 
 
 vphich Mr. Anstey imitated the transcendental prose of Mr. Herbert Spencer : 
 " And these illusive and primordial cognitions, or pseud'ideas, are homogeneous 
 entities which may be differentiated objectively or subjectively, according as 
 they are presented as Noumenon or Phenomenon. Or, in other words, they 
 are only cognoscible as a colligation of incongruous coalescences " (" The 
 Travelling Companions "). 
 
 ■I Talleyrand said : " Ce diable d'homme trompe sur tous les points. Ses 
 passions mimes vous ^chappent ; car il trouve encore le moyen de les feindre, 
 quoiqu'elles existent r^ellement." 
 
 " II semblait de la meilleure humeur du monde ; je le remarquai. . . . Bona- 
 parte se mit k rire, et continua ses jeux avec I'enfant. Tout a coup, on vint 
 i'avertir que le cercle itah form^. Alors, se relevant brusquement et la gaiet^ 
 disparaissant de ses Wvres, je fus frappie de I'expression severe qui la rempla^a 
 subitement, son teint parut presque palir ^ sa volont^, ses traits se contracterent, 
 et tout en moins de temps que je ne mets ^ le center. En pronon^ant d'une voix 
 ^mue ces seuls mots : ' Allons, mesdames 1 ' il marcha pr^cipitamment, entra 
 dans le salon, et, ne saluant personne, il s'avanfa vers I'ambassadeur d'Angle- 
 terre." Thus began the celebrated scene, at the end of which, " le flegme de 
 I'Anglais en fut mfime diconcert^, et il eut beaucoup de peine k trouver des 
 paroles pour lui ripondre." (" Mtooires de Madame de R^musat," i. 117-120.) 
 
 ^ " Sketches and Essays " (1839 edition), p. 44. 
 
 ' From Ransom's bank the Hon. Douglas Kinnaird practised vice, and 
 preached the Old Testament to Lord Byron, whom he exhorted to write Hebrew 
 Melodies. 
 
 12 
 
BYRON CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 watching in tragic contemplation of the ribald nightmare, 
 judging and condemning the transient self with the 
 surrounding crew. 
 
 He often talked of Napoleon, of whom he was a great 
 admirer, and said that what he most liked in his character 
 was his want of sympathy, which proved his knowledge 
 of man, as those only could possess sympathy who were 
 in happy ignorance of human nature.^ 
 
 " Tu grandis sans plaisir, tu tombas sans murmure, 
 Rien d'humain ne battait sous ton epaisse armure : 
 Sans haine et sans amour, tu vivais pour penser ; 
 Comme I'aigle regnant dans un del solitairfe, 
 Tu n'avais qu'un regard pour mesurer la terre, 
 Et des serres pour I'embrasser." * 
 
 His gift of creating emotion in himself and others was 
 not more astonishing than the suddenness of its extinc- 
 tion. By that bewildering antinomy which is the only 
 persistent fact observable in him, he could divest him- 
 self, or at least simulate being destitute of that poignant 
 passion he so beautifully describes. 
 
 ' Lady Blessington's " Conversations," etc., p. 132. 
 
 ' Lamartine's " Bonaparte," as quoted in M. Albert Sorel'i " Madame de 
 Stael." She had written in the " Considerations sur la Revolution Fran^aise " : 
 " Loin de me rassurer en voyant Bonaparte plus souvent, il m'intimidoit 
 toujours davantage. Je sentois confus^ment qu'aucune Amotion du coeur ne 
 pouvoit agir sur lui. II regarde une creature hUmaine comme un fait ou comme 
 une chose, mais non comme un semblable. II ne hait plus qu'il n'aime ; il n'y 
 a que lui pour lui ; tout le reste des creatures sont des chifFres. La force de sa 
 volonte consiste dans I'imperturbable calcul de son dgoisme ; c'est un habile 
 joueur d'ichecs dont le genre humaii\ est la partie adverse qu'il se propose de 
 faire ^chec et mat. . . . Je sentois dans son ame une ipie froide et tranchante 
 qui glafoit en blessant ; je sentois dans son esprit une ironie profonde k laquelle 
 rien de grand ni de beau, pas m^me sa propre gloire, ne pouvoit ^chapper ; car 
 il miprisoit la nation dont il vouloit les suffrages, et nulle ^tincelle d'enthousiasme 
 ne se mMoit k son besoin d'ttonner I'espece humaine " (ii. 197-199). 
 
 Mfidame de Stael once (February, 1814) reproved Lord Byron for his want of 
 human sympathy, in which he was a follower of Napoleon : " Si vous avez le 
 tort de ne pas aimer I'espece humaine il me semble qu'elle fait ce qu'elle peut 
 pour se raccomoder avec vous par son suffrage — et la destinde n'a pas maltrait6 
 celui qu'elle a fait le premier po^te de son siecle et tout le reste— traitez ceux 
 qui vous admirent avec un peu plus de bienveillance et sachez moi gr^ de par- 
 donner k votre g^nie tout ce qui a du me d^plaire en vous — ^je voudrais causer 
 avec vous quand m'en trouverez vous digne ? " — 
 
 Lord Byron almost disliked Madame de Stael at their first acquaintance in 
 1813 ; but in 1816 he warmly appreciated her cordial welcome to him in Switzer- 
 land, at the time he was shunned by fair-weather friends. 
 
 13 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Lady Blessington observed in Lord Byron a candour 
 in talking of his own defects, nay, a seeming pleasure in 
 dwelling on them, that she never remarked in any other 
 person. She told him this one day, and he answered : 
 "Well, does not that give you hopes of my amendment ? " 
 Her reply was : " No. I fear, by continually recapitu- 
 lating them, you will get so accustomed to their 
 existence, as to conquer your disgust of them. You 
 remind me of Belcour in 'The West Indian,' when 
 he exclaims : ' No one sins with more repentance 
 or repents with less amendment than I do.' " 
 It appeared to her that the consciousness of his own 
 defects rendered him still less tolerant to those of 
 others.^ 
 
 Goethe said that Byron but dimly understood himself, 
 ever living from hour to hour and passion to passion, he 
 knew not and cared not what he did ; ^ but " the Hke 
 would never come again." ^ There was in him a high 
 degree of that daemonic instinct and attraction which 
 influences others independently of reason, effort, or 
 affection, which sometimes succeeds in guiding where 
 the understanding fails.* 
 
 An eye-witness wrote : 
 
 " If you had seen Lord Byron you could scarcely dis- 
 believe him — so beautiful a countenance I scarcely 
 
 ^ "Journal of Conversations with Lord Byron," pp. ii8, no. Compare 
 Coleridge, than whom " nobody could lecture more sagaciously on his own 
 defects, point out the evil results, and even suggest the remedy " {vide Sir Leslie 
 Stephen in "The New Review," 1895). " Coleridge has such a complete self- 
 knowledge, mixed with intellectual complacency, that he takes a lively interest 
 in contemplating his own shortcomings, and has a ' consequent slowness in 
 amending them.' When there is a dispute at home, Mrs. Coleridge will never 
 see that she is wrong, which seems strangely unreasonable to the husband. He, 
 meanwhile, seeing with singular clearness that he is also wrong, will not take 
 the trouble to improve, which to the wife seems equally unreasonable. Having 
 expounded the theory of the situation with undeniable lucidity, Coleridge 
 assumes that the evil is as good as amended." 
 
 Naturally Coleridge attained virtue and final happiness by swallowing 
 oblivion and metaphysics in regions inaccessible to Mrs. Coleridge. 
 
 ' " Er war zu dunkel viber sich selbst. Er lebte immer leidenschaftlich in 
 den tag bin und wuszte und bedachte nichte, was er that " (To Eckermann, 
 February 24th, 1825). 
 
 ' To Crabb Robinson, August, 1829. 
 
 * In conversation with Eckermann, March 8th, 1831. 
 
 H 
 
LORD BYRON ON LEAVING HARROW 
 After a Painting given by him to Dr. Drury 
 
BYRON CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 ever saw ... his eyes the open portals of the sun — 
 things of Hght and for Hght — " ^ 
 
 Another description says : 
 
 " His eyes, though of a light grey, were capable of all 
 extremes of expression, from the most joyous hilarity 
 to the deepest sadness, from the very sunshine of 
 benevolence to the most concentrated scorn or rage, 
 [as] I once had an opportunity of seeing [on his] 
 suddenly turning round upon me with a look of such 
 intense anger, as, though it lasted not an instant, 
 could not easily be forgot, and of which no better idea 
 can be given than in the words of one who, speaking 
 of Chatterton's eyes, says that fire rolled at the bottom 
 of them.^ 
 
 It might, perhaps, be said that his eyes were placed 
 too near his nose, and that one was rather smaller than 
 the other ; they were of a greyish brown, but of a 
 peculiar clearness, and when animated possessed a fire 
 which seemed to look through and penetrate the 
 thoughts of others, while they marked the inspirations 
 of his own." ^ 
 
 Sir Thomas Lawrence wrote in 1822 : 
 
 " In Lord Byron's countenance you see all the charac- 
 ter ; its keen and rapid genius, its pale intelligence, its 
 profligacy and its bitterness — its original symmetry 
 distorted by the passions, his laugh of mingled merri- 
 ment and scorn — the forehead clear and open, the 
 brow boldly prominent, the eyes bright and dissimilar, 
 the nose finely cut, and the nostril acutely formed — the 
 mouth well formed, but wide, and contemptuous even 
 in its smile, falling singularly at the corners,* and its 
 vindictive and disdainful expression heightened by the 
 massive firmness of the chin, which springs at once 
 
 ' Coleridge (April loth, 1816), Oilman's " Life," Pickering, 1838, p. 236. 
 
 ^ " Letters and Journals of Lord Byron," by Thomas Moore, 2 vols, 
 quarto, 1830, Vol. II., 798. 
 
 ° " Conversations of Lord Byron," by Thomas Medwin, Esq'., p. 8. 
 
 * Like the " beaucoup de m^pris . . . dans les deux coins pendants de la 
 bouche " of M. de Talleyrand, according to the description in the " M^moires 
 d'Outre Tombe." 
 
 IS 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 from the centre of the full underHp — the hair dark and 
 curHng, but irregular in its growth ; all this presents 
 to you the poet and the man, and the general effect is 
 aided by a thin spare form, and, as you may have 
 heard, by a deformity of limb." ^ 
 
 Chantrey, however, remarked " the soft voluptuous 
 character of the lower part of his face, and the firmness 
 of the upper part." ^ 
 
 Still more remarkable than the magic of love (Liebes- 
 zauber) was his power of paralyzing and fascinating with 
 a peculiar " sort of under look he used to give." In 
 consequence of her awe of this glance, Lady Rosebery 
 (afterwards Mildmay) was terrified to meet Lord Byron, 
 and " once, when he spoke to her in a doorway, her heart 
 beat so violently that she could hardly answer him." ^ 
 
 The superstitious horror felt by some almost touched 
 veneration. A friend of Lady Byron's family, Lady 
 Liddell (afterwards the first Lady Ravensworth), who 
 
 ■■• " Life of Sir Thomas Lawrence," by D. E. Williams, 1831,- ii. 70. 
 
 Lord Byron mentioned (in a journal of seven years later) having met Lawrence 
 the painter one evening in 1814 when he had dined with Earl Grey and heard one 
 of the daughters of the house play on the harp. " Well, I would rather have had 
 my talk with Lawrence (who talked delightfully) and heard the girl, than have 
 had all the fame of Moore," etc. (Moore's Quarto, ii. 410). 
 
 " Lawrence once made a sketch in ink of Byron's head, which he sent to a 
 friend, a beautiful woman nam«d Mrs. Wolfi " (" Sir Thomas Lawrence," by 
 Lord Ronald Gower). 
 
 * Moore's Diary, v. 189. 
 
 ' See Moore's Diary, iii. 247. 
 
 Harriet, second daughter of the Hon. Bartholomew Bouverie, was married 
 first to the Earl of Rosebery, and divorced in 18 15, and was married secondly, 
 at Stuttgardt in 181 5, to her brother-in-law, Sir Henry Mildmay. 
 
 Another half-Celt — Gladstone — had an eye " fierce, luminous, restless, and 
 with dangerous symptoms of possible insanity," the glance of which was 
 " piercing as a stab to the heart " {vide Mr. Lecky's Introduction to the new 
 edition of " Democracy and Liberty "). 
 
 But no one perhaps ever intimidated those who approached him anything like 
 what is described of Napoleon, with Madame de Stael, Augereau, and even Van- 
 damme : " un autre soudard r^volutionnaire plus ^nergique et plus brutal 
 encore qu' Augereau. En 181 5 Vandamme disait au marechal d'Ornano un 
 jour qu'ils montaient ensemble I'escalier des Tuileries, ' Mon cher, ce diable 
 d'homme (il parlait de I'Empereur) exerce sur moi une fascination dont je ne 
 puis me rendre compte. C'est au point que moi, qui ne crains ni Dieu, ni diable, 
 quand je I'approche, je suis prdt ^ trembler comme un enfant ; il me ferait 
 passer par le trou d'une aiguille pour aller me jeter dans le feu " {vide Taine's 
 " Le Regime Moderne," vol. i., pp. 17-zi). 
 
 16 
 
BYRON CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 had never seen Lord Byron, suddenly came upon him on 
 the roof of St. Peter's at Rome, while walking with her 
 daughter and friends. In a moment it struck her who 
 it was : 
 
 " And what came over me I cannot describe, but I 
 felt ready to sink, and stood as if my feet were rooted 
 to the ground, looking at him, as Mr. Blakeney told 
 me, as if I were horror-struck." 
 
 Lady LiddeU was so alarmed at the terrible reprobate 
 that she insisted on her daughter (Maria, afterwards 
 Marchioness of Normanby) keeping her eyes down, 
 saying, " Don't look at him, he is dangerous to look at." 
 
 Southey told Henry Taylor he had a vivid remem- 
 brance of first meeting Byron. There was an insidious 
 softness in Byron's manner which made Southey com- 
 pare it at the time to a tiger patting something which 
 had not angered him with his paw, the talons being aU 
 sheathed ; " and the prevailing expression in his fine 
 countenance was something which distrusted you, and 
 which it could never have been possible for you or me 
 to trust." ^ This first impression was so strongly con- 
 firmed the three or four times he saw him after this, that 
 at last Southey could not be persuaded into another 
 meeting with Byron. 
 
 For a long time Lord Byron was almost totally boy- 
 cotted by the English in Switzerland and Italy, with a 
 few honourable exceptions, the most striking of which 
 were Lord and Lady Jersey, who would not be turned 
 away from an old friend by a ubiquitous intriguer. The 
 taboo of Lord Byron had been ably organized at Geneva 
 and Milan by Brougham, comedian to the Whig party 
 and mischief-maker general.^ 
 
 An old novel-writing lady, Elizabeth Hervey, sister of 
 " Vathek " Beckford, tried hard to faint at Madame 
 de Stael's on the unexpected arrival of Lord Byron. She 
 wrote from Geneva (August ist, 1816) : 
 
 1 From a letter of Henry Taylor, March 3rd, 1830. 
 
 ' " That indescribable wretch Brougham," as O'Connell said in 1844 — not 
 without ground. 
 
 A. 17 c 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 "The sight of him quite disordered me, and he 
 affected tender melancholy and much agitation. I 
 could not prevent his seizing my hands, but I behaved 
 to him the whole time of his stay with the most marked 
 coldness in despite of all the pains he took to concihate 
 me, and these were noticed by everybody. • • • _ 
 
 " By the charms of his wit, his harmonious voice, and 
 fascinating manner, he completely enchanted Madame 
 de Stael without ever being able to change the bad 
 opinion she has of his morals." 
 
 The influence of women on Lord Byron's life is of 
 course very traceable, without being at all remarkable 
 in the generation to which he belonged, or specially 
 characteristic of him. It should be remembered that all 
 through the eighteenth century, and for the first third 
 of the nineteenth, seductions and all the similar pursuits 
 formed a great, almost the principal part of the life of 
 rich Englishmen, without any offence being given to the 
 moral feehngs of the community. The greatest nobles, 
 such as Lord Pembroke (died 1794), who was weU known 
 for his elopement with Miss Kitty Hunter, " but uni- 
 versally esteemed as an accomplished nobleman," the 
 Earl Bishop of Derry, the Duke of Devonshire, who died 
 in 1 81 1, Lord Egremont, Lord Hertford, and, not least. 
 Lord Darlington, were all, to use the phrase of Wraxall, 
 " well known in the annals of meretricious pleasure." 
 Chastity and sobriety were thought ridiculous. As Lady 
 Byron once wrote towards the close of her life : " A 
 kind of ridicule attaches to the differences between 
 man and wife." ^ 
 
 "■ " Mrs. Norton will be cleared I think by her pamphlet, and by Ld. M.'s 
 letters — so conclusive — but she must have waited — 
 
 " Domestic Martyrdoms have been less sympathized with than any others — 
 partly because a kind of Ridicule (why ?) attaches to the differences between 
 man & Wife—" (Lady Noel Byron to Ehza Follen, April i8th, 1854 (?) ). 
 
 " Le monde, dont les jugements sont rarement tout a fait faux, voit une sorte 
 de ridicule a ^tre vertueux quand on n'y est pas oblig^ par un devoir professionel. 
 Le pretre, ayant pour ^tat d'etre chaste, comme le soldat d'etre brave, est, d'apres 
 ces id^es, presque le seul qui puisse sans ridicule tenir k des principes sur lesquels 
 la morale et la mode se livrent les plus itranges combats. II est hors de doute 
 qu'en ce point, comme en beaucoup d'autres, mes principes cl^ricaux, conserves 
 
 18 
 
BYRON CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 More than once the love of a woman for Byron — said 
 by her to be stronger than death — decomposed into 
 hatred more bitter than the grave. In a trance of fear 
 she would see a dark transfiguration from hero to monster, 
 and in a delusion of loathing, might thus speak to him : 
 
 " In Francesco Cenci you may behold yourself some 
 twenty years hence ! " 
 
 The constitution of his body and mind had destined 
 him to his swift and feverish pilgrimage from family, 
 country, friends, mankind, and life. 
 
 " In the post-mortem examination it was found that 
 the Sutures were quite obliterated — a change which 
 only takes place at a late age. There was also (which 
 was not stated) incipient ossification of heart — ' the 
 madness of the heart.' " ^ 
 
 The great man who keenly followed his career from a 
 distance, and understood him with the wisdom of genius 
 and experience, once exclaimed : 
 
 " If only Lord Byron had known how to set moral 
 limits for himself ! That he could not was his over- 
 throw, and it may very well be said that he went to ruin 
 because he was utterly unbridled. Taking his own 
 course ' along the line of limitless desires,' and approving 
 of nothing in anyone else, he was sure of destruction, 
 certain to raise up a whole world against himself. He 
 had started by offending the foremost literary potentates. 
 In order to live without lifelong war, he must afterwards 
 have given way a little ; instead of which he went 
 
 dans le siecle, m'ont nui aux yeux du monde. lis ne m'ont pas nui pour le 
 bonheur " (" Souvenirs de jeunesse," Renan, p. 360). 
 
 " Plus tard, je vis bien la vanity de cette vertu comme de toutes les autres, je 
 reconnus, en particulier, que la nature ne tient pas du tout a ce que Thomme 
 soit chaste. Je n'en persistai pas moins, par convenance, dans la vie que 
 j'avais choisie, et je m'imposai les moeurs d'un pasteur protestant " {Ibid., 
 
 P-359)- . ,.,.,.. 
 
 " Je ne peux m'6ter I'ld^e que c'est peut-etre apres tout le libertm qui a 
 
 raison et qui pratique la vraie philosophie de la vie " {Ibid., p. 149). 
 
 Renan sometimes amused himself with the fancy that we are all the dupes of a 
 wily power lurking in nature (" une puissance rus^e, qui nous exploite "). We 
 are thus decoyed into virtues and sacrifices that are of no use to us, but serve 
 hidden ends for which we might care little and still less understand. 
 
 ^ Such is Lady Byron's statement in one of her papers. 
 
 19 C2 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 further and further in his opposition and disapproval ; 
 he respected neither State nor Church. This reckless 
 energy banished him from England, and must in time 
 have banished him from Europe. It was everywhere 
 too close for him, and with boundless personal licence 
 he felt himself confined ; the world was for him a prison. 
 His retreat to Greece was no voluntary act ; it was a 
 false relation to the world that drove him thither.^ 
 Not only did abjuration of all prescriptive or patriotic 
 obligations prove personally disastrous to so remarkable 
 a being, but his revolutionary animus and consequent 
 eternal restlessness of mind hindered the proper develop- 
 ment of his talent." ^ 
 
 Goethe's comprehension of Byron, whom he had never 
 seen, particularly struck Lady Byron, who was rather 
 repelled than attracted by Goethe. She wrote (Septem- 
 ber 24th, 1854) : 
 
 " Crabb Robinson told me what he called ' some 
 strange mistaken notions of Goethe's respecting Lord 
 Byron,' as an instance that one poet did not perfectly 
 understand the other. 
 
 " But they were true — and prove wonderful insight. 
 I could not say so to Mr. Robinson, whose own ideas of 
 Lord Byron are very far from the truth I am persuaded." 
 
 One coincidence occurs between what Goethe said of 
 " Lara," which he thought " bordered on the kingdom 
 of spectres," ^ and Lady Byron's own remark to Lord 
 Byron himself about that poem : 
 
 " One of the conversations he then held with me 
 turned upon the subject of his poems, and — tacitly 
 between us — of their allusions to himself. He said of 
 ' Lara,' ' There's more in that than any of them,' shudder- 
 ing and avoiding my eye. I said it had a stronger 
 
 ^ Lady Blessington wrote : " He so often turned with a yearning heart to 
 his wish of going to England before Greece, that we asked him why, being a 
 free agent, he did not go. The question seemed to embarrass him, he stammered, 
 blushed and said : ' Why, true, there is no reason why I should not go, but yet 
 I want resolution to encounter all the disagreeable circimistances which might 
 and most probably would greet my arrival in England.' " 
 
 " Goethe's " Conversation with Eckermann," February 24th, 1825. 
 
 ' Conversation with Ticknor, October 25th, i8i6. 
 
 20 
 
BYRON CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 mysterious eflEect than any, and was ' like the darkness 
 in which one fears to behold spectres.' The remark 
 struck him as accidentally more characteristic than he 
 thought I could know it to be — at least I presume so 
 from his singular commendation of it with the usual 
 mysterious manner. He often said that ' Lara ' was the 
 most metaphysical of his works." ^ 
 
 Lord Byron's literary activity was accidental. He 
 told Lady Byron that if she had married him when he 
 first proposed, he should not have written any of the 
 poems which followed " Childe Harold " ; and once at 
 Halnaby he observed that no one who was naturally 
 meant for a poet could have had s6 much solitude without 
 making more verses. He was strongly impressed with the 
 idea that celebrity rapidly acquired is seldom permanent. 
 The very favourable reception of " Childe Harold " had 
 been quite unexpected to him. His estimation of his 
 own works was below that of the public. 
 
 ^ Narrative F, March, 1817. [Lady Byron's statements will be found fre- 
 quently thus referred to under various initials, and it must not be inferred that 
 — as suggested by a hostile critic — they were as numerous as the letters of the 
 alphabet. The initials were those used by the author to indicate the various 
 portions of materials from which he quoted. There are in fact only two impor- 
 tant narratives by Lady Byron of her married life. The first one, which was 
 prepared in January, i8i6, for Lady Noel's preliminary discussions with Dr. 
 Lushington, gave a long and very minute account of Byron's words and actions, 
 but omitted anything that could incriminate Mrs. Leigh. When itis necessary 
 to speak of Byron's avowals of passion, the object is simply alluded to as 
 " another woman." In this first narrative the obsession as to his possible 
 insanity is very manifest. The second narrative is ijiainly occupied with the 
 story of Byron's conduct to Augusta and his constant avowals about her to 
 Lady Byron. It was apparently begun some time before Mrs. Leigh's con- 
 fession, which took place in September, 1816, and not finished until the following 
 March. It is very fragmentary ; some interpolations being on very small bits 
 of notepaper. Many letters of the alphabet were used up in particularising 
 these small interpolations. Many years later, apparently about 1854, Lady 
 Byron projected a long and full narrative of all that she had known and seen of 
 Byron from the first day of their acquaintance, which should embody her 
 original stories of 1816 and 1817; but though more than one abortive version 
 of this later narrative exists, none was ever completed. The author of 
 " Astarte " may have culled here and there a few sidelights on Byron's 
 character from these later writings, but for the main story that he had to 
 tell he relied upon the narratives of 1816-17; his other materials being 
 quotations from letters, and stray memoranda written by Lady Byron at 
 different times on Byron's poetry. He did not regard the presentation of Lady 
 Byron's narratives in their entirety to the public as possible, but in his own 
 narrative he has reproduced the greafer part of them very closely. — Ed.] 
 
 21 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 His feelings and sympathies were only kindled by 
 what he could identify with himself. In all the characters 
 on which he had any inclination to dwell, there were, at 
 least in his imagination, resemblances to himself, for 
 instance, Rousseau, or Napoleon.'- 
 
 Lord Byron could describe nothing which he had not 
 actually had under his eyes, and not even then unless 
 either done on the spot or immediately after. He wrote 
 only from impressions, which, after all, as Lord Holland 
 replied to Moore's criticisms, was the sign of a true poet.^ 
 
 Lord Byron's command of words was his resource in 
 failure to command men. He was a man of words in 
 consequence of physical limitations — a man of words 
 and a trag'c jester — but a man of force by nature. But 
 command over words was exercised in a spirit of dominion 
 over men. Like Napoleon, he no more loved than he 
 hated his kind ; he was a determined rebel against them, 
 who craved to subdue them — or at least to be an object 
 of wonder and terror. Without study or effort he became 
 a literary enchanter — of fleeting might. As explained 
 by Goethe, the world of feeling and the physical world 
 seemed transparent to him. He knew them by anticipa- 
 tion before acquaintance.^ He formed it all into words 
 without reflection and by intuition, as women get 
 beautiful offspring, they know not how.* His views of 
 nature were profound and poetical and so were those he 
 
 ' Miss Randall said how much she had been struck by the resemblance 
 between Lord Byron's smile and Buonaparte's (Moore's Diary, iii. 232). 
 
 " M. KoU dit qu'il n'a jamais vu de sourire plus aimable, ou du moins plus 
 distingui, plus fin, que celui de Napoleon et celui de Chateaubriand. Mais ni 
 I'un ni I'autre ne souriaient tons les jours " (Sainte Beuve, " Chateaubriand," 
 yoie Le?on, p. 152). 
 
 The substance of these two paragraphs is from Lady Byron's Statements, L, 
 F, etc. 
 
 ^ Moore's Diary, iii. 248. 
 
 ^_ '' Dasz ihm die welt durchsichtig sei, und dasz ihm ihre darstellung durch 
 anticipation moglich," etc., etc. (" Conversation with Eckermano," Feb- 
 ruary 26th, 1824). 
 
 * " Aber alles was er produciren mag, gelingt ihm, und man kann wirklich 
 sagen, dasz sich bei ihm die inspiration an die stelle der reflexion setzt. . . . 
 Zu seinen sachen kam er wie die weiber zu schonen kindem ; sie denken 
 nicht daran und wissen nicht wie I " (" Conversation with Eckermann," 
 February 24th, 1825). 
 
 22 
 
BYRON CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 took of the Bible ; but for the latter he was indebted to 
 the ennui he suffered from it at school.^ The dogmas of 
 the Church were insufficient for a free spirit hke Byron, 
 and " Cain " shows how he shook off the doctrines that 
 had been lavished on him.^ 
 
 Goethe, who " was by no means addicted to contra- 
 diction," passed over the defects of Byron's workman- 
 ship. He spoke of the brilliancy and clearness of his style, 
 saying : " There is no padding in his poetry." ^ He said 
 that his poetry showed great knowledge of human nature 
 and great talent in description.* With every fresh read- 
 ing he appreciated Lord Byron's talent more highly, but 
 at the same time probed his fundamental incapacity to 
 be a really great man. His hypochondria and negation 
 excluded him from supreme genius.^ Goethe especially 
 praised " The Deformed Transformed." He dwelt much 
 on Lord Byron's everlasting opposition and discontent, 
 and how much the best of his works had suffered from it. 
 
 " For not only does the discomfort of the poet spread 
 to the reader, but all work of opposition degenerates 
 into negation, and negation is void. If I say evil is 
 evil, what is gained ? but if perchance I take good for 
 evil, great harm is done. Whoever would work right 
 must never scold, or be in trouble over things per- 
 verted, but simply do what is good. We should not 
 care to pull down, but to build up, what will inspire 
 mankind with unsullied joy." ^ 
 
 At the time of the publication of " Manfred," the 
 readers of Lord Byron's poetry felt as if they were 
 receiving confidential disclosures. The reader forgets 
 for the time that he is but one of the public to whom the 
 feelings are thus revealed.' 
 
 " Or may not each " (wrote Lady Byron, Septem- 
 
 ^ Conversation with Crabb Robinson, August, 1829. 
 2 Conversation with Eckermann, February 24th, 1824. 
 ' Conversation with Crabb Robinson, August, 1829. 
 
 * Conversation with Ticknor, October 25th, 1816. 
 
 ' Conversation with Eckermann, November 8th, 1826. 
 
 * Conversation with Eckermann, February 24th, 1825. 
 
 ' Lady Byron's Journal of September 14th, 1818, mentions this as the best 
 idea of a recent article in the " Edinburgh Review." 
 
 23 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 ber 14th, 1818), " each of the children of passion at least, 
 feel that he understands the nature of the confession 
 so much more intimately than the colder multitude, 
 that to him it is really private ? It conveys a mystical 
 sense — so I have felt." 
 
 Lord Byron seems to have been, like the fair-haired 
 Eckbert of Tieck's story, seized with the longing to 
 unbosom himself wholly to the pubHc, as to a friend, that 
 so it might become his friend still more. When he thus 
 opened the inmost recesses of his heart in verses, " that 
 wonderful poetry affected its readers like an evil potion 
 taken into their blood." 
 
 " The small sweet draught which I sipped . . . 
 remained indelibly impressed on my memory." ^ 
 
 When Byron passed to 
 
 " The things that were — and what and whence were they f 
 Those clouds and rainbows of thy yesterday ? 
 Their path has vanished from the eternal sky," 
 
 and gradually his " shadow lengthens but to fade," that 
 boundless appreciation of his poetry, which was in the 
 main extra-literary, also faded away. The vitahty of 
 his writings had depended mainly on his own vivid 
 existence of agitations, errors, illusions, loves, hates, and 
 catastrophes. 
 
 All levity vanishes from the closing scenes of his Hfe of 
 passion, mirth, and disaster, when he vainly tried to 
 articulate messages ^ to his wife, herself both a victim 
 and an instrument ^ of the furies * who had haunted his 
 
 ^ " Records of a Girlhood," by Frances Anne Kemble, vol. i., p. 91. 
 
 ^ Fletcher was desired by Lord Byron to go to her th? day before he died, 
 but for what purpose could not be articulated. 
 
 ' " Yours has been a bitter connection to me in every sense ; it would have 
 been better for me never to have been born than to have ever seen you. This 
 sounds harsh, but is it not true ? and recollect I do not mean that you were my 
 intentional evil Genius but an Instrument for my destruction, and you yourself 
 have suffered too (poor thing) in the agency, as the lightning perishes in the 
 instant with the oak that it strikes " (Lord Byron to Lady Byron, January i ith, 
 
 * " My solitude is solitude no more, 
 
 But peopled by the Furies." 
 
 " Manfred," Act 11., Scene 2. 
 24 
 
BYRON CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 existence. But even at the last his indomitable spirit 
 was not conquered. 
 
 " 'Tis over — my dull eyes can fix thee not ; 
 But all things swim around me, and the earth 
 Heaves as it were beneath me — Fare thee well." 
 
 " ril die as I have lived — alone." ^ 
 
 Those -who have access to the best information are sure 
 of nothing in the character of Lord Byron. He struck 
 out for his life, exulting in his blows with a " cry of 
 savage gladness," but it was at least rash to assume that 
 
 " No grief is thine, no moody madness 
 In that mysterious bosom found." * 
 
 The character of Augusta Byron is far simpler to read 
 in her letters and actions. She was a woman of that 
 great family — often very lovable — ^which is vague about 
 facts, unconscious of duties, impulsive in conduct. The 
 course of her life could not be otherwise explained, by 
 those who had looked into it with close intimacy, than 
 by " a kind of moral idiotcy from birth." ^ 
 
 She was of a sanguine and buoyant disposition, 
 childishly fond and playful, ready to laugh at anything, 
 loving to talk nonsense. The great charm of her society 
 was a refined species of comic talent. She had kind 
 feelings and good intentions without principles ; she 
 received a strict moral and pietistic training, but its 
 influence on her life was limited to a prodigal and some- 
 times inappropriate use of devout phrases. When she 
 confessed all in September, 1816, she said she blamed 
 herself more for her guilt because of the principles she 
 had had instilled into her early. 
 
 A friend ^ who had loved her from childhood wrote 
 (July 9th, 1816) : " I think I am justified in saying very 
 confidently that her mind zvas purity and innocence 
 itself," but her moral ideas were to the greatest degree 
 
 j-r- 1 " Manfred," Act III., Scene 4. 
 
 ' Lines addressed to Lord Byron by Robert Wilmot, April, 1816. 
 ' Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. ViUiers, May nth, 1852. 
 ♦ The Hon. Mrs. ViUiers. 
 
 25 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 confused. She did not feel that there was much harm in 
 anything which made no one unhappy. Lady Byron 
 once wrote : ^ " I have observed the remarkable differ- 
 ence that his feelings, distinct from practice, were much 
 more sensitive and correct on all moral questions than 
 hers." On the side of virtue she was weak, but the 
 character was not altogether weak, rather incomplete. 
 She was shy and timid, and there was great apparent 
 facility and yieldingness, but in emergencies she could 
 be steadfast and act with considerable courage. She had 
 a sort of good feeling that led her to risk her own skin for 
 some who needed it, and for whom she cared more or 
 less. But there was always a blend of artificial senti- 
 ment. She excelled in simulation ; herself she could 
 persuade of almost anything. She feigned without 
 thinking, perhaps felt what She feigned, unmindful of 
 tangible truths at unsuitable seasons. " There was 
 apparently an absence of all deep feeling in her mind, 
 of everything on which a strong impression could be 
 made." ^ With instinctive craft and courage she 
 fought for self-preservation — a life-long battle — hopeless 
 and lost owing to fundamental mistakes and untrust- 
 worthy associates. She was great in the cleverness of 
 expedients, full of plausible sophistry, of smooth dis- 
 paragement, pretending altruism whilst really acting for 
 herself without incurring any responsibility. 
 
 She was abominably married to a first cousin — 
 impracticable,^ helpless,* tiresome and obstructive. She 
 was more than any one sensible how intolerable her 
 husband was with his debts and selfishness, which had a 
 large share in bringing on the final ruin of the whole 
 family.^ He was little with her, being generally at race 
 meetings or on long visits to Lord Darlington ® and other 
 
 1 To the Hon. Mrs. Villiers, June 28th, i8i6. 
 
 ^ Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Villiers, October 17th, 1851. 
 
 3 The Hon. Mrs. Villiers to Lady Byron, July i8th, i8i6. 
 
 * " That very helpless gentleman, your cousin," as Lord Byron calls him in a 
 letter to the Hon. Mrs. Leigh of September 17th, 1816. [See Chap. XL] 
 
 ' The Hon. Mrs. Villiers to Lady Byron, March 9th, 1841. 
 
 ° The life at Lord Darlington's in the time of his first wife, who died 1807, is 
 described by Lady Byron's mother (then the Hon. Mrs. Milbanke) in a letter to 
 
 26 
 

 
 H 
 
 1 
 
 HH| 
 
 I 
 
 ■■ 
 
 '^ .^i^^^^^H 
 
 
 ^Kr^ 
 
 
 ' ■ '''^f . , ^ 
 
 1 
 
 H 
 
 
 ^m 
 
 i 
 
 
 -._j 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 f 
 
 
 . , ^, :^ 
 
 1 
 
 i^^H 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 "j' ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 im 
 
 
 1 
 
 '///■/. 
 
 
 ' 
 
 - 
 
 '■J>' - ^ 
 
 AUGUSTA LEIGH 
 
 From u Sketch by George Hayter (1812). 
 
BYRON CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 reprobates, protectors and boon companions. When 
 Newmarket races brought Colonel Leigh home, Mrs. 
 Leigh went off on a holiday if she could. He was a trying 
 and exacting inmate. Everything had to be done for 
 him, not the least of which was his turfy correspondence. 
 He was quite capable of acquiescing in her going away for 
 any purpose, temporarily or otherwise. ^ 
 
 Long habits of concealment made it difficult to judge of 
 her feelings by her manner. ^ For years and down to her 
 death she was " under the necessity of acting what she did 
 not feel," ^ She was almost always collected and prepared 
 to repel suspicion,* and at the same time " her horror of 
 the crime was already not too great." ^ She was strangely 
 insensible to the nature and magnitude of the offence in 
 question even as an imputation. " She did not appear 
 to think these transgressions of consequence." ® 
 
 In one or two points there was a resemblance of 
 character to Rousseau's account of Madame de Warens, 
 who was naturally pure of heart and fitted for an irre- 
 proachable life, which she always desired for its own sake, 
 but never realized in practice, because she came to look 
 on conjugal ^delity as the most indifferent act in itself, 
 regarding only public opinion, and to regard a woman 
 who outwardly appeared virtuous as really so, by the 
 mere absence of all offence or unhappiness to anyone.' 
 
 her aunt, Mary Noel (December 23rd, 1797) : " We stayed two nights at Raby 
 Castle, you know it is a visit of duty, and we are always glad when it is over, 
 however we escaped much wine this time as My Lord had the Gripes and could 
 not drink ; we succeeded the Liddells & Sir Thomas who hates drinking was 
 never permitted to rise from table till past midnight any one day for a week — 
 Lord D. plunges deeper and deeper in low Amours & got into a terrible scrape 
 at Dunbar when there with his Regiment — he went into the room of a Servant 
 Girl at the Inn & attempted violence, the poor Girl threw herself out of window 
 and was so much hurt that She will be a Cripple for life, this is one of many 
 Stories equally to his credit — " 
 
 1 The Hon. Mrs. ViUiers to Lady Byron, May i8th, 1816. 
 
 * Anne Wilmot to Lady Byron, July 31st, 1816. 
 
 ^ The Hon. Mrs. ViUiers to Lady Byron, July 27th, 181 6. 
 
 * Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Villiers, June 28th, 1816. 
 
 * The Hon. Mrs. Villiers to Lady Byron, September 12th, 1816. 
 ' Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Villiers, June 28th, 1816. 
 
 ' " EUe ^toit bien n6e, son coeur 6toit pur, elle aimoit les choses honnetes, ses 
 penchans ^toient droits et vertueux, son gout ^toit d^licat ; elle ^toit faite pour 
 une il^gance de raoeurs qu'elle a toujours aim£e et qu'elle n'a jamais suivie, 
 
 27 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Augusta's expressions of conscious innocence to her 
 friends were wonderful.^ " She named the report con- 
 cerning her with the pride of Innocence ! — as it is 
 called— " 2 
 
 Outwardly she affected extreme prudery, and after 
 alighting on one unlucky passage, said she would not 
 open " Don Juan " again " for fear her delicate feelings 
 should be shocked by stumbling again on a Ship- 
 wrecke." ^ Lord Byron wrote to her : " I am delighted 
 to see you grown so moral. It is edifying." 
 
 She had a language of her own, that of half fact, half 
 fiction ; that in which the most definite actions are 
 blurred or obliterated under an ambiguous mist of 
 hints, parentheses, inuendoes, dashes, " megrims, mys- 
 teries," and as Lord Byron used to add, " d — d crinkum 
 crankum." 
 
 " For the life of me I can't make out whether your 
 disorder is a broken heart or ear-ache — or whether it is 
 you that have been ill or the children — or what your 
 melancholy & mysterious apprehensions tend to — or 
 refer to — whether to Caroline Lamb's novels — M"^ 
 Clermont's evidence — Lady Byron's magnanimity — 
 or any other piece of impossture." * 
 
 In Augusta's idiom blood shame is translated into " I 
 have been most unfortunate in aU my nearest con- 
 nections." ^ Unfortunate J When she writes : " None 
 can know how much I have suffered from this unhappy 
 
 parce qu'au lieu d'icouter son cceur, qui lamenoit bien, elle 6couta sa raison qui 
 la menoit mal." 
 
 Madame de Warens was persuaded to regard " I'union des sexes comme I'acte 
 le plus indifferent en soi ; la fidelity conjugale, comme une apparence obligatoire 
 dont toute la morality regardoit 1' opinion ; le repos des maris, comme la seule 
 regie du devoir des femmes ; en sorte que les infidelitis ignor6es, nuUes pour 
 celui qu'elles offensoient, I'^toient aussi pour la conscience ; enfin il lui persuada 
 que la chose en elle-m^me n'^toit rien, qu'elle ne prenoit d'existence que par le 
 scandale, et que toute femme qui paroissoit sage par cela I'^toit en effet " 
 (" Les Confessions," premiere partie, livre v.). 
 
 ^ The Hon. Mr? Vilhers to Lady Byron, May gth, 1816. 
 
 ^ Lady Byron's Statement G. 
 
 ^ Words in a letter of Lord Byron's to the Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 ' Lord Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Leigh, June 3rd, 1817. 
 
 ' Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Villiers, March 29th, 1826. 
 
 28 
 
BYRON CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 business " — the real meaning is that detection of her 
 secret is imminent. Substitution of herself for Lord 
 Byron's right heirs becomes " unnatural conduct in 
 them" and she is sick of them and the subject. 
 
 After her final rupture with her sister-in-law she used 
 to proclaim that nothing could justify Lady Byron in 
 abandoning her husband. Augusta's indignation was 
 about three quarters sincere ; but she kept back a little 
 bit of information for want of which her language alto- 
 gether missed the truth. Naturally enough she could 
 not name the real obstacle between Lord and Lady Byron 
 — that was herself, Augusta. Accordingly she sup- 
 pressed a troublesome particle of truth, which in her eyes 
 only rendered Lady Byron still more odious now that the 
 bondage of gratitude had been shaken off. 
 
 She lived in the impulse of the moment ; saw what had 
 been in the specious restorations of her fabric of truth, — 
 her outlet for imperative present necessities. If a fact 
 grew into an obstruction, it must no longer be a fact. 
 Some women can thus delete their own past in good faith, 
 or very nearly so. 
 
 She worked her friends well — frequently induced them 
 by partial statements which they believed made with the 
 most unreserved confidence, to give the very worst advice 
 possible,^ and take part in her concerns upon a perfect 
 persuasion of her innocence.^ In numerous instances 
 they were made accessory to her doing the very things 
 she ought most to have avoided.^ 
 
 Her actions necessarily became regulated by self- 
 deceit as to herself and suspicion as to others.* There 
 had been a day when she " foolishly imagined she had 
 not such a thing as an enemy." She came to think 
 that there were many who would make out everything in 
 an ill-natured light against her.^ Even when un- 
 attacked, she lived in a state of morbid anxiety for a 
 
 1 The Hon. Mrs. Villiers to Lady Byron, May i8th, 1816. 
 
 ^ The same to the same, July i8th, i8i6. 
 
 ' The same to the same, May i8th, 1816. 
 
 ' Robert John Wihnot to Lady Byron, May 29th, 18 16. 
 
 ' The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron, December 22nd, 18 16. 
 
 29 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 defence, and instead of persisting in a policy of silence, 
 she became ready to accuse anyone, under the pre- 
 occupation of making a case for herself. ^ Fancying 
 enemies everywhere, she exhibited a character of hard- 
 ness. ^ She also grew more and more wary, and resorted 
 more habitually to subterfuges for fencing off embar- 
 rassing inquiries. She would pretend to be in a hurry, 
 or studiously forget or postpone the most momentous 
 topics, till the fag end of a conversation or a letter. 
 
 Sometimes she would simply wait till children or ser- 
 vants were in the room and heard all that was said, which 
 gave her the opportunity herself to introduce the subject 
 on which she expected questions, and drop it altogether 
 after a few superficial words. Even when she could not 
 divert a viva voce discussion of her concerns, it required 
 great energy on the part of friends to protract a conver- 
 sation she was desirous of discontinuing, as she was very 
 adroit in letting questions or zealous interest in her affairs 
 perish of inanition.^ 
 
 She could make a good fight for herself in other ways — 
 sometimes made painful scenes, accusing some in whose 
 power she might be to a certain extent, or at least think 
 she was, of unkindness, prejudice, or treachery. In 
 some cases she was wisely suspicious, in others mis- 
 takenly so, and she could be very rancorous in her 
 resentment for unfavourable opinions about herself. 
 She showed much anger against those who had friendly 
 relations with her real or supposed enemies. These 
 sentiments led her to quarrel with and insult some who 
 were not ill-disposed towards her, and even to alienate 
 friends and relations. She violently resented the most 
 moderate criticism in any matter that was even remotely 
 connected with her peculiar position. On her own part, 
 she did not abstain from provocation. This state of mind 
 resulted in a bitter quarrel with Lady Noel Byron, and 
 
 ^ Robert John Wilmot to Lady Byron, May 29th, 1816. 
 
 2 Colonel Francis Hastings Doyle to Lady Byron, July 9th, 1816. 
 
 3 The Hon. Mrs. Villiers to Lady Byron, June 19th, 1816, July Uth, 1816, 
 and February 23rd, 18 17. 
 
 30 
 
BYRON CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 also with Admiral Lord Byron and his wife, and inter- 
 rupted intimate relations with Sir Robert and Lady 
 Wilmot Horton and Mrs. Villiers. 
 
 Strange to say, there was more vacillation about Lady 
 Caroline Lamb, whom she hated and had reason to hate 
 beyond anyone else, knowing she had done more than 
 anyone else to circulate the reports against her. On 
 chance meetings Mrs. Leigh's manner towards Lady 
 Caroline Lamb was that of hatred and horror openly 
 displayed, but she ceased to cut her dead later, when 
 Lady Caroline Lamb had changed her system, and 
 actually denied the truth of reports spread by herself. 
 Lady Caroline Lamb refused to be put off with a low and 
 ironical curtsey. On one occasion she suddenly started 
 up before Mrs. Leigh, as if from underground, and claimed 
 acquaintance, whereupon, according to Mrs. Leigh's own 
 account of the scene, she felt " compelled to touch Lady 
 Caroline Lamb's hand." The key to this and many 
 other inconsistencies is that, involved as Mrs. Leigh was 
 by the many obliquities of her conduct, she was often 
 obliged to act in a manner which variously appeared like 
 imprudence or timidity ; when there were very different 
 causes underneath.^ 
 
 There would be no use in specifying all the causes of 
 Mrs. Leigh's financial ruin, even if they were completely 
 recorded. Her property, including that bequeathed by 
 Lord Byron, largely passed into the hands of the money- 
 lenders, of whom twenty-six came forward as claimants 
 for everything after Mrs. Leigh's death. In her later 
 years a more painful impersonation of anxious disquiet 
 and misery could hardly be imagined. She rather 
 suddenly became a very sunk and aged person. Her 
 disposition had ever been such that no lasting impression 
 could be made on her feelings. She lived through so 
 much that at last she found herself growing callous at 
 bottom like flint or steel. Her wits got darkened at 
 intervals by judicial blindness, by a kind of fatuity which 
 besets people burthened with a secret, and sooner or later 
 
 ^ Lady Noel Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Villiers, March i6th, 1841. 
 
 31 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 forces its disclosure. Her heart seemed frozen. But 
 when she was dying, Lady Byron felt so great a desire 
 to send her a message, that, after fully considering what 
 might be the effects, Lady Byron determined to disregard 
 all but those which it might possibly have upon Mrs. 
 Leigh herself, and wrote to the daughter to whisper two 
 words of affection long disused. This was a week before 
 Mrs. Leigh's death, and on hearing the message, tears 
 long dry flowed again with the joy of hearing once more 
 " Dearest Augusta ! " from Lady Byron. Mrs. Leigh 
 said those words " were her greatest consolation " ; and 
 she went on to say a great deal that could not be heard 
 distinctly, her voice had grown so weak and thick. Thus 
 was another message lost, but there had been a speck of 
 light in almost infinite darkness. Mrs. Leigh's sufferings 
 were dreadful and continued to the very last. She died 
 October I2th, 185 1, of heart disease and dropsy, with her 
 hands in those of her youngest daughter Emily who, she 
 said, had always been such a comfort to her.^ 
 
 Mrs. Leigh's distress for money had been so extreme 
 that she even got money (from a pubUsher) for a box of 
 Lord Byron's letters but told her daughter before she 
 died that she wished them to be redeemed.^ There 
 never was apparently money enough to save the letters ; 
 some of them passed away for ever into the hands of 
 strangers, and were ultimately made use of in the way 
 which Mrs. Leigh most dreaded. 
 
 1 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to EHzabeth Medora Leigh, February, 1831 ; Lady 
 Noel Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Villiers, June nth, 1841 ; to the Rev. F. W. 
 Robertson, October 14th, 1851 ; and memorandum of April 8th, 1851 ; Emily 
 Leigh to Lady Noel Byron, October 5th and October 13th, 1851. 
 
 ' The Hon. Mrs. Villiers to Lady Noel Byron, October 30th, 1851. See also 
 Chap. XI., p. 264. 
 
 32 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THREE STAGES OF LORD BYRON's LIFE 
 
 " — ^when one ceased the other began — and now both are 
 closed— " 1 
 
 Lord Byron to Lady Byron, io^'^ 28th, 1820. 
 
 IN June, 1 81 3, there was a crisis of insolvency at Mrs. 
 Leigh's home, Six Mile Bottom, and she came to Lord 
 Byron in London for an indefinite absence from home. 
 He then gave up an arrangement he had made to travel 
 to Sicily with Lady Oxford and her family — otherwise 
 called the " Harleian Miscellany." Instead of this, he 
 planned taking Augusta to Sicily, but this was relin- 
 quished in consequence of the remonstrances of Lady 
 Melbourne, to whom he confided at that time most of 
 the things he was engaged upon. Augusta had consented 
 to go with him to Sicily, but Lady Melbourne dissuaded 
 him from taking " this fatal step," saying : " You are 
 on the brink of a precipice, and if you do not retreat, 
 you are lost for ever — ^it is a crime for which there is 
 no salvation in this world, whatever there may be in 
 the next." She told him that, whatever he might 
 affect, she knew how susceptible he was to opinion, and 
 would he do that which must utterly destroy his charac- 
 ter ? She told him that, though destitute of principle, 
 she believed him naturally generous and honourable, and 
 remonstrated with him on the cruelty of depriving of 
 all future peace or happiness a woman who had hitherto, 
 whether deservedly or not, maintained a good reputation 
 — and even if their distresses, after he had taken this 
 fatal step, should arise from external causes, they would 
 always reproach themselves for their reciprocal wretched- 
 
 ^ See page 11:. 
 
 A. 33 D 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 ness. His comment on this advice of Lady Melbourne's 
 was : " She is a good woman after all, for there are things 
 she will stop at." He followed Lady Melbourne's 
 advice in part (as to Sicily), but not altogether. He once 
 said: " Ah, I wish I had." 1 
 
 Lady Melbourne, in order to get him out of this 
 " worse business," encouraged him to start on a fresh 
 intrigue, and gave him the most minute instructions 
 about seducing another woman, ^ almost in the style of the 
 Marquise de Merteuil, in " Les Liaisons Dangereuses." * 
 
 It is not wonderful that Lady Melbourne failed in 
 keeping Byron and Augusta long apart. 
 
 " We repent, we abjure, we will break from the chain ; 
 We must part, we must fly — to unite it again ! " 
 
 It hai been reunited for long months when he wrote 
 those lines to Augusta, which are here quoted from the 
 original MS. afterwards given to Lady Byron. 
 
 Lord Byron did not limit his confidences to Lady Mel- 
 bourne. He used to give himself an unfortunate latitude 
 in conversations with people, who, having no interest in 
 his welfare, or any desire to approfondir whether his 
 strange paradoxes were advanced by way of amusement 
 or from his real way of thinking, repeated and circulated 
 his speeches as he made them.^ Early in 1814 he 
 advanced at HoUand House the most extraordinary 
 theories about the relations of brothers and sisters.^ 
 This was the origin of reports against Mrs. Leigh's 
 character, which were widely circulated at that time, 
 without there having been any ill will to, or ill opinion 
 of her.® These reports must also be attributed to " The 
 Bride of Abydos," which rumour proclaimed to be a 
 representation of Mrs. Leigh. Far and wide, people 
 asked whether she had read it, and if she had recognized 
 
 ' Lady Byron's Narrative F. 
 
 ^ [See Notes by the Editor, p. 315.] 
 
 ' Lady Byron's Narrative F. 
 
 * The Hon. Mrs. Villiers to the Hon. Mrs. Leigh, April 25th, 1816. 
 ' The Hon. Mrs. ViUiers to Lady Byron, May i8th, 1816. 
 
 • The Hon. Mrs. ViUiers to the Hon. Mrs. Leigh, April 23rd, 1816. 
 
 34 
 
THREE STAGES OF LORD BYRON'S LIFE 
 
 herself, what she had to say to its publication. In those 
 days the poems of Lord Byron used to be searched with 
 avidity for mysteries and sensations by old and young 
 down to Eton boys. Schoolfellows at Eton taunted and 
 questioned a nephew of Mrs. Leigh's about " The Bride 
 of Abydos " and informed him of the stories in circula- 
 tion. Lord Byron's recklessness did not stop at paradox 
 and poetry. He gave hints in letters to more than one 
 woman, and in conversation gave various intimations of a 
 criminal intercourse with Mrs. Leigh. He did not for 
 some time speak of it in a manner which fixed it with 
 certainty upon her. He would say : " Oh, I never knew 
 what it was before. There is a woman I love so pas- 
 sionately — she is with child by me, and if a daughter, 
 it shall be called Medora." Gradually his avowals of 
 this incestuous intercourse became bolder, he positively 
 declared the crime and his delight in it : 
 
 " Too brief for our passion, too long for our peace, 
 Was that hour — Oh, when can its hope — can its memory 
 cease ? " 
 
 When it was objected, " I could beheve it of you, but 
 not of her," his vanity appeared to be piqued to rage, 
 and he exclaimed, " Would she not ? " It would appear 
 that he used to say the seduction had not given him much 
 trouble, that it was soon accomplished, and she was very 
 willing ; that in their early days they had been separated 
 by Lady Holderness on account of some apparent im- 
 propriety. He recollected also asking his mother why he 
 should not marry Augusta, the question being suggested 
 by an anecdote of some germana Jovis in Roman history.^ 
 
 On one occasion at the Albany Lord Byron was stated 
 to have taken a number of letters from Mrs. Leigh out 
 of his portfolio and shown them to a lady who was visiting 
 him. She said she remembered expressions in those 
 letters that must refer to such a connection. The letters 
 
 * The fourth Caesar publicly produced his own sister Drusilla as a lawful 
 wife : in modum juslae propalam habuit. Their grandmother Antonia is 
 mentioned by Suetonius as the Lady Holderness of the early days of Caius 
 Caligula and Drusilla, 
 
 35 ^^^ 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 contained much foolish levity, but occasionally there 
 
 appeared feelings of remorse, such as : " Oh, B , 
 
 if we loved one another as we did in childhood — then it 
 was innocent." But these feelings apparently became 
 less frequent. Lord Byron's valet, Fletcher, appeared 
 to be conscious of the crime.-'- 
 
 When Byron was about to be married, both he and 
 Augusta meant to close the secret life of the last year and 
 a half, and replace it by the purified adoration (almost 
 as of another being) which he afterwards so beautifully 
 expressed in the first two lines of " The Epistle " : 
 
 " My sister ! my sweet sister ! if a name 
 Dearer and purer were, it should be thine." ^ 
 
 It was a difficult, an almost impossible resolution, but 
 it seems probable that she did adhere to it. To Lady 
 Melbourne he made every promise of amendment man 
 could make on his engagement to her niece, but he was 
 half-hearted in this perfectly sincere intention, and it was 
 not persevered in. He was fond of quoting, " Returning 
 were as tedious as go on," and he soon felt it intolerable 
 to renounce his forbidden influence over Augusta : 
 
 " And thine is that love which I would not forego, 
 Though that heart may be bought by Eternity's woe." ^ 
 
 It would seem that none of Augusta's letters to Byron 
 have been preserved, with one or two trifling exceptions. 
 When he went abroad all her letters were left with other 
 papers at Sir Benjamin Hobhouse's.* Some of these 
 
 1 Theaboveaccount of Lord Byron's conversations in 1813 and 1814 was given 
 on March 27th, 1 816, by a lady (not Lady 'Byron, of course) who had frequently 
 been -with him during those months. What has been quoted of her statements, 
 from a memorandum made the same day, agrees with the things recorded else- 
 where, which could hardly be the case unless her report of conversation were so 
 far true ; but it is only here given for what it is worth, as the lady in question 
 was not in all respects trustworthy. But in this instance her information, being 
 confirmed by that from other sources, is of sufiBcient interest for inclusion in an 
 explanatory narrative. 
 
 ^ Further on these stanzas relapse into purely pagan passion. 
 
 3 From the first draft of the fifth stanza of " I speak not, I trace not, I breathe 
 not thy name," in the MS. given to Lady Byron. [See Appendix B.] 
 
 ♦ The Hon. Mrs. Villiers to Lady Byron, September 20th, 1816. 
 
 36 
 
THREE STAGES OF LORD BYRON'S LIFE 
 
 were returned to her after Lord Byron's death,i but 
 whether they were all ultimately destroyed, or what 
 became of them, is not recorded in Lady Byron's papers. 
 Lord Byron, however, who after his marriage constantly 
 talked of Augusta's letters with an air of mystery and a 
 kind of fierce and exulting transport, gave one of these 
 letters to Lady Byron. 
 
 Though trivial and childish, it is interesting in its 
 babyish adoration and undemonstrative acquiescence 
 in the approaching cutting of cakes and ringing of bells, 
 which was to be in nineteen days. Whereupon Augusta 
 just finds time for a word of smooth depreciation of her 
 successor's health, and a rapid but tender ending : 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lord Byron. 
 
 Seal Post Mark 
 
 Cupid driving a chariot Newmarket 
 
 Free 
 The 15 Dec 15 
 
 Lord Byron 1814 
 
 Albany 
 London 
 
 Wednesday [December 14, 18 14] 
 My dearest B + 
 
 As usual I have but a short allowance of time to 
 reply to your tendresses + but a few lines I know will 
 be better than none — at least I find them so + It was 
 
 very very good of you to think of me amidst all the 
 
 _ _ + + 
 
 visitors, &c. &c. I have scarcely recovered mine of 
 yesterday — La Dame did talk so — oh my stars ! but 
 at least it saved me a world of trouble — oh ! but she 
 found out a likeness in your picture to Mignonne ^ 
 who is of course very good humoured in consequence 
 
 1 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Noel Byron, April 26th, 1851. 
 
 * Mignonne or Mignon was Byron and Augusta's pet name for Medora, then a 
 few months old. About the end of 1816 or beginning of 18 17, the name of 
 Medora was altogether disused, and her other name of Elizabeth or Libby solely 
 employed. Libby's godmothers were Lady Francis Osborne (Elizabeth) and 
 Mrs. Wilmot {nee Horton). Lord Byron was godfather. (Lady Byron to the 
 Hon. Mrs. Villiers, March 6th, 18 17.) 
 
 37 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 + I want to know dearest B + your plans— when you 
 come -|- when you go — umph ! when the writings 
 travel — when y* Cake is to be cut — ^when the Bells 
 are to ring &c. &c. &c. — by the bye my visitors are 
 acquainted with a & did praise her to the skies — ^They 
 say her health has been hurt by studying, &c. &c. &c. 
 
 I have not a moment more my dearest + 
 except to say 
 
 ever thine 
 
 After his marriage, he generally spoke of Augusta as 
 " a fool " — with equal contempt of her understanding 
 and principles.^ He was, however, continually lamenting 
 her absence, saying no one loved him as she did — no one 
 understood how to make him happy but her.^ 
 
 When he found that Augusta had escaped from his 
 dominion and resisted his wishes, his anger was exces- 
 sively violent against both his wife and his sister, whom 
 he considered to have joined hands against him. His 
 bitterness was greatest against his wife, whom he then 
 wanted to cast off, and his temper became savagely cruel, 
 partly from the effects of Kinnaird's brandy, which 
 brought him to the verge of madness, and at times more 
 than to the verge. Out of revenge to both he took a 
 maitresse en litre, but this he seemed to think a greater 
 injury to Augusta than to Lady Byron. 
 
 This is not the place for details of the time passed at 
 Halnaby, Seaham, Six Mile Bottom, and 13, Piccadilly 
 Terrace, or of Augusta's long visits there, and Byron's 
 own short visit to Six Mile Bottom in the autumn. 
 
 1 The signature Indicated was used in the correspondence of Byron and 
 Augusta by both of them in writing to each other. Lord Byron often so signed 
 in letters to Lady Melbourne and Lady Byron. 
 
 2 Compare certain passages in his later letters to Augusta, such as : " You 
 see Goose — that there is no quiet in this world — so be a good woman— & 
 
 repent of y' sins. " " I am truly sorry for Blake — but as you observe with 
 
 great truth and novelty ' we arc none of us immortal." " — " I . . . shall 
 probably place [.'Vllegra] in a Convent— to become a good Catholic — & (it may 
 be) a Nun being a character somewhat wanted in our family." 
 
 ^ Lady Byron's Statement Q. 
 
 38 
 
LORD BYRON, AGED ABOUT TWENTY 
 
 From a Miniature belonging to his sister Augusta 
 
THREE STAGES OF LORD BYRON'S LIFE 
 
 About three weeks after Lady Byron's confinement, the 
 aversion he had already at times displayed towards her 
 struck everyone in the house as more formidable than 
 ever. Augusta, George Byron, and Mrs. Clermont were 
 then all staying in the house, and were very uneasy at 
 his unaccountable manner and talk. He assumed a 
 more threatening aspect towards Lady Byron. There 
 were paroxysms of frenzy, but a still stronger impression 
 was created by the frequent hints he gave of some sup- 
 pressed and bitter determination. He often spoke of 
 his conduct and intentions about women of the theatre 
 — particularly on January 3rd, 1 816, when he came to 
 Lady Byron's room and talked on that subject with 
 considerable violence. After that he did not go any 
 more to see her or the child, but three days later sent 
 her the following note : 
 
 January 6th, 18 16. 
 
 When you are disposed to leave London, it would be 
 convenient that a day should be fixed — and (if pos- 
 sible) not a very remote one for that purpose. — Of my 
 opinion upon that subject you are sufficiently in pos- 
 session, & of the circumstances which have led to it — 
 as also to my plans — dr rather — intentions — for the 
 
 future ^When in the country I will write to you 
 
 more fully — as Lady Noel has asked you to Kirkby — 
 there you can be for the present — unless you prefer 
 Seaham — 
 
 As the dismissal of the present establishment is of 
 importance to me — the sooner you can fix on the day 
 the better — though of course your convenience & 
 inclination shall be first consulted 
 
 The Child will of course accompany you — there is a 
 more easy & safer carriage than the chariot (unless you 
 prefer it) which I mentioned before — on that you can 
 do as you please 
 
 The next day [Sunday, January 7th, 18 16] Lady 
 Byron replied in writing as follows : " I shall obey your 
 wishes and fix the earliest day that circumstances will 
 
 39 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 admit for leaving London." Consequently she quitted 
 London on January 15 th. 
 
 A day or two after her arrival at Kirkby her mother, 
 Lady Noel, drew from her many of the circumstances of 
 her misery, and Lady Byron's own conviction that her 
 life would be endangered by returning to his roof. She 
 also communicated the impression of a certain degree 
 of insanity which had been made on all those who had the 
 nearest opportunities of observation ; but Lady Byron 
 also told her mother that the malady, if such there was, 
 did not appear to become more decided, and that she 
 believed him to be perfectly competent to transact 
 matters of actual business, and, indeed, particularly acute 
 about them. Lady Noel took up the cause of her daughter 
 with the thoroughness of a tigress whose young are 
 threatened, and, with Lady Byron's somewhat half- 
 hearted consent at first, her mother immediately went to 
 London to prepare for measures to protect Lady Byron 
 from intolerable misery. During her stay in London 
 for about a week Lady Noel saw Mrs. Leigh and George 
 Byron, who agreed with her that every endeavour should 
 be made to induce Lord Byron to agree to a separation. 
 Lady Noel also consulted Sir Samuel RomiUy, Serjeant 
 Heywood, Dr. Lushington the civilian, and Colonel 
 Francis Hastings Doyle, an old friend of the Milbanke 
 family and a shrewd man of the world. They all agreed 
 that a separation was indispensable, but Colonel Doyle 
 strongly urged that no pressure should be put on Lady 
 Byron to induce her to go further than she would 
 spontaneously do. He said he would much rather run 
 the risk of a negotiation which might leave some possible 
 chance of a future reconcihation under altered circum- 
 stances than deprive her of the status of a free agent. 
 Dr. Lushington, on the other hand, said Lady Byron 
 must allow her advisers entirely to dictate the measures 
 to be taken, and that otherwise she would have no 
 security. Nothing had been said at this time by Lady 
 Byron of her suspicions about Augusta, except apparently 
 a few incoherent words to Lady Noel, when telUng her 
 
 40 
 
THREE STAGES OF LORD BYRON'S LIFE 
 
 that Lord Byron had threatened to take the child away 
 from her and commit it to Augusta's charge. 
 
 When in his sober senses he had no wish to take the 
 child away from its mother, but when in a state of excite- 
 ment he seemed to glory in bringing on himself the odium 
 of the world. Moderation in anything was intolerable 
 to his nature. In January, 1816, his mood appeared to 
 be, " I cannot be positively good, but what prevents me 
 being positively bad ? Nothing — well — I'll show the 
 world I'm fit for great things." 
 
 On Tuesday evening, January 23rd, Captain George 
 Byron, in conversation with Lord Byron, openly 
 arraigned his conduct towards his wife, and threatened 
 him with her parents' taking up her defence. Lord 
 Byron interrupted George Byron with the most animated 
 expression of exultation, and said, " Let them come 
 forward, I'll glory in it." 
 
 He was very changeable. Sometimes he spoke of her 
 with the greatest kindness — though never seeming to 
 feel any desire that she should return — and the next 
 hour saying, as he did to George Byron, that the sooner 
 Lady Byron's friends took measures for a separation the 
 better. Besides " the usual nonsense about women at 
 the theatre," he talked about marrying Miss Mercer 
 Elphinstone if he could get rid of his present connection. 
 
 During the uncertainty about the manner in which he 
 would meet the attempt to negotiate for an amicable 
 separation. Miss Selina Doyle, sister of Colonel Doyle, 
 wrote to Lady Byron, January 26th, 1816 : 
 
 " As a real wife you were contemned, but when you 
 become again the beau ideal of his imagination, between 
 the possession of which and him there is an insuperable 
 barrier, you will be a second Thersa [Thyrza], perhaps 
 supplant her totally. These are prophecies and may 
 appear irrelevant, but as I think them now, I like to 
 say them, they may possibly save you a pang hereafter 
 when you hear of his love and misery at being deprived 
 of you, which nothing can replace. No, nothing 
 indeed, for were you to return the excitement pro- 
 
 41 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 duced by desire of you would cease, I am convinced, 
 and his incapacity of rendering you happy, as you 
 deserve in his opinion, would make him hate himself 
 and you, and helas, as long as he lives I fear that his 
 mind will be in that disordered state without malady 
 increases to a degree of imbecility, for I doubt not that 
 that degree of insanity is his natural state, at least 
 since the period his mind was first supposed to have 
 been affected, and I have as little doubt that had he 
 married Thersa, he would have been to Thersa what he 
 has been to you. She could not' better have ' minis- 
 tered to a mind diseased ' than you did when living 
 with him, than you do in leaving him."^ 
 
 For the last two days of January Lord Byron talked^ 
 in a very quiet way of proposing a separation himself, 
 saying he could not live with his wife, and must be at 
 liberty. The child he would leave with her, in order to 
 show that he had no fault to find with her, but he should 
 consider about it all. He constantly declared his dislike 
 of being a married man. 
 
 Should the negotiation for an amicable separation fail, 
 the step intended to be taken was to institute a suit in 
 the Ecclesiastical Court to obtain a divorce of bed and 
 board on the pleas of cruelty and adultery. ^ 
 
 On February 2nd Sir Ralph Noel wrote in harsh and 
 decided terms, drawn up by his council of advisers, to 
 require a separation. Thus addressed, Lord Byron 
 shrank from that liberty for which he had so ardently 
 longed, and positively refused to accept the separation. 
 The whole affair then rapidly became of world-wide 
 celebrity. The uproar against him at that time was 
 really due to latent enmities, awaiting some chance 
 
 ^ He had occasionally spoken of Thyrza to Lady Byron, at Seaham and after- 
 wards in London, always with strong but contained emotion. He once showed_ 
 his wife a beautiful tress of Thyrza's hair, but never mentioned her real name. 
 
 " As Lord Byron never presented himself to the Philistines as a pattern of 
 matrimonial virtue, Moore, Murray and Co. must have evolved out of their own 
 imagination the curious invention that during the time Lord and Lady Byron 
 lived together there was not a single instance of infidelity ! No such statement 
 as that ever was or could have been made by himself, even for the gratification 
 of Hannah More. 
 
 42 
 
THREE STAGES OF LORD BYRON'S LIFE 
 
 circumstance, such as the separation, to burst out. He 
 had accumulated an overwhelming mass of resentment 
 against himself by negation of time-honoured beliefs, 
 opposition to established order, disregard of persons, 
 rejection of law and restraint for himself. More than 
 enough irreconcilable ill-wishers, powerful or obscure, 
 were on the watch for his overthrow. Every kind of 
 report was spread about him, and more especially the 
 old report about Augusta was revived, and gained ground 
 on the numerous other conjectures as to probable or 
 possible causes for the separation. The report did not 
 arise, and could not possibly have arisen, in any way from 
 Lady Byron or her connections. To them it occasioned 
 entire surprise — she only was too well prepared for it ^ — 
 and so was Augusta herself, who afterwards wrote ^ 
 (July isth, 1816) : 
 
 " I never thought the report came from you or yours — 
 I know too well how to account for it — " 
 
 Lady Byron's friends could never forget the kindness 
 she experienced from Mrs. Leigh the latter part of the 
 time she was in Piccadilly. Even for Lady Byron's life 
 they believed they might thank Mrs. Leigh, and however 
 weakly the latter might have acted, they firmly believed 
 her intentions to have been good during all that latter 
 period.^ Mrs. Leigh always made the most of her good 
 offices. On a later occasion she quoted a remarkable 
 little speech of Sir John Hobhouse. His words were : 
 
 " Lady Byron has every reason to be grateful to you, 
 for you not only risked the loss of property, but what 
 was much dearer to you, his affection." * 
 
 When a suit in the Spiritual Court, presided over by 
 Sir William Scott, appeared inevitable. Lady Byron 
 came to her father in London, and arrived at Mivart's 
 Hotel on Thursday, February 22nd, 1816. The same 
 evening she had a long private conversation with Dr. 
 
 ^ Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Leigh, July nth, 1816. 
 2 To Lady Byron. 
 
 ' Mary Ann Clermont to the Hon. Lady Noel, March gth, i8i6. 
 * Lady Noel Byron's and the Rev. F. W. Robertson's Memorandum of 
 April 8th, 1851. 
 
 43 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Lushington, and confided to him the whole of the circum- 
 stances, including those that could not be made public. 
 
 By the last week in February the reports prejudicial 
 to Mrs. Leigh's character were very formidable. On her 
 friends " vehemently and indignantly resenting such a 
 calumny," they were met with the argument that Lady 
 Byron's " refusal to assign a reason for her separation 
 confirmed the report," and that no one but she could 
 deny it with any effect. " Nothing to be sure could be 
 more absurd than such an inference." It was not she 
 who had started or circulated the report, and she could 
 not seriously be expected to divulge her motives or the 
 means by which she was prepared to secure herself and 
 her child in the event of failure of a difficult negotiation, 
 while her hope was to avoid all exposure and litigation. 
 The reports were not kept up by Lady Byron's silence 
 so much as by the indefinite prolongation of Mrs. Leigh's 
 stay in Piccadilly under such eccentric conditions. 
 Under that roof she was in a focus of incessant obser- 
 vation and ever increasing curiosity. The surest course 
 for those friends who had her worldly reputation at 
 heart would have been to insist on her leaving Lord 
 Byron's house and London without further delay or 
 subterfuge. But Mrs. Leigh could not then be induced 
 to dare Lord Byron's displeasure and go away, so 
 application was made to Lady Byron on February 26th 
 for some kind of certificate of character for Mrs. Leigh. 
 This Lady Byron could not and did not give. In her 
 answer to Mrs. Leigh's friend (Mrs. Leigh being supposed 
 to be ignorant of this correspondence). Lady Byron dis- 
 claimed participation in any reports, referred to her 
 former grateful and affectionate acknowledgments of 
 Mrs. Leigh's good offices towards her personally, whilst 
 regretting that the extreme perplexities of present cir- 
 cumstances forbade any specific confidences.-^ 
 
 Unsuccessful attempts were made through the media- 
 tion of Lord Holland, and afterwards of Lord Byron's 
 
 1 The Hon. Mrs. Villiers to Lady Byron, February 26th, 1816, and Lady 
 Byron's answer of the same day. 
 
 44 
 
THREE STAGES OF LORD BYRON'S LIFE 
 
 first cousin, Robert John Wilmot, to induce Lord Byron 
 to accept a separation by agreement. Wilmot arrived 
 in London on March 2nd. In the course of his mediation, 
 which was undertaken about March 6th, he expressed 
 great anxiety that Lady Byron should do that justice to 
 Mrs. Leigh in the eyes of an ill-natured world which no 
 one else could render, by making known sentiments of 
 confidence, esteem, and affection, which he supposed to 
 be still intact. He was very urgent that Lady Byron 
 should see her, and the situation became distressing, as 
 she could not indefinitely refuse to meet her as before 
 without giving a sufficient reason, and Mrs. Leigh's 
 numerous connections might be expected to impute 
 malice to Lady Byron. 
 
 Dr. Lushington thought it would be extremely 
 improper to renew any intercourse with Mrs. Leigh until 
 means had been taken to obviate any injurious effect on 
 Lady Byron's position. The only possible course was 
 to communicate everything to Wilmot, and after this 
 had taken place Dr. Lushington somewhat reluctantly 
 withdrew opposition to a renewal of personal intercourse. 
 His feeling was that any personal contact with Mrs. 
 Leigh was a degradation to Lady Byron, and in after 
 years the cessation of such intercourse was regarded by 
 him with unmixed satisfaction.^ Together with Wilmot 
 and Colonel (afterwards Sir) Francis Hastings Doyle, he 
 then prepared a clear and conclusive statement of the 
 existing circumstances, intended for production under 
 the contingency of the fullest explanation of the motives 
 and grounds of Lady Byron's conduct becoming neces- 
 sary. It was hoped and believed that nothing might 
 ever occur to bring into discussion the motives and 
 principles of Lady Byron's conduct towards Mrs. Leigh. 
 But the character with which Lady Byron was imph- 
 cated demanded the greatest caution, and Colonel Doyle, 
 in particular, recommended her to act towards Mrs. 
 Leigh as if a time might possibly arise when it would be 
 necessary to justify herself. He could not dismiss from 
 
 1 Stephen Lushington, D.C.L., M.P., to Lady Byron, December 14th, 1829. 
 
 45 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 his mind the very serious embarrassment he and lier 
 advisers were under from the effects of a too confiding 
 disposition, and he impressed upon her and everyone 
 else the importance of securing herself from eventual 
 danger. Above all, he desired her to keep copies of all 
 her letters, and destroy none of those she might receive 
 from Mrs. Leigh, as she had once imprudently done.^ 
 
 STATEMENT. A L. 
 
 In case of my death to be 
 given to Colonel Doyle — 
 A. I. Byron ^ 
 
 [Thursday March 14 i8i6] ^ 
 
 During the year that Lady Byron lived under the 
 same roof with Lord B : certain circumstances occurred 
 & some intimations were made which excited a sus- 
 picion in Lady B's mind that an improper connection 
 had at one time & might even still subsist between 
 
 Lord B : and M"^ L : The causes however of this 
 
 suspicion did not amount to proof & Lady Byron did 
 not consider herself justified in acting upon these 
 suspicions by immediately quitting Lord B's house for 
 the following reasons. — i^' & principally because the 
 causes of suspicion, tho' they made a strong impression 
 upon her mind, did not amount to positive proof, & 
 Lady B : considered, that whilst a possibility of inno- 
 cence existed, every principle of duty & humanity 
 forbad her to act, as if M"^ L : was actually guilty, more 
 especially as any intimation of so heinous crime even 
 if not distinctly proved, must have seriously affected 
 M"^ L's character & happiness 
 
 2^. Lady B : had it not in her power to pursue a 
 middle course ; it was utterly impossible for her to 
 remove M'^ L from the society & roof of Lord B : 
 except by a direct accusation. 
 
 1 Colonel Doyle to Lady Byron, July 9th and July i8th, 1816. 
 
 ^ The packet was sealed. 
 
 ' The writing that follows is in Dr. Lushington's hand. 
 
 46 
 
THREE STAGES OF LORD BYRON'S LIFE 
 
 3'^'''. Because M" L : had from her first acquaintance 
 with Lady B : always manifested towards her the 
 utmost kindness & attention endeavouring as far as 
 laid in her power to mitigate the violence and cruelty of 
 Lord B : 
 
 4*. Because M" L : at times exhibited signs of a deep 
 remorse ; at least so Lady B : interpreted them to be, 
 tho' She does not mean to aver that the feelings M'* L : 
 then shewed were signs of remorse for the commission of 
 the crime alluded to or any other of so dark a descrip- 
 tion. 
 
 & lastly — Because Lady B : conceived it possible that 
 the crime, if committed might not only be deeply re- 
 pented of, but never have been perpetrated since her 
 marriage with Lord B : 
 
 It was from these motives & strongly inclining to a 
 charitable interpretation of all that passed that Lady B : 
 never during her living with Lord B : intimated a 
 suspicion of this nature. 
 
 Since Lady B's Separation from Lord B : the Report 
 has become current in the World of such a connection 
 having subsisted This report was not spread nor 
 sanctioned by Lady B : — M" L's character has however 
 been to some extent affected thereby — Lady B : cannot 
 divest her mind of the impressions before stated, but 
 anxious to avoid aU possibility of doing injury to M" L : 
 & not by any conduct of her own to throw any suspicion 
 upon M"^ L : & it being intimated that M'' L:'s character 
 can never be so effectually preserved as by a renewal of 
 intercourse with Lady B : she does for the motives & 
 reasons before mentioned consent to renew that inter- 
 course — 
 
 Now this Statement is made in order to Justify 
 Lady B : in the line of conduct she has now determined to 
 adopt & in order to prevent all misconstruction of her 
 motives in case M" L : should be proved hereafter to be 
 guilty, and if any circumstances should compel or render 
 it necessary for Lady B : to prefer the charge in order 
 
 47 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 that Lady B,: may be at full liberty so to do without 
 being prejudiced by her present conduct. 
 
 It is to be observed that this Paper does not contain 
 nor pretend to contain any of the grounds which gave 
 rise to the suspicion which has existed & still continues 
 to exist ii; Lady B's mind — 
 
 We whose names are hereunto subscribed are of 
 opinion, that under all the circumstances above stated 
 & also from our knowledge of what has passed respecting 
 t}ie.xQnduct of all parties mentioned, that the Une now 
 adopted by Lady B : is strictly right and honourable, as 
 well as just towards M"^ L : & Lady B : ought not what- 
 ever may hereafter occur be prejudiced thereby — , 
 
 London — Rob''. John Wilmot [Signed : 
 
 March 14. F. H. Doyle : by : 
 
 1816 Stephen Lushington : each.] 
 
 [Written Addition by Lady Byron.] 
 
 The reasons above stated are the genuine reasons 
 which actuated my conduct — 
 
 Anne Isabella Byron 
 
 [Attestations to Lady 
 Byron's signature by 
 
 London R. J. W. Mr Wilmot 
 
 March 14. 1816 F. H. D. Col : Doyle and 
 S. L : Dr Lushington.] 
 
 Upon one contingency only, viz., the taking from 
 Lady Byron of her child, and placing her under the care 
 of Mrs. Leigh, would the disclosure have been made 
 of Lady Byron's grounds for suspecting Mrs. Leigh's 
 guilt. ^ 
 
 Meanwhile she " did everything for Augusta but give 
 precisely such an authority " for specific denials as could 
 possibly constitute a departure from veracity.^ 
 
 It was not tiU Saturday, March i6th, that Mrs. Leigh 
 
 1 sir Francis Hastings Doyle to Lady Noel Byron, February gth, 1830. 
 
 2 Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Villiers, April 27th, i8i6. 
 
 48 
 
THREE STAGES OF LORD BYRON'S LIFE 
 
 moved from 13, Piccadilly Terrace, and then only to her 
 own rooms at St. James's Palace. 
 
 At the instance of his friend Hobhouse, Lord Byron 
 ultimately agreed to the principle of a separation on 
 equitable terms ; but this measure was carried through 
 in the teeth of opposition and obstruction from his 
 adviser, John Hanson, an attorney of bad repute, but 
 a very cool, calculating fellow, who had contrived to 
 marry his daughter to the mad Lord Portsmouth — a 
 marriage which was set aside afterwards on the ground 
 of his lordship's weakness of intellect and imbecility, 
 and consequent incapacity to contract marriage.-"- 
 
 The signature of the separation was delayed on various 
 pretexts till April 21st. 
 
 At a party given by Lady Jersey in the second week 
 
 ' Dr. Lushington's statement to Mr. H. A. Bathurst, January 27th, 1870, in 
 which I also find that " Lord Byron on the occasion of the marriage was present, 
 gave the bride away, and whilst leading her to the altar reminded her of his 
 seduction of her — Lord Byron told this to Lady Byron." John Charles, 3rd Earl 
 of Portsmouth, born 1767 ; married, first, an old Miss Norton, many years his 
 senior, and probably Warranted not to present an heir to the family. The family 
 seem to have regarded her as a safe caretaker for a man of great eccentricity ; 
 but she died November 15th, 1813, and on March loth, 1814, the lunatic married 
 young Miss Hanson, who was not perhaps considered to be past child-bearing. 
 
 The brother, Newton Fellowes, then took charge of the person of the lunatic, 
 and shut him up at Hurstbourne ; Lady Portsmouth and all the Hansons being 
 rigorously kept at a distance. A suit of nullity was brought against the mar- 
 riage ; but this lasted many years, partly owing to the opposition of Lord Eldon 
 — who had been publicly ridiculed by Newton Fellowes — for they were personal 
 and political enemies. Newton Fellowes was a racing man, and christened 
 his horses by nicknames of Lord Eldon — " Old Bags," " Upright Judge," etc. 
 Through Lord Eldon's influence the Hansons obtained for Lady Portsmouth an 
 order for an interview with Lord Portsmouth. Armed with this decree Lady 
 Portsmouth and her family went down with a hired force from London to 
 Hurstbourne, intending to use the interview to capture and carry ofl the lunatic. 
 But Newton Fellowes suspected this, and was on the spot quite ready for them, 
 with a still larger and better armed force. When Lady Portsmouth and the 
 Hansons arrived at Hurstbourne, they were not admitted inside the house, but 
 received in the entrance portico, whither the lunatic was brought out, surrounded 
 by his body-guard, commanded by Newton Fellowes in person, who went up 
 to old Hanson and seized him by the throat, pointed a loaded pistol at him, and 
 said : " If there is any attempt at abduction, I shall shoot you first." Under 
 these circumstances Lady Portsmouth's interview with Lord Portsmouth did 
 not last long, and led to nothing. The Hanson expedition had failed and 
 returned to town. All this was related to the late Earl of Lovelace by his 
 solicitor, Henry Karslake, who also, I think, acted for Lord Lovelace's aunt. 
 Lady Catherine Fellowes and her husband Newton Fellowes (whose second 
 wife was Lady Catherine Fortescue). 
 
 A. 49 E 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 of April Mrs. Leigh was cut by some people (Mrs. George 
 Lamb was one), and Lord Byron, who also went, was 
 shunned by a still greater number. It was stated by 
 Moore that Miss Mercer Elphinstone, afterwards Madame 
 de Flahaut and Baroness Keith, who was an enthusiastic 
 admirer of Byron's genius, was particularly gracious to 
 him that evening, and there is also some legend that, on 
 finding him there, she exclaimed : " Oh ! Lord Byron, 
 if you had married me aU this would never have hap- 
 pened." ■*■ 
 
 It was a little before that party, which proved such 
 an unpleasant ordeal for Mrs. Leigh, that the Hon. Mrs. 
 George Lamb wrote about her to Lady Byron : 
 
 "As to the other person, I do not wish to reveal her 
 faults, for I could almost pity her, when I think how 
 unhappy she must be, and I look upon her more as his 
 victim than as his accomplice." ^ 
 
 ^ " Lord Byron used to tell a story of a little red-haired girl, who, when 
 countesses and ladies of fashion were leaving the room where he was in crowds 
 (to cut him after his quarrel with his wife) stopped short near a table against 
 which he was leaning, gave him a familiar nod, and said, ' You should have 
 married me, and then this would not have happened to you.' " Hazlitt's 
 "Conversations of James Northcote," No. 15. Miss Mercer Elphinstone was 
 reported to have been desperately in love with the Duke of Devonshire. In 
 1817 she was married to Auguste Charles Joseph, Comte de Flahaut de la 
 Billarderie, then an exile in England. He was bom April 21st, 1785. His 
 mother (afterwards Marquise de Souza) had been married very young to the 
 elder Flahaut, but they separated immediately. Before the Revolution, in 
 which he perished, she was excessively intimate with Talleyrand. 
 
 Her son became general of brigade and aide-de-camp to Napoleon, rallied to 
 Louis XVIII., whom he deserted again in the hundred days, and became one of 
 the most desperate opponents of the second restoration. Talleyrand's interven- 
 tion saved him from figuring in the ordinance of July 24th, 1815, and prosecu- 
 tion, but he was expelled from France, and only returned to live at Paris in 1827. 
 By his marriage there were only daughters, but the Due de Morny was notori- 
 ously his son. (The chapter of maternity tacitly lay under an imperial interdict.) 
 
 ^ In the Morrison Catalogue of Manuscripts is printed a letter from Lady 
 Byron to the Hon. Mrs. George Lamb, evidently the answer to Mrs. Lamb's 
 letter quoted above. The following is an extract from Lady Byron's note as 
 printed by the catalogue compiler : 
 
 " Monday, April ist, 1816. 
 
 " I am glad that you think of her with the feelings of pity which prevail in my 
 mind, and surely if in mine there must be some cause for them. I never was, 
 nor ever can be so mercilessly virtuous, as to admit no excuse for even the worst 
 of errors." 
 
 Strange that Mr. Alfred Morrison and his friends, however ignorant, could 
 have failed to see that such words could only apply to Mrs. Leigh I 
 
 SO 
 
THREE STAGES OF LORD BYRON'S LIFE 
 
 Lady Holland was at that time amongst Lord Byron's 
 enemies, but not on the ground of his relations with 
 Lady Byron, which she regarded as mere peccadilloes 
 compared with his behaviour in other matters, of which 
 the most important seems to have been going to the 
 Continent without paying the Duchess of Devonshire 
 her rent. 
 
 A letter was written at this time by Lord Byron to 
 Lady Byron, which is necessary for the comprehension 
 of the very last letters that ever passed between them, 
 nearly five years later. It has never before been accu- 
 rately published, having been previously printed from a 
 version inaccurate in every line. 
 
 To 
 
 The Lady Byron 
 
 Mivart's Hotel 
 
 [Easter] Sunday April [14] 1816 
 
 " More last words " — not many — and such as you 
 will attend to — answer I do not expect — nor does it 
 
 import — but you will hear me. I have just parted 
 
 from Augusta — almost the last being you had left me 
 to part with — & the only unshattered tie of my exist- 
 ence — wherever I may go — & I am going far — you & 
 I can never meet again in this world — nor in the next — 
 
 Let this content or atone. If any accident occurs 
 
 to me — be kind to her, if she is then nothing — to 
 
 her children ; 
 
 Some time ago — I informed you that with the know- 
 ledge that any child of ours was already provided for 
 by other & better means — I had made my will in favor 
 of her & her children — as prior to my marriage : — this 
 
 prejudice 
 
 was not done in (anger)^ to you for we had not then 
 differed — & even this is useless during your life by the 
 settlements — I say therefore — be kind to her & hers — 
 for never has she acted or spoken otherwise towards 
 you — she has ever been your friend — this may seem 
 valueless to one who has now so many : be kind to 
 
 ^ [" Anger " is effaced. — Ed.] 
 
 51 E2 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 her — however — & recollect that though it may be 
 advantage to you to have lost your husband — it is sorrow 
 to her to have the waters now — or the earth hereafter 
 — between her & her brother. — 
 
 She is gone — I need hardly add that of this request 
 she knows nothing — your late compliances have not 
 been so extensive — as to render this an encroachment : — 
 I repeat it — (for deep resentments have but half recollec- 
 tions) that you once did promise me thus much — do not 
 forget it — nor deem it cancelled it was not a vow. 
 
 M'' Wharton has sent me a letter with one question 
 & two pieces of intelligence — to the question I answer 
 that the carriage is yours — & as it has only carried us to 
 Halnaby — & London — & you to Kirkby — I hope it will 
 take you many a more propitious journey. — 
 
 The receipts can remain — unless troublesome, if so — 
 they can be sent to Augusta — & through her I would 
 also hear of my little daughter — my address will be left 
 for M"^^ Leigh. — The ring is of no lapidary value — but it 
 contains the hair of a king and an ancestor — ^which I 
 should wish to preserve to Miss Byron. — 
 
 To a subsequent letter of M"^ Wharton's I have to 
 reply that it is the " law's delay " not mine, — & that 
 when he & M' H have adjusted the tenor of the bond — 
 I am ready to sign 
 
 Y^ Ever 
 
 very truly 
 
 Byron 
 
 He was refused permission by the French Government 
 to travel through France except on condition of keeping 
 a prescribed route and avoiding Paris. ^ According to 
 Lady Holland, the ladies of Paris would have received 
 him with open arms had he been allowed to go there.^ 
 
 On April 23rd Lord Byron left the house where he 
 had been almost uninterruptedly from March 28th, 1815, 
 
 ^ His friend Hobhouse was also unable two months later to procure French 
 passports in consequence of his book about the Hundred Days. 
 ^ Dr. Lushington to Lady Byron, April 30th, 18 16. 
 
 52 
 
THREE STAGES OF LORD BYRON'S LIFE 
 
 and stayed two nights at Dover, where the curiosity to 
 see him was so great that many ladies accoutred them- 
 selves as chambermaids for the purpose of obtaining 
 under that disguise a nearer inspection whilst he con- 
 tinued at the inn, and on going to embark he walked 
 through a lane of spectators.^ On April 25th, 1816, he 
 crossed to Ostend with the presentiment that his absence 
 would be long. 
 
 ^ Dr. Lushington to Lady Byron, May 6th, 1816. 
 
 S3 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 MANFRED 
 
 " Pone me ut signaculum super cor tuum, ut signaculum super 
 brachium tuum : quia fortis est ut mors dilectio, dura sicut 
 infernus aemulatio : lampades eius lampades ignis atque 
 flammarum. 
 
 " Aquae multae non potuerunt extinguere caritatem, nee 
 flumina obruent illam : si dederit homo omnem substantiam 
 domus suae, pro dilectione, quasi nihil despiciet earn." 
 
 " Alas, I know not by what name to call thee ! 
 Sister and wife are the two dearest names ; 
 And I wou'd call thee both ! and both are sin. 
 # * * * * 
 
 And I shou'd break thro' Laws divine and humane, 
 
 And think them Cobwebs, spread for little Man, 
 
 Which all the bulky Herd of Nature breaks. 
 
 The vigorous young World was ignorant 
 
 Of these Restrictions, 'tis decrepit now ; 
 
 Not more devout, but more decay' d, and cold. 
 
 All this is impious ; therefore we must part : " 
 
 Don Sebastian.'^ 
 
 THE same day that Lord Byron crossed the water, 
 " Lady Byron too went into the country to break 
 her heart." So said Rogers, and he was not so far wrong 
 as Lushington, who reported the words, wished to beheve. 
 
 * At Halnaby, two or three days after the marriage, Lady Byron — ^who had 
 been reading Dryden's tragedy — thoughtlessly alluded to the subject : an 
 incestuous union of brother and sister through ignorance of their parentage. 
 He probably supposed the allusion designed, and made a strange and violent 
 scene which first gave her an indefinite but most painful suspicion. Her first 
 idea was that he might have had a connection with some girl, whom he after- 
 wards discovered to be a natural sister. This was rendered more probable by 
 his father's libertine character. 
 
 After this scene she carefully avoided this subject, though he made it difficult 
 by continual allusions to it as if for the purpose of ascertaining whether she had 
 any suspicion or not. She was in constant fear of being supposed to be trying 
 to find out his secrets, but knew not what subjects to avoid. 
 
 54 
 
MANFRED 
 
 If happiness could be restored by exhortations to forti- 
 tude, she would have been well provided. She was 
 admonished not to waste her health and spirits in 
 unavailing lamentations over the past, or in regret for 
 one who had sacrificed her happiness and forfeited his 
 own by an entire dereliction of principle both in theory 
 and practice. Her new state was declared eligible by 
 comparison with the misery and degradation from which 
 she had escaped. 
 
 Her real state of mind was described by herself many 
 years later : 
 
 " I felt appalled at the desert which seemed spread 
 before me. At first indeed I felt relief from breathing an 
 atmosphere of innocence — but it was not for long. 
 There was a burning world within which made the 
 external one cold — I had given up all that was con- 
 genial with youth — The imagination of what might 
 
 have been was all that remained In this state 
 
 I had a singular degree of insensibility to the real — 
 The touch of every hand seemed cold. I could look on 
 tears without sympathy — and I returned kindness 
 heartlessly & mechanically. — One principle was still 
 active, tho' unaccompanied by natural feelingsf*r^t 
 was — to follow his example who ' went about doing 
 good ' — But the little good I might have done was 
 perhaps frustrated by the state of my own mind — The 
 poor [were] rather indeed benefactors to me than I to 
 them — they had a claim upon my thoughts which I 
 could not set aside for visionary indulgences — they 
 saved me from myself — Thus passed several months — " 
 
 It is not surprising that at this time Lady Milbanke 
 (who had then resumed under Lord Wentworth's Will 
 her maiden name of Noel) was in much trouble of mind 
 about her daughter. Lady Noel had written (Sunday, 
 March 3rd, 1816) to Lady Byron : 
 
 " I neither do, or can expect that you should not feel 
 and deeply feel — but I have sometimes thought (and 
 that not only lately) that Your mind is too high wrought — 
 too much so for this World — only the grander objects 
 
 55 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 had pressed Lady Byron hard more than once to vouch 
 for Augusta's character, and whose indignation had been 
 excited by the absence of such a certificate. All this 
 changed when she had received full explanation of the 
 indelible impression left on Lady Byron's mind. Mrs. 
 Villiers was also informed by Wilmot, and jointly with 
 him strongly urged Lady Byron to avow to Augusta the 
 information of which they were in possession. Colonel 
 Doyle and Dr. Lushington saw no necessity for this step, 
 and would have preferred that all intercourse should 
 then be dropped. But Lady Byron would have experi- 
 enced pain in throwing off without explanation a person 
 she had loved and from whom she conceived she had 
 received kindness.-^ So Lady Byron wrote on her own 
 responsibility, in conformity with the ufgent advice of 
 Wilmot and Mrs. Villiers, and announced what she knew. 
 Augusta did not attempt to deny it, and in fact admitted 
 everything in her letters of June, July, and August, i8i6.^ 
 It is unnecessary to produce them here, as their contents 
 are confirmed and made sufficiently clear by the corre- 
 spondence of 1819 in another chapter.^ Colonel Doyle 
 wrote to Lady Byron (July 9th, 1816) : 
 
 " Your feelings I perfectly understand, I wiU even 
 whisper to you I approve. . . . But you must remember 
 that your position is very extraordinary, and though 
 when we have sufficiently deliberated and decided, we 
 should pursue our course without embarrassing ourselves 
 with the consequences, yet we should not neglect the 
 means of fully justifying ourselves if the necessity be 
 ever imposed upon us. I see the possibility of a con- 
 conversation and manner, with something young about the still well-cut face, 
 the light in her eyes and agreeable voice. She spelt her name Therese in all the 
 signatures I have seen. 
 
 ^ Colonel Doyle to Lady Byron, July gth, 1816. 
 
 ^ [See Chapters IX. and X. ; also Introduction, p. ix. — Ed.] 
 
 ^ Sir Leslie Stephen said it made him quite uncomfortable to read Mrs. 
 Leigh's letters of humiliation dated 1816. That she could have written as she 
 did, considering all the circumstances of the whole miserable story seemed 
 " to imply the sort of moral idiocy of which Lady Byron speaks. To print the 
 letters would seem to be superfluous and any superfluous printing would, on 
 my view, be a mistake." (Letter to the Earl of Lovelace, April ist, 1900.) 
 
 58 
 
MANFRED 
 
 tingency under which the fullest explanation of the 
 motives and grounds of your conduct may be necessary, 
 I therefore implore of you to suffer no delicacy to inter- 
 fere with your endeavouring to obtain the fuUest admis- 
 sion of the fact. ... If you obtain an acknowledgment 
 of the facts and that your motives be, as you seem to 
 think, properly appreciated, I think on the whole we 
 shall have reason to rejoice that you have acted as you 
 have done, but I shall be very anxious to have a more 
 detailed knowledge of what has passed and particularly 
 of the state in which you leave it. 
 
 " The step you have taken was attended with great 
 risk, and I could not, contemplating the danger to which 
 it might have exposed you, have originally advised it. 
 If however your correspondence has produced an 
 acknowledgment of the fact even previous to your 
 marriage I shall be most happy that it has taken place." 
 
 Colonel Doyle also wrote to Lady Byron (July i8th, 
 1816) : 
 
 " I must recommend you to act as if a time might pos- 
 sibly arise when it would be necessary for you to justify 
 yourself, though nothing short of an absolute necessity so 
 imperative as to be irresistible could ever authorise your 
 advertence to your present communications. Still I 
 cannot dismiss from my mind the experience we have had 
 nor so far forget the very serious embarrassment we were 
 under from the effects of your too confiding disposition, 
 as not to implore you to bear in mind the importance of 
 securing yourself from eventual danger. This is my first 
 object — and if that be attained — I shall approve and 
 applaud all the kindness you can show." 
 
 At this time the reports against Mrs. Leigh were very 
 strong. It is not impossible that they were in Scott's 
 mind when he wrote " The Antiquary," published about 
 this time, the plot of which is based on a marriage 
 between persons supposed to be " ower sib." Byronic 
 personages appeared sometimes in " Tales of my Land- 
 lord " after this time. George Staunton (or Robertson), 
 in " The Heart of Mid Lothian," is very much the 
 
 59 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 popular presentation of Byron. The discovery, after 
 his death by the hands of a son whom he was seeking and 
 meant to acknowledge, that he had been secretly a 
 Catholic and practised severe penance for the crimes of 
 his youth, has a curious resemblance to Scott's own 
 prophecy that Byron would end as a Catholic. 
 
 Lord and Lady Darlington,^ while at Geneva in the 
 summer of 1816, were told very seriously that Mrs. Leigh, 
 disguised as a page, was there with Lord Byron, and 
 their informer could not be persuaded that it was not 
 so.^ Lady Granville had dropped Mrs. Leigh's acquaint- 
 ance, but called on her again in consequence of a letter 
 from Lady Byron, appealing for a continuance of former 
 kindness, and expressing confidence that Mrs. Leigh 
 would in future deserve it. 
 
 For a long time Mrs. Leigh was in unceasing dread of 
 social collapse, and thought she might have to disappear, 
 in which case she said she wished neither Lady Byron 
 nor Mrs. VilHers to make any further efforts to see her or 
 take her part. 
 
 Desperation about her character in the world very 
 nearly drove Augusta to follow Byron abroad. Her 
 distraction and misery were most striking when she came 
 to London on July ilth, 1816 ; but her letters also from 
 Six Mile Bottom in May and June had been " dejected 
 and melancholy to the greatest degree." To Mrs. 
 Villiers she wrote " in a tone of despair, saying that now 
 her own happiness was at an end, and she could only 
 look to that of her friends." " Her letters to Lord 
 Frederick Bentinck (who is as you know very much in 
 her confidence) are he tells me more melancholy than 
 ever, but I do not hear a word of any particular cause," ^ 
 reports Mrs. Villiers. 
 
 ■■ William Henry, third Earl of Darlington, born July 27th, 1766, married 
 firstly, September 19th, 1787, Lady Katharine Powlett, who died June i6th, 
 :8o7; he married secondly, July 27th, 1813, Elizabeth, daughter of Robert 
 Russell, who died January 31st, 1861. He was created Duke of Cleveland, 
 January 15th, 1833, and died January 2nd, 1842. See also note at page 26. 
 
 2 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron, September 17th, 1816. 
 
 ' The Hon. Mrs. Villiers to Lady Byron, June 8th, 1816; Robert John 
 Wilmot to Lady Byron, June 12th, 18 16. 
 
 60 
 
MANFRED 
 
 To another correspondent Mrs. Leigh wrote, June loth, 
 i8i6 : " None can know how much I have suffered 
 from this unhappy business — and, indeed, I have never 
 known a moment's peace, and begin to despair for the 
 future." 1 
 
 On Wednesday, July 17th, 18 16, she dined with the 
 Villiers's, stayed with them between four and five hours ; 
 " and I must say," wrote Mrs. ViUiers, " that in my Hfe 
 I never saw anything equal to her dejection, her absence, 
 her whole mind evidently pre-occupied and engrossed, 
 and apparently insensible of being in society. Mr. 
 Villiers, who really exerted himself, and commanded 
 himself much better than I expected, to show her as 
 much kindness as before, tells me that while I was called 
 out of the room to speak to a person, he could not extract 
 an answer, even a monosyllable from her, except when 
 he joked about the predicted destruction of the world 
 to-day, and said {d propos to some arrangements which 
 the boys wanted to make) ' we need not give ourselves 
 any trouble about it, for the world will be at an end to- 
 morrow, and that will put an end to all our cares.' She 
 quite exclaimed before the boys, the servants, etc., ' I 
 don't know what you may all be, but I am sure I'm not 
 prepared for the next world, so I hope this will last.' " 
 This seemed the only topic that roused her.^ 
 
 A real reformation, according to Christian ideals, 
 would not merely have driven Byron and Augusta apart 
 from each other, but expelled them from the world of 
 wickedness, consigned them for the rest of their lives to 
 strict expiation and holiness. But this could never be ; 
 and, in the long run, her flight to an outcast life would 
 have been a lesser evil than the consequences of pre- 
 venting it. The fall of Mrs. Leigh would have been a 
 
 1 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to the Rev. Francis Hodgson. The latter half of the 
 passage quoted was omitted from the printed version produced in a memoir of 
 the reverend gentleman, but was brought to light at the auctionof the original 
 letter in 1885. The suppressed words, apart from their own significance, are 
 an average sample of every-day Byronese garbling. 
 
 " The Hon. Mrs. Villiers to Lady Byron, July i8th, 1816. [See' Chapter X, 
 —Ed.] 
 
 61 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 definite catastrophe, affecting a small number of people 
 for a time in a startling manner. The disaster would 
 have been obvious, but partial, immediately over and 
 ended. While at first causing acute pain to a very few, 
 it must soon have relieved them from increasing diffi- 
 culties and dangers which gradually undermined and 
 ruined many lives and fortunes. She would have Hved 
 in open revolt against the Christian standard, not in 
 secret disobedience and unrepentant hypocrisy. He 
 would have avoided the acted profligacy in which he 
 pursued a savage revenge for her desertion of him. 
 Judged by the light of nature, a heroism and sincerity 
 of united fates and doom would have seemed beyond all 
 comparison purer and nobler than what they actually 
 drifted into. By the social code, sin between man and 
 woman can never be blotted out, as assuredly it is the 
 most irreversible of facts. Nevertheless societies secretly 
 respect, though they excommunicate, those rebel lovers 
 who sacrifice everything else, but observe a law of their 
 own, and make a religion out of sin itself by living it 
 through with constancy. 
 
 Byron was ready to sacrifice everything for Augusta, 
 and to defy the world with her. If this had not been 
 prevented, he would have been a more poetical figure in 
 history than as the author of " Manfred " and all the 
 poems of despair and ennui born of a solitude amidst 
 unmentionable women. Misery and inaction were what 
 drove him to verse. He wrote, as a lark in a cage, " non 
 canta d'amor ma di rabbia." He might never have 
 written a line of poetry if he could have done and lived 
 the things that were natural to him. How he would 
 have treated Augusta if once completely in his power, is 
 hard to guess. Lady Melbourne had predicted that they 
 would end by reproaching each other reciprocally for 
 their inevitable unhappiness. Augusta may have had 
 her own misgivings as to this, though at the height of 
 her passion she was an utter fool about him, saw nothing 
 except with his eyes, and thought only of merging her 
 identity and existence in his, " Dearest, first and best of 
 
 62 
 
MANFRED 
 
 human beings," as she called him.^ She once said to 
 Lady Byron in December, 1815 : " Ah — you don't know 
 what a fool I have been about him ! " ^ In her blindness 
 she knew not that her secret was already betrayed even 
 in detail and in writing to other women. 
 
 She certainly was not spared misery or degradation by 
 being preserved from flagrant acts ; for nothing could 
 be more wretched than her subsequent existence ; and, 
 far from growing virtuous, she went farther down with- 
 out end temporally and spiritually. Character regained 
 was the consummation of Mrs. Leigh's ruin. Her return 
 to outward respectability was an unmixed misfortune to 
 the third person through whose protection it was possible. 
 For if Augusta fled to Byron in exile, was seen with him 
 as et soror et conjux, the victory remained with Lady 
 Byron, solid and final. This was the solution hoped for 
 by Lady Byron's friends, Lushington and Doyle, as well 
 as I^ady Noel ; who all rightly wished to prevent or end 
 false and intolerable relations.^ Their triumph and Lady 
 Byron's justification would have been complete, and 
 great would have been their rejoicing. But with her the 
 romance of self-sacrifice was all-powerful. She dreamed 
 of miracles, of Augusta purified from sin. Then she 
 thought of the disgrace and scandal, the distress of 
 Augusta's connections. Wilmot and Mrs. Villiers, too, 
 were pressing her hard to be kind to Augusta, win her 
 confidence, save her from losing her character in England 
 and rushing off to destruction. They had both come to 
 execrate Byron as wickedness personified, desired to 
 thwart him and interfere with the triumph of his plans. 
 Mrs. Villiers was still deeply attached to Augusta, and 
 
 1 " The day after my marriage he had a letter from her — it affected him 
 strangely — and excited a kind of fierce and exulting transport. He read to me 
 the expression, ' Dearest, first and best of human beings,' and then said with 
 suspicious inquisitiveness, ' There— what do you think of that ? ' " (Lady 
 Byron's Narrative, Q.) 
 
 * Lady Byron's Statement, G. 
 
 ' Lady Noel strongly and repeatedly warned Lady Byron against Mrs. 
 Leigh ; for example, on September 7th, 1816, she wrote : " Once more take care 
 of + (the symbol used by Byron and others for Augusta). If I know anything 
 of human nature she does and must hate you." 
 
 63 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Wilmot, though very angry with his unfortunate cousin, 
 naturally wished to stifle the talk about her. Thus was 
 a false position perpetuated for generation after genera- 
 tion. A cloud of misunderstanding was allowed to 
 darken the Byron history, and has hung thick and weary 
 upon his race. His personality and genius have been 
 effaced under laudatory fallacies which would otherwise 
 have been impossible. 
 
 It was the fatality of events which drove Lady Byron 
 to intervene and prevent things from taking their 
 natural course. She cannot be blamed for the evils 
 which followed, and to herself most of all. It was her 
 interest that Augusta should join Byron abroad and 
 never return, but it was impossible for her to desire or 
 connive at such an event, and she thought it her duty 
 strenuously to oppose it. To the last she preserved the 
 illusion that it had been well to interfere, and that she 
 had saved them both from additional guilt. 
 
 Byron had given his solemn word of honour to Augusta 
 that he never had betrayed her either to Lady Byron or 
 to anyone else, or said anything that could give rise to 
 a report about her ; and she declared just after parting 
 from him in April, 1816, that "she must believe his 
 word, could not, would not believe him dishonourable." 
 Her infatuation continued to increase in his absence — 
 so much that Mrs. Villiers apprehended she would go 
 abroad to him at the first opportunity, and said it was 
 " of the utmost importance that her feelings towards 
 him should be changed, and the sooner the better." 
 This could only be done by informing her how com- 
 pletely he had committed her, " even betrayed her in 
 writing to two or three women." ^ Thus was Lady 
 Byron induced to resume correspondence with Mrs. 
 Leigh, and by degrees to detach her from Lord Byron. 
 The discovery of what Byron had said and written of 
 Augusta became a powerful motive for her to play the 
 game of entire submission to Lady Byron's guidance. 
 On August 5 th, Augusta wrote that she felt most 
 
 1 The Hon. Mrs. Villiers to Lady Byron, May i8th 1816. 
 64 
 
MANFRED 
 
 solemnly Byron had not been her friend, and that 
 though there were difficulties in writing to him that she 
 would never see him again, she was determined that 
 nothing should induce her to see him again in the way 
 she had done.^ Augusta's so-called rescue was worked ; 
 and Lady Byron had sacrificed herself in vain. 
 
 Lady Byron came to London for a fortnight's stay in 
 lodgings on August 31st, and again saw Augusta, who was 
 at St. James's Palace ; indeed, she saw her most days 
 during that stay as well as Mrs. Villiers.^ Augusta then 
 made full confession of the previous connection — any sub- 
 sequent to Lady Byron's marriage being stoutly denied. 
 Lady Byron had sometimes been incUned to think that 
 Mrs. Leigh might have feigned resistance to Lord Byron's 
 wishes before her and permitted them in private. 
 
 Lady Byron wrote (in 18 17) of these meetings with 
 Augusta : 
 
 " She acknowledged that the verses (' I speak not, I 
 trace not, I breathe not thy name ') of which I have the 
 original, were addressed to her. She told me that she 
 had never felt any suspicions of my suspicions except at 
 the time in the summer of 1815 when I evidently wished 
 she would leave us, but she had often told him he said 
 such things before me as would have led any other 
 woman to suspect. He reassured her when these doubts 
 occurred, and she seems to have acted upon the principle 
 that what could be concealed from me was no injury. 
 
 " She denied that during the business of the separa- 
 tion he had ever addressed any criminal proposals to her. 
 
 " Augusta told me that she had never seen remorse 
 for his guilt towards her in him but once — the night 
 before they last parted, previous to his going abroad." ^ 
 
 1 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron, August 5th, 1816. 
 
 * From July nth to September 14th, 1816, Mrs. Leigh never left St. James's 
 Palace. She and Lady Byron were not inmates of the same house, either there 
 or anywhere else, after the separation. A contemporary invention that Lady 
 Byron went to live with Mrs. Leigh was embellished by a fabuUst of 1869 into 
 the statement that Lady Byron visited Mrs. Leigh near Newmarket in 1816 ; 
 the fact being that Lady Byron was only once in her life at Six Mile Bottom, 
 viz. : with Lord Byron from March 12th to March 28th, 1815. 
 
 ' Statements G and K. 
 
 A. 65 ' 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Augusta also admitted her guilt — somewhat less fully 
 and explicitly — to Mrs. ViUiers at that time. Mrs. 
 Villiers was sceptical of Augusta's entire innocence after 
 marriage, especially during the period after Lady Byron 
 left, when Augusta permitted personal famiHarities 
 which astonished George Byron, and also seemed entirely 
 to change her opinion respecting the rights of the separa- 
 tion. Mrs. Villiers thought Lord Byron would never 
 have missed such an opportunity of securing the con- 
 tinuation of her submission.-"- 
 
 Mrs.' Villiers wrote to Augusta that she " considered 
 her the victim to the most infernal plot that had ever 
 entered the heart of man to conceive . . . that her 
 [Mrs. Villiers'] horror, detestation and execration of the 
 person who had beguiled and betrayed Augusta exceeded 
 all powers of expression." ^ 
 
 Of this letter of Mrs. Villiers, Augusta wrote to Lady 
 Byron from Six Mile Bottom (September 17th, 1816) : 
 
 " I shall be glad that you see M"^ ViUiers again — . . . 
 She terms you my Guardian Angel & I am sure you are 
 so — Towards another person — she is very violent in her 
 expressions of resentment — & it is I daresay very 
 natural but I think it better not to say a word in answer 
 — tho' in fact I am the one much the most to blame — & 
 quite inexcusable — You know — I trust — that I am 
 anxious to make every atonement — & will assist me — " 
 
 Lady Byron was not under a complete illusion about 
 Augusta's repentance and gratitude. She felt Httle 
 doubt that Augusta would readily turn upon her as an 
 enemy some day, as it was very difficult for one woman 
 to forgive another such a humiUating position. For 
 the time, however, Augusta submitted completely to 
 guidance — showed aU Lord Byron's letters as she 
 received them to Lady Byron, and answered him in the 
 most guarded way. 
 
 Mrs. Leigh was to have been the child's godmother. 
 
 ^ Lady Byron'to Mrs. Villiers, November 2nd, and Mrs. Villiers to Lady 
 Byron, November 5th, 1816. 
 
 ^ The Hon. Mrs. Villiers to Lady Byron, September 15th, 1816. 
 
 66 
 
MANFRED 
 
 In those days the real christening often took place long 
 after the baptismal registration, which in this case had 
 taken place while Lady Byron was still confined to her 
 room. On November ist, 1816, Ada was christened ; 
 Captain Byron being godfather, Lady Byron's mother 
 and Lady Tamworth the godmothers. The change was 
 not announced to Mrs. Leigh, though she heard some- 
 thing about it, and wrote to inquire, apparently without 
 receiving any answer, which was doubtless best, as, 
 though Lady Byron was unwilling to allow Augusta 
 more than a restricted intercourse with the little Augusta 
 Ada, and had an insurmountable repugnance to the 
 child's being in her company, she could not bear to 
 distance her for that reason in so many words, though 
 she might have done so consistently with what she always 
 told her on that subject.^ 
 
 When he had gone abroad, Byron wrote to Augusta 
 with passionate affection — love letters which were after- 
 wards shown to Lady Byron, whose advice was asked 
 how they could be stopped, when Augusta had put 
 herself absolutely, though temporarily, into Lady Byron's 
 hands. On September 17th, Byron wrote to urge 
 Augusta to join him abroad, and on or before Octo- 
 ber 13 th she answered by Lady Byron's direction that 
 such a step would be equally ruinous to himself, her, 
 and her children, and that she hoped he would feel that 
 such views must now be relinquished. At the same time 
 she wrote very coldly about meeting him again, or his 
 returning to England. He at once suspected the letter 
 to have been prompted by Lady Byron, and his exaspera- 
 tion against Augusta and Lady Byron, for the one having 
 fallen under the influence of the other, was extreme, and 
 went on increasing till it culminated in " Manfred." 
 Under Augusta's " absurd obscure hinting style of 
 writing," — " full of megrims and mysteries," Byron 
 read clearly two things : that Augusta threatened not 
 to see him, if he returned, either at her own house or his, 
 or except in the presence of other people. He compre- 
 
 1 Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. ViUiers, November jith, 1818. 
 
 6-] ^2 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 hended secondly that Lady Byron forbade Augusta ever 
 to meet him again.^ 
 
 After Waterloo he had wished for Castlereagh's head 
 on a pike. Now his most sanguinary language was 
 reserved for domestic enemies, amongst whom he in- 
 cluded his nearest blood relations, as well as those of 
 Lady Byron. He appealed to Heaven for a proscrip- 
 tion by the side of which that of CoUot d'Herbois should 
 seem a mere idyll. To Lady Byron and her parents, 
 George Byron, Robert Wilmot, he promised that " not 
 a fibre of their hearts should remain unsearched by fire." 
 His bitterness was most undying against Lady Byron's 
 mother, about whom he wrote four years later : 
 
 " She [Lady Noel] is too troublesome an old woman 
 ever to die while her death can do any good — but if she 
 ever does march — it is to be presumed that she will take 
 her ' water divining rod ' with her — it may be a useful 
 twig to her & the devil too — ^when she gets home again."^ 
 
 For Augusta he reserved in " Manfred " a special 
 " guillotine axe to shear away her vainly whimpering 
 head."^ Just as " Manfred " was coming out, he wrote 
 a few bitter reproaches to her for behaving so coldly 
 when he was ready to have sacrificed everything for her. 
 He said it was " on her account principally that he had 
 given way at aU and signed the separation, for he thought 
 
 ^ See extracts from Lord Byron's letters, page 79. [See also Chapter XL] 
 
 ' Lady Noel was a water-finder. The detestation was thoroughly reciprocal. 
 She wrote to Lady Byron (August 2nd, 1818) : 
 
 " Lady Calthorpe has a letter from her Daughter written at Venice, where 
 she has seen Lord Byron. You may imagine in what terms she speaks of 
 him — 
 
 " the only new particular is, that he has quarrelled with and dismissed the 
 married lady, and supplied her place, by a Girl of sixteen — 
 
 " I conclude you have heard that his black-haired Daughter is sent to him at 
 Venice — 
 
 " but no more on such a polluted subject — I will begin with some other on a 
 virgin Page — " 
 
 But from her deathbed Lady Noel desired a message of " her forgiveness " 
 to be sent to Lord Byron, It was not in her character to launch an insolence 
 in the form of a dying forgiveness, but there is reason to fear that her words — 
 perhaps uttered when she was almost severed from the power of expression — 
 did not and could not soften Lord Byron. 
 
 ^ Written in the " French Revolution," Book I, Chapter iv, of the Comtesse 
 du Barr)j " unfortunate female " yet " unmalignant, not unpitiable thing." 
 
 68 
 
MANFRED 
 
 they would endeavour to drag her into it, although they 
 had no business with anything previous to his marriage 
 with that infernal fiend whose destruction he should yet 
 see." 1 
 
 After this he wrote no more to Augusta for nearly 
 nine months, and she expressed the opinion that she 
 was now hated by him. 
 
 When Manfred was published, " nothing could have 
 saved Augusta in the eyes of the whole world but want 
 of faith in his veracity " — a very unfounded disbehef. 
 " No avowal can be more complete," wrote Mrs. Villiers. 
 " It is too barefaced for her friends to attempt to deny 
 the allusion. All that appeared to me practicable I 
 have done with her own family, who have all spoke to 
 me about it. I have said that I had long been aware 
 that his whole object was to ruin others, and particularly 
 those to whom he owed the most, and that I had long 
 been convinced of his wish to confirm the reports of last 
 year to Augusta's prejudice. 
 
 " Did you see the newspaper called ' The Day and 
 New Times ' of the 23rd June ? There is a long critique 
 on ' Manfred ' ably done, I think, but the allusions to 
 Augusta dreadfully clear. Lady Chichester brought it 
 to me ! " 2 
 
 The sacrifice of Lord Byron's character for veracity 
 was of course cordially made by Mrs. Leigh's brothers 
 and sisters. Lady Chichester, the Duke of Leeds,^ and 
 Lord Francis Godolphin Osborne, who could not but 
 be willing to be deceived. More strangely, the general 
 
 ^ Lord Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Leigh, June 19th, 18 17. 
 
 2 The Hon. Mrs. Villiers to Lady Byron, July 6th, 1817. No copy of this 
 newspaper exists in the British Museum, and whether any copy of it still exists 
 has not been ascertained. Dr. John Stoddart, Hazlitt's brother-in-law, and 
 once connected with "The Times," quitted that paper in January, 1817, and 
 edited " The Day," which was from that time for some months entitled " The 
 Day and New Times." But before long the word " Day " was left out, and in 
 1818 Dr. Stoddart's newspaper was called " The New Times " alone. 
 
 ' By Lady Blessington's account. Lord Byron, who bore no malice, and in a 
 short time often lost the very recollection of his own violences, thought it odd 
 that the Duke of Leeds did not call on him at Genoa in 1823 1 But it was no 
 wonder if Mrs. Leigh's half-brother on the mother's side never forgot or forgave 
 Manfred. 
 
 69 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 public, with the stupidity of doves, helped by the caution 
 of the more experienced serpents of the world and the 
 Court, was determined to discover in Mrs. Leigh nothing 
 more than a deserving " maid of honour " ^ to Que en 
 Charlotte. Augusta herself expressed the opinion that 
 she was now hated by the Manfred who descended to 
 Hades to uncharnel the wraith of Astarte. His love 
 certainly was as implacable as Nemesis. He was a 
 master of dire enchantments to transfix hearts. Astarte 
 was haunted and ridd'en by a spectral Astarte vivified 
 for a flash of time out of the eternal silences to prophesy 
 judgment by the infernal gods upon Manfred. 
 
 Lord Byron's long silence lasted till March, i8l8, 
 when he again wrote to Augusta from Venice. 
 
 He attributed his long silence to her having plagued 
 him with letters full of hints and grievances he could not 
 understand ! encomiums of Lady Byron — gossip about a 
 flock of Idiots. He asked whether " Manfred " had not 
 caused " a pucker." 
 
 So at least Augusta described the letter to Lady 
 Byron. Augusta said that this most unfeeHng and 
 almost insulting manner of remarking upon " Manfred " 
 had given her the opportunity to reply : 
 
 " A propos of ' puckers ' I thought there was unkind- 
 ness which I did not expect in doing what was but too 
 sure to cause one — & so — I said nothing — & perhaps 
 should not but for y^ questions " — 
 
 Augusta adds to Lady Byron about the letter from 
 Venice : 
 
 " A more melancholy one I can't well imagine — such 
 anger & hatred & bitterness to all — only fit for y" fire — 
 in short it's plain to me he is angry with himself poor 
 fellow ! what a dreadful existence — the only ace' of 
 himself — & his proceedings is a dreadful one — & I 
 suppose intended to vex & perplex me — as is very 
 evidently the whole letter P 
 
 ^ So at least Lord Byron affected to call her. He wrote to Augusta during 
 the last illness of her royal mistress : " If the Queen dies you are no more a 
 Maid of Honour — is it not so ? , . ." 
 
 7° 
 
MANFRED 
 
 After this he wrote to Augusta at short intervals, in 
 the most varying moods. 
 
 Before proceeding to the important documents which 
 will be recorded in Chapter IV, the substance of Lord 
 Byron's strange poetical manifesto of June, 1817, must 
 be noticed. 
 
 The following extracts from " Manfred " contain a 
 sort of transfiguration of terribly real feelings and circum- 
 stances into a haunting apparition. 
 
 Act III. Scene 3. 
 
 MANUEL. 
 
 That was a night indeed ! I do remember 
 'Twas twilight, as it may be now, and such 
 Another evening ; — ^yon red cloud, which rests 
 On Eigher's pinnacle, so rested then — 
 So like that it might be the same ; the wind 
 Was faint and gusty, and the mountain snows 
 Began to glitter with the climbing moon ; 
 Count Manfred was, as now, within his tower, — 
 How occupied, we knew not, but with him 
 The sole companion of his wanderings 
 And watchings — her, whom of all earthly things 
 That lived, the only thing he seem'd to love, — 
 As he, indeed, by blood was bound to do, 
 The lady Astarte, his — 
 
 HERMAN. 
 
 Look — ^look — the tower — 
 The tower's on fire. 
 
 Act I. Scene i. 
 
 Let him 
 Who is most powerful of ye, take such aspect 
 As unto him may seem most fitting — Come ! 
 SEVENTH SPIRIT {appearing in the shape of a beautiful 
 female figure). 
 
 Behold ! 
 
 71 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 MANFRED. 
 
 Oh God ! if it be thus, and thou 
 Art not a madness and a mockery, 
 I yet might be most happy. I will clasp thee. 
 And we again will be — [The figure vanishes] — ^My heart is 
 crush'd ! \M.AT<i-FVi.-ETi falls senseless. 
 
 Act II. Scene i. 
 
 MANFRED. 
 
 There's blood upon the brim ! 
 Will it then never — never sink in the earth ? 
 
 * * * 
 
 I say 'tis blood — my blood ! the pure warm stream 
 Which ran in the veins of my fathers, and in ours 
 When we were in our youth, and had one heart 
 And loved each other as we should not love, 
 And this was shed ; but still it rises up, 
 Colouring the clouds, that shut me out from heaven, 
 
 Where thou art not — and I shall never be. 
 
 * * « 
 
 Oh ! no, no, no J 
 My injuries came down on those who loved me — 
 On those whom I best loved ; I never quell'd 
 An enemy, save in my just defence — 
 But my embrace was fatal. 
 
 Act II. Scene 2. 
 
 Though I wore the form, 
 I had no sympathy with breathing flesh, 
 Nor midst the creatures of clay that girded me 
 Was there but one who — but of her anon. 
 
 * • * 
 
 I have not named to thee 
 Father or mother, mistress, friend or being 
 With whom I wore a chain of human ties ; 
 If I had such, they seem'd not such to me — 
 Yet there was one — 
 
 72 
 
MANFRED 
 
 She was like me in lineaments — ^her eyes, 
 Her hair, her features, all, the very tone 
 Even of her voice, they said were like to mine ; 
 But soften'd all, and temper'd into beauty ; 
 She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings. 
 The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mind 
 To comprehend the universe ; nor these 
 Alone, but with them gentler powers than mine, 
 Pity, and smiles, and tears — which I had not 
 And tenderness — but that I had for her ; 
 Humility — and that I never had. 
 Her faults were mine — her virtues were her own — 
 I lov'd her, and destroy'd her ! 
 
 * * * 
 
 Not with my hand, but heart — which broke her heart- 
 It gazed on mine, and wither'd. I have shed 
 Blood, but not hers — and yet her blood was shed — 
 I saw — and could riot stanch it. 
 
 « • * 
 
 Daughter of Air ! I tell thee since that hour — 
 
 * • « 
 
 My solitude is solitude no more. 
 But peopled with the Furies. 
 
 * * * 
 
 If I had never lived, that which I love 
 Had still been living ; had I never loved. 
 That which I love would still be beautiful — 
 Happy and giving happiness. What is she ? 
 What is she now ? — a sufferer for my sins — 
 A thing I dare not think upon — or nothing. 
 
 Act II. Scene 4. 
 
 NEMESIS. 
 
 Whom wouldst thou 
 Uncharnel ? 
 
 MANFRED. 
 
 One without a tomb — call up 
 Astarte. 
 
 73 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 NEMESIS. 
 
 Shadow ! or Spirit ! 
 Whatever thou art, 
 • * • 
 
 Appear ! — ^Appear ! — Appear ! 
 
 Who sent thee there requires thee here ! 
 
 [7 he -Phantom of Astarte rises and stands in the 
 midst. 
 
 MANFRED. | 
 
 Can this be death ? there's bloom upon her cheek ; 
 But now I see it is no living hue, 
 But a strange hectic — like the unnatural red 
 Which Autumn paints upon the perish'd leaf 
 It is the same ! Oh, God ! that I should dread 
 To look upon the same — Astarte ! — ^No, 
 I cannot speak to her — but bid her speak — 
 Forgive me or condemn me. 
 
 nemesis. 
 
 By the power which hath broken 
 The grave which enthrall'd thee, 
 
 Speak to him who hath spoken. 
 Or thgse who have call'd thee ! 
 
 MANFRED. 
 
 She is silent, 
 And in that silence I am answer'd. 
 
 NEMESIS. 
 
 * ♦ 
 
 She is not of our order, but belongs 
 
 To the other powers. Mortal ! thy quest is vain, 
 
 And we are baffled also. 
 
 MANFRED. 
 
 Hear me, hear me — 
 Astarte ! my beloved ! speak to me ; 
 
 74 
 
MANFRED 
 
 I have so much endured — so much endure — 
 
 Look on me ! the grave hath not changed thee more 
 
 Than I am changed for thee. Thou lovedst me 
 
 Too much, as I loved thee ; we were not made 
 
 To torture thus each Other, though it were 
 
 The deadHest sin to love as we have loved. 
 
 Say that thou loath'st me not — that I do bear 
 
 This punishment for both — that thou wilt be 
 
 One of the blessed — and that I shall die ; 
 
 For hitherto all hateful things conspire 
 
 To bind me in existence — ^in a life 
 
 Which makes me shrink from immortality — 
 
 A future like the past. I cannot rest. 
 
 I know not what I ask, nor what I seek : 
 
 I feel but what thou art — and what I am ; 
 
 And I would hear yet once before I perish 
 
 The voice which was my music — Speak to me ! 
 
 For I have call'd on thee in the still night, 
 
 Startled the slumbering birds from the hush'd boughs, 
 
 And woke the mountain wolVes, and made the caves 
 
 Acquainted with thy vainly echoed name, 
 
 Which answer'd me — many things answer'd me — 
 
 Spirits and men — but thou wert silent all. 
 
 Yet speak to me ! I have outwatch'd the stars. 
 
 And gazed o'er heaven in vain in search of thee. 
 
 Speak to me ! I have wander'd o'er the earth, 
 
 And never found thy likeness — Speak to me ! 
 
 Look on the fiends around — they feel for me ! 
 
 I fear them not, and feel for thee alone — 
 
 Speak to me ! though it be in wrath ; — but say — 
 
 I reck not what — but let me hear thee once — 
 
 This once^once more ! 
 
 PHANTOM OF ASTARTE. 
 
 Manfred ! 
 
 MANFRED. 
 
 Say on, say on — 
 I live but in the sound — ^it is thy voice ! 
 
 75 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 PHANTOM. 
 
 Manfred ! To-morrow ends thine earthly ills. 
 Farewell ! 
 
 MANFRED. 
 
 Yet one word more — am I forgiven ? 
 
 PHANTOM. 
 
 Farewell ! 
 
 MANFRED. 
 
 Say, shall we meet again f 
 
 PHANTOM. 
 
 Farewell ! 
 
 MANFRED. 
 
 One word for mercy ! Say, thou lovest me. 
 
 PHANTOM. 
 
 Manfred ! \^he Spirit of Kstakt-e disappears 
 
 NEMESIS. 
 
 She's gone and will not be recall'd ; 
 Her words wUl be fulfiU'd. Return to earth. 
 
 Act III. Scene 4. 
 
 ABBOT. 
 
 I see a dusk and awful figure rise. 
 Like an infernal god, from out the earth ; 
 His face wrapt in a mantle, and his form 
 Robed as with angry clouds ; he stands between 
 Thyself and me — but I do fear him not. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Why doth he gaze on thee, and thou on him ? 
 Ah ! he unveils his aspect ; on his brow 
 The thunder-scars are graven ; from his eye 
 Glares forth the immortality of Hell — 
 
 * 111 # 
 
 What art thou, unknown being ? Answer ! — speak ! 
 
 76 
 
MANFRED 
 
 SPIRIT. 
 
 The genius of this mortal, — Come ! 'tis time. 
 
 * * « 
 
 MANFRED. 
 
 I knew, and know my hour is come, but not 
 To render up my soul to such as thee ; 
 Away ! I'll die as I have lived — alone. 
 
 ■ft * « 
 
 My life is in it's last hour — that I know 
 Nor would redeem a moment of that hour ; 
 I do not combat against death, but thee 
 And thy surrounding angels. 
 
 « « * 
 
 SPIRIT. 
 
 But thy many crimes 
 Have made thee 
 
 MANFRED. 
 
 What are they to such as thee ? 
 Must crimes be punish'd but by other crimes. 
 And greater criminals ? — Back to thy hell ! 
 
 4: 4e W 
 
 What I have done is done ; I bear within 
 
 A torture which could nothing gain from thine ; 
 
 The mind which is immortal makes itself 
 
 Requital for its good or evil thoughts — 
 
 In its own origin of ill and end — 
 
 And its own place and time — its innate sense 
 
 When stripp'd of this mortality, derives 
 
 No colour from the fleeting things without ; 
 
 But is absorb'd in sufferance or in joy. 
 
 Born from the knowledge of its own deserts 
 
 The hand of death is on me — but not yours ! 
 
 \7he Demons disappear. 
 
 ABBOT. 
 
 Alas ! how pale thou art — thy lips are white — 
 And thy breast heaves — and in thy gasping throat 
 
 77 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 The accents rattle — Give thy prayers to Heaven — 
 Pray — albeit but in thought — but die not thus, 
 
 MANFRED. 
 
 'Tis over — my duU eyes can fix thee not ; 
 But all things swim around me, and the earth 
 Heaves as it were beneath me. Fare thee well. 
 
 The germ of this nightmare in blank verse was in the 
 actual letters to the living Astarte, many of which she 
 destroyed ; but in the fragments which remain some of 
 the ideas, and almost the very words, are still to be 
 found which were developed into the incantations of 
 Manfred. 
 
 Some passages taken at random will illustrate the 
 afiinity of the poem with the letters to her whom Byron 
 addressed as " My Heart ! " in the days 
 
 " when I was ' gentle and juvenile — curly and gay,' 
 and was myself in love with a certain silly person — and 
 who was she — can you guess ? " 
 
 " Your confidential letter is safe — and all the others. 
 This one has cut me to the heart because I have made 
 you uneasy — Still I think all these apprehensions — ^very 
 groundless — " 
 
 " do not be uneasy — and do not ' hate yourself ' — if 
 you hate either let it be me — but do not — ^it would kill 
 me ; — we are the last persons in the world — who ought — 
 or could cease to love one another — " 
 
 " Your having seen my daughter is to me a great satis- 
 faction. It is as if I had seen her myself — Next to you 
 dearest she is nearly all I have to look forward to with 
 hope or pleasure in this world — perhaps she may also 
 disappoint and distress me — " 
 
 " This Country is altogether the paradise of wilderness. 
 I wish you were in it with me and everyone else out of it 
 — love me — A. — ever thine." 
 
 78 
 
LORD BYRON 
 
 From a Miniature formerly belonging to his sister Augusta, 
 by J. Holmes (1814) 
 
MANFRED 
 
 " I would return from any distance at any time to see 
 you — and come to England for you — " 
 
 " What a fool I was to marry — and you not very wise 
 — my dear — ^we might have lived so single and so happy 
 — as old maids & batchelors ; — I shall never find any one 
 like you — nor you — (vain as it may seem) like me — ^we 
 are just formed to pass our lives together, — and therefore 
 — we — at least — I — am by a crowd of circumstances 
 removed from the only being who could ever have loved 
 me — or whom I can unmixedly feel attached to — " 
 
 " a thousand loves — to you from me — which is very 
 generous for I only ask one in return." 
 
 " I really do not & cannot understand all the mysteries 
 & alarms in your letters — & more particularly in the last 
 — all I know is — that — ^no human power — short of 
 destruction — shall prevent me from seeing you when — 
 where — & how — I may please — according to time and 
 circumstance — that you are the only comfort (except the 
 remote possibility of my daughter's being so) left me in 
 prospect in existence, and that I can bear the rest — so 
 that you remain — but any thing which is to divide us 
 would drive me quite out of my senses ; — " 
 
 " You surely do not mean to say that if I come to 
 England in Spring — that you & I shall not meet ? — If so 
 I will never return to it — " 
 
 " I know nothing of what you are in the doldrums 
 about at present — I should think — all that could affect 
 you — must have been over long ago — & as for me — leave 
 me to take care of myself — " 
 
 " it would be much better at once to explain your 
 mysteries- — than to go on with this absurd obscure 
 hinting style of writing — ^What do you mean ? — what is 
 there known ? or can be known ? which you & / do not 
 know much better ? & what concealment can you have 
 from me ? — / never shrank — " 
 
 79 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 " You say nothing in favour of my return to England 
 — ^Very well — I will stay where I am — and you will never 
 see me more." 
 
 " I always loved you better than any earthly existence, 
 and I always shall unless I go mad " ^ 
 
 [* The full text of the letters from which these passages are quoted will be 
 found in Chapter XI. — Ed.] 
 
 80 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 SOME CORRESPONDENCE OF AUGUSTA BYRON 
 
 " Im garten der liebe, da welken die rosen, 
 Es fliehen, es flattern zu anderem ort 
 Die lustigen voglein und falter, die losen, 
 Denn die Minne, die goldene Minne, zieht fort. 
 Und kalt wird dein herz, das voreinsten so gliihte, 
 Und triibe der augen hellstrahlendes paar ; 
 Und blass wird die lippe, die purpura einst bliihte, 
 Und silbern — und silbern dein goldenes haar." 
 
 SCHULTE VON BrUHL. 
 
 THE detached extracts given at the close of the last 
 chapter are mostly from the letters of 1816 and 
 1 8 17, and reflect the state of mind also expressed in 
 " Manfred," for comparison with which the dates are 
 unnecessary. 
 
 There is, however, another letter written in a similar 
 spirit two years later, which is so important both in itself 
 and on account of the subsequent correspondence which 
 it occasioned between Mrs. Leigh and Lady Byron, that 
 it must be given in extenso : 
 
 Lord Byron to the Hon: Mrs: Leigh. 
 Superscription : 
 
 To [Name effaced by Mrs. Leigh] 
 to the care of Jn° Murray Esq'' ^ 
 50 Albemarle S' 
 May 17* London 
 
 18 19 Angleterre 
 
 Inghilterra 
 
 Venice [Monday] May 17* 18 19. 
 My dearest Love — 
 
 I have been negligent in not writing, but what 
 can I say Three years absence — & the total change of 
 
 1 [Nearly all Byron's letters to Mrs. Leigh of this period are thus 
 addressed.] 
 
 A. 81 ° 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 scene and habit make such a difference — that we have 
 now ^ nothing in common but our affections & our 
 relationship. — 
 
 But I have never ceased nor can cease to feel for a 
 moment that perfect & boundless attachment which 
 bound & binds me to you — which renders me utterly- 
 incapable of real love for any other human being — for 
 what could they be to me after you ? My own xxxx ^ 
 we may have been very wrong — but I repent of nothing 
 except that cursed marriage — & your refusing to continue 
 to love me as you had loved me — I can neither forget nor 
 quite forgive you for that precious piece of reformation. — 
 but I can never be other than I have been — and whenever 
 I love anything it is because it reminds me in some way 
 or other of yourself — for instance I not long ago attached 
 myself to a Venetian for no earthly reason (although a 
 pretty woman) but because she was called xxxx ^ and 
 she often remarked (without knowing the reason) how 
 fond I was of the name. — It is heart-breaking to think of 
 our long Separation — and I am sure more than punish- 
 ment enough for all our sins — ^Dante is more humane in 
 his " Hell " for he places his unfortunate lovers (Fran- 
 cesca of Rimini & Paolo whose case fell a good deal short 
 of ours — though sufficiently naughty) in company — and 
 though they suffer — it is at least together. — If ever I 
 return to England — it will be to see you — and recollect 
 that in all time — & place — and feelings — I have never 
 ceased to be the same to you in heart — Circumstances 
 may have ruffled my manner — & hardened my spirit — 
 you may have seen me harsh & exasperated with all 
 things around me ; grieved & tortured with your new 
 resolution, — & the soon after persecution of that infamous 
 fiend who drove me from my Country & conspired against 
 my life — by endeavouring to deprive me of all that could 
 render it precious — but remember that even then you 
 were the sole object that cost me a tear ? and what tears ! 
 do you remember our parting ? I have not spirits now 
 
 ^ [This is misprinted "never" in original edition.] 
 ' Short name of three or four letters obliterated. 
 
 82 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF AUGUSTA BYRON 
 
 to write to you upon other subjects — I am well in health 
 — and have no cause of grief but the reflection that we 
 are not together — ^When you write to me speak to me of 
 yourself — & say that you love me — never mind common- 
 place people & topics — ^which can be in no degree interest- 
 ing — to me who see nothing in England but the country 
 which holds you — or around it but the sea which divides 
 us. — ^They say absence destroys weak passions — & con- 
 firms strong ones — Alas ! mine for you is the union of all 
 passions & of all affections — ^Has strengthened itself but 
 will destroy me — I do not speak of physical destruction — 
 for I have endured & can endure much — but of the annihi- 
 lation of all thoughts feelings or hopes — ^which have not 
 more or less a reference to you & to our recollections — 
 
 Ever dearest 
 
 [Signature erased] 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 Right HoiiW« 
 Lady Byron 
 
 Tunbridge Wells 
 Chichester 
 
 Friday [June 25, 1 8 19] 
 My dearest A — 
 
 I have been fining for a letter from you — & am 
 afraid I should not have left you in peace so long — had I 
 not heard thro M"^ G V — that you had arrived safe & 
 well — I am glad you found your Mother improving in 
 health — & that y" place agrees with you — but you tell 
 me not a word in particular of your own health & whether 
 you have tried y* Waters — I am pleased that Ada has 
 been so with Noah &c. 
 
 As for Mazeppa & Appendages I am all astonishment 
 not knowing it was OMi— what are the Appendages my 
 dear A ? not the Don I hope — I think I shall never read 
 another of those performances, — I have just got M" 
 Hoares Book which I mean to study & the new Tales are 
 awaiting my leisure or my inclination to read Some way 
 or other I have not had energy of mind or body for any 
 
 83 G 2 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 thing of late — & all I do is an effort — ^You were not wrong 
 in thinking me depressed & oppressed my dear A when 
 we met — & certainly the sight of dear Ada contributed 
 in a great degree to unnerve me — I'm sorry you discovered 
 it — & I need not dwell on all the painful feelings it 
 occasioned & which you can enter into — I will only tell 
 you of my pleasure in seeing her all you could wish. I 
 never saw — prejuges a part so very engaging a Child — I 
 might say a great deal of her tractability — & your good 
 management — but as you hate praises & I am very 
 awkward about expressing my approbation & admiration 
 I will not dwell on that either, 
 
 I felt greatly annoyed at not seeing you again alone — 
 before you left [London], as I had made up my mind to 
 what I am now doing — tho' I am not clear I may be 
 acting right, & it has been made and unmade on the 
 subject 20 times — Yet I can safely affirm not on my own 
 ace' have I doubted — I really must enclose y* last letter 
 I spoke to you of — for I have endeavoured in vain, in 
 thought & deed to reply to it — I am so afraid of saying 
 what might do harm — or omitting any possible good — 
 burn it — & tell me you have & answer me as soon as you 
 can — I shall be anxious — & my unusually long silence 
 may cause agitation — ^which I always avoid — in short he 
 is surely to be considered a Maniac — I do not beheve any 
 feelings expressed are by any means permanent — only 
 occasioned by y* passing & present reflection & occupa- 
 tion of writing to the unfortunate Being to whom they 
 are addressed — 
 
 pray pardon me if you think me wrong — for I do 
 not mean it to be so — tho I am convinced there 
 are many w'^ condemn the act as an insult but it is / 
 advice & superior judgment that is wished for. Inde- 
 pendent of this misery I have plenty of Home ones — 
 but I will not worry you dear A — The Babes are well. 
 I am hurried for post having unexpectedly got this 
 frank ^ & being anxious not to delay — God bless you 
 ever & ever 
 
 ^ From Lord Chichester, see superscription. 
 84 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF AUGUSTA BYRON 
 
 Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Tunbridge Wells 
 [Sunday] June 27* 
 1819. 
 
 My dearest A — 
 
 It is impossible that I could mistake your 
 motives for sending me the enclosed letter — As it opens 
 nothing new to me in regard to the writer's mind, it gives 
 me no other pain than what arises from feeling for your 
 grief in receiving a fresh proof of the continuance of that 
 passion which you most wish to be extinguished. I have 
 looked anxiously for such appearances of incoherency as 
 could justify your idea of its being mere raving. In- 
 capable as he is of the true attachment, which is devoted 
 to the welfare of its object, I have before observed to you 
 that in the intervals of every pursuit which engaged him 
 by its novelty, this most dreadful fever of the heart has 
 returned — In such cases, unless a purifying repentance 
 has taken place there can be no medium between aver- 
 sion & love — This well known fact in the nature of man — 
 should form a ground of conduct — You have indeed made 
 it so by avoiding every expression that could encourage 
 tenderness — & this letter is an ample testimony of your 
 having done so, as well as of the prior " reformation " 
 which was sufficiently evidenced to me by your own 
 assertion & the agreement of circumstances with it — But 
 in case of a more unequivocal disclosure on his part than 
 has yet been made, this letter would confute those false 
 accusations — to which you would undoubtedly be 
 subjected from others — Still I am aware of the danger of 
 not burning it. I however prefer returning it to you — 
 and I shall not enclose, that there may be more perfect 
 security of its delivery. 
 
 But in regard to your conduct — ^There appear to me 
 to be but two ways of proceeding which are at all recon- 
 cileable with those principles by which you are governed — 
 
 The first alternative is to reply that after so unequi- 
 vocal a proof that the idea of you was associated with the 
 most guilty feelings, you considered it your duty to break 
 
 85 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 off all communication — being convinced that it must be 
 attended with the danger of keeping them alive — that 
 your anxiety for his welfare could not be more strongly 
 proved than by a resolution which might expose you 
 to his resentment, but which was dictated by the 
 strongest sense of duty towards him, as well as towards 
 yourself — 
 
 The other alternative is — to take no notice of having 
 received the letter — for if you notice it at all, it must be 
 in my opinion in such terms as above — but to continue 
 the correspondence in the same style of guarded pro- 
 priety which seems to [have] piqued him to make this 
 impassioned, tho as appears to me, artfully studied 
 address, to recover his ascendancy — 
 
 Considering you as an individual, I should not hesitate 
 to say that the first was absolutely incumbent upon you 
 — Considering you with reference to your domestic ties, 
 the determination of the question must be influenced by 
 your opinion of the probable consequences — If I felt that 
 I could calculate them with confidence, I would not 
 shrink from the responsibility of advising you — but I 
 cannot — Indeed I fear that he wiU nor let you rest till 
 he has done you the greatest temporal injury — & that 
 you can only avert it a Httle longer by any mode of con- 
 duct — I wish with aU my heart that I could express more 
 consolatory opinions — but your consolations must come 
 from a different source — and I trust they wiU encrease 
 with your trials — 
 
 I will write to you about myself soon — and tell me 
 what you do — tho' I feel sure that the gentler expedient 
 will appear to you the best. We must act consistently 
 with our own opinions, not with those even of the persons 
 we most esteem — if we would secure the peace of retro- 
 spect — Endeavour to clear your ideas as to what your 
 relative duties require, act according to the best con- 
 clusions you can form, and then rest in the feeling that 
 " duties are ours — events are God's " — 
 
 Ever yours most affec''' 
 
 A I B 
 86 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF AUGUSTA BYRON 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 London June twenty eight 1 8 19 
 The 
 
 Lady Byron 
 
 Tunbridge Wells 
 Fred Bentinck 
 
 [Monday] June 28 [1819] 
 
 Your letter &c has arrived safely my dearest A & a 
 million of thanks for y^ kindness — Decision was never 
 roY forte in any circumstances — & God knows in such as 
 y° present, y^ difficulty I feel & shall feel — ^yet — one 
 ought to act (as far as one can) right & leave the issue to 
 Providence. — 
 
 I will tell you what now passes in my mind. As to 
 the gentler expedient you propose, I certainly lean to it — 
 as the least offensive — btit — supposing he suspects the 
 motive & is piqued to answer, " I wrote you such a 
 letter of such a date ? Did you receive it ? " What 
 then is to be done — I could not reply falsely — & might 
 not that line of conduct acknowledged — irritate ? This 
 consideration w^ lead me perhaps — ^preferably — to adopt 
 the other — as most open & honest — (certainly to any 
 other Character but his — ) but, query whether it might 
 not be most judicious as to its effects — and at the same 
 time acknowledging that his Victim was wholly in his 
 power, as to temporal good & leaving it to his generosity 
 whether to use that power — if not dead to every Spark 
 of good feeling — or not partially insane^ — I think — I 
 cannot but think — it might be best — but to determine 
 those questions is difficult — in either case to be acting 
 right would be one's consolation. 
 
 There seem so many reasons why he should for his 
 own sake abstain for the present from gratifying his 
 revenge that one can scarcely think he would do so-^ 
 unless insane — it w^ surely be ruin to all his prospects — 
 & those of a pecuniary nature are not indifferent — if 
 others are become so — 
 
 if really & truly he feels or fancies he feels — that 
 
 87 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 passion he professes I have constantly imagined he might 
 suppose from his experience of the weakness of disposi- 
 tion, of the unfortunate Object, that driven from every 
 other hope or earthly prospect she might fly to him ! & 
 that as long as he was impressed with that idea he w'^ 
 persevere in his projects — but if he considered that 
 hopeless, he might desist — for otherwise he must lose 
 every thing — hut his Revenge, & what good w^ that do 
 him ! — 
 
 After all my dearest A — if you cannot calculate the 
 probable consequences, how should I presume to do so ! 
 To be sure the gentler expedient, might be y° safest — 
 with so violent & irritable a disposition & at least {of a 
 time act as a ■palliative — & who knows what changes a 
 little time might produce or how Providence might 
 graciously interpose — with so many reasons to wish to 
 avoid extremities (I mean for y° sake of others) one leans 
 to what appears the safest & one is a Coward — 
 
 But the other at the same time has something gratify- 
 ing to one's feelings — & I think might be said & done — 
 so that, if he showed y® letters, it would be no evidence 
 ag^' the Person — & worded with that kindness, & appear- 
 ance of real affec'° concern for him as well as the other 
 person concerned that it might possibly touch him. 
 Pray — think of what I have thought 8c write me a hne 
 not to decide for that I cannot expect, but to tell me if 
 I deceived myself in the ideas I have expressed to you — 
 I shall not cannot answer till y° latest post day this 
 week — 
 
 I know you will forgive me for this infliction & may 
 God bless you for that & every other kindness — 
 
 Extract from Letter from the Hon. Mrs. Leigh to 
 Lady Byron. 
 
 [Friday, July 2, 18 19] 
 
 1000 thanks for y" hint about letters — I scarcely know 
 whether to risk keeping that you saw — 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF AUGUSTA BYRON 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 London July third 1819 
 The 
 
 Lady Byron 
 
 Tunbridge Wells 
 Fred Bentinck 
 
 [Saturday, July 3, 18 19] 
 My dearest A — 
 
 Having a frank I write a line — I was in such a 
 hurry yesterday having waited for M — all day — I'm 
 afraid my letter may have appeared to you — as treating 
 the subject too lightly — but indeed no one can be more 
 fully aware of the Precipice on which I stand than I am 
 — but situated as I am — I feel that — if once I gave 
 way to despair I could never shake it off & should be 
 unfitted for every thing — as this w'' be adding to the 
 evil, I do all I can to avoid it — & I hope it is not pre- 
 sumptuous to trust in that Power who alone can shield & 
 protect — 
 
 I have not heard any more of what you apprehended 
 — I own I cannot for y' present fear more than this 
 detestable production the Poem — God bless you dearest 
 A — & forgive my plaguing you so but I could not resist 
 sending a line — pray write to Y affec* & grateful 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 London Dec^ Twenty one 18 19 
 The 
 
 Lady Byron 
 
 Kirkby Mallory 
 Hinckley 
 W Howard 
 
 [Tuesday] Dec' 21. 18 19 
 
 My dearest A — The enclosed ^ came last night — & I 
 fear looks too like certainty respecting the return — ^Any- 
 thing you may wish to be said relative to the chief sub- 
 ject — pray address to me on a separate sheet — I am 
 determined to give no opinions of mine — & wish the 
 
 1 [See Chap. XL, letter of Dec. 4.] 
 89 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Will in question was burn't — I'm sure I do not know 
 how to address a letter to Calais — ^it being out of the 
 question to give him welcome to En^ — alas ! how melan- 
 choly that it s'^ be so — ^Luckily — (or Mwluckily perhaps) 
 I do not die easily — or I think this stroke w^ about 
 finish me — ^however my trust is in Providence — & the 
 agitation caused by the first intelligence of such a 
 mournful prospect has subsided into a dead calm — I'm 
 sure I am very selfish to have said all this ab' myself — 
 but indeed I think of & feel for you — all day long — 
 and I am so sorry for your Parents — all this you wiU 
 believe dearest dear A — altho' I can not fuUy express 
 it — M'^ V. called yesterday — from her looks, I guess 
 she is ignorant — she mentioned a letter from you saying 
 
 you w'^ be here early in Jan'' Let me hear about 
 
 this 
 
 Murray sent me a letter to him — of the same date as 
 that I enclose^t was chiefly on y° subject of D. J.^ & 
 an application to the Chancellor — about the pubHca- 
 tion of it by others — discussing this he says — to this 
 effect — " You may do as you please but recollect if it is 
 pronounced blasphemous or indecent, I shall lose all 
 right of Guardianship &c &c (I forget the exact expres- 
 sions) in y' education of my Daugh' " — & gives an 
 instance of y" same in that infamous M"' Shelley's case, — ^ 
 he then justly & handsomely enough says it is hard 
 M — should pay for y* Poem — all things considered & 
 that y" Money being untouched shall be his again — 
 which I fear the latter will not hsten to — The letter 
 ends by saying his return to Eng — was unlooked for but 
 he has given his reason in letters to his Sister & D. K.^ — 
 I tell you this (I mean about the Poem) as it may give 
 you my guess of probabilities relative to Ada — My 
 own opinion is he will be pretty quiet on her subject — 
 
 1 [" Don Juan."] 
 
 * Mrs. Leigh would not have claimed to have read or to understand " that 
 infamous Mr. Shelley," and merely repeated a phrase of Murrayish or some 
 equally Bowdlerite origin ; it certainly could not represent Lord Byron's 
 judgment. 
 
 ^ [Douglas Kinnaird.] 
 
 90 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF AUGUSTA BYRON 
 
 but do not say a word to any of your friends — nor indeed 
 to any one^even our own relations that I have done so — 
 they are too closely acquainted and connected with 
 those whom I believe most inimical to me — & it w"* be 
 echoed to y° other side by some means or other — I am 
 not ashamed of what I do — as I feel my motive — I 
 think my dear A — one of the worst misfortunes to be 
 dreaded is that he will be clawed hold of by that most 
 detestable Woman— your relation by Marriage ^ — I am 
 sorry but I can't disguise from you my horror of her — 
 (which I can fully & satisfactorily explain) over and 
 above that which all must feel who know anything of 
 her — God bless you dearest A — and pray -write a line 
 
 Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Indorsed 
 
 Copy of a letter to Augusta Leigh 
 
 a letter of which this is the exact copy was delivered 
 to M"^ Leigh by Miss Atkinson at my request Dec'* 2g*\ 
 1819 
 
 T ViLLIERS — 
 
 Kirkby [Thursday] Dec' 23^^ [1819] 
 
 Dearest A— As you seem to apprehend some insecurity 
 from the ordinary means of communication, and I think 
 myself called upon to speak openly, I will request M" 
 Villiers to deliver this letter to you herself — I shall 
 mention to her the prospect of B's return, and leave you 
 to consult her if you like to do so. — 
 
 On my own account, for my own sake individually, I 
 am at present not very anxious — but for you, I feel the 
 greatest solicitude, and I should reproach myself were I 
 to shrink at- this crisis from the declaration of any 
 opinions by which you might be assisted to form your 
 own determination. — 
 
 The reasons which a short time since induced you to 
 
 ^ [Lady CaroIiHe Lamb.] 
 91 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 deliberate whether you ought to continue the corre- 
 spondence, even with those restrictions which you so 
 cautiously observe, have infinitely more weight in the 
 question whether any personal intercourse is admissible. 
 — I have, throughout our confidential communication, 
 strongly pointed out to you the pernicious eflFects that 
 must result from B's associating with you, unless the 
 circumstances were wholly changed, and the proofs of 
 his reformation unequivocal. — So far from there being 
 any change of this kind, several of his letters and some 
 which you received only 3 or 4 months ago, demonstrate 
 that he has not relinquished his criminal desires, & I 
 think I may add designs. Is it not inevitable that the 
 former must be more excited by the presence of their 
 object, even though the latter, in consequence of your 
 conduct, be frustrated ? — Guilt of heart must be pro- 
 moted. It can scarcely be doubted, from the whole 
 series of his correspondence, that you are his principal 
 object in England. — Consider too, as a Mother, that he 
 would corrupt the morals of your Children — and recol- 
 lect that the impression on the public mind is such, that 
 the strongest suspicion would attach to your personal 
 intercourse with him — 
 
 Since evils of such magnitude may be confidently 
 anticipated from one course, let us weigh the conse- 
 quences of the alternative, (which in principle is unobjec- 
 tionable) — that is — of your communicating to him your 
 determination not to associate with him in the existing 
 circumstances. — His revenge must be directed either 
 against your reputation or your pecuniary interests. I 
 do not think that his worst attacks upon the former, when 
 appearing to proceed from pique, would endanger it more 
 than your personal intercourse — particularly whilst he 
 obviously desires to bring you under his power by any 
 means, — & you cannot suppose that the conduct which 
 principle would dictate on your part, were you & he 
 together, would incline him to forbear — ^With regard to 
 your pecuniary interests, of which he so insultingly 
 reminds you, as if you were to be bribed into wickedness, 
 
 92 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF AUGUSTA BYRON 
 
 I am aware that the interests of your children ^ may 
 rightly influence your conduct, when guilt is not incurred 
 by consulting them — ^However your children cannot, I 
 trust, under any circumstances be left destitute, for 
 reasons which I will hereafter communicate. 
 
 Observe, I entreat you, that my sole wish is to place 
 before you those considerations which appear to me 
 most important, not to influence you by my authority or 
 my wishes to adopt any course of the rectitude & pro- 
 priety of which your own mind is not thoroughly con- 
 vinced. I should most seriously regret so to influence 
 you — for you would not act consistently, unless you 
 acted from Conviction, — ^You would take half-measures, 
 which must end in your ruin. — ^Anxious as I feel to sup- 
 port & comfort you in the recovered path of virtue, I 
 could not hope to do so by an attempt to impose my own 
 opinions — On the contrary I would as far as possible, 
 remove every obstacle to independence of conduct on 
 your part. 
 
 Consider then for yourself, whether it would be 
 advisable to apprize him at Calais of the impossibility of 
 your consenting to personal intercourse, after the letters 
 which you had at different times received from him, &c. — 
 and which had caused you to hesitate as to the pro- 
 priety of continuing the correspondence — But, as I have 
 before observed, I fully participate in your wish to 
 consult his welfare in the present & the future, & 
 should most warmly concur with you in any measures 
 directed to those ends — 
 
 God bless you — & believe me 
 
 Ever affectionately yours 
 A I B 
 
 P.S. I think I cannot make it too clear to you that I 
 do not instigate the measure which I suggest — If my 
 reasons convince you, they become yours — ^if not, I have 
 no wish to enforce them — 
 
 [1 Lord Byron was known to have made his will in favour of Mrs. Leigh 
 and her children.] 
 
 93 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 The 
 
 Lady Byron 
 
 'Kirkby Mallory 
 Hinckley 
 E [Excise Office] Leicestershire 
 
 Tuesday Night [December 29, 18 19] 
 
 My dearest A — Y' letter — thro M'' V arrived today — 
 her Governess brought it me — as she herself is not likely 
 to be in Town for sometime — ^Altho' y^ change of cir- 
 cumstances makes the advice now unnecessary — the 
 impression of your kindness remains — ^& ever will remain 
 the same on my heart — I have not words to thank you — 
 but I do hope that I do not may not appear ungrateful in 
 y^ Eyes — ^The time may come when y° same kind soHci- 
 tude may be excited for me — & I can't dearest A — ^help 
 replying to your suggestions — ^Do you remember once 
 before giving them & I told you, what I must again 
 repeat & recall to you — that supposing me to feel like 
 you on all the points you have touched — there is one 
 which surely escaped you — supposing me to decide on 
 not seeing him — what reasons could I give for it to my 
 relations — friends — acquaintances but — most of all my 
 Husband — I really cannot calculate all the consequences 
 of that step as far as he is concerned — I think you agreed 
 with me before — that this consideration rendered the 
 step impossible — I assiure you — all that you have said had 
 passed already in my mind — ^My idea was this — if what 
 you apprehend, came to pass, my conduct must have 
 been — either this must cease — or our intercourse — & 
 then had the latter been adopted — ^his caprice is so well 
 known it (the estrangement) w'^ not have been thought so 
 extraordinary as in the other case — at any rate the inter- 
 course to have been as much restricted as possible — I 
 am sure — at least I hope — you cannot think it could have 
 afforded me any pleasure — & for my children I most 
 perfectly agree with you it w'' have been the least desir- 
 able upon earth — However I will honestly confess to 
 you — I never have — I cannot now believe as you do in 
 
 94 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF AUGUSTA BYRON 
 
 the depth & strength of what is manifested by fits & 
 starts — when there is nothing else — surely it must be a 
 dreadful idea that he must necessarily be wicked in some 
 way — then dearest A — I do not feel that I could without 
 one effort relinquish — the hope — the chance of making 
 some impression on his better feelings — you wiU perhaps 
 think me foolish — ^vain — I hope not the latter — but 
 indeed do you think there is one person in Eng"^ who 
 would — ^who couli say to him what from circumstances 
 / might ? it might be/oji now but perhaps recur hereafter, 
 & it w* be a satisfaction to me at all events to have said 
 it — Do you mean on the subject of pecuniary interests — 
 what \yas said oj my opinion expressed on the subject of 
 the Mortgage — I mean to decline that whoUy — & pray 
 do me the justice to believe that one thought of the 
 interests of my Children as far as that Channel is con- 
 cerned never crosses my mind — I have only entreated — 
 I believe more than once that y° Will might be altered — ■ 
 but if it is not — as far as I understand the' matter — there 
 is not the slightest probability of their ever deriving any 
 benefit — ^Whatever my feelings dear A — I assure you 
 never in my life have I looked to advantages of that sort — 
 I do not mean that I have any merit in not doing it-^but 
 that I have no inclination — therefore nothing to struggle 
 with — I trust my Babes to Providence & provided they 
 are good — I think perhaps too little of the rest — from 
 
 indolence I daresay & fear 
 
 I am sure you will not be angry with me for saying all 
 I do & have & I only entreat you to reply to me — for 
 very likely I may be wrong — but I have God knows ! 
 considered & reflected on probabilities since I have had 
 this dreadful expectation — ^What a mercy it has ceased ! 
 My dear A do not you think it all very odd ? — I have not 
 had any letter but besides the message I enclosed you 
 yesterday one thro' D. K. this Evg to y' same effect-^ 
 my own opinion is he wiU never come — or at least if ever — 
 not for this long time — if his life is spared — I wiU not 
 tire you — with more now — Pray do not hate me for what 
 I have written & do answer me — for I scarcely ever feel 
 
 95 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 confidence in my own opinions. God bless you — & thank 
 you my dearest A for all your great kindness — Believe me 
 always grateful 
 
 Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Kirkby [Friday] Dec'^ 31=' [18 19] 
 
 Dearest A — As I think the return, if it takes place, is 
 likely to be sudden, and for that reason to preclude 
 deliberation, it is certainly better that we should openly 
 discuss the subject, previously, tho but for your request, I 
 should have been reluctant on your account to resume it. 
 
 I was aware that in the letter sent through M"^ ViUiers, 
 I recapitulated some arguments which I had before 
 urged to you, but I wished to present a full view of the 
 case — You were mistaken, dear A — in supposing that I 
 ever admitted the validity of any reasons in favor of 
 personal intercourse, tho' I was persuaded that you might 
 be justified in not breaking off the correspondence — 
 However it is well that you have enabled me to correct 
 that error — I will distinctly consider your reasons for 
 thinking that it would be " impossible " for you to 
 decline seeing B — you state them to be these — 
 
 " i^' that you could not allege any satisfactory reason 
 for that conduct — To this I reply that since the pubUca- 
 tion of Manfred & Don Juan and the greater notoriety 
 of their author's character, consideration for the good 
 of your children would be deemed a sufficient justification 
 by those whose opinions have most weight in society — 
 and I should think that Col : licigh might be persuaded 
 of this by others, if not entirely by yourself. 
 
 ^naiy You still retain the hope of influencing him 
 beneficially — ^What is the foundation for this hope ? — 
 Has it not been during the period of your associating 
 with him that he has acted in a manner the most con- 
 trary, surely, to your views of what is for his welfare ? 
 Do not take upon yourself the responsibility of asserting 
 that you have influence over him — ^The answer would be 
 " How has it been used " ? — I am very far from wishing 
 to detach you from him in any way by which he could 
 
 96 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF AUGUSTA BYRON 
 
 be injured — It is under the existing circumstances that 
 I foresee nothing but evil to both from your being with 
 him — but were he to renounce his vicious habits and 
 give evidence of a better state of mind, it would afford 
 me consolation to know that you were confirming his 
 amendment, in person or otherwise — 
 
 jidiy You may say you " cannot beHeve in the depth & 
 strength " of his wicked dispositions towards you " when 
 there is nothing else " — ^Do you mean nothing else to 
 prove them but his occasional letters ? Is experience 
 nothing ? Did you not before indulge the delusion that 
 he was not in earnest till it was fatally proved that he 
 was ? — " Angry with you " dear A — No — my feelings 
 are very different — I deeply lament to think that you are 
 still too much influenced by early prepossessions and by 
 hopes which to me appear totally unfounded, and likely 
 to lead into danger — I have no suspicions of your being 
 actuated by mercenary views, but I think you ought not 
 to reject, without good reason, any advantages offered 
 to your children — , 
 
 I do not consider you bound to me in any way. I told 
 you what I knew, because I thought that measure would 
 enable me to befriend you — and chiefly by representing 
 the objections to a renewal of personal communication 
 between you & him — On reference to the letters which 
 you returned to me, and to some other memorandums, I 
 find that I have taken every opportunity of doing this — 
 & you have never before made your dissent intelligible to 
 me — ^with such objects in view, I considered myself 
 justified in departing frftm my declaration made when I 
 told you my knowledge of former guilt that our inter- 
 course must be limited. ^"^ — ^We must, according to your 
 present intentions act independently of each other. On 
 my part it will still be with every possible consideration 
 for you & your children — and should I by your reception 
 of him be obliged to relinquish my intercourse with you, 
 I will do so in such manner as shall be least prejudicial 
 
 ' In the first draft of the letter the next sentence began : " If he returns, we 
 must," etc. 
 
 97 « 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 to your interests. — I shall most earnestly wish that the 
 results of your conduct may tend to establish your peace 
 instead of aggravating your remorse — but, entertaining 
 these views of your duty & my own, could I in honesty or 
 in friendship suppress them — ? — 
 
 Ever yours affectionately 
 A I B. 
 
 Pray write to me at M' Carr's, 
 Frognall, 
 
 Hampstead. 
 
 to let me know that you have received this letter and 
 what your impressions are — I may have failed in express- 
 ing my deep interest in your happiness, but I trust that 
 you will believe it. 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 The 2^ Post Wedv Evening 
 
 Lady Byron, 
 
 Carr's Esq'« 
 
 Frognall 
 Hampstead 
 
 My dearest A, 
 
 I write a line to say that I received your letters 
 safe — & as I hope to see you soon, I prefer replying to 
 them de vive voix — 
 
 God bless you 
 
 Ever y^ most affec'° 
 A L 
 
 Tuesday Night [January 4, 1820] 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 The 
 
 Lady Byron 
 
 Kirkby Mallory 
 F H D Hinckley 
 
 Sunday [January 16, 1820] 
 My dearest A 
 
 Thanks — for writing — as I was anxious to hear of 
 your safety & y' cold— y^ latter you do not mention 
 
 98 
 
CORRESPONDENCE OF AUGUSTA BYRON 
 
 You will have received a letter & enclosure frorn me — 
 but I can't resist writing again a few lines — as altho' I 
 am now well, delays are dangerous — & I wish to say 
 dearest A — what a grief it is to me that I cannot im- 
 plicitly adopt your advice — taking one — (& a very 
 essential one it is) view of the subject, I am entirely of 
 your opinion — but there are other points I must consider 
 & unless I could change characters & circumstances, I do 
 not see how I could act as for the sake of that one, I w'' — 
 I trust I may be spared the trial — I scarcely know any 
 greater that could befall me Pray tell me what you think 
 of the letter I sent you — I have not yet written since the 
 communication of the intended arrival & the change of 
 intention have reached me — but I fear I must soon & 
 wish I knew what to say, & whether it w'^ give an oppor- 
 tunity of saying anything to be of use — tell me your 
 ideas upon this — 
 
 I am glad you found Ada well & good — Do tell me for 
 I had not time to ask you any thing — do you & yours still 
 think of the Hampstead plan ? — 
 
 George B. was much vexed at not seeing you — He 
 went away Monday — I must say Good Night & God bless 
 you dearest A — & pray write soon to your ever affec** 
 & grateful 
 
 AL 
 
 Chicks : pretty well 
 
 The preceding letters were very unsatisfactory to Lady 
 Byron, who wrote to Mrs. Villiers (January 26th, 1820) : 
 
 " I am reluctant to give you my impression of what 
 has passed between Augusta and me respecting her 
 conduct in case of his return — but I should hke to know 
 whether your unbiassed opinion formed from the state- 
 ment of facts coincided with it." 
 
 After this time there was much less concett between 
 the two. They remained friends till 1829, when Mrs. 
 Leigh would have insisted on nominating a trustee to 
 
 99 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 the Marriage Settlement in substitution for Kinnaird. 
 But long before that date Mrs. Leigh had more than once 
 defied Lady Byron's wishes and advice, especially in 
 starting a violent quarrel with Captain Lord Byron. 
 But the period of Mrs. Leigh's estrangement from Lady 
 Byron and of many windings and deviations from sense 
 and reason belongs not to this place. Enough to say, that 
 the disasters of Mrs. Leigh's later years were partly 
 caused and greatly aggravated by her complete subjec- 
 tion to impulse and temper. 
 
 100 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 SOME CORRESPONDENCE OF ANNE ISABELLA BYRON 
 
 " Perhaps not a pleasant spectacle, — said Glenalmond. — ^And 
 yet, do you know, I think somehow a great one." — Weir of 
 Hermiston. 
 
 AFTER the letter of Easter Sunday, 1816, Lord 
 /j^Byron wrote only once more to Lady Byron for 
 three years. On November ist, 1816, he wrote to her 
 from Milan ; after that never again till August, 18 19. 
 The third letter he wrote to her from abroad was from 
 Ravenna, December 31st, 1819. The only part of it that 
 need be quoted here is his offer of an inspection of the 
 first part of the Memoirs. 
 
 " Augusta can tell you all about me & mine if you think 
 
 either worth the enquiry ; But the object of my 
 
 writing is to come 
 
 " It is this. — I saw Moore three months ago and gave 
 to his care — a long Memoir written up to the Summer of 
 1 8 16, of my life — ^which I had been writing since I left 
 England. — It will not be published till after my death — 
 and in fact it is a ' Memoir ' and not ' confessions ' 
 I have omitted the most important & decisive events and 
 passions of my existence not to compromise otherss. — 
 But it is not so with the part you occupy — which is long 
 and minute — and I could wish you to see, read — and 
 mark any part or parts that do not appear to coincide 
 with the truth. — The truth I have always stated— but 
 there are two ways of looking at it — and your way may be 
 not mine. — I have never revised the paperss since they 
 were written — You may read them — and mark what you 
 
 lOI 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 please — I wish you [to] know what I think and say of 
 you & yourss. — You will find nothing to flatter you — 
 nothing to lead you to the most remote suppossition that 
 we could ever have been — or be happy together. — But I 
 do not choosse to give to another generation statements 
 which we cannot arise from the dust to prove or dis- 
 prove — without letting you see fairly & fully what I 
 look upon you to have been — and what I depict you as 
 being. — If seeing this — you can detect what is false — or 
 answer what is charged — do so — your mark — shall not 
 be erased. 
 
 " You will perhaps say why write my life ? — ^Alas ! 
 I say so too — but they who have traduced it — & blasted 
 it — and branded me — should know — that it is they^ — 
 and not I — are the cause — It is no great pleasure to have 
 lived — and less to live over again the details of existence 
 — but the last becomes sometimes a necessity and even a 
 duty. — 
 
 " If you choosse to see this you may — if you do not — 
 you have at least had the option " ^ 
 
 [Finished] January ist — [1820]. 
 
 Lady Byron received this letter at Kirkby MaUory 
 about or a little before January 21st, 1820. Her first 
 impulse was to answer it, and she drew up the following 
 draft : 
 
 " I have received your letter of January ist offering 
 to my perusal a Memoir of your life and informing me 
 that the part which I occupy is ' long and minute.' — 
 
 " I decline to inspect it because I consider the com- 
 position of such a Memoir for present or future circulation 
 as wholly unjustifiable, and I would not, even indirectly, 
 appear to sanction it. 
 
 ' The signature is a whirl of curves in the fashion of Mrs. Leigh's signature, 
 in her letter to Lord Byron of December 14th, 1814, a facsimile of which will be 
 found at p. 38. [See also p. 286 for Byron's signature.] 
 
 The frequent duplication of the letter s is a characteristic of Lord Byroin's 
 writing during the last five years of his life. There is not a trace of this ortho- 
 graphic pecuUarity in his earlier manuscripts. 
 
 102 
 
ANNE ISABELLA BYRON 
 
 " If you truly state our domestic circumstances I can 
 only express my astonishment that you should wish to 
 expose them. — If as I have every reason to expect, your 
 representation is partial, falsely coloured, and affectedly 
 candid, the mode of refutation which you suggest would 
 be very inadequate. — 
 
 " I have most earnestly desired, and especially on 
 our daughter's account, that our private concerns 
 should no further be obtruded on the public — I 
 would have submitted to some injustice from opinion, 
 rather than have promoted or renewed the discus- 
 sion of so painful a topic. — Of this I believe you 
 were well aware — But there must be a limit to for- 
 bearance, and that limit is fixed, absolutely fixed, in my 
 own mind. — 
 
 " Great as is the advantage which your talents give 
 you, I feel confident that your duplicity, with the facts 
 and feelings which it is employed to conceal, will ulti- 
 mately be discovered — and that every addition which 
 you make to the fabric of falsehood will accelerate its 
 fall— 
 
 " When I last addressed you I was still influenced by 
 an attachment too deep to be rapidly subdued however 
 unjustly and cruelly treated — I now most sincerely 
 wish your welfare, and shall lament any proceedings on 
 your part which may render it impossible for me to 
 persevere in a passive conduct." 
 
 Colonel Doyle thought this letter — ^whlch was never 
 sent — a very good one, with the exception perhaps of 
 the last paragraph but one. He thought it also ques- 
 tionable whether the last paragraph meant anything, 
 and considered it would be better left out. 
 
 But Dr. Lushington thought it very objectionable for 
 Lady Byron to enter into a direct correspondence on 
 that subject with Lord Byron. He thought there was 
 not a shadow of doubt — and in this all agreed — that she 
 should decline any perusal of the manuscript or Memoir, 
 but he thought the communication should be made 
 through Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 103 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Colonel Doyle wrote to Lady Byron (January 27th, 
 1820) : 
 
 " [Dr. Lushington] conceives that if it were made to 
 appear to Mrs. Leigh that the consequence of this sort 
 of controversy, begun by the circulation of a Memoir, 
 followed by an answer, and ending in pubHcation on 
 both sides would inevitably be at last the disclosure of 
 everything which she was most desirous to conceal — 
 that such a letter or communication from her to him 
 would be sent as would be as likely to operate in deterring 
 him from the commencement of this attack as any other 
 means you could employ. This would depend upon her 
 communicating to him pretty faithfully what you should 
 write to her. Lushington seems to think there would 
 be no doubt of this. . . . 
 
 " I think the great point to effect is that Lord Byron 
 should be aware of the extent of the information you 
 possess, and be made to believe that the consequence of 
 commencing an attack which would lead necessarily 
 from one thing to another, would be the ultimate dis- 
 closure of everything. If this could be done through 
 Mrs. Leigh it perhaps would be the best course, and you 
 can best judge of that. . . . 
 
 " If you think that you can make Mrs. Leigh the 
 instrument of conveying that sort of intimidation to 
 Lord Byron that may deter him from the course he is 
 about to enter — I think you should not be prevented 
 by any consideration for her immediate feelings on 
 receiving a decided letter from you on the subject — 
 as, to her as well as to all concerned — it is of so much 
 more importance that things should be left undisturbed 
 — than that present feelings only should be consulted." 
 
 Dr. Lushington sketched an outhne for a letter from 
 Lady Byron to Mrs. Leigh. His first idea was to convey 
 a sort of threat to make a full and unreserved disclosure 
 to the world of aU those circumstances which would at 
 once estabHsh Lady Byron's justification, " and involve 
 Lord Byron and others in infamy." 
 
 104 
 
ANNE ISABELLA BYRON 
 
 Dr. Lushington suggested also the following words : 
 
 " Lord Byron is probably by no means aware of the 
 extent of the information of which I was possessed 
 before our separation, nor of the additional proofs as 
 well as new facts which have since come to my 
 knowledge." 
 
 However, after these and other suggestions. Dr. 
 Lushington concluded thus in a letter to Colonel Doyle 
 of January 25th, 1820 : 
 
 " Indeed I doubt whether the safest and wisest course 
 would not be, shortly to request Mrs. Leigh to com- 
 municate to Lord Byron Lady Byron's refusal to inspect 
 the Memoirs, and add as it were cursorily 
 
 " ' If they should come into circulation in my lifetime 
 I should lament on account of others the disclosures 
 which I should then be compelled to make in my own 
 justification — for my daughter I should regret pub- 
 licity : to myself it could not be injurious.' " 
 
 Lady Byron wrote to Colonel Doyle from Kirkby, 
 January 29th, 1820 : 
 
 " I defer to Dr. Lushington's opinion with respect to 
 the danger of entering into a direct correspondence with 
 Lord Byron — I will state my objections to the measure 
 which he proposes to substitute 
 
 " i^'. I think it is highly desirable that I should be 
 able to produce to any one a copy of my declaration to 
 Lord B — on this subject — If that declaration were 
 contained in a letter to M'^ Leigh, I must, in showing it, 
 either explain fully how she and I are circumstanced, or 
 else inferences contrary to the truth would be drawn 
 from the fact of my treating her thus confidentially. — 
 
 " 2°'^^''. Supposing that objection could be obviated — 
 M'^ L — is herself sufficiently alarmed about the con- 
 sequences of his measures, but I have no reason to 
 think that she can influence him. — I foresee from the 
 
 105 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 transmission of such a letter in substance as D^ L's 
 first (which I believe she would transmit, if urged to do 
 so — with her own comments), this consequence : — ^that, 
 an unreserved disclosure from her to him being neces- 
 sitated, they would combine together against me — ^he 
 being actuated by revenge — she by fear — ^whereas, from 
 her never having dared to inform him that she has 
 already admitted his guilt to me with her own, they have 
 hitherto been prevented from acting in concert — ^The 
 transmission of the cursory observation suggested in 
 D" L's note, and the equivalent of what I have said to 
 her, would not in my opinion have any effect. Lord 
 B — is not intimidated by terms so general. The addi- 
 tion which you suggest of the paragraph — ' Lord B — 
 is probably by no means aware oj the extent of the informa- 
 tion of which I was possessed before our separation, nor 
 of the additional proofs, as well as new facts, which 
 have since come to my knowledge ' — ^would render the 
 communication more pointed (bringing it perhaps into 
 the same case with th.Qjirsi) but I perceive objections to 
 the clause underlined. For, my information previous 
 to my separation having been derived either directly 
 from Lord B — or from my observations on that part of 
 his conduct which he exposed to my view — the expres- 
 sion ' he is probably not aware ' would seem a contradic- 
 tion, at least unless guarded by something to this effect — 
 ' As the infatuation of pride may have blinded him to 
 the conclusions which must inevitably be estabHshed 
 by a long series of circumstantial evidences '—The 
 same clause also appears objectionable to me as coin- 
 ciding with the story of my having used clandestine 
 means to obtain information — ^An invention doubtless 
 designed to invalidate the force, or impair the respecta- 
 bility of my probable statements — on the same prin- 
 ciple as he contrived to cast on Lady C L^" — the suspicion 
 of a forgery in order to destroy the effect of her evidence 
 against him. — ^These insidious endeavours render it in 
 my opinion the more necessary for me to have made my 
 
 ' [Lady Caroline Lamb.] 
 
 io6 
 
ANNE ISABELLA BYRON 
 
 protest, — ^in terms of greater decision than I have yet 
 employed, and in such a form as to be recorded, — 
 before an attack is made upon the credibility of my 
 testimony, — ^And in one case, which it is painful to me 
 to calculate upon, such a declaration would be almost 
 the sole, though inadequate proof of my conscious 
 integrity — Viz — If I were to survive him — for it would 
 then be impossible for me to vindicate myself by accusa- 
 tion from the posthumouis charges which could not, 
 probably, be otherwise disproved. — 
 
 " I have to ask — would not such a communication to 
 Lord B — from my father — authorised by me — answer 
 the desired ends without being Hable to the same objec- 
 tions as a letter from myself — 
 
 " The chief points in that communication to be — 
 
 " The information of my decUning to peruse the MS — 
 A representation of the injurious consequences of its 
 circulation to Ada — and a declaration that I shall 
 consider the existence of such a Memoir (avowedly 
 descined for future publication) especially if it be cir- 
 culated in MS — at present, as releasing me from even the 
 shadow of an engagement to suppress the facts of my own 
 experience, or the corroborating proofs of Lord B's 
 character & conduct — that reluctant as I have ever 
 been to bring my domestic concerns before the public, 
 and anxious as I have felt to save from ruin a near 
 connection of his, I shall feel myself compelled by duties 
 of primary importance, if he perseveres in accumulating 
 injuries upon me, to make a disclosure of the past in 
 the most authentic form. — 
 
 " The last sentence requires very great caution — 
 & I have only given the substance. — This allusion tp 
 M^^ L — is not so likely as that which she might convey, 
 to necessitate her acknowledgment to him. At the same 
 time it would have equal force. — I do not conceive that 
 such a communication would absolutely bind me at this 
 time to pubhsh my ca^e, if he should, (relying on the 
 
 107 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 advantage of an intervening sea,) return an answer of 
 defiance. — " 
 
 Colonel Doyle answered, February ist [?] 1820 : 
 
 " I shall send your memorandum to Lushington & 
 not answer it till I get his answer & have seen him. I 
 will however say that it is my present impression that 
 as you will not transmit your protest through M'^ L. 
 for the very fair reason you assign — a letter from yourself 
 short & to the point, without any unnecessary provoca- 
 tiou' — but intimating the determination not to yield 
 beyond a certain point — as in y"" first letter you have 
 expressed, w'' be better than through y' father — the 
 threat of a third person may make it incumbent upon 
 his pride to revolt — " 
 
 After much discussion. Dr. Lushington's objection to 
 Lady Byron writing herself for fear of its leading to 
 correspondence was decided to be inapplicable to a proper 
 letter, the terms of which were arranged, but only after 
 considerable delay. 
 
 Lady Byron to Lord Byron. ^ 
 
 Kirkby Mallory 
 
 March loth 1820 
 
 I received your letter of January i*' 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 publicity, but notwithstanding the injuries which 
 I have suffered, I should lament some of the conseguences. 
 
 A I : Byron. 
 
 To Lord Byron. 
 
 ^ This and the following letter were printed in 1853 with Moore's Diaries, 
 without any kind of sanction from Lady Byron, but, though feeling that it was 
 improper to publish them without her leave, she did not regret that her reason 
 for avoiding public discussion, viz., her daughter's happiness, should become 
 known. In 1853 that reason no longer existed. 
 
 108 
 
ANNE ISABELLA BYRON 
 
 Lord Byron to Lady Byron, 
 
 To 
 
 The Lady Byron 
 to the care of M' T. Moore 
 Inclosed in a wrapper by Thomas Moore and addressed 
 For 
 The Lady Byron 
 
 Kirkby Mallory (redirected lo, York Buildings, 
 Hastings) 
 T.M. 
 
 Ravenna. April 3"* 1820. 
 
 I received yesterday your answer dated March 10"'. 
 My offer was an honest one, and surely could be only 
 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 really cannot 
 pretend to unriddle it — I could hardly be very sensible 
 even if I understood it — before it could 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 yourss can avail 
 beyond the present, — and if it could I would answer with 
 the Florentine 
 
 " Et io, che possto son con loro in croce 
 
 e certo 
 
 ha Jiera Moglie, piu ch'altro, mi nuoce." 
 
 Byron. 
 To, 
 
 Lady Byron. 
 
 In the course of the same year, 1820, Lord Byron 
 wrote several times to Lady Byron, constantly repeating 
 the request originally made in the letter of Easter Sunday, 
 1 8 16, for future kindness to Augusta. The inconsistency 
 of alternate supplications and imprecations is one of the 
 most extraordinary manifestations of Lord Byron's 
 complex or twofold character. After writing an entreaty 
 
 109 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 on October 8th, 1820, to one of the two A.'s,i he wrote 
 (about October 20th, 1820) to the other A. : 
 
 " — the Lady Byron I suppose retains her old starch 
 obstinacy — ^with a deeper dash of Sternness — from the 
 dint of time — and the effort it has cost her to be ' mag- 
 nanimous ' as they called her mischief-making. — , . . 
 
 " Time and Events will one or the other revenge her 
 past conduct, — ^without any interference of mine. — " 
 
 His renewed appeals — ^half entreaty, half curse — were 
 in the spirit of those supplications of old which, though 
 lame, haggard and looking nowhere, were the children 
 of the Eternal, and, when spurned and denied by the 
 infatuation of men, sooner or later surely invoked final 
 equity that the avenger may follow. 
 
 Koi yap T€ Airai elcri Aios KoOpat neyiXoio, 
 Xa)Aat re pvcraC re wapa/SAtoire's t' 6^daXfJ,a, 
 at pa re K.al ixeroTTLcrff' 'Arrjs akfyovcri KtoCtrat. 
 
 ■ • ■ ■ * . 
 
 OS hi K.' avrfvr]Tai Kai re trrepeSis airoimri, 
 XiacrovTai b' apa raC ye Aia KpovCcava KioVcrai 
 T(S "Attjv ap! eiiea-daL, iVa jiXacpdels aiioTicrr}. 
 
 " Iliad," IX., 502, etc 
 
 With all her inflexibility. Lady Byron was not insen- 
 sible to pity for the destructive consequences of that 
 passion which had broken up Lord Byron's life. She 
 felt that he was suffering from irremediable sorrow, which 
 no power could remit. But after so many prayers from 
 him on this one subject, she was moved to write once 
 more to him for the very last time. Her note was very 
 short, and is here given verbatim : 
 
 Lady Byron to Lord Byron. 
 Indorsed : " Copy to Lord B." 
 
 Kirkby 
 
 Dec" lo"" 1820 
 
 When you first expressed the wish respecting M"^ Leigh, 
 which is repeated in your last letter of Oct" 8^ I deter- 
 
 1 In 18 14 Lord Byron used to talk to Lady Melbourne of her niece Anne 
 Isabella Milbanke as " your A," of Augusta Leigh as " my A "—and sometimes 
 referred to " the two A's." 
 
 110 
 
ANNE ISABELLA BYRON 
 
 mined to act consistently with it. If the assurance of 
 that intention would conduce, — (as you state in a former 
 letter, & as appears from your reiterated requests) — to 
 calm your mind, I will not withhold it. The past shall 
 not prevent me from befriending Augusta Leigh & her 
 Children in any future circumstances which may call for 
 my assistance — I promise to do so. — She knows nothing 
 of this 
 
 Lord Byron to Lady Byron. 
 
 To 
 
 The Right HonW« 
 Lady Byron. 
 (Sealed with the pansy seal — motto 
 " elle vous suit partout.") 
 
 " Ravenna. [Thursday] lo'"^ 28* 1820. 
 
 I acknowledge your note which is on the whole satis- 
 factory — the style a Httle harssh — but that was to be 
 expected-^it would have been too great a peace-offering 
 after nearly five yearss — to have been gracious in the 
 manner, as well as in the matter. — ^Yet you might have 
 been sso — for communications between us — are like 
 " Dialogues of the Dead " — or " letterss between this 
 world & the next." You have alluded to the " past " 
 and I to the future. — ^As to Augusta — she knowss as 
 little of my request, as of your answer — ^Whatever She 
 is or may have been — you have never had reason to comr 
 plain of her — on the contrary — ^you are not aware of the 
 obligations under which you have been to her. — Her life 
 & mine — and yourss & mine — ^were two things perfectly 
 distinct from each other — ^when one ceased the other 
 began — and now both are clossed. 
 
 You must be aware of the reasons of my request in fa' 
 of Augusta & her Child" which are the restrictions I am 
 under by the Settlement, which death would make 
 yourss^at least the available portion. 
 
 I wrote to you on the 8* or ninth inst, I think. — 
 
 Things here are fast coming to a Crisis. War may 
 
 III 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 be considered as nearly inevitable — ^though the King 
 of N is gone to Congress/ that will scarcely hinder it— 
 the people are so excited, you must not mind what the 
 EngHsh fools say of Italy— they know nothing— they go 
 gaping from Rome to Florence and so on — ^which is like 
 
 seeing England — ^in Saint James's Street. 
 
 I live with the people and amongsst them — & know 
 them — and you may rely upon my not deceiving you, 
 though I may myself If you mean ever to extricate the 
 Settlement from the funds now is the time to make the 
 trustees act — ^while Stocks are yet up — and peace not 
 actually broken. Pray attend to this — 
 
 Yours 
 
 Byron 
 
 P.S. 
 
 Excuse haste — I have scribbled in great quickness, — 
 and do not attribute it to iU-humour — but to matterss 
 which are on hand — & which must be attended to — I am 
 
 really obHged by your attention to my request. 
 
 You could not have sent me any thing half so acceptable 
 but I have burnt your note that you may be under no 
 restraint but your internal feehng. — It is a comfort to me 
 now — beyond all comforts ; that A — & her children 
 will be thought of — after I am nothing ; but five yearss 
 ago — it would have been something more r why did you 
 then keep silence ? I told you that I was going long — 
 and going far (not so far as I intended — ^for I meant to 
 have gone to Turkey and am not sure that I shall not 
 finish with it — but longer than I meant to have made of 
 existence — at least at that time — ) and two words about 
 her or herss would have been to me — ^Uke vengeance or 
 freedom to an Italian — ^i.e. the ' Ne plus ultra ' of 
 gratifications — She and two otherss were the only things 
 
 ^ The King of Naples escaped from his capital and " National Parliament " 
 on December 13th, 1820, on board an English man-of-war, the " Vengeur," 
 was landed at Leghorn and went on to Laybach. After the Congress, an 
 Austrian army marched to put an end to the Neapolitan constitution, and before 
 the end of March, 1821, the constitutional army concluded a slight resistance 
 with unqualified submission (Sir Spencer Walpole's " History of England," 
 chap. X.). 
 
 112 
 
ANNE ISABELLA BYRON 
 
 I ever really loved — I may say it now, — for we are young 
 no longer. " * 
 
 It is evident from the allusions in Lord Byron's letter 
 of December 28th, 1820, that he had become thoroughly 
 aware of the extent of Lady Byron's information, and 
 did not wish that she should be misled. He probably 
 may have heard from Augusta herself that she had 
 admitted her own guilt together with his to Lady Byron. 
 
 The breath of pagan and sensuous melancholy which 
 vibrated in Byron has little or no significance to the 
 present age, and indeed is almost unintelligible without 
 interpretation. Such an interpreter was Goethe, whose 
 comprehensive genius mastered most of what co-existed 
 in the long epoch of his Hfe. Headlong progress has 
 carried Europe ever farther from classical paganism. 
 Semitic and socialist hordes are far more deadly to 
 ancient learning and beauty than even the Christians to 
 pagan Rome. Modern materialism decoys mankind 
 with ugly but effective spectres, the craving for absolute 
 utility, the madness of final equality, so-called universal 
 happiness. The state in its wisdom keeps schools for 
 Christianity without God, literature without Latin, 
 science without conscience. We are remote indeed from 
 the despair of the humanists over the substitution of the 
 barbarous Old Testament for the Alexandrian Library.^ 
 
 At the ruin of paganism, joy and beauty vanished from 
 life, together with the motley throng of the gods of old 
 
 ' There is a clever guess in the article in " Temple Bar " mentioned at 
 pp. 1+3-4, note, and i6i, about this last letter from Lady Byron to Lord Byron : 
 
 " She sent him a parting letter which he destroyed. It is known only from 
 being mentioned in one which he wrote (17th November, 1821) but did not send 
 to her." " Her letter contained some voluntary pledge." " One of two 
 reasons, neither perhaps the true one, which he gave her, for having destroyed 
 it, is that he wished to take her word without documents." " He alleged as 
 the other reason for the destruction of her letter that it was written in a style 
 not very agreeable. It is probable she told him that it would be, as it was, 
 the last letter he would receive from her." " He would not dare preserve such 
 a letter, which must needs allude to the cause of separation " (" Temple Bar "). 
 
 The writer, however, obviously made the mistake of assuming that Lady 
 Byron's letter of December loth, 1820, had been written in 18 16. 
 
 * Gladstone gave his " Romanes lecture " " to combat Pattison's statement 
 that the extinction of the Pagan civilization by the Church was a great calamity " 
 (" Talks with Mr. Gladstone, by the Hon. L. A. Tollemache," p. 107). 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 and their rites and revels. Droning preachers vainly 
 muttered their empty benedictions. Black fanaticism 
 snatched human victims from life and love. 
 
 " saepius ilia 
 religio peperit scelerosa atque impia facta." ■'■ 
 
 The dark transformation of the world is described in an 
 exquisite poem of Goethe. In it a fair heathen bride 
 is offered up to the dread alien Deity to whom her bap- 
 tised and Christian parents have devoted her, 
 
 " tremibundaque ad aras 
 deductast, non ut solemni more sacrorum 
 perfecto posset claro comitari Hymenaeo 
 sed casta inceste nubendi tempore in ipso 
 hostia concideret mactatu maesta parentis 
 exitus ut classi felix faustusque daretur 
 tantum religio potuit suadere malorum." * 
 
 But neither earth nor the exorcisms of priests can cool 
 love. Her apparition, white as snow, but cold as ice, 
 visits the lover to whom she had been promised while 
 yet the bright temple of Venus was standing. He vows 
 to warm and win her back to love and joy though she 
 came from the grave itself. But she warns him she 
 belongs not to joy, no heart beats in her breast. She 
 must not stay with him, but he must follow her. 
 
 In her last adjuration, we could almost think we hear 
 that final farewell which should be inscribed on the urn 
 that ought to hold Byron's ashes : 
 
 " Einen scheiterhaufen schiclite du ; 
 Oeffne meine bange kleine hiitte, 
 Bring' in flammen liebende zur ruh.' 
 Wenn der funke spriiht, 
 Wenn die asche gliiht, 
 Eilen wir den alten gottern zu." * 
 
 " Ainsi mourut cet homme qui fut sans doute un grand 
 coupable, mais qui pourtant fut un homme." * 
 
 ' Lucretius, I. 82. 
 
 ^ Lucretius, I. 95-101. 
 
 5 " Die Braut von Corinth." 
 
 * " Monsieur de Camors." 
 
 114 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 LADY BYRON'S POLICY OF SILENCE 
 
 " I looked at the face of the crucifix, and . . . some sense of 
 what the thing implied was carried home to my intelligence. 
 The face looked down upon me with a painful and deadly con- 
 traction ; but the rays of a glory encircled it, and reminded 
 me that the sacrifice was voluntary. It stood there, crowning 
 the rock, as it still stands on so many highway sides, vainly 
 preaching to passers-by, an emblem of sad and noble truths : 
 that pleasure is not an end, but an accident ; that pain is the 
 choice of the magnanimous ; that it is best to suffer all things 
 and do well." — R. L. Stevenson, Olalla. 
 
 " Poets are not ideal beings ; but have their prose-sides, like 
 the commonest of the people. We often hear persons say. 
 What they would have given to have seen Shakespeare ! For 
 my part, I would give a great deal not to have seen him ; at least 
 if he was at all like anybody else that I have ever seen. ... It 
 is always fortunate for ourselves and others, when we are pre- 
 vented from exchanging admiration for knowledge. The splendid 
 vision that in youth haunts our idea of the poetical character, 
 fades, upon acquaintance, into the light of common day ; as 
 the azure tints that deck the mountains' brow are lost on a nearer 
 approach to them. It is well, according to the moral of one of 
 the Lyrical Ballads, — ' To leave Yarrow unvisited.' " — Hazlitt, 
 Lecture on Living Poets. 
 
 LORD BYRON'S life contained nothing of any 
 _yinterest except what ought not to have been told. 
 His story was not his alone. Other fates had been 
 engulfed in his — fates of which no account was owing to 
 the pubHc. The poignant drama of the separation : " so 
 poetical in its circumstances, and the mystery in which 
 it was involved — that if he had invented it, he could 
 hardly have had a more fortunate subject for his genius "^ 
 
 Goethe in conversation with George Tioknor, October 25tJj, 1816. 
 
 IIS '* 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 — could not be put into simple prose " sine ira et studio." 
 Those sad transactions had left a sting in every heart 
 and memory, but a still stronger craving for silence and 
 rest. He alone was constantly on the verge — sometimes 
 more than on the verge — of facing the world with defiant 
 avowals ; of having a " Dies Irae " of his own, for the 
 disclosure of secrets, and searching of hearts with fire ; 
 of forcing his public to become absolutely his confidants. 
 That public of contemporaries recoiled affrighted from 
 the spectres he called half out of vagueness. They 
 washed their hands of comprehension. 
 
 Their avidity for the poetry, once so stimulating to 
 them, passed away. He had defied what they revered, 
 and was expelled from the country. He was already 
 dead to the nation which sent hirn into exile. The 
 waters of oblivion divided him from England as com- 
 pletely as the sea over which he never returned. His 
 fame had risen in other lands, and spread far and wide, 
 but the EngUsh had had enough of his aHen and rebel 
 spirit — ^his " fierce and unfathomable thoughts," his 
 " eternal wrath " : 
 
 " And where he gazed a gloom pervaded space." 
 
 " Eternal wrath " had been his overthrow and extinc- 
 tion ; it availed not to give him a fierce immortality of 
 posthumous greatness, which he had not himself ex- 
 pected, or indeed desired, when he should be " where 
 nothing can touch him further." In England, at least, 
 no more Byron was wanted, not even a supposititious 
 one. 
 
 No spontaneous revival ever came, nothing but simu- 
 lated praise, and disguised announcements of Byron 
 ware for hire or purchase. Such unreal and passing 
 fashions would have been once for all extinguished by 
 the truth about Lord Byron. It would have been well 
 to stamp out free trade in falsehood and restore silence 
 to his memory. He would not have desired the survival 
 of that deception which began in spite of him ; for it was 
 he who first startled the world with " the night-mare of 
 
 ii6 
 
LADY BYRON'S POLICY OF SILENCE 
 
 his own delinquencies " ^ in " Manfred," — his Apocalypse 
 of defiance to the society which had renounced him, and 
 he rather endured than consented to his avowals being 
 explained away. 
 
 The alternate chaos and order of his mind did much 
 to encourage the darkest suppositions of those who heard 
 his conversation. He was in turn dominated by frenzy 
 and master of his frenzy, able to direct it to a purpose. 
 He had a fancy for some Oriental legends of pre-existence, 
 and in his conversation and poetry took up the part of a 
 fallen or exiled being, expelled from heaven, or sentenced 
 to a new Avatar on earth for some crime, existing under 
 a curse, predoomed to a fate really fixed by himself in his 
 own mind, but which he seemed determined to fulfil. At 
 times this dramatic imagination resembled a delusion ; 
 he would play at being mad, and gradually get more and 
 more serious, as if he beheved himself to be destined to 
 wreck his own life and that of everyone near him. AU 
 this took a coherent literary form ; there underlies his 
 poems from the crude beginnings in " Hours of Idleness " 
 to " Lara," and from " The Siege of Corinth " to " Heaven 
 and Earth," the desire to terrify mankind and make 
 
 them see 
 
 " a dusk and awful figure rise 
 Like an infernal god from out the earth," ^ 
 
 but terror was in reality all-powerful with himself, 
 though he added to the above : " But I do fear him not." 
 The part of prophet of Antichrist,^ half in jest, half in 
 madness, was assumed in his writings. The spirit of 
 suffering and vengeance of the French Revolution was 
 reflected in his formidable laughter and his mystery of 
 lamentation. He was a sort of offspring of the revolu- 
 
 "• " I was half mad (in June and July, 1816) between metaphysics, mountains, 
 lakes, love unextinguishable, thoughts unutterable, and the night-mare of my 
 own delinquencies. I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, 
 but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law ; 
 and even then if I could have been certain to haunt her " (Written January 28th, 
 1817, V. Moore's Quarto, ii. 72). 
 
 - "Manfred," Act III, Scene 4. 
 
 ' Lamartine addressed him as " Chantre d'enfer I " 
 
 117 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 tionary convulsions in France in the years immediately 
 following his birth. The passions which led him from 
 his birth till he returned to the East to die were an 
 incarnation of the romance, gaiety, energy, and cruelty 
 of the French Revolution, — 
 
 " tempting region that 
 For Zeal to enter and refresh herself, 
 Where passions had the privilege to work, 
 And never hear the sound of their own names." 
 
 " A golden palace rose, or seemed to rise, 
 The appointed seat of equitable law 
 And mild paternal sway." 
 
 Byron, however, was at no time " a patriot of the 
 world " or of any other place, and never dreamt dreams 
 that one day the triumph of humanity and hberty would 
 be complete, nor to say the truth did he very much care. 
 He knew as well as any one that " for this purpose 
 several things were necessary which are impossible. It 
 is a consummation which cannot happen till the nature 
 of things is changed, . . . till romantic generosity shall 
 be as common as gross selfishness, . . . till the love of 
 power and of change shall no longer goad men on to 
 restless action, till passion and will, hope and fear, love 
 and hatred, and the objects proper to excite them, that 
 is, alternate good and evil, shall no longer sway the 
 bosoms and businesses of men." ^ Byron was more 
 sensible to the stupendous poetry of the relentless 
 empire of force and heroes which in his time had almost 
 mastered the world. 
 
 Men of judgment and authority. Lord John Russell, 
 Lord Lansdowne, Canning and Hobhouse,^ were unani- 
 mous that there ought to be no biography — ^he had been 
 too great a reprobate, ^ that it was quite out of the ques- 
 tion to jsnter into the details of Lord Byron's life,* that 
 Lord Byron's letters could not be pubhshed by those 
 
 ' Hazlitt on Mr. Wordsworth's poem, " The Excursion." 
 
 * Moore's Diary, v. 40, 41, 
 ' Ibid., V. 51. 
 
 * Ibid., iv. 253. 
 
 118 
 
LADY BYRON'S POLICY OF SILENCE 
 
 to whom they were addressed confidentially. ^ That 
 there was no excuse for cramming not over-willing con- 
 temporaries with Byron biography was also implied in 
 Lord Holland's strong protest against an assignment ^ or 
 pawning of the Byron Memoirs to a bookseller for ulti- 
 mate publication. Lord Holland " seemed to think it 
 was in cold blood depositing a sort of quiver of poisoned 
 arrows for a future warfare on private character." 
 This was on November 4th, 1821, and impHed censure 
 on Byron himself for his intention to bequeath his own 
 story to the world when he should be gone.^ 
 
 If pubHcation of a Hfe is ever legitimate, it must be 
 that of an autobiography designed expressly for that end. 
 Nevertheless, it would seem that Lord Byron did Hsten 
 to the strong remonstrances made, and withdraw the 
 authority for immediate pubHcation of his Memoirs in the 
 event of his death. Their destruction he never contem- 
 plated, and assuredly he would far sooner have com- 
 mitted to the flames most of the intolerable volumes 
 issued about him from that day to this, together with 
 their compilers and pubHshers.* 
 
 ^ Moore's Diary, v. 154. 
 
 * [Lord Byron had given his autograph memoirs to Thomas Moore, who 
 had raised a loan of £2,000 on them from Mr. Murray. — 'En.'] 
 
 ^ Moore's Diary, iii. 298. 
 
 * " During our ride the conversation turned on our mutual friends and 
 acquaintances in England. Talking of two of them, for one of whom he pro- 
 fessed a great regard, he declared laughingly that they had saved him from 
 suicide. Seeing me look grave, he added : ' It is a fact, I assure you : I should 
 
 positively have destroyed myself, but I guessed that — or would 
 
 write my life, and with this fear before my eyes, I have lived on. I know so 
 well the sort of things they would write of me — the excuses, lame as myself, 
 that they would offer for my delinquencies, while they were unnecessarily 
 exposing them, and all this done with the avowed intention of justifying what, 
 God help me 1 cannot be justified, my unpoetical reputation, with which the 
 world can have nothing to do I One of my friends would dip his pen in clarified 
 honey, and the other in vinegar, to describe my manifold transgressions, and 
 as I do not wish my poor fame to be either preserved or pickled, I have lived on 
 and written my Memoirs, where facts will speak for themselves, without the 
 editorial candour of excuses, such as " we cannot excuse this unhappy error, 
 or defend that impropriety ! " — the mode,' continued Byron, ' in which friends 
 exalt their own prudence and virtue, by exhibiting the want of those qualities 
 in the dear departed, and by marking their disapproval of his errors. I have 
 written my Memoirs,' said Byron, ' to save the necessity of their being written 
 by a friend or friends, and have only to hope they will not add notes ' " (Lady 
 Blessington's " Journal of Conversations vrith Lord Byron " p. 56), 
 
 119 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 The Memoirs were burnt with indecent haste on the 
 third morning from the arrival of the news of Lord 
 Byron's death. 
 
 The pretended reason put forward was an allegation 
 that the Memoirs were " of such a low, Pot-house descrip- 
 tion " 1 that they never could be published by a Church 
 and King bookseller. Such was the assertion of the 
 " foremost of literary prostitutes " — " one of the meanest 
 specimens of the workmanship of God " ^ — the informer 
 Gifford.^ " Grown old in the service of corruption," * 
 this " menial tool of noble families " * commonly 
 reserved his rancour for those low people of whom he had 
 originally been one himself. Once no flattery of the 
 "Noble Bard" had been too fulsome for Keats'straducer.* 
 
 1 These were the very words attributed to Gifford by Murray, first in conversa- 
 tion with Captain Lord Byron (March 15th, 1828), and repeated in a letter from 
 the same Murray to Sir Robert Wilmot Horton (March 25th, 1830). 
 
 ' " Adonais," p. 5. Shelley had " dipped his pen in consuming fire " to 
 write these indelible words (Shelley Society facsimile, p. 15). 
 
 ^ " You are a little person, but a considerable cat's paw ; and so far worthy 
 of notice. Your clandestine connexion with persons high in office constantly 
 influences your opinions, and alone gives importance to them. You are the 
 Government Critic — a character nicely differing from that of a government spy — 
 the invisible link that connects literature with the police. It is your business 
 to keep a strict eye over all writers who differ in opinion with his Majesty's 
 Ministers, and to measure their talents and attainments by the standard of 
 their servility and meanness " (Hazhtt's letter to William Gifford, Esq.). 
 
 * Hazhtt's letter to WiUiam Gifford, Esq. 
 
 ° " From the difficulty Gifford had in constructing a sentence of common 
 grammar, and his frequent failures," his ignominious defamation, like his venal 
 good nature, was sometimes committed to a colleague, or even a comparatively 
 respectable man, for execution. He was one of those persons who " cannot 
 write a whole work themselves, but they take care that the whole is such as 
 they might have written ; it is to have the Editor's mark, like the broad R on 
 every page . . . nothing is to be differently conceived or better expressed than 
 the Editor could have done it " (Sketches, etc., by Hazlitt, 1839, p. 353). It 
 has been suggested that Editor Gifford employed Croker on the vile article 
 about Keats, but it is not very material whether those turpitudes were partly 
 Croker's or wholly Gifford's. 
 
 " Lame G.," as Hazlitt named this sinister figure, was " in no danger of 
 exciting the jealousy of his patrons by a mortifying display of extraordinary 
 talents." " A happy combination of defects, natural and acquired," " at once 
 ensured the gratitude and contempt " of those who " presided over the impure 
 expedients of the state." Amongst other shameful functions, he was Com- 
 missioner in the Lottery Office. The one honest thing about him was his aver- 
 sion to genius and beauty. " He damns a beautiful expression less out of spite 
 than because he really does not understand it. Any novelty of thought or 
 sentiment gives him a shock from which he cannot recover for some time, and 
 
 120 
 
LADY BYRON'S POLICY OF SILENCE 
 
 The "Quarterly Review" of February, 1817, "wrote 
 Byron down a beauty, borrowing the description of his 
 charms from Glenarvon ! ! ! " " This precious piece of 
 impudence " ^ was attributed to Walter Scott, " who, 
 arniable, frank, friendly, manly in private life," — 
 " joined a gang of desperadoes to spread calumny, con- 
 tempt, infamy, wherever they were merited by honesty 
 or talent on a different side — who officiously undertook 
 to decide public questions by private insinuations, to 
 prop the throne by nicknames, and the altar by lies — 
 who being (by common consent) the finest, the most 
 humane and accomplished writer of his age, associated 
 himself with and encouraged the lowest panders of a 
 venal press." ^ 
 
 The article was in no real sense Scott's own, being 
 entirely inspired by " Giflford, Murray and Co." ^ 
 
 he naturally takes his revenge for the alarm and uneasiness occasioned him, 
 without reference to venal or party motives " (" Spirit of the Age," and letter 
 to " William Gifford Esq« "). 
 
 In an unpubhshed letter, J. C. Hobhouse wrote that Gifford began his career 
 " as a voluntary reformer, self-sworn upon his own altar to make war upon the 
 giant vices of the age, and be at the least himself an honest man " — and that 
 he had concluded " as the pimp and pander of the Court." 
 
 ^ Robert John Wilmot to Lady Byron, February 20th, 18 17. 
 
 ' Hazlitt's " Spirit of the Age," pp. 154, 155. 
 
 " The beginning of the nineteenth century saw bands of literary ruffians 
 marshalled in order for each of the two parties in politics, and prepared to shoot 
 down, scatter and trample upon all who presumed to hold other views of pohtics 
 or religion than their own. The Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews, in the first 
 decades of the century, were, to the authors of the period, very much what the 
 scalping Indian tribes of Sioux or Choctaws were to the New England settlers " 
 (Miss Frances Power Cobbe on Schadenfreude or iirfxaLpeKaKia in the " Contem- 
 porary Review," May, 1902). 
 
 According to Hazlitt — scalper of scalpers — the crimes of the " Edinburgh 
 Review " were exclusively literary. It ridiculed the " Lyrical Ballads," and 
 denied their beauties, but did not " barb ridicule by some allusion (false or true) 
 to private history." Jeffrey was not " impervious alike to truth and candour," 
 and did not " traduce every opponent " (" Spirit of the Age," pp. 306, etc.). 
 
 ' Robert John Wilmot to Lady Byron, February 20th, 18 17. 
 
 The argument of the article attributed to Walter Scott was : 
 
 " That Lord Byron was not quite a Joseph, but that he was the soul of honour 
 and generosity. 
 
 " That he never told even a white lie, nor made himself in any way whiter 
 than he truly was. That he did think Lady Byron a little too good, and was 
 in a passion, which frightened her, and her friends still worse — and then was 
 rather too proud to beg pardon, which she was too much affronted to grant. 
 
 " That he showed a disregard of money which was foolish, to be sure, but 
 
 121 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Gifford's insinuation against the Byron Memoirs was 
 no more trustworthy than his former adulation of the 
 autobiographer. There was nothing at all gross in the 
 first part of the Memoirs, ending in the summer of i8i6. 
 In the latter portion there were at most four or five 
 indehcate pages, which could have perfectly been spared. 
 Lord John Russell, Lady Holland and other readers of 
 the Memoirs agree about this. 
 
 It is absolutely untrue that the Memoirs were burnt 
 for Lady Byron's sake or by her influence. She did not 
 wish to destroy them, and had no motive whatever 
 for their disappearance ; — quite the reverse — ^had it 
 depended on her. It was her interest to preserve and 
 perpetuate all possible evidence. 
 
 One of the real reasons for the destruction of the MS. 
 was a panic over possible revelations concerning another 
 lady, whose feeHngs and interests were put forward as 
 the paramount consideration by the parties to that deed. 
 If its destruction was for anyone's interest, it was for 
 hers. It is uncertain how far she was compromised in it. 
 Lord John Russell, who had read the Memoirs, stated in 
 1869 that she was not implicated, but Lady HoUand, 
 who had also read them, stated in 1843 that she was. 
 Sir Walter Scott spems in 1825 to have heard something 
 from Moore of a dark reason for the destruction of the 
 Memoirs, for, after lamenting the decision, which he 
 attributes to " the executors," he remarks : " it was a 
 pity," adding, " but there was a reason, — fremat nox 
 
 poets will be romantic sometimes. (N.B. No romance about money was 
 attributed to Mr. Scott himself)" (Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. ViUiers, March 
 6th, 1817). 
 
 There was a " defect of moral force in Scott's character ; invariable candour 
 and moderation in judging men is generally accompanied by such a defect. 
 Scott seems to be always disposed to approve of rectitude of conduct and to 
 acquiesce in the general rules of morality, but without any instinctive or 
 unconquerable aversion from vice, — witness his friendship for Byron " (Henry 
 Taylor to Edward ViUiers, October 15th, 1827). 
 
 In contrast to Scott, Wordsworth seemed to Ticknor to have no regard at all 
 for Lord Byron. Though Wordsworth admired Byron's talent, he had a deep- 
 rooted abhorrence of his character, and besides seemed to feel a little bitterness 
 against Childe Harold for taking something of Wordsworth's own lakish manner, 
 and what was worse, " borrowed some of his thoughts " (Ticknor's " Journal "). 
 
 122 
 
LADY BYRON'S POLICY OF SILENCE 
 
 aha" However this may be, in 1824 all — and more 
 particularly the lady herself — ^were very uneasy on this 
 point. She wrote on Sunday, May i6th, 1824 : " It is 
 my very decided opinion that the Memoirs ought to be 
 burnt, and I think the sooner the better." ^ Next 
 morning they were burnt. 
 
 Lady Byron always suspected, but never knew posi- 
 tively that Mrs. Leigh was implicated in the Memoirs. 
 Mrs. Leigh had expressed so great an anxiety to have 
 them burnt for Lady Byron's sake ! ^ 
 
 The meanest part of the whole business was that some 
 of those concerned endeavoured afterwards to shift the 
 responsibility for their own betrayal of Lord Byron's 
 confidence on to his widow, who would never have con- 
 sented to it had it depended upon hfer, was actually at a 
 distance from the spot, totally ignorant of what was 
 being done, and did not approve when she heard of it 
 for the first time after the perpetration of the treachery. 
 Proof of this will be found in Appendix A. Documents 
 of 1820 will be found in Chapter V which show how little 
 fear Lady Byron had of the Memoirs on her own account, 
 though she rightly wished to shield her daughter's youth 
 from insulting public discussion of private family 
 circumstances. 
 
 Any kind of publication about the domestic relations 
 of Lord and Lady Byron was criminal, and it was 
 treacherous to destroy the Menloirs. A third course 
 was clear : simply to lock them up for a term of years, 
 or lives, in safe hands, such, for example, as Hobhouse's, 
 or Colonel Francis Hastings Doyle's. Lord Byron's 
 own words about his MS. were that he " gave it to the 
 care " of the man ^ who afterwards pawned it. 
 
 The pawner and his creditor, after pretending to burn 
 the authentic Autobiography because it was shocking, 
 joined fortunes to present to the public a contraband 
 version of Lord Byron's vices. The improper Venetian 
 
 1 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Robert John Wihnot Horton. 
 
 ^ Lady Noel Byron to the Earl of Lovelace, August 3rd, 1843. 
 
 ' Moore. 
 
 123 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 women of the Byronic Venusberg were given the beau role 
 of the poet's nine Muses in this travesty of an apotheosis. 
 But besides the scandals, which would have been found 
 in the Memoirs, others were dragged in or invented, 
 which assuredly were not included in them. For 
 example. Lord Byron's ofHcious traducers added endless 
 false and sentimental garbage about his ignominious 
 fan-carrying bondage to Guiccioli. The Memoirs had 
 not been continued to those four years of forced and 
 penal adultery — opprobrious end to the merry madness 
 
 of his " nine w s of Venice " ^ — as he called them. 
 
 If post mortem advertisements in rotten books could 
 create a poet's literary concubine out of an elderly 
 nobleman's divorcible wife, hard and dull in character, 
 with an evil countenance and dumpy figure, Guiccioli's 
 claims to that sort of notoriety were trumpeted without 
 much pretence of decency. Doubtless in a way she might 
 be considered to hold Lord Byron by right of capture. 
 She certainly showed great determination not to let him 
 loose again. In the lassitude of reaction after his 
 Venetian comedie rosse, he just endured his thraldom ; 
 but he loathed and detested it from the very first, — 
 wrote of it with despair to his friends, with bitter taunts to 
 
 " her, whom of all earthly things 
 That lived, the only thing he seemed to love." * 
 
 Augusta he reproached with having driven him into the 
 trap. At the same time he promised her that if she 
 would come out to him in Italy, she should never meet 
 " any Italian acquaintances of his." He took very good 
 
 ' Lord Byron's conversation at Venice, as described to me from oral tradition, 
 was very daring and bitter, with a note of forced jocularity, but there were 
 many grossly exaggerated reports of his excesses. Trustworthy contemporary 
 information from Venice, dating from the first half of the nineteenth century, 
 disposes completely of the most repulsive abominations. There was no founda- 
 tion for the crass and egregious suggestions of Shelley in a letter to Peacock, 
 which became a favourite quotation for credulous ill-wishers. Shelley's good 
 faith was probably imposed upon by Jane Clairmont, who had been prowhng 
 about with him in the neighbourhood of Venice at the time, and like other spies 
 was quite capable of passing oft her own inventions as information picked up. 
 
 ' " Manfred," Act III, Scene 3. 
 
 124 
 
LADY BYRON'S POLICY OF SILENCE 
 
 care also that Lady Blessington should not be exposed 
 to _ the indignity of an encounter with Guiccioli.^ 
 Guiccioli's one attraction for Lord Byron was her 
 ancient and noble birth. This was the bait that caught 
 him. After the low company of the three previous 
 years, he was not sorry to let his friends hear of a lady 
 of high degree. 
 
 Sir H. Davy, who went to Ravenna early in 1820 to see 
 Lord Byron, found him anxious to get off with Davy to 
 Bologna, professedly to see Lady Davy, but really to 
 give Guiccioli the slip.^ In pauses between struggles to 
 escape from his keeper, Lord Byron relieved his oppres- 
 sion of spirits in letters to various people (including even 
 Lady Byron), to whom he repeatedly wrote that 
 Guiccioli knew he did not love her and charged him 
 with it. 
 
 Byron had been seized in an impudent man-trap set 
 by one bent on rupture even of such bonds of decency as 
 were imposed at Ravenna ; for dreary years he mouldered 
 under a stifling incubus. Such was the dismal termina- 
 tion of delights which in one form or other so often lurks 
 for the man of passion. It has been said that the hunt 
 for enjoyment draws the pursuer far and farther away 
 from it. With each fancied obstacle removed, happiness 
 is still missing.^ The nature of the man of pleasure 
 passes through successive stages of deformation ; from 
 romantic he declines into sensual, vicious, cold, callous, 
 malignant.* Byron, however, roused himself from final 
 petrification, but only when he was fey.^ He shook off 
 
 ^ It is strange that both Lady Blessington and Mrs. Leigh sunk by 1832 to 
 the level of contact with Guiccioli, who had actually become a friend and 
 correspondent of Lady Blessington's, and was admitted to visit Mrs. Leigh in 
 the summer of 1832, spent hours with her speaking of Lord Byron — not omitting 
 Lady Byron's sins against him (v. " Correspondence of Lady Blessington "). 
 
 ^ Moore's Diary, iii. 118. 
 
 ^ Substance of some thoughts in a note-book of Lady Byron's, 1817. 
 
 * Substance of a maxim of Lady Byron's written in 1851. 
 
 * This ancient English word, probably of Scandinavian origin, seems to have 
 only survived in Scotland, and is perhaps best known from a striking passage in 
 " Guy Mannering " : " ' I think,' said the old gardener to one of the maids, 
 ' the gauger'S fie' ; by which word the common people express those violent 
 spirits which they think a presage of death " (" Guy Mannering," 181 5, i. 135). 
 
 125 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 his incubus, and went to the East to fulfil his destmy and 
 die. His " madness of the heart " was over, and the 
 remaining months of his life were spent on repeal of the 
 Union of Greece with Turkey. He liked and respected 
 Turks more highly than Greeks, but was the restless foe 
 of prescriptive authority, whether national or alien, in 
 all places and times. ^ On his tomb might be written 
 the last farewell of another great man whose heart was 
 transfixed by indignation : 
 
 " Abi viator, et imitare, si poteris, strenuum pro virili libertatis 
 vindicatorem." 
 
 His death following closely on participation in a great 
 and necessary rebellion, gave an instant's shock to the 
 country which had expelled him ; but it could not revive 
 his momentary fashion. He was inevitably superseded 
 by voices fitter for a new era, and by more favoured 
 lyrical artificers. The English had learnt to see in him 
 little beyond dismal exaggeration. They followed their 
 
 The word originally meant " fated to die, marked for death," not merely in 
 those violent spirits. The Icelandic form is, feig-r, morti vicinus. The diction- 
 aries quote the proverb : " eigi fry's feigs vok — the water will not freeze for the 
 fey." Lord Byron was superstitious about his destiny. Often he fixed his gaze 
 towards the East, saying : " There it is, I must return to the East to die." 
 
 1 Lord Byron never displayed or felt much enthusiasm for the inhabitants of 
 modern Greece. He was ready to sacrifice money, occupations and enjoyments 
 on the altar of liberty, but there may have been in this as much love of power 
 and celebrity as of the principle of freedom. He hated oppressors more than 
 he loved the oppressed. Heroism of opinion was combined with the spirit of 
 adventure and restlessness. His devotion was not to the cause of Greece, but 
 to that of rebellion all over the world. He was just as willing to raise a regi- 
 ment and go to fight in Spain, America, or Ireland. He was equally ready for 
 revolt either here or there, everywhere or nowhere. At Genoa in 1823, when 
 about to start on the nearest chivalrous or buccaneering enterprise in which 
 he could emancipate himself from European law or social fetters, he constantly 
 mentioned his calm conviction of the worthlessness of the people whom he 
 proposed to emancipate and perhaps subject. 
 
 See Lady Blessington's " Journal of Conversations with Lord Byron," p. 137, 
 and also an able anonymous letter addressed to " The Times " somewhere about 
 September 15th, 1869. 
 
 This letter to " The Times " began with pointing out, what was of course 
 perfectly true, that the accusation of incest was no new unheard-of revelation, 
 but an old report, familiar to the poet himself and all his friends, and referred 
 to in his published correspondence. The writer also mentions Lord Byron's 
 cynical spirit of sneering at the Guiccioli's shameless pursuit of himself and his 
 bad luck in having her thrown on his protection. 
 
 126 
 
LADY BYRON'S POLICY OF SILENCE 
 
 lights and shook him oflF. They did well to choose more 
 appropriate teachers ; they would have done better 
 consistently to banish his memory as well as himself. 
 The pillage of his tomb should never have been encour- 
 aged or condoned. Beyond what he had addressed to 
 mankind himself, nothing ought to have been told about 
 him. A respectful silence about his first apparition, his 
 sterile celebrity, vicissitudes, eclipse and final wracke, 
 was what any friend with a spark of fidelity or feeling 
 was bound to observe. Some excellent friends he had 
 who did not betray him when he was gone, but, un- 
 fortunately, he had also suffered too many of a meaner 
 sort to creep into familiarity with him. He had even 
 treated them with confidence and corresponded with 
 them. This infatuation was more dangerous to his fame 
 than aU his other errors, and was not one of the least 
 pernicious in itself. His moral atmosphere was not the 
 better or purer for the company of dealers and adven- 
 turers in literature attracted by interest. For example, 
 his taste and feelings were perverted by his toleration 
 of the blackguard depreciation of Keats hy some of these 
 unworthy associates. When Keats was dead, Byron 
 recanted his thoughtless assent to those infamies of 
 criticism ; nevertheless, when Byron was himself dead, 
 all the coarse nonsense about Keats contained in private 
 letters was exposed to the derision of the world. In 
 mitigation of Lord Byron's responsibility for writing 
 senseless confidences it should be remembered that their 
 publication was unauthorized, and was a greater injury 
 to him than to the great poet he had so little compre- 
 hended. Upon his death, faithless and thankless in- 
 formers turned to the letters they had of his, or their 
 notes of his conversation, for the money that might be 
 in them. A batch of books thus began to be shot into 
 circulation, and to infect a certain public with morbid 
 curiosity. The earliest in the field made little pretence 
 of disinterestedness. Others lay low for a time, watching 
 for some more or less decent pretext. The parasites on 
 Lord Byron who brought out books worked upon imper- 
 
 127 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 feet information with little accuracy. Their insight was 
 small ; they were wanting in good faith. The " Con- 
 versations with Lady Blessington " was the only 
 comparatively creditable book — but she was not a 
 parasite. 
 
 The largest number of black marks are due to two 
 quarto volumes-*- (already referred to on p. 123), which 
 were turned out by an Irish adventurer to the order of 
 the Church and State bookseller, who was afHicted with 
 the craze of possession (as " his birthright ! ") of the 
 biography of an outlaw against every one of his own 
 sacred institutions.^ 
 
 When the news of Lord Byron's death burst upon 
 England, on Friday, May 14th, 1824, Lady Byron's 
 interest would have been to preserve the Memoirs, 
 together with aU other papers of his or hers, as records 
 and proofs of her own history, which for her daughter's 
 sake must, if possible, be suppressed — for a period — but 
 also preserved. Discussion would be distracting to the 
 child of Lord and Lady Byron as she grew up ; but 
 entire or partial destruction of the truth for Mrs. Leigh's 
 deification was no benefit to Augusta Ada Byron. Lady 
 Byron might have paid heavily in money for surrender 
 of Lord Byron's manuscript into safe custody, but she 
 could not have paid Mrs. Leigh's hush money for getting 
 rid of evidence. Without Lady Byron's consent, know- 
 ledge, or even suspicion, Murray arranged with Mrs. 
 Leigh the hangman's work of burning the Memoirs — 
 executed with precipitation on Monday, May 17th — 
 when Murray recovered simultaneously the entire prin- 
 cipal and interest of his disbursement. Moore paid back 
 what he had raised on pawn, and remained with his 
 unpaid vexation. Nothing was done for Lady Byron 
 by either Murray or Moore, but a story became current 
 that she had offered ;£2,ooo reward for the perpetration 
 of the crime, and afterwards broke faith and refused to 
 
 1 [See note 2, p. 15.] 
 
 ''■ Moore's Diary, v. 77, May, 1826. "Murray . . . repeated, two or three 
 times, that the ' Life of Byron ' was his birthright." 
 
 128 
 
LADY BYRON'S POLICY OF SILENCE 
 
 pay up.^ Moore was the only person with a plausible 
 pecuniary grievance, not against her, but against those 
 who rendered Lord Byron's gift valueless. And yet both 
 he and Murray appeared from this time malignant 
 towards her. 
 
 The plot against her peace and honour would not have 
 been agreeable to Lord Byron. He had not wished her 
 to be exposed to other insolence than his own. He was 
 apt to repel vulgarian assumptions of familiarity towards 
 any woman connected with himself. Notwithstanding 
 the separation, he would never have surrendered her 
 character to a venal travesty. Moore's " Letters and 
 Journals of Lord Byron etc." were a vUe misrepresenta- 
 tion of Lord Byron himself. The worst of his letters 
 were included. There were juvenile letters, in which, 
 having nothing to tell, he made up crude unrealities into 
 idiotic nonsense for idiots to read. Subsequent notoriety 
 could never convert trash written to Pigot into literature 
 or biography. Lord Byron's memory was vilely gibbeted 
 upon the refuse of his correspondence. Dissection of 
 poets, poetry and works of art is delusive. Words 
 displace realities ; facts get shifted ; theories are con- 
 fused with what existed. The secret of life is never 
 discovered by the posthumous spy. The secret of youth 
 is not in the letters it writes ; they mean nothing and 
 explain nothing. The immature letter-writer is what 
 Napoleon called an " ideologue — fonctionnant a vide." 
 He cannot write with that total and absolute sincerity 
 on which Hterary beauty must be founded. He neither 
 thinks nor knows what he says — unable alike to say what 
 he thinks and what he does not think. Right speech is 
 long and arduous of discovery — speech that shall be true 
 
 ^ This fiction, accompanied by other misstatements concerning Lady Byron 
 or Colonel Doyle, may be found in a letter printed with the signature " John 
 Murray" in the "Academy" of October 9th, 1869. [If the author had seen 
 the documents subsequently published by Mr. Murray, he would have with- 
 drawn the word "fiction." Apparently, two months after the burning of 
 the Memoirs, Lady Byron expressed herself as willing to join with Mrs. Leigh 
 in compensating Mr. Murray if he were the loser, but she saw no reason to 
 compensate Moore. — Ed.] 
 
 A. 129 K 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 both in form and substance — that just reaches and not 
 over-reaches its intention.^ 
 
 Lord Byron's most interesting and important letters 
 have been preserved in safety — unpublished — to this day, 
 some by Lady Byron, and a very large number by his 
 surviving executor, Hobhouse.^ These last have more 
 sincerity, wit, power and beauty than the best hitherto 
 published. 
 
 Lord Byron's style was sometimes of the highest 
 beauty, but it was greatly influenced by subject and by 
 his associates, these last too often of the lowest order. 
 Even the nobler literary forces were capable of injury to 
 his poetry. Wordsworth said (October 27th, 1820, at 
 Paris) " that the celebrated passage about Solitude in 
 ' ChUde Harold,' canto IIL, was taken from ' Tintern 
 Abbey,' with this difference, that what is naturally 
 expressed by Wordsworth, has been worked by Byron 
 into a laboured and antithetical sort of declamation." 
 " The whole third canto of ' Childe Harold ' was founded 
 on Wordsworth's style and sentiments. The feeling of 
 natural objects which is there expressed, was not caught 
 by Byron from nature, but from Wordsworth, and 
 spoiled in the transmission." ^ 
 
 Wordsworth's faith in his own grandeur was strong ; 
 and it was brave in one who had so long been " the 
 spoiled child of adversity." With advancing years it 
 rather declined into a foible. Byron's somewhat angry 
 and unwilling appreciation and more or less conscious or 
 appropriate adoption of Wordsworth's tone in a few 
 places, is not a little curious when it is remembered that 
 
 ^ " Tantot la parole est trop faible pour rendre la pensee, tantot elle la 
 d^passe dans I'effort qu'elle fait pour I'atteindre " (M. Gaston Boissier in 
 'Revue des deux mondes," i^ Octobre 1902). Renan had written: " Le 
 succes oratoire et littiraire n'a jamais qu'une cause, I'absolue sincerite " — 
 which M. Boissier would thus qualify : " Sans doute, qu'on parle ou qu'on 
 ecrive, il faut Stre sincere ; on ne doit jamais dire que ce qu'on pense, mais le 
 pe riser et le dire ne sont pas la meme chose. L'exp^nence prouve, au contraire, 
 qu'il est tres rare qu'on arrive du premier coup k exprimer exactement ce 
 qu'on pense, comme on le pense et comme on le sent." 
 
 ' [The letters left by Hobhouse (Lord Broughton) are still unpublished in 
 1921. — Ed.]. 
 
 ^ Moore, iii. 161. 
 
 130 
 
LADY BYRON'S POLICY OF SILENCE 
 
 " from the ' Lyrical Ballads,' it does not appear that 
 men eat or drink, marry or are given in marriage. . . . 
 If the species were continued like trees (to borrow an 
 expression of the great Sir Thomas Browne), Mr. Words- 
 worth's poetry would be just as good as ever." ^ Byron 
 was no scientific versifier ; Wordsworth was better 
 equipped, without perhaps ranking as a perfect poetical 
 artificer ; but when all has been said by the experts, 
 there are a host of lines by either, where no metrical skiU 
 could improve essence or form. An outlaw's passion 
 glowed in one ; the other, with firm philosophy, faced a 
 world in convulsions. 
 
 Great deterioration of Lord Byron was produced by 
 his intimacy with Moore, who had " converted the wild 
 harp of Erin into a musical snuff-box," ^ and who im- 
 parted something of his mean, vapid varnish of conceit 
 to everyone who suffered him to approach thgm. 
 Followers of the opposite camp to Moore were at the 
 same time crawHng about Lord Byron, to his great 
 discredit and damage. The most besetting enemies of 
 Lord Byron's genius were the band celebrated as " the 
 impenetrable phalanx round the throne," by whom, " if 
 a writer came up to a certain standard of dulness, 
 impudence and want of principle, nothing more was 
 expected." ^ Their colleague Croker was a friend of 
 Moore, who called him (behind his back) " a Uckspittle," 
 but was himself the Croker of Whiggery. The company 
 and communications of these men lowered Lord Byron 
 incalculably as a man and as a writer to that extent that 
 it has been said with partial — but only partial — truth, 
 " that Lord Byron's prose is bad ; that is to say, heavy, 
 laboured and coarse ; he tries to knock someone down 
 with the butt end of every line, which defeats his object."^ 
 The wonder is that any fragments of letters from a Noble 
 Poet to his attendant servilities should have been over 
 
 ^ Hazlitt's " Lectures, On Burns," etc. 
 
 2 " Spirit of the Age." 
 
 ' Hazlitt on " Jealousy and Spleen of Party." 
 
 * Hazlitt's " Plain Speaker," Essay I. 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 the level of the creeping things to which he wrote. The 
 best of Lord Byron's letters were not accessible and still 
 remain unpubUshed. They laid hands on those to 
 inferior correspondents, and the better portions of these 
 were difficult to discover in a thicket of weeds, some- 
 times rank and disagreeable, — editors' garbage and 
 smug commentaries. Not all of Lord Byron's [letters] 
 have a good flavour. Before his social education began, 
 about 1 812, they were little more than the crude 
 insincere imitations, the infantile fabrications of " pue- 
 rorum aetas inprovida," of no sort of significance either 
 as to character or facts. Out of offal life cannot be 
 reconstituted. 
 
 As the compilations multiphed and waxed fat. Lord 
 Byron's less uninteresting letters — nearly stationary in 
 number — became more and more wasted under the 
 vacant mass of incoherent refuse which gentlemen of the 
 press were pleased to advertise as Lord Byron's prose, 
 with fat forecasts of fame and fortune. 
 
 His worst prose was put behind a mirage of hallucina- 
 tion and hysteria. Lord Byron was not a Byronese 
 impostor ; but he was made up into one by vulgar old 
 augurs who stole his name, invented the pseudo-Byron 
 religion, and finished in self-deception, somnambulism, 
 epilepsy. They saw the unexistent, told the unknown, 
 believed in the impossible. Most of them were afflicted 
 with a childish aversion for Lady Byron that was quite 
 unconnected with sympathy or respect for Lord Byron. 
 In some the symptoms were morbid covetousness. 
 Others were afflicted with argumentative hallucinations 
 which would have wiped out of existence the separation 
 as a tangible event — the consequence of antecedent 
 causes. The real Byron world was to be fabled to 
 nothing and nowhere — replaced by a crazy phantom 
 standing in vacuity hke the unthinkable universe of the 
 Stoics : 
 
 " sed vanus stolidis haec [error somnia finxit] 
 amplexi quod habent perv[ersa rem ratione] 
 
 132 
 
LADY BYRON'S POLICY OF SILENCE 
 
 nee quisquam locus est, quo corpora cum venerunt, 
 ponderis amissa vi possint stare in inani, 
 nee quod inane autem est uUi subsistere debet, 
 quin, sua quod natura petit, concedere pergat." ^ 
 
 Nothing is too stupid for belief. Dreamers evolved 
 from their consciousness that Lord Byron knew of no 
 cause for the separation. Some vague but studied com- 
 plaints (such as his sly attorney had suggested to him) 
 that he had received no formal communication of charges, 
 were interpreted into unconsciousness of what they could 
 possibly be. 
 
 Other and bolder discoverers of the non-existent gave 
 out that there were no records of any causes of separation 
 between Lord and Lady Byron. Finally, it was decreed 
 by some determined infallibles, that there never were 
 any causes for that insignificant event, which is thus 
 reduced to a negligeable quantity. The omniscience of 
 the uninformed is everlasting. 
 
 Lord Byron was successively stripped of every real and 
 living attribute. It is difficult to comprehend how a 
 story so much expurgated, and with so many signs of 
 being spurious, could excite any other feeling than dis- 
 appointment at its insufficiency. When people are 
 invited to the spectacle of a man of passion, they do 
 not expect to be shown a sort of abortion. Otherwise 
 they would not stay through the performance, but 
 leave before the fifth act, like the lady at a play in 
 which another hero had been deprived of his identity. 
 She did not care to see any more, exclaimed : " Ce 
 pauvre Abelard ne m'interesse plus ! ", and put out for 
 home. 
 
 Tangibilities are not to be blurred out and reduced to 
 impotence by unnatural mutilations and denials. Not 
 all the old women in England could neutralize Lord 
 Byron into a domestic character. 
 
 In reality the papers concerning the marriage of 
 Lord and Lady Byron have been carefully preserved. 
 
 ' Lucretius, i. :o68-9, 1077-80, with the missing words as supplied by Munro. 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 They are a complete record of all the causes of separa- 
 tion, and contain full information on every part of the 
 subject. 
 
 It is true that papers of Mrs. Leigh's may have been 
 destroyed by her, or subsequently disappeared in one 
 way or another. All the information her papers con- 
 tained about every thing, existed in dupUcate in Lord or 
 Lady Byron's documents, which are in perfect preserva- 
 tion ; and this was well known to Mrs. Leigh herself, 
 who had actually placed some important proofs in Lady 
 Byron's own hands. Nothing could be more futile than 
 endeavours to make away with the evidence she possessed 
 against herself. 
 
 The bulk of her papers cannot be traced. Some 
 cautiously selected fragments were in 1869, ^^^ after- 
 wards from time to time, pubHshed as Mrs. Leigh's case 
 for herself or against Lady Byron. Taken by them- 
 selves, the minute and insignificant fragments produced 
 out of Mrs. Leigh's huge correspondence with Lady 
 Byron and others, proved nothing and explained nothing 
 for good or evil about any one. An abundance of 
 virulent rhetoric and unsupported assertions against 
 Lady Byron supplied the place of a basis of evidence for 
 the charges made at her. 
 
 Though no incriminating evidence against Mrs. Leigh 
 has turned up out of her own documents, its annihilation 
 would have been a very short-sighted proceeding, of 
 stupid and ineffectual cunning, avaiHng only to suppress 
 what mattered not, except possibly for power of writing 
 and larger justice to the persons involved. 
 
 However this may be, it must be repeated and should 
 be distinctly understood that no misfortunes, blunders 
 or malpractices have swept away Lady Byron's papers 
 or those belonging to the executors of Lord Byron. The 
 essential records have not been got rid of. The facts 
 which led to the separation are as distinct and compre- 
 hensible in existing documents as they were to Lord or 
 Lady Byron and those in their confidence. All that 
 passed between them was as well known to him as to 
 
 134 
 
LADY BYRON'S POLICY OF SILENCE 
 
 her, and the circumstances which forbade her return 
 were even more present to his mind than hers. Her 
 silence as to her motives was complained of, unreason- 
 ably — in the opinion of the present writer — for a complete 
 specification of the grounds of her conduct must have 
 had far-reaching consequences, and would have given 
 him no information beyond what he already possessed 
 much more fully. His memory was vivid for what 
 concerned himself. With his peculiar personaHty, there 
 might conceivably have been ecHpses of memory for 
 particular incidents in his fateful course towards the 
 separation. When in a state of agitation he Would drop 
 some half-confidence without mention of names, and 
 afterwards, being wholly absorbed in his recollections 
 and projects, perhaps forget his own allusions, and that 
 there was another being near him, a wife, who suffered 
 and thought. When a woman is placed as she was, her 
 mind works involuntarily, almost unconsciously, and 
 conclusions force their way into it. She has not meant 
 to think so and so, and she has thought it ; the dreadful 
 idea is repelled then, and to the last, with the whole force 
 of her will, but when once conceived it cannot be 
 banished. The distinctive features of a true hypothesis, 
 when once in the mind, are a precise conformity to facts 
 already known, and an adaptability to fresh develop- 
 ments, which allow us not to throw it aside at pleasure. 
 Lady Byron's agony of doubt could only end in the still 
 greater agony of certainty, but this was no result of 
 ingenuity or inquiry, as she sought not for information. 
 Women are said to excel in piecing together scattered 
 insignificant fragments of conversations and circum- 
 stances, and fitting them all into their right places 
 amongst what they know already, and thus reconstruct 
 a whole that is very close to the complete truth.^ But 
 Lady Byron's whole effort was to resist the hght, or 
 rather the darkness that would flow into her mind. 
 
 1 The latter part of this paragraph is largely indebted to a penetrating 
 analysis of similar situations in " Une Idylle Tragique " and " Le Fant6me " 
 by M. Bourget. Certain passages therein applied so closely to what had to be 
 
 135 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 After his death she aspired only to peaceful obscurity, 
 exemption from discussions which must be agonizing to 
 her growing daughter, soon to enter the world — oblivion 
 of the dreadful things said of her by her husband, when 
 
 " His heart was swollen and turned aside 
 By deep interminable pride," ^ 
 
 which had once conferred upon her an unnatural, dire 
 celebrity. She was the one person involved in that 
 tragic story who was innocent of wrong, true in word 
 and deed, generous, resourceful, courageous amidst 
 crushing difficulties, and so she consistently remained 
 till the close of her Hfe. The public were systematically 
 deceived about her by distortions, suppressions, and 
 inventions. An untrue piece of history has grown by 
 degrees into a hideous popular delusion. The ancient 
 maxim that " Delusion is strong and swift, wherefore it 
 greatly outruns all else, and is first over the whole earth, 
 perverting men," ^ was imposed upon some of us as 
 youths to interpret as we could. Passage through the 
 world construes it for every one. 
 
 During seventy years judicial blindness has over- 
 whelmed a guiltless victim with infamy in place of the 
 woman actually rescued by her from social and worldly 
 ruin. " Tout se paie," said Napoleon at Saint Helena — 
 sooner or later most wrongs are expiated, but often by a 
 vicarious sacrifice. Lady Byron has been compared to 
 Gemma Donati,' but the Beatrice whose " soft breast 
 . . . unto his was bound by stronger ties than the church 
 
 stated that an adaptation of able words which might ahnost have been written 
 of the Byron story is truer and better than reflections composed with inferior 
 insight into the nature and acts of men and still more women. 
 1 " Siege of Corinth." 
 
 * jj 6' 'Att) (rSfvapTj re Kol dpriVof, ovvcKa ndcras 
 
 iroWov vneKTrpodeetj (pSdvei de re 7rd(rav en aiav 
 jQXaTrroucr dj/dpwirovi' at d^e^aKeovrai 6irLcr(T(a. 
 
 Iliad, ix. 505-507. 
 
 The latter half of this last line refers to lines 502-504, quoted on p. no, and to 
 the healing power of AiTal. 
 ^ Moore's Quarto, i. 656. 
 
 136 
 
LADY BYRON'S POLICY OF SILENCE 
 
 link'd withal," had dreaded nothing so much as the 
 poems addressed to herself, and had written to the 
 supposed " Gemma Donati " (November 6th, 1816) : 
 *' I heartily wish y* verses in the Red Sea." This sort 
 of Beatrice suppressed all she could, and did suppress 
 the announcement that 
 
 " We were and are — I am, even as thou art — 
 Beings who ne'er each other can resign." ^ 
 
 But in 1830, when she was certain that, do what she 
 would (and she had just given striking proofs of ingrati- 
 tude), " Gemma Donati " would never betray her while 
 alive, she committed to publicity those remarkable 
 suppressed stanzas, to be represented as " breathing all 
 that is most natural and tender in the affections of this 
 [world] " ! 
 
 Lady Byron was not absolutely disarmed — far from it. 
 She could easily have confounded her traducers, and 
 more than rehabihtated herself by producing her corre- 
 spondence, which contained crushing evidence that the 
 phantom of Astarte in " Manfred," of Azora in another 
 poem,^ of the " dear sacred name, rest ever unrevealed," 
 had been no unreal apparition, but belonged to a Uving 
 creature, who had confessed everything in September, 
 1816. 
 
 But there were weighty reasons for abstention. Lady 
 Byron naturally shrank from a public appeal for her own 
 justification ; she considered first her daughter's happi- 
 ness ; she was unwilling to ruin a whole family. In 
 addition she "had promised Lord Byron unconditionally" 
 to be always a friend to her who was implicated — " a 
 promise of Idndness sealed by death." Lastly, Lady 
 Byron thought " that the divulging of such a fact would 
 be injurious to society, under circumstances hke that of 
 
 ' Epistle to Augusta. 
 
 ^ " Azora, dearest, thou whose thrilling name 
 
 My heart adores too deeply to proclaim." 
 
 Opening lines to " Lara " {v. Appendix C). 
 
 137 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 the actual case." Towards 1830, Lord Byron's literary- 
 influence was a "light of other days "— distant moon- 
 shine, but he retained some of that demonic power of 
 attraction mentioned by Goethe. ^ " So strong was the 
 personal influence, that the moral epidemic to which it 
 did give rise might have extended stiU further ; that the 
 holiness and beauty of that relationship should through 
 my mea; be sullied by a breath of doubt, would have 
 been most painful to me." ^ 
 
 Unreserved truth has been thought unfit for a mixed 
 public by more than one great man.^ Family and society 
 live on beneficent illusions. Something in the universe 
 drives them to work for ends they do not understand. 
 If they saw clearly, they would shoot their tiresome debts 
 and duties off into phantom land. A keen but balanced 
 thinker once stated in jesting words the evergreen truth 
 that : " The best security for people's doing their duty 
 is that they should not know anything else to do." * 
 Human beings must not be led to discover that they are 
 dupes to be virtuous ; they must be left undisturbed in 
 imperfectly realized theories, which by being believed 
 produce conformity of practice. Men need not b^ for- 
 bidden to think that the love of sister for brother is 
 infallibly pure and sexless ; it is often wise and just not 
 to search for undiscovered sins ; but it is neither noble 
 nor even expedient to fabricate false righteousness ; and 
 
 1 To Eckermann, March 8th, 1831. 
 
 * This is from a statement made some years later by Lady Byron, She had 
 written on the same subject about 1819 : " It is and above all appears strange 
 that situations and feelings by no means enviable could allure to imitation, but 
 youthful minds are indisposed to consider the consequences of any course of 
 action when it is transfigured by a halo of sentimentality, and they are fascinated 
 by the surrounding splendour. And admiration is not the only motive for 
 ■imitation ; there may also be the desire to become interesting in the eyes of 
 others. Everything is passed as venial when seen through the induced colouring 
 of romantic idealization." 
 
 ' See C "-he's Conversation of February 25th, 1824. 
 
 " Bag''Hc:\.'s " Letters on the Aptitude of the Frencli Character for National 
 Freedom and Self-Government," in January, 1852 : " What we opprobriously 
 call stupidity, though not an enlivening quality in common society, is nature's 
 favourite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of 
 opinion. I need not say that in real sound stupidity the English are 
 unrivalled." 
 
 138 
 
LADY BYRON'S POLICY OF SILENCE 
 
 still less if at the same time infamy is invented for 
 some one else who is innocent. Illusions and even 
 deceptions have been tolerated in silence by great and 
 just men as lesser evils than bringing down some great 
 ruin ; but in actual speech, sincerity of opflfion has been 
 the practice of the wisest of the human race — and not 
 least on the subject which underlies Astarte. When 
 some one mentioned the theory that sisters only could 
 love brothers with perfect and sexless purity, Goethe 
 made short work of the fallacy, saying : " I should have 
 thought the love of sister for sister was stiU pufel' and 
 less sexual ! For otherwise we should have to ignore the 
 countless instances, recorded or secret, where the most 
 sensual attachment between sister and brother has 
 prevailed." ^ 
 
 Lady Byron endured all and did not stand at bay. 
 She would not speak and deHver up to be devoured by 
 the multitude, instead of herself, another victim, the 
 one not innocent. Fanny Kemble once not long before 
 her own death spoke to the narrator of " Lady Byron's 
 beautiful power of silence " ; when others said what she 
 did no^- approve, she could hold her peace and let the 
 subject" drop. In the whole of her life she never said 
 what she did not think or what was not true, but she' 
 could be silent. However hard pressed about her own 
 secrets, or those of others (which happened more than 
 once), she certainly never was squeezed into falsehood, 
 and her presence of mind was equal to baffling ques- 
 tioners, who seldom, if ever, seem to have fished success- 
 fully for information or admissions. Lord Byron wrote 
 of her that she was 
 
 " Mute, that the world might belie," 
 
 1 Goethe's " Gesprache," March 28th, 1827. It was in reference to a theory 
 of Hinrichs's, in connection with the " Antigone " of Sophocles : " Dasz die 
 familienpietat am reinsten im weibe erscheine, und am allerreins^SSS- in der 
 Bchwester, und dasz die schwester nur den bruder ganz rein und ges^iifechtslos 
 lieben konne." " Ich dSchte," erwiderte Goethe, " dasz die liebe von schwester 
 zur schwester noch reiner und geschlechtsloser ware ! Wir miiszten denn nicht 
 wissen, dasz unzahlige falle vorgekommen sind, wo zwischen schwester und 
 bruder, bekannter- und unbekannterweise, die sinnlichste neigung stattge- 
 funden." 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 but he forgot to mention that she was herself the person 
 behed. 
 
 The original of Astarte, through whom and for whom 
 Lady Byron had suffered so much, died October 12th, 
 1 85 1, and Augusta Ada, Countess of Lovelace, died 
 November 27th, 1852. Under those changed circum- 
 stances Lady Byron wrote : 
 
 " As the chief reason for absolute silence has ceased 
 with my daughter's life, the question forces itself 
 on my consideration whether there are not some 
 facts engraven on my memory which ought to survive 
 me. 
 
 " And now, after the lapse of forty years, I look back 
 on the past as a calm spectator, and at last can speak of 
 it. I see what was, what might have been, had there 
 been one person less amongst the Hving when I married. 
 Then I might have had duties, however steeped in sorrow, 
 more congenial with my nature than those I was com- 
 pelled to adopt. Then my life would not have been the 
 concealment of a Truth, whilst my conduct was in 
 harmony with it. 
 
 " Writing as I do towards the close of life, and after 
 submitting to misconstruction for so many years, I trust 
 that the spirit of self-vindication wiU neither be found 
 in my pages nor imputed to me. I have no cause to com- 
 plain of the world's unkindness ; on the contrary, I am 
 grateful to it. In personal intercourse I have only to 
 acknowledge the kindest and most generous treatment, 
 and if I have sometimes been condemned by strangers 
 without evidence, I have certainly been acquitted 
 equally without proof by those on whom I had no claim, 
 of the charges of Hstening to informers against Lord 
 Byron, sanctioning treacherous practices, etc. Let me 
 observe with reference to them, that there can be no 
 media via as to such accusations, and the woman who 
 could be guilty of any one of them could not be a trust- 
 worthy witness in matters relating to the husband she 
 had injured and betrayed. Read then no further, you 
 who hold this sheet in your hands, unless you can relin- 
 
 140 
 
LADY BYRON'S POLICY OF SILENCE 
 
 quish all prepossessions of that kind. Think of me as a 
 Memory, not as a Person, for I desire not sympathy, but 
 an impartial hearing. 
 
 " Yet when I look at the accumulation of difHculties 
 in my way, I feel that the truths I may bring forward 
 will but partially dispel those illusions, so long accepted 
 as realities, and that even if not a fruitless, it is yet an 
 ungrateful task to translate fascinating verse into bare 
 fact. Apart, however, from any view to benefit the 
 unknown Reader, who may have little disposition to 
 attend to me, I naturally desire to leave a few counter 
 statements for the information of my grandchildren, for 
 I own that on that point the opinion formed of me does 
 touch me." 
 
 This is the substance, somewhat compressed, of a 
 sketch for [the] Preface of an unfinished narrative com- 
 posed by Lady Byron about 1854. She does not appear 
 to have used any of her earlier papers in writing it, but 
 it agrees substantially with other documents so far as 
 it goes, and is of some interest in establishing her sound- 
 ness of memory, and as absolutely confirming her good 
 faith. There are only a few minor discrepancies. She 
 consulted several friends, supposed to be trustworthy 
 (and with one exception real]^ so), about the plan of 
 leaving for publication at the time of her death a final 
 and conclusive statement to settle for ever any dis- 
 cussion that might then arise. 
 
 It is a pity that nothing was decided that might have 
 had the effect of clearing away the falsehood, vulgarity 
 and PhiHstinism that stiU He so ponderously upon Lord 
 Byron's memory. Lady Byron left her papers to 
 trustees, and as there were others in the hands of rela- 
 tions, there were too many persons concerned for perfect 
 agreement on any particular mode of deahng with the 
 trust. This has had unfortunate results. When once 
 a league of misrepresentation has been formed, it 
 hves and grows by the brute force of repetition, and 
 gains unconscious adherents, who obediently repeat 
 established fallacies. It takes an unusually sound 
 
 141 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 head to pick the way through a rotten old stock of 
 materials.^ 
 
 1 In the remarkable letter quoted above, where Bagehot contrasts the English 
 with the French, will be found the following pointed description of the English 
 obtuseness to new and true ideas : " What I call a proper stupidity . . . chains 
 the gifted possessor mainly to his old ideas ; it takes him seven weeks to com- 
 prehend an atom of a new one ; it keeps him from being led away by new theories 
 
 for there is nothing which bores him so much. . . . Inconsistency puts him 
 
 out — ' What I says is this here, as I was a saying yesterday,' is his notion of 
 historical eloquence and habitual discretion." 
 
 142 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 INFORMERS AND DEFAMERS 
 
 " The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn ; 
 He sets, and each ephemeral insect then 
 Is gathered into death without a dawn." — Adonais. 
 
 AS Lady Byron had foreseen, there did not fail 
 ^after her death to be outbursts against her of 
 " the rant of false feeUng and fal^e moraEty." These 
 words were used by the Hon. Mrs. Norton in reviewing 
 a specially despicable book about Lord Byron, in which 
 " Lady Byron is mahgned with a persistent rancour so 
 excessive that astonishment almost supersedes indigna- 
 tion as we read." ^ 
 
 Mrs. Norton (who wrote anonymously) was almost 
 Lady Byron's only friend in the press,^ for it is impossible 
 
 ^ " The Times," February 13th, 1869. In " Lord Byron jug^ par les temoins 
 de sa vie," the ex-Guiccioli, ex-incubus to Lord Byron, ex-travelling companion 
 to Lord Malmesbury, etc., etc., etc., had exclaimed : " Ere this, God has judged 
 her [Lady Byron] above, but here below can those possessing hearts have any 
 indulgence for her ? " — " a sentence," remarks Mrs. Norton, " v?hich, when we 
 consider of whom and by whom it was written, is certainly as startling a piece 
 of blasphemy as ever was fulminated against the dead." 
 
 It was on the same afternoon, of February 13th, 1869, when the review had 
 appeared in " The Times," that Lord Houghton mentioned it in the Peers' 
 gallery of the House of Commons, stated it to have been written by Mrs. Norton, 
 and commended it highly. Mrs. Norton had to deny a later review in " The 
 Times " of Mrs. Beecher Stowe, which was attributed to her by the uninformed 
 on the strength of her former article. 
 
 2 There was another anonymous article in favour of Lady Byron in " Temple 
 Bar " for June, 1869. It was of some ability ; but the writer was not so well 
 informed as Mrs. Norton. His argument was that a similar fact must have 
 existed to one which had prevailed with the House of Lords when Lord Thurlow 
 " induced them to give, what had never been allowed before, the right of marry- 
 ing again to a woman seeking divorce for the cause of her husband's adultery." 
 In the particular instance before the House of Lords the husband had been 
 guilty with his wife's sister. The wife could not, without guilt, return to him, 
 and therefore she was permitted to marry again " (" Lord Byron's Married 
 Life "). 
 
 Whoever the writer in " Temple Bar " may have been, his articles (afterwards 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 so to describe the person to whom she had " given a 
 partial confidence which was shamefully betrayed." It 
 was quite manifest that "Mrs. Beecher Stowe's pubHca- 
 tion was not expressly or impHedly sanctioned by Lady 
 Noel Byron." So Dr. Lushington said, on reading that 
 to a large extent spurious production ; for, as Dr. 
 Lushington then declared, " a great deal of it was 
 untrue, and could not have been stated by Lady Noel 
 Byron." i 
 
 The article in " The Atlantic Monthly " ^ stated (not 
 untruly) that the mystery of Astarte in " Manfred " was 
 founded on fact, and (erroneously) that those circum- 
 stances had continued and been the direct cause of the 
 separation. 
 
 Recollections of interviews are not evidence against a 
 person reported, except by consent and with other 
 reserves. Those who quote confidential matter without 
 leave may discredit themselves, but reaUy commit no 
 one else. The most uncertain of hearsays are conversa- 
 tions long afterwards imputed posthumously, as was 
 done by Mrs. Beecher Stowe nine years after Lady 
 Byron's death. And yet every error of fact that was 
 either found or imagined in the apocryphal version of 
 Lady Byron's story was attributed to her contrary to 
 truth and probability. Failure of memory was far more 
 likely in Mrs. Stowe than in Lady Byron. No doubt it 
 
 in book form entitled " A Vindication of Lady Byron," Bentley, 1871) were a 
 serviceable digest of the information then open to the public. His industry 
 must have been considerable, his arguments were legitimate, and he was con- 
 spicuously honest. His work was not otherwise than creditable to him ; and 
 it drew upon him some elderly comminations from overfed sentimentalists 
 stuffed with Lord Byron and " his szveet sister." Early Victorian stage villains 
 were invariably attorneys ; so 'it was assumed by the romance-mongers that 
 " Temple Bar " must have been written by an attorney — ^it was too wicked to 
 have any other author. And behind the hand of the attorney loomed of course 
 a vast and nefarious, but somewhat vague conspiracy, like those which haunted 
 Rousseau. Old-gentlemanly hallucinations could go no further. [See Appen- 
 dix I and J, p. 338, note 2.] 
 
 ^ Miss Frances Carr to the Earl of Lovelace, in a letter dictated in Septem- 
 ber, 1869, by Dr. Lushington, who was recovering from illness, but still unable 
 to write. 
 
 2 The True Story of Lady Byron's Life, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, pub- 
 lished simultaneously in the "Atlantic Monthly" and in "Macmillan's 
 Magazine," September, 1869. See Introduction, pp. vii-viii. 
 
 144 
 
INFORMERS AND DEFAMERS 
 
 was proper to credit Mrs. Stowe with as much good faith 
 as was consistent with her undeniable treachery, but 
 under such conditions her accuracy was at least doubtful, 
 whilst Lady Byron's veracity never was doubted by 
 careful and unprejudiced minds. Lord Byron himself 
 averred that she was " truth itself." It was a misplaced 
 dehcacy towards Mrs. Beecher Stowe to pass over her 
 untrustworthiness so lightly, and beg the whole question 
 by pretending that the rancour of misfortune had 
 falsified Lady Byron's memory.^ 
 
 Lady Byron was unquestionably entitled to be silent 
 or speak as she thought fit about her history. She was 
 free of aU obligations, whether moral or material, to any 
 other human being, but could not evade having to 
 decide what should ultimately become of the records. 
 She was perfectly justified in making confidences to any 
 friend whose opinion or sympathy she valued. Nor was 
 it in the least discreditable in her to treat an American 
 as an intimate friend. She had had many American 
 friends who fully deserved her Hking and esteem. It was 
 singularly unfair, long after the event, to blame her for 
 having trusted the eloquent American philanthropist 
 whose obvious good intentions were not altogether un- 
 associated with real moral worth. Mrs. Beecher Stowe's 
 character and genius had received universal recognition, 
 which was almost deserved. She only wanted two or 
 three of the more unobtrusive virtues : accuracy, 
 fidehty, good taste and tact, for lack of which she uncon- 
 
 ^ This incorrect supposition is to be found in a letter of a charming writer, 
 rather too often influenced by his likes and dislikes : " Ah I que c'est vilain k 
 madame Beecher-Stowe ! Les amis de Lady Byron pensent en eflet qu'a la fin 
 de sa vie elle n'avait pas I'exacte possession de ses souvenirs. Le chagrin avait 
 brouill^ sa mtooire. On devrait tres-peu se m^er de debrouiller des mysteres 
 de famille quand on est d'un tout autre pays, d'une autre soci^t^, d'une autre 
 civilisation. J'ai eu I'honneur de voir a Paris madame Beecher-Stowe, avec sa 
 jolie figure et son air de douceur et de bonne education. Je ne I'aurais pas crue 
 capable de jeter avec tant de t^m^rit^ un pav4 k la tgte du Giaour, de la Fiancee 
 d'Abydos, de Childe-Harold. Quand on a icnt le charmant roman de la Fiancee 
 du ministre, comment est-on capable de si vilains proc4d& en vers un homme 
 de gteie ? Je suis fach^ que ce fonds de barbarie reste aux compatriotes de 
 Franklin, de Washington, de Lincoln, de Longfellow, de Prescott, de Ticknor " 
 (X. Doudan to Mademoiselle Gavard, 20 Septembre, 1869). 
 
 A. 145 L 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 sciously turned traitor like the other publicists who 
 busied themselves about Lord Byron. Her miserable 
 puff of Lady Byron was no madder or baser than count- 
 less advertisements of Lord Byron which provoked no 
 uproar. But as soon as Lady Byron's narrative had been 
 robbed, perverted, and sold to her enemies, great was 
 the cawing in the rookery. More especially was the book- 
 selling caucus alarmed and enraged when " a sensitive 
 journalist declared that a black mark had been set for 
 all time against Byron's most perfect poems, and almost 
 feels he shall never open his works again."^ . . . 
 
 The proprietor of the " Quarterly Review " contrived 
 to raise a contribution of materials suitable for his pur- 
 pose from the residuary legatee of the person whose 
 character was under discussion, that is to say Lord 
 Byron's half-sister Augusta (the Hon. Mrs. Leigh). She 
 had left behind her, all ready and arranged, a smaU 
 collection of carefully selected documents calculated to 
 rebut the charge that had been expected and prepared 
 for all through her life. With suicidal blindness to ulti- 
 mate consequences, the Leighs joined in the plan for the 
 ruin of Lady Byron's character. Fortunately for imme- 
 diate success in this object, the story had been so stupidly 
 and inaccurately told [by Mrs. Stowe] as to facihtate a 
 telling retort by a crafty advocate of few scruples. 
 
 The choice of Abraham Hayward ^ as counsel meant 
 much, for his utility in a bad cause was never impaired 
 by any tendency to straightforward fairhe^ ; but he 
 was perhaps seldom quite trusted by his employers.^ 
 In the Byron discussions he surpassed himself in the 
 
 1 " Quarterly Review," October, 1869. It was " The Times " in a review of 
 Mrs. Beecher Stowe's " True Story of Lady Byron '' which had written of the 
 black mark against Byron's most perfect poems, and never opening his works 
 again. 
 
 2 Lord Beaconsfield, whom of course he hated, called him " a literary louse." 
 Even his friend, the Countess of Cork, wrote of him (" Memories and Thoughts," 
 1886) : 
 
 " Not choice in witticisms, nor in anecdotes refined, 
 And sometimes e'en betraying that too freely he had dined, 
 In brief, though contradictory, and garrulous and wayward, 
 Methinks we ' could have better spared a better man than ' Hayward." 
 ' [I think this is a mistake. — Ed.] 
 
 146 
 
INFORMERS AND DEFAMERS 
 
 licence with which he manipulated all the information 
 he could acquire. His office was like that of an Old 
 Bailey lawyer, who receives no confessions and may be 
 very imperfectly acquainted with the facts, but avers his 
 cHent's innocence as a matter of course. He acted just 
 as might be expected from a specialist of his description, 
 when engaged in making the most of selected extracts 
 from an immense correspondence to invalidate a par- 
 ticular fact, which those same papers would completely 
 prove, if fairly and frankly produced. He was presented 
 to the public with unusual ostentation as Lady Byron's 
 exterminator. His employers freely abdicated all respon- 
 sibility, loaded it on to him and retired from the scene. 
 It was a virtual assumption by Hayward of other 
 liabilities than his own ; and, like all such transfers of 
 credit, to a large extent misleading. Hayward could not 
 have been the real inventor of all that was put in or left 
 out of the articles. He took what was given to him. The 
 vast suppression of material can only very partially have 
 been his doing. And many things that were included — 
 highly questionable suppositions, suggestions and asser- 
 tions, may also not have been his own. 
 
 In the " Quarterly Review " articles he was most 
 himself as Mrs. Leigh's advocate, but his mode of repre- 
 senting her cause was sinister. He founded his defence 
 of her moral character on brutal physical depreciation. 
 Ugliness proved chastity ; the surest evidence of vice 
 being beauty. Hayward's study of dead roues for 
 knowledge on the eternal subject of women had left him 
 with the notion that no woman is virtuous if she can 
 help it. With logical simplicity he set to work, and 
 exculpated Mrs. Leigh from the charge of incest by 
 robbing her of identity, almost of sex, and competence 
 for any sort of love passion. Like the deformities 
 invented by Professor Wilson's friends to deface HazHtt,^ 
 Mrs. Leigh's supposed unloveliness was purely imaginary. 
 
 It is not true that Augusta Leigh was corporeally ill- 
 favoured. She was in reality a charming woman, who 
 
 » Viie " William Hazlitt," by Augustine Birrell, pp. 19 and 155. 
 147 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 exercised great fascination over all sorts of people in the 
 brilliant society to which she belonged. Good looks are 
 matter of taste and fashion. No two persons or genera- 
 tions think exactly ahke. The " jolie laide " of one 
 generation would have been the perfect beauty of 
 another. Augusta's portrait by Holmes shows a very 
 attractive woman, — not a regular beauty, — but well 
 equipped with love powder, which she knew thoroughly 
 how to handle. Her hair was very dark brown verging 
 on black, fine and silky, not unMke that of her niece, 
 Augusta Ada Byron,^ when in about her thirtieth year. 
 If Mrs. Leigh had been ill-favoured in her generation, 
 some reference to this misfortune might be expected in 
 the long letters written about her by Lady Melbourne, 
 Lady Carohne Lamb, Mrs. George VilHers, and others. 
 By them she was fully and frankly discussed ; but 
 nowhere do any of them imply that her charms and looks 
 were of indifferent repute. Lord Byroji himself, in the 
 original manuscript of " Childe Harold's Good Night to 
 his Native Shore," wrote : 
 
 " I had a sister once I ween 
 
 Whose tears perhaps will flow ; 
 But her fair face I have not seen 
 For three long years and moe." 
 
 In the pseudo-Byron forge, however, an ugly old figure 
 was cast to represent her. Her youth was nulHfied 
 under a shapeless blanket of equivocal motherhness. 
 False maternahsm at its best is a barren fallacy. It is 
 also a road to sentiments and relations that are not 
 maternal. A " motherly elder sister's " fleece is one of 
 the disguises of ravenous passions. How often has some 
 very much older woman than was Augusta in 1813 
 approached some very young man with an ambiguous 
 air of maternity and the formula " mon cher enfant " ! 
 
 Augusta's imaginary part of motherly good old woman 
 in the Byron story rested on her suppositious physical 
 deficiencies. The proof was clinched by her having once 
 
 * [Ada, Countess of Lovelace, mother of the author. — Ed.] 
 148 
 
INFORMERS AND DEFAMERS 
 
 given him a Bible, and also by her twenty-nine years in 
 1813 (he being then only twenty-five). It is true that 
 she was seasoned in the religious practices of her half- 
 sister Lady Chichester, but services and readings of " the 
 Chichester Gospel " ^ were mingled with her Hfe without 
 any very appreciable effect on it. She " made a regular 
 compromise between religion and morahty, between 
 faith and good works." She had inflammable passions, 
 and equal facility in yielding a platonic homage to 
 virtue. " Her heart continued riglxt towards God " — 
 " uncontaminated by any trifling peccadillo in point^of 
 conduct." Her actions counted for so little ! — ^not being 
 officially known in this world ; — and before Heaven it 
 was enough to be " pure in the last recesses of the 
 mind." ^ She propitiated God with a reverential 
 etiquette suited to appease an oriental despot, by com- 
 pliments and prostrations, by complacent professions 
 that " humility was the only means of internal peace, 
 and was a blessing not purchased too dearly by the ex- 
 perience of our weakness." Such were her very words. 
 Divine peace and the sweets of sin, sacred and profane 
 love, comfortably dwelt together in her heart — were 
 almost identical. She could actually write in such a 
 strain as that, or as the following : " I have sometimes 
 thought that but for what is known to you my affections 
 might have been wholly devoted to this world — as they 
 are but too much still — ^but at least it is my endeavour 
 to detach them — . . . it is not that I endeavour to 
 excuse myself — but to improve to the best advantage 
 what is left — " ^ A spurious state of feehng prevailed, 
 in which professions and actions were at variance. 
 There are few more suicidal facts or arguments for 
 unthinking bibliolatry than Augusta's Bible and prayer- 
 book gifts. As to her four years' advance upon Byron, 
 young women of twenty-nine are not by nature exempt 
 from temptation ; on the contrary, it is then rather than 
 
 1 Lady Byron on one occasion thus summed up Mrs. Leigh's religion. 
 ' See Hazlitt on the causes of Methodism in " The Round Table." 
 ' The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron, February ist, 1817. 
 
 149 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 earlier that they are approaching the age of adventure. 
 They are drawn to possess their youth in full and enjoy 
 it in freedom before it is gone. They go forth to over- 
 come the flaming ramparts of forbidden knowledge : 
 
 " et extra 
 processit longe flammantia moenia mundi," ^ 
 
 and explore the abyss of voluptuous romance. With a 
 light heart they follow the enchantment — infinitely 
 young and gay, as the tide of passion flows. To those who 
 saw Byron and Augusta together, her adoration of him, 
 which was very marked, displayed childish fondness 
 and levity. She was always ready to laugh, even at 
 what would have shocked the serious. 
 
 Except for a few descendants whose lives have been 
 darkened by the after-effects of those accidents of passion, 
 laughter, bitterness and despair, the actual Byron drama 
 has never been visible or tangible, and now irrevocable 
 progress has absolutely swept away those generations 
 and their casualties from the consciousness of the 
 monster humanity of to-day : 
 
 " quando ea saecla hominum, quorum haec eventa fuerunt, 
 inrevocabilis abstulerit iam praeterita aetas." ^ 
 
 If the life of humanity and the march of the universe 
 {res gestae) are the accidents of matter in space {eventa 
 corporis atque loci), and time itself is but an accident of 
 accidents,^ as was taught of old, it was also taught that 
 the whole nature of things was ruled by one infinite 
 and insatiable power without whom nothing could be 
 born to light joy and love. The ancients personified in 
 Helen at Troy the eternal power of fair women and fell 
 desire. Had beauty which burns to the heart and love 
 
 ' Lucretius, i. 72-73. 
 
 ' Lucretius, i. 467-468. 
 
 ' trii/xjrroD/in o-vfiirTcofiaTav. Munro's notes to Lucretius, i. 459 foil. ; 
 " tempus item per se non est, sed rebus ab ipsis 
 consequitur sensus, transactum quid sit in aevo, 
 turn quae res instet, quid porro deinde sequatur, 
 nee per se quemquam tempus sentire fatendumst 
 semotum ab rerum motu placidaque quiete." 
 
 ISO 
 
INFORMERS AND DEFAMERS 
 
 that takes lives never been given form and place in 
 pagan myth; yet still would the race of Tyndaris 
 endure and rule and ever replant unconsumed fire in 
 Phrygian breasts, to swell and blaze in many a fierce 
 and famous contest,^ or determine some equally redoubt- 
 able obscure overthrow. 
 
 Augusta Leigh was as fateful an instrument of con- 
 flagration in her " Httle world in the great world of all " 
 as a Greek Love or Nemesis ; ^ but she had many 
 lovable and some good quahties, and even the crime of 
 her earlier years was not entirely wanting in mitigating 
 circumstances. The destructive passion she inspired and 
 shared is more endurable to read about than most of 
 Lord Byron's other adventures, in which he neither 
 breathed nor inspired any of that poetic emotion he could 
 so beautifully express. It was not merely a case of 
 warming an insensible heart in sensations he could not 
 share. She charmed him from all else whether good or 
 evil : 
 
 " in gremium qui saepe tuum se 
 reicit aeterno devictus vulnere amoris." ' 
 
 The real bond between them was so little concealed 
 and so unequivocally proclaimed in verse at intervals 
 from 1 813 to 1822, that the wilful closure of eyes to patent 
 facts has always seemed inexplicable. The truth bursts 
 from Byron's lines on first reading them. It was from 
 them that it flashed as an entire surprise upon two 
 generations of his descendants with no previous know- 
 ledge of family secrets or hints from any one. First his 
 daughter, and twenty or thirty years later the present 
 
 1 Lucretius, i. 471-475 : 
 
 " denique materies si rerum nulla fuisset 
 
 nee locus ac spatium, res in quo quaeque geruntur, 
 numquam Tyndaridis formae conflatus amore 
 ignis, Alexandri Phrygio sub pectore gliscens, 
 clara accendisset saevi certamina belli." 
 * Pliny the Naturalist (xxxvi. 4) related that a beautiful Venus by Agoracritus 
 went with the name of Nemesis to Rhamnus. There was a legend that Helen 
 (thence entitled Rhamnusis) had sprung from an egg laid by Nemesis at Rham- 
 nus. 
 
 ' Lucretius, i. 33. 
 
 151 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 writer, some two years after Lady Byron's death, were 
 startled by Lord Byron's own revelations, which were 
 long afterwards confirmed by acquaintance with private 
 letters. Of all the strange attitudes of aliens towards 
 the Byron literature, the oddest was their determination 
 to treat as false Lord Byron's own striking intimations 
 of a sin far less repulsive than some exaggerations and 
 inventions about him which human imbecility and 
 infatuation forged out of infinitely little knowledge. 
 
 Why should not a young man, in whose maternal 
 family (as the fanciers of " les vidanges " were good 
 enough to scent out and expose) insanity is found to 
 have prevailed, who grows up, after a ruinous education, 
 destitute of right-minded friends, have lost himself in the 
 abysses of a forbidden paradise ? After years of separa- 
 tion he meets again, almost as a stranger, but under 
 circumstances of the closest intimacy, a charming half- 
 sister a little older than himself, and of vastly more 
 social experience and sense. In the careless time of 
 George III, the code for the sexes of the same blood was 
 less inviolate than in the Victorian epoch of vociferous 
 propriety. Lord Bolingbroke in 1789 had run away 
 with his half-sister, Miss Beauclerk, daughter of their 
 common mother. Lady Diana Beauclerk,^ who had been 
 divorced from his father to marry Topham Beauclerk — 
 Dr. Johnson's friend. 
 
 There were strange reports, possibly not unfoimded, 
 about Napoleon and all his sisters ; and also about an 
 English princess (the one who died blind at a considerable 
 age) and one of her brothers. 
 
 Thus Byron and Augusta were allured by formidable 
 and insidious temptation. It may have begun in uncon- 
 
 ^ Though perhaps not generally known, this elopement is referred to unmis- 
 takably in a letter from Horace Walpole to the Countess of Ossory, July zznd, 
 1789. He had been to see " the mother " of " the wretched pair " at Twicken- 
 ham, and found that " most unfortunate of all mothers " looking nearly killed 
 by the blow. The fact is stated in an unpublished letter of Mary Noel, a great- 
 aunt of Lady Byron's : 
 
 " Ld Bulingbroke I suppose you have heard is gone pff with his sister Miss 
 Beauclerke who it is said is with Child a rtjerry World my Masters " (Mary Noel 
 to the Hon. Mrs. Milbanke, July 3rd, 1789), 
 
 152 
 
INFORMERS AND DEFAMERS 
 
 sciousness, and been realized when it was too late. It 
 was followed by long separation, vain regrets for lost 
 happiness, and frantic desperation ; vengeance of the 
 carnal image, — " Le Stryge " — hewn in stone on Notre- 
 Dame : 
 
 " Insatiable vampire I'eternelle Luxure 
 Sur la Grande Cite convoite sa pature." ^ 
 
 Headlong passion is followed by inexorable atonement, 
 which prevents nothing and remedies nothing. Lovers 
 may be sundered, but what has never yet been quelled 
 is the impetuous nature of " undiseased mankind " ^ — 
 the " violenta viri vis atque inpensa libido." ^ 
 
 " nam si abest quod ames, praesto simulacra tamen sunt 
 illius et nomen dulce obversatur ad auris." * 
 
 Primaeval force or intangible phantom, the mutual 
 influence of the sexes is the one thing stable amidst the 
 ephemeral purposes of humanity. Everything sacred or 
 profane is outlived by the mother and queen of the pagan 
 world, Latin Venus — hominum divomque voluptas — 
 against which saintly hopes and promises of reformers 
 are in vain. Memory and desire of felicity is stronger 
 than sermons. It may be doubted whether all the 
 homilies against that " purple-lined palace of sweet sin " ^ 
 have not done more to aUure than to repel prey for the 
 insatiable vampire of libertinism. Lord Byron more 
 than expiated his subjection to the vampire ; " how he 
 
 ' Lines etched by M^ryon on the first state of his " Stryge." 
 « " The idol 
 
 Of early nature, and the vigorous race 
 
 Of undiseased mankind, the giant sons 
 
 Of the embrace of angels, with a sex 
 
 More beautiful than they, which did draw down 
 
 The erring spirits who can ne'-er return." 
 
 " Manfred." 
 ' " et Venus in silvis iungebat corpora amantum ; 
 
 conciliabat enim vel mutua quamque cupido 
 
 vel violenta viri vis atque inpensa libido 
 
 vel pretium, glandes atque arbita vel pira lecta." 
 
 Lucretius, v. 962-965. 
 * Lucretius, iv. 1061-1062. For ames, Lachmann reads aves (" cravest "), 
 and Munro suggests that it might be amas, but could not be ames. 
 ^ " Lamia," Part II, line 31. 
 
 IS3 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 communed with his own heart before he died, he would 
 have told but could not," when he said to Fletcher : 
 " Go to Lady Byron and tell her — " what, as Mrs. Norton 
 wrote, " is known only to a pardoning heaven." Plati- 
 tudes are unending, but none are more vain than those 
 of the third and fourth generation. With what Goethe 
 names " the indomitable spirit of Manfred," Byron would 
 have repelled the moralists of all generations with the 
 words : 
 
 " The hand of death is on me, but not yours ! " 
 
 His defiance of those who taunt him with his many 
 
 crimes was : 
 
 " What are they to such as thee ? 
 Must crimes be punished but by other crimes 
 And greater criminals f Back to thy hell ! " 
 
 The tragedy of Astarte might well interpose a barrier 
 between Lord Byron's works and popularity. After all 
 that has passed, upright judges should, perhaps, hesitate 
 before pronouncing a completely black mark upon the 
 Augusta series of stanzas, but it is a prostitution of 
 literature to set them up as inspirations of pure and sacred 
 love. The pagan glow of those exquisite verses is that 
 of profane and material love — " offered from my heart 
 to thine " — whose " gentle hand to clasp in " his is the 
 one thing he desires : 
 
 " Could thy dear eyes in following mine 
 Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine ! " 
 
 In 1816, on their first appearance, the public found equal 
 difficulty in believing they could possibly be addressed 
 to a sister, or that there was any other love at that time 
 which could account for them.^ 
 
 Great indulgence would be due to Mrs. Leigh's own 
 descendants if they had spoken out in her exculpation, 
 however bitterly and unfairly. In their position, per- 
 fect and absolute good faith and good temper could 
 
 1 Mary Godfrey to Thomas Moore, December 24th, 181 6. See Appendix E, 
 for the Rhine lines. 
 
 1 54 
 
INFORMERS AND DEFAMERS 
 
 hardly be expected from them. But the manufacture of 
 infamy for Lady Byron was not properly speaking their 
 act. They were not people to disregard all decencies of 
 conduct and language about her. They sought to 
 fortify their own discretion by consulting their cousin, 
 the [third] Earl of Chichester ^ — as kind and honourable 
 an adviser as could be desired. He was of course liable 
 to be deceived about the character of his aunt, Mrs. 
 Leigh ; nor was it wonderful that the truth should have 
 been repugnant to him, and that he would not under- 
 stand and could not like perfect justice towards Lady 
 Byron. He had not, however, forgotten what had been 
 feelingly expressed by his mother, Mrs. Leigh's half- 
 sister — that some gratitude and respect were due to 
 Lady Byron from the Leighs. The Dowager Countess 
 of Chichester had written (May 25th, 1856) to Lady Noel 
 Byron herself : ^ " I am on the verge of 80, but should it 
 please God to spare me another Winter ... I shall be 
 much gratified if we could meet once more in this world, 
 that I might have an opportunity of assuring you of y" 
 grateful sense I have ever entertained of your kindness to 
 my late Sister and to several Members of her unfortunate 
 family." 
 
 The plan of campaign against Lady Byron's character 
 was neither devised nor managed by any of the Byrons 
 or their representatives, kindred or connections. It was 
 no cry of anguish from wounded affection, but tactics or 
 temper of a more mercantile character, which must be 
 traced back to the commercial dislikes of the parties 
 guilty of destroying Lord Byron's memoirs. 
 
 The apocryphal anecdotes of the " Quarterly Review " 
 in ridicule of Lady Byron, and its pretended revelations 
 of her misdeeds, were accepted with glee by the baser 
 elements of public opinion and also by some who ought 
 to have felt more generosity. There was a general 
 welcome to pretexts for devoting her to the infernal gods. 
 
 * [In the first edition of " Astarte " he is erroneously called " Second."— Ed.] 
 ' [Lady Byron had assumed the name of Noel in 1822 on inheriting the 
 Noel estates in Leicestershire from her mother. — ^Ed.] 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Why were they all so determined to dislike her without 
 really knowing anything about her ? There was perhaps 
 the prejudice of ignorance against something strange and 
 unknown, but that was not all. She was single and 
 honest — ^hateful therefore to worldliness and vulgarity — 
 unloved by the sheep of fashion — that unthinking aggre- 
 gate which bleats with the wolves in pious repetition of 
 slander. 
 
 Admirers of calumnies against Lady Byron (and they 
 were many) addressed their congratulations to Hajrward, 
 on whom everything was fathered. To do him justice, 
 he was as ready for blows as for brag, and would have 
 " fought like wild cats " — a willing substitute for a 
 reluctant fighter. He was a sort of literary incarnation 
 of the fighting editor in Tennessee, retained to guard the 
 office of his chief and answer " That's me ! " to any rival 
 pugilistic expert who calls to inquire : " Have I the 
 honour to speak to the poltroon who edits this mangy 
 sheet ? " ^ Hayward's functions turned out to be light. 
 The prize-fighting classes were with him, and it was 
 mostly ignored how vulnerable he was. A more per- 
 fectly informed few were forbidden to make use of their 
 knowledge. Instead of just punishment he received 
 flowery compliments. Ope friend of his own sort wrote 
 to him expressing the opinion that Lady Byron had " an 
 ill-conditioned mind preying on itself till morbid delusion 
 was the result ; or that she was an accompUshed hypo- 
 crite, regardless of truth, and to whose statements no 
 credit whatever ought to be attached." ^ 
 
 Thus was pleased to write Sir Alexander Cockburn — 
 a pharisee in the carcase of a Ubertine, grown old in 
 debauchery and the philosophy of the Old Bailey, not 
 esteemed as a lawyer, but much liked by his boon com- 
 panions. He was a capital speaker in a bad cause.^ 
 His parliamentary reputation was founded on a single 
 
 1 See Mark Twain's " Journalism in Tennessee." 
 
 ^ Lord Chief Justice Cockburn to Abraham Hajrward, November 7th, 1869. 
 3 Cf. Greville Memoirs, November 19th and 23rd, 1856. The Hon, Lionel 
 Tollemache'i " Talks with Mr. Gladstone," p. 55. 
 
 156 
 
INFORMERS AND DEFAMERS 
 
 speech in defence of some of Lord Palmerston's worst 
 acts. His manner was vulpine, voice beautiful, and 
 countenance more than saturnine, satanic as that of 
 Lord Lyndhurst. A long course of studies on the ever- 
 lasting subject of women had led him to the conclusion 
 that the best of them is worthless. A long series of 
 successes in hanging more or less guilty persons raised 
 him to redoubtable pre-eminence amongst experts of 
 the gallows. He was a singular and formidable figure 
 of vice sitting in judgment on crime : but when vice 
 goes on to preach the gospel of truth against iU-con- 
 ditioned minds, morbid delusions, hypocrisy and false 
 witness, the tragic mask falls off and leaves bare the 
 grimace of Heliogabalus. 
 
 The determined provider for the scaffold who thus 
 pronounced sentence against Lady Byron did so without 
 trustworthy evidence that the falsehood if any was con- 
 tained in her own authenticated words. But that is not 
 all. There is reason to beUeve that at the very date of 
 his unjust language about Lady Byron the old fox had 
 privately seen letters of 1 813 and 18 14 which proved the 
 fact of incest, and indeed that he had himself been the 
 first to discover the overwhelming effect of the evidence 
 therein contained. He may have been bound in honour 
 not to disclose what he had read and advised about 
 confidentially, but assuredly he was equally bound in 
 honour not to ayer what he had ascertained to be false — 
 the innocence of Lord Byron and Mrs. Leigh. After 
 such knowledge of their guilt, it was not far removed 
 from perjury to join Hayward and find perjury in Lady 
 Byron. 
 
 The charges against her would instantly have collapsed 
 if all her papers had then been accessible and available ; 
 and on the whole it would have been better if her 
 responsible trustees had been in a position to interpose 
 their authority and settle once for all and justly her status 
 in history. A painful business would then have been 
 over and done with. But there were great obstacles, 
 material and moral. Amongst other objections, all of 
 
 157 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 them felt a repugnance to corroborating any part of a 
 tale so wickedly sprung on the world. Then there was a 
 want of union between half-a-dozen different persons. 
 The various executors, trustees, descendants or friends 
 (including the present writer) who were acquainted with 
 the essential facts (and had proofs of them) were neither 
 able nor willing to produce them on their own sole 
 responsibility. To some of her trustees it would have 
 been a great relief if truth and justice could have pre- 
 vailed without separate action on their part. But from 
 the best and kindest motives and long habit of silence. 
 Dr. Lushington's influence, which was inevitably great 
 over the others, was exerted to prevent or at least post- 
 pone revelation. The date 1880 had been originally 
 mentioned by Lady Byron herself as the earliest possible 
 one for a discretionary disclosure. In 1849 Lady Noel 
 Byron had consigned to Miss Frances Carr at Ockham 
 Park a box containing a large number of the most impor- 
 tant Byron papers, and wrote the following directions 
 as to their ultimate destination and use. Firstly, Lady 
 Byron refers to their inclosure in a metal box with secure 
 lock. Then she desires : 
 
 " 2. That Miss Frances Carr shall keep the said Box 
 unopened (leaving access to its contents to me only if 
 desired) for Thirty Years. 
 
 "3. That she shall by her Will or other arrangements 
 secure the transfer of the said Box at her decease to the 
 care of one of the following persons — the others being also 
 responsible for the Trust. 
 
 " Sir Francis Hastings Doyle B'. 
 " William Lushington Esq" (son of D' Lushington) 
 " Henry Bathurst Esq" of Doctors Commons. 
 " 4. That the Box, which contains Byron documents 
 and letters, shall be opened at the ex^piration of Thirty 
 Years, namely in 1880, by the then surviving Trustees or 
 Trustee abovenamed, and the contents thereof shall be 
 disposed of according to their best judgement, for the 
 interests of Truth & Justice, and with due regard to the 
 
 158 
 
INFORMERS AND DEFAMERS 
 
 feelings of whoever may then be the Representative of 
 my Family. 
 
 " Anne Isabella Noel Byron." 
 
 The paper was thus signed on February i8th, 1850. 
 The provisions of Lady Byron's will in i860 as to her 
 remaining papers were very similar, and absolutely con- 
 firm the above-quoted document, which remains now the 
 principal authority by which any and every custodian 
 of Lady Byron's papers must be governed. 
 
 Dr. Lushington was deeply grieved at the scurrility 
 of the libels on Lady Byron of 1870, and he repeated 
 emphatically to the trustees that at the time Lady Byron 
 was driven to the decision of parting from Lord Byron 
 she had cogent reasons on account of cruelty and adultery, 
 that there was nothing else at that time, for she was still 
 determined to repel from her mind all belief in incest, a 
 supposition that might well perplex her, being almost 
 equally difiicult altogether to reject or actually to accept. 
 But Dr. Lushington added that Mrs. Leigh subsequently 
 confessed the crime. 
 
 Lady Byron's truth was not doubted by those who had 
 been in her confidence, though they had no other material 
 evidence than her own word ; they were faithful and 
 steady in disbelieving the revilers with all their garbled 
 evidence. Whatever impostors and lunatics might 
 pretend, not one of Lady Byron's real intimates ever 
 wavered, though of course it was impossible for them to 
 depart from silent fidelity. The attitude of her friends 
 is well explained in a letter of one of them, an able and 
 good old woman, though a philanthropist — ^Mrs. Barwell, 
 author of children's books.^ 
 
 1 Her philanthropy was not what has been well described as " the counterfeit 
 coin of charity." — " Congres de V^rone," xiv., where Chateaubriand refers to 
 the commercial hunger concealed behind the Slave Trade agitation : " Le 
 marquis de Londonderry et le due de Wellington, ennemis des franchises de 
 leur pays, M. Canning, ileve de William Pitt et opposi k la reforme parlemen- 
 taire, tous ces torys adverses pendant trente ans k la motion de Wilberforce, 
 itaient devenus passionds pour la liberty des negres, tout en maudissant la 
 liberty des blancs. . . . Le secret de ces contradictions est dans les int^rSts 
 privis et le giaie mercantile de I'Angleterre ; c'est ce qu'il faut comprendre 
 
 IS9 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Louisa Mary Barwell to Sophia De Morgan.^ 
 
 (Extract.) 
 
 [Monday] Jan^ lo"' [1870] 
 
 Dear M" de M 
 
 You must pardon all abruptness — as I have a 
 feeble hand and write with difficulty • 
 
 You ask my " views " on this most painful subject — 
 M"^ Stowe has committed the grave error (whatever her 
 motive) of going to the Public with insufficient evidence — 
 arrogantly expecting her name to command universal 
 belief — She has committed a flagrant breach of confidence, 
 and without even the justification of producing a history, 
 upon such evidence that no doubt could be fastened upon 
 it — Now because M'' S — has done this, I see no reason 
 why Lady B's friends should follow her example — they 
 can produce no evidence stronger than their own con- 
 victions of her truthfulness — aU that they know they 
 heard from her or her dearest & most trusted friends — I 
 do not feel that because M"^ S — has betrayed a confidence 
 I am thereby released from the trust reposed in me — and 
 I think this applies to all her friends — the family alone 
 excepted — Should they now, or at any future time, hold 
 in their hands, a complete chain of evidence, furnished 
 from other sources than Lady B's own authority or 
 testimony, then they would be justified in giving it to 
 the world — nothing short of a case so perfect, that the 
 most acute lawyer can see no flaw will now be of any 
 avail to stay the flood of calumny & obloquy w*" M" 
 Stowe has been the means of letting loose upon the 
 character of one of the noblest of human beings 
 
 She kept silence though goaded and calumniated — & 
 that is the example, we^ her friends must follow — ^Why 
 did not M" Stowe consult the Grandchildren f What 
 must be the vanity which supposed M'^ Stovye could 
 settle a question for the present world and for future 
 history — which the life of Lady B had not been able to 
 
 afin de n'ltre pas dupe d'une philanthropic si ardente et pourtant venue si 
 tard : la philanthropic est la fausse monnaie de la charity." 
 * Sophia Freud, wife of Professor Augustus De Morgan. 
 
 160 
 
INFORMERS AND DEFAMERS 
 
 set to rest — And the friends who still remain must not 
 assume to themselves any power to convince, simply by 
 their own declarations of their convictions of her truth — 
 every tittle of evidence rests upon her statements only — 
 how can it be otherwise ? 
 
 The links are missing — whatever they may be — W' 
 would explain those letters — but depend upon it they 
 will not be found amongst any but the associates of 
 earlier days, or amongst Written records — out of reach — 
 Every line, short of unimpeachable evidence that has 
 been, or will be written, has damaged & will damage — 
 still further her reputation 
 
 I see no generosity in M"^ Stowe — I only see great 
 defects of judgment & a great desire for a place in public 
 estimation as the proclaimer of a Secret — & the power to 
 boast of the confidence placed in her by such a woman 
 as Lady B — How else could she blind herself upon the 
 subject — ; she has drawn upon herself universal con- 
 demnation — not a single pen has attempted to justify 
 her — She alone could not or would not estimate the Evil 
 she has done 
 
 The Article in the Saturday Review of the 25"" Dec' 
 is powerful, and fair if considered from the Writers point 
 of view — & he admits the truth of the Story. — Although 
 reluctantly 
 
 You will quite feel that in holding the opinions I have 
 expressed, I can not supply any information — I hope I 
 may have succeeded in leading you to adopt my views 
 
 The Articles in the Temple Bar was the only reply 
 needed to Guiccioli's Book & the best justification of 
 Lady B — unless direct evidence other than her own had 
 been forthcoming 
 
 I hope you will not be too much troubled to decypher this 
 — Rheumatism has enfeebled my right hand — but except 
 
 this, my health is as good as I can expect at my age 
 
 I hope you & M" de Morgan are well 
 
 believe me, 
 
 yours very truly, 
 
 Louisa M. Barwell. 
 A. 161 ^ 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 This letter states the actual question clearly and 
 accurately. It defines what was too much forgotten by 
 everybody : — that the issue of fact about Lord Byron 
 and Mrs. Leigh depended on " a complete chain of 
 evidence furnished from other sources than Lady B.'s 
 own authority or testimony." Mrs. Barwell was right 
 in considering that the " written records " which at that 
 time were detained " out of reach " must contain the 
 " missing links " which would explain and justify all 
 Lady Byron had done or written. Mrs. Barwell 
 thoroughly understood that the really decisive evidence 
 against Mrs. Leigh was not and could not be Lady 
 Byron's, who (as Lord Byron said) was truth itself, but 
 could prove no more than came within her own know- 
 ledge. She could testify to her own impressions : how 
 from the first she held fast to belief in Mrs. Leigh's 
 purity and resisted unfavourable interpretations of what 
 occurred as long as was possible and longer than other 
 wives in her place would have done. Statements written 
 by Lady Byron in 1816 a:nd 1817 describe her extreme 
 miseries and perplexities, how her opinion fluctuated 
 between agonising suspicion and comforting error, how, 
 under the delusive influence of hope, or rather reaction 
 from despair, she had endeavoured to feel and express 
 confidence and affection. There had been moments 
 when she could have wished to see a dagger plunged into 
 that heart whose treachery seemed revealed, but Mrs. 
 Leigh's voice of kindness and evident wish to protect 
 her from Lord Byron's fits of rage would again resolve 
 the impulse into tears. With a broken heart and im- 
 prudent generosity she had written to Mrs. Leigh letters 
 afterwards basely used to blacken the helpless inexperi- 
 ence of the writer. Her narratives related how continued 
 trust in Mrs. Leigh gradually became more difficult, and 
 finally impossible, and how ultimately Mrs. Leigh 
 confessed her crime. All these statements and narratives 
 of Lady Byron's were only secondary evidence as to the 
 conduct of the half-sister. On the other hand, Mrs. 
 Leigh's own correspondence during and after the period 
 
 162 
 
INFORMERS AND DEFAMERS 
 
 of her confession, and certain other documents and 
 memoranda, existed which constituted primary evidence. 
 Lady Byron's own written testimony corroborated and 
 completed that part of her case as to which it was not of 
 itself decisive. 
 
 The impressions of Mrs. Leigh's guilt had been forced 
 into Lady Byron's mind chiefly by incidents and con- 
 versations which Occurred while they were aU under one 
 roof. Lord Byron never then long abstained from 
 allusions that could not be otherwise interpreted, and 
 Mrs. Leigh was unaccountably passive under his hardly- 
 veiled hints. But as soon as Mrs. Leigh was out of the 
 way, and there was sensible relief from the frenzy excited 
 in Lord Byron by her presence. Lady Byron began to 
 reproach herself for her involuntary suspicions, and 
 resolved to quell and repudiate them. These suspicions 
 flowed and ebbed with the feelings that burst from Lord 
 Byron and Mrs. Leigh's manner. It was in the earlier 
 half of 1 815 that his inclination towards her was most 
 violent, and there were moments when Lady Byron felt 
 nearly certain of the past and had even a strong appre- 
 hension of a renewal. At that time Mrs. Leigh comfort- 
 ably ignored all the strange appearances called forth by 
 her presence in Piccadilly. She was preternaturally 
 cool and collected, seemingly unaware that she could be 
 an object of suspicion or anxiety. She slipped out of 
 explanation and shifted the point with an obtuseness 
 hardly natural, though it seemed unaffected at the time. 
 She almost overdid it ; but only on reflection would the 
 thought occur : " Tres poHe ! mais pas moyen de 
 s'expliquer avec elle ! " She could not and would not 
 comprehend ; answered what had not been said with 
 something else that was perfectly trivial. This went on 
 with all sorts o'f vicissitudes till the close of her first visit 
 to Piccadilly a little before the end of June, 181 5, Lady 
 Byron was then really anxious to get rid of her, made 
 her fix a time to go, and held her to it. After her 
 departure Lord Byron was rather quieter on that subject, 
 and during the twenty weeks of her absence (at Six Mile 
 
 163 M 2 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Bottom) Lady Byron could persuade herself that it was 
 all a hideous dream. 
 
 When Mrs. Leigh came back on November 15th before 
 Lady Byron's confinement, he seemed much alienated 
 from Mrs. Leigh and entirely occupied with women at the 
 theatre. During the confinement he resumed familiar 
 talk with her, and she used to sit up with him till late 
 in the night to keep him quiet. After Lady Byron's 
 recovery, he now and then dropped references to past 
 intercourse in very crude terms — and before Mrs. Leigh, 
 who passed over such speeches with well-acted indiffer- 
 ence ; but he seemed to have no inclination for a renewal. 
 In December and January he appeared hardly responsible 
 for what he said and did. Mrs. Leigh was the most 
 eager of those in the house with him to adopt the hypo- 
 thesis of his insanity. She was in constant terror of 
 what he might say next. She occasionally uttered vague 
 sentiments of remorse, and repeatedly said she had 
 forfeited all hope of salvation ; but she was more afraid 
 of discovery in this world than of consequences in the 
 next. In her desperation she seemed ready to anticipate 
 his disclosures by confession, though on the whole she 
 preferred to discredit him as a madman. Lady Byron 
 was now greatly perplexed by his mad fits, and attributed 
 much of what he said to insane delusions. She went 
 through extreme alternations of opinion and plans, but 
 left London on January 15th determined to think Mrs. 
 Leigh her truest friend, and reject the suspicions, vivid 
 as they were. In one respect she owed deep gratitude to 
 Mrs. Leigh, who, with Mrs. Clermont, had faithfully 
 striven for Lady Byron's protection and preservation 
 when ill and in need. 
 
 Mrs. Leigh's letters from Piccadilly in the last fort- 
 night of January were devoted to Lord Byron's alarming 
 state of mind and conduct. She represented her presence 
 as necessary to prevent suicide. She strongly deprecated 
 any announcement of measures of separation as likely to 
 drive him to desperation. There was much obvious art 
 in this, which could not but attract Lady Byron's 
 
 164 
 
INFORMERS AND DEFAMERS 
 
 attention and revive mistrust about everything. Mrs. 
 Leigh was not insincere in her fears about Lord Byron 
 and her behef that the scandal of a suit in the ecclesi- 
 astical court would be a great evil for everyone, but 
 above all she was frightened of reports and disclosures 
 concerning herself. 
 
 Lady Byron's letters from Kirkby in January were 
 inspired by the resolve to trust Mrs. Leigh, to reject the 
 hypothesis of her crime, and to acknowledge both the 
 affectionate devotion to herself and the solicitude for 
 Lord Byron's preservation. It was a point of honour 
 and duty to give entire confidence — not to reserve the 
 possibility that Mrs. Leigh might after all be a liar and 
 worse. She did full justice to what was in fact true, that 
 she had received kindness. Nothing in her letters was 
 false. She kept silence on the main question. She could 
 not and did not say that she knew Mrs. Leigh was 
 innocent. Nowhere and never did she go further than 
 to omit reference to what was then beyond positive 
 knowledge. Mrs. Leigh's very real merits and services 
 were well within Lady Byron's knowledge. 
 
 There is inevitably something ridiculous in being too 
 generous, in giving a large measure of confidence to 
 persons who do not quite deserve it. It is more prudent 
 to treat everyone as a potential traitor or enemy, to store 
 up every possible suspicion intact for future use. Lady 
 Byron did not write with the caution of an attorney, 
 she was but a very young woman, agitated and desperate, 
 and penned incoherent and confidential letters, instead 
 of composing carefully and " without prejudice " docu- 
 ments calculated to form a serviceable case if produced 
 by themselves without other context than the malignant 
 commentaries of prejudiced enemies. For about a fort- 
 night she wrote unwarily. But gradually her eyes were 
 opened in every respect. Former impressions returned 
 with increased force and fixed themselves into the con- 
 viction, which never again could be shaken, that after 
 all Mrs. Leigh must be guilty pretty nearly of everything 
 that Lord Byron had intimated. At the same time Lady 
 
 i6s 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Byron became aware that she had been putting weapions 
 into the hands of an unscrupulous and desperate woman, 
 and that her letters might be used unfairly — strained 
 into meaning what they did not contain. After January, 
 1816, she wrote in a more guarded manner and at longer 
 intervals, till after her first interview with Dr. Lushington 
 the correspondence became infinitesimal and was 
 ultimately suspended. 
 
 It would have been better, as Colonel Doyle afterwards 
 explained to Lady Byron, not to have written at all to 
 one who was engaged in a hard struggle for self-preserva- 
 tion, and well knew how to use and misuse everything 
 that came within her reach. 
 
 But, above all, such letters ought never to have been 
 published isolated froiii genuine complete information, 
 and unsanctioned by Lady Byron's executors and 
 trustees. They were written in the strictest secrecy, 
 from which no release was ever given. They were 
 intrinsically unimportant — told virtually nothing and 
 explained less. Very much more was read into them 
 than the words would bear. They were mere answers 
 to able and ingenious letters from Mrs. Leigh, whose 
 statements and suggestions, under an attitude of un- 
 studied frankness, were admirably calculated to fortify 
 Mrs. Leigh's own weak points and to bewilder and 
 confuse Lady Byron into very mistaken ideas. The 
 only knowledge to be gained out of Lady Byron's in- 
 cautious letters is the old but rarely learnt lesson of the 
 extreme danger of communications with those who say 
 what they do not mean and mean what they do not say. 
 Let those who have never been duped by hypocrites 
 throw the first stone at Lady Byron. But if anyone had 
 to be stoned because letters of a dupe were dragged into 
 publicity without her consent, and against either moral 
 or legal right, it was remarkable that the brutalities of 
 the press should have been lavished on the dupe alone. 
 The illicit production of documents flourished with 
 impunity. Lady Byron was made the scapegoat for the 
 contraband trade in her own letters ! It unfortunately 
 
 166 
 
INFORMERS AND DEFAMERS 
 
 escaped the attention of her legal representatives that 
 they had power to stop publication ; for it would have 
 been well to inforce their power as an act of justice, 
 especially as they were not yet prepared to publish an 
 authentic statement of the real case. Partial truth 
 commonly means total falsehood. 
 
 Of course Mrs. Leigh was not wholly an impostor and 
 a hypocrite. Lady Byron's generous acknowledgements 
 of personal care and kindness were in some measure 
 applicable, but the letters she wrote under an illusory 
 feeling in Mrs. Leigh's favour did not go to the heart of 
 the greater question. Lady Byron had no personal 
 evidence to give that would have been decisive. She 
 knew not for certain what to believe. If she could not 
 prove guilt, still less could Mrs. Leigh's innocence be 
 proved by any amount of hope or doubt in Lady Byron. 
 Lady Byron's letters amount to nothing in this respect. 
 She could not abohsh by wishing the irrevocable past of 
 her sister-in-law. It would not, indeed, have been in 
 her power to annihilate the evidence of that past. If 
 all Lady Byron's papers were non-existent, other inde- 
 pendent records would remain to prove that Mrs. Leigh 
 was what she was, and that the fundamental event of her 
 life was over before she and Lady Byron ever met. The 
 course of time was reversed when Mrs. Leigh was regarded 
 as re-endowed with virgin purity by glib imputations of 
 perjury against Lady Byron ; as if the innocence of the 
 one could be recovered through posterior crime attributed 
 to the other ! And when it came to proofs of Lady 
 Byron's crime, of course none were forthcoming — nothing 
 but re-affirmation of Mrs. Leigh's holiness. Neither 
 hypothesis was borne out by facts ; neither was relevant 
 to the other, chronologically or by any of the essential 
 conditiqns. But each of these crazy and unrelated 
 phantoms was alternately produced by way of floating 
 the cither one about, and being itself in turn floated 
 round in vacuous repetition. 
 
 One result of discrediting Lady Byron's word would 
 have been to cancel many of the kind and just things 
 
 167 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 she said in Mrs. Leigh's favour, without affecting the 
 darker parts of the history, which were fully established 
 by more direct testimony. Lady Byron's detractors 
 were most detrimental as allies. 
 
 In 1 869-70, besides other obstacles which had nothing 
 to do with the merits of the case, though they caused 
 great inconvenience, the term of thirty years fixed by 
 Lady Byron in 1850 stood in the way of reparation to 
 her for ten years more. " Procrastinator's argument, 
 ' wait a Httle, this is not the time,' " ^ still reigned for 
 another decade before it could be displaced, though 
 every remaining reason for silence might drop away. 
 And as circumstances change in one way, the guardians 
 of truth change in another. They grow old and cautious 
 about facing trouble and odium, and repeat with more 
 obstinacy than ever : " The time has not yet come ! " 
 And it never does come if they can keep it off. Blind 
 silence becomes an end in itself — identified with their 
 very being. 
 
 So the years slipped away ; 1880 passed by, and Lady 
 Byron's friends let the lies be. The seeming inertia of 
 time, stealthy and secret, accumulated its latent sur- 
 prises, ^ its reserve of forces and occasions for a clean 
 sweep of darkness and impurity ; but meanwhile truth 
 lay low. 
 
 It has been said that " Hes always come first in every- 
 thing ; " 3 and attract the imbecile by the law of universal 
 vulgarity.* The blind see the unknown, the incredulous 
 believe the false. " Few are they who look to the inside 
 of things. . . . They are usually very different from 
 what they seem. . . . Truth comes in the last, and very 
 
 ^ Sydney Smith on Bentham's " Book of Fallacies." 
 
 ^ " J'ai toujours remarqu^ que le temps faisait ses affaires sournoisement. 
 Pendant des mois, il fait un travail souterrain qui se rdvele tout ^ coup. Je 
 conviens aussi qu'il y a d'autres mois oil il se croise tres r^ellement les 
 bras corame s'il ne savait que faire " (X. Doudan to M. Verdet, 9 Octobre, 
 1861). 
 
 ^ Sir M. E. Grant Duff's abstract of Balthasar Gracian's maxims in " Mis- 
 cellanies," etc., 1878. 
 
 * As Doudan once wrote : " La vulgarity est une forme de la sympathie avec 
 le grand nombre." 
 
 168 
 
INFORMERS AND DEFAMERS 
 
 late, limping along on the arm of Time." ^ History is 
 evolved by spontaneous generation. Biography grows 
 out of pamphlets having their origin in corporate rancour 
 or pursuit of profit. 
 
 Misrepresentations were much more ephemeral before 
 the invention of trimestrial reviews about a hundred 
 years ago. Through those secret organisms the spirit of 
 the nineteenth century was let loose in countless noto- 
 rious articles against whoever was obnoxious to one of 
 the trade brotherhoods of the age. 
 
 " And ever at thy season be thou free 
 To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow." 
 
 Ignoble travesties were exhibited to the public of Keats, 
 the Byrons, O'Connell, Harriet Martineau, Sir Robert 
 Peel, Chateaubriand,^ Carlyle, Shelley, some of which 
 finally prevailed with the foolish public. Some of the 
 victims turned upon their revilers. As Peel put it : 
 " Personal good-wiU could not coexist with the spirit 
 in which those articles were written, or with the feelings 
 they must naturally have excited." He was repelling 
 the explanation of a Quarterly Reviewer who, after 
 public and avowed vituperation of extreme virulence, 
 wrote privately to profess lively personal good wishes for 
 the friend whom he had just been rending. This impu- 
 dent communication received the stern answer just 
 quoted, the conclusion of which was that Sir Robert 
 Peel " trusted there was nothing inconsistent with 
 perfect civility in the expression of an earnest wish that 
 the same principle which suggested the propriety of 
 closing a written correspondence of seven and thirty 
 
 1 Balthasar Gracian. The belated, limping Truth is similar to the Atral in 
 the Iliad (see p. no). Supplications are the daughters of heaven — lame, 
 wrinkled, sidelong gazer and outrun by Judicial Blindness. But it is they who 
 heal hereafter, and if men reject and refuse them, they appeal to the eternal 
 spirit of equity and Nemesis. 
 
 ^ The ignominy of the base articles against Chateaubriand does not of course 
 belong to the English press, and had at least the redeeming features both of 
 some masterly appreciation and of being signed by the deadly hater who wrote 
 them. 
 
 169 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 years might be extended to every other species of 
 intercourse." ^ 
 
 A remarkable attempt was made quite late in the 
 nineteenth century to brand Shelley with domestic 
 infamy which cannot be left unnoticed in this place on 
 account of the quarter from which it came, and because it 
 was a strange counterpart to other maledictions by the 
 same prophet. It was discovered in 1887 that Shelley 
 had an incestuous passion for his sister Elizabeth. This 
 amazing hypothesis was announced to the world " as a 
 protest against the theory that moral conduct is unin- 
 fluenced by speculative opinions," and in order " to test 
 the soundness of Shelley's moral principles by a reference 
 to his relations with Elizabeth in 1811." ^ A more or 
 less genuine letter of Shelley's, dated July 4th, 1811, was 
 quoted as proof of the charge, but the authenticity and 
 text of the letter are uncertain. Even about its sense 
 there has been a conflict of interpretations. The luminary 
 who thus brought forward an incestuous accusation 
 against Shelley in connection with a whole sister was the 
 editor of the " Quarterly Review," who in 1869-70 raised 
 an accusation of deliberate wickedness against Lady 
 Byron ^ for stating confidentially to a friend, then 
 believed to be trustworthy, that part of her misery had 
 originated in the guilt of a half sister ! The infallible 
 oracle of Church and State, who would not allow that 
 " Manfred " could have any connection with Lord 
 Byron's own theories and practice, considered that his 
 own imputations against Shelley were confirmed by 
 " Laon and Cythna " and " Rosalind and Helen." His 
 later article was the condemnation of his former ones, and 
 reciprocally. The best comment on all the sermons and 
 statements for which he was responsible is the levity 
 
 1 The Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel to the Right Hon. John Wilson Croker, 
 January 15th, 1847. 
 
 2 " Quarterly Review,'' vol. clxiv., No. 328, for April, 1887, pp. 290-293. 
 
 ^ Sir William Smith (1813-1893), editor of the above-mentioned from 1867 to 
 1893. He was told at the time by the " Saturday Review " that he had " raised 
 an accusation of deliberate wickedness against Lady Byron which no person of 
 common sense — laying the matter of good feeling aside — can for a moment 
 entertain." 
 
 170 
 
INFORMERS AND DEFAMERS 
 
 with which, after cursing the very mention of incest by 
 the person whom it deeply affected, he appropriated the 
 subject for his own use in the damnatory personalities 
 which he called arguments against Shelley. It is not 
 wonderful if Keats's avenger was an abomination to 
 reviewers, who, he thought, " with some rare exceptions, 
 are a most stupid and malignant race," turned critics 
 " as a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair." ^ 
 More especially had the writer of " Adonais " exposed 
 the founders of the " Quarterly Review " " in their venal 
 good nature " and inexhaustible ruffianism. In vain did 
 bullies prosper and " wantonly deface the noblest speci- 
 mens of the workmanship of God." Shelley had risen, 
 " dipped his pen in consuming fire for " the tribe of 
 obscene birds, and not much was left of them besides the 
 memory of his burning words. 
 
 By a striking coincidence Shelley's eloquence is 
 strangely applicable to the rage and hate preached much 
 later against Lady Byron by the idolaters of the "faux 
 maternel " — of false sisterhood, false holiness, false 
 godliness. If second sight had revealed her figure stoned 
 like that of some indescribable ruffian because she had 
 been upright, pure and noble, he could not have uttered 
 a more direly fulfilled prophecy than can be found in 
 his celebrated passage : " Against what woman taken 
 in adultery dares the foremost of these literary prosti- 
 tutes to cast his opprobrious stone ? Miserable man ! 
 you, one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of 
 the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God." 
 Lady Byron was, of course, in no public sense distin- 
 guished ; her very name ought never to have become 
 known to the many ; but relatively to her own little 
 world her life was as heroic as many a larger existence 
 in the great world of all. And as for her detractors, 
 it is perfectly fair to hold that amongst them were 
 to be found some of the meanest specimens of God's 
 creatures. 
 
 Lady Byron's trust remained unexecuted, but there 
 
 * Shelley Society, "Adonais," 1886, p. ig. 
 171 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 was no rest from the hideous things written against her. 
 The fall of Lord Byron's works into disrepute by no 
 means silenced defamation of her — on the contrary. It 
 was not for his sake that a bad character had been given 
 to her after his death. She was most maligned by those 
 who cared nothing about him personally. His greatest 
 detractors extended their aversion to her. For many 
 years the public have been in a condition of stolid in- 
 difference to both. There has been no demand for any 
 kind of book about Lord Byron ; but this has lowered 
 the quality rather than diminished the quantity of the 
 literature which obscures those memories. In aU sorts 
 of places vast accumulations of the least precious mate- 
 rials had been amassed — which were expected to grow 
 into value, but destined to be unloaded upon an unre- 
 sponsive market by impatient holders. Thus the fair 
 was encumbered with voluminous mounds of books, which, 
 if they contained anything at all, could only consist of 
 what Lord Byron's own people would refuse to touch. 
 The inheritance of the Byrons was in every way the prey 
 of strangers, and it has been more and more ignored that 
 Lord Byron's own descendants have some feelings or 
 even rights in connection with the affairs of their own 
 family. They cannot regard their concerns as a pro- 
 vision or a playground for press and public, publicists 
 and publishers. There is an extreme point for per- 
 sonalities and misrepresentations, whether laudatory, 
 damnatory or predatory. The time comes at last when 
 some measure of truth preservation is forced upon the 
 victims. The representatives of Lord and Lady Byron 
 would have infinitely preferred the official action of 
 trustees to their own personal agency, which is a work 
 of pain, though of honour and duty. 
 
 Unfortunately the last of the trustees, Mr. Henry Allen 
 Bathurst, died a few years ago. His fidelity and affection 
 for Lady Byron never waned, but difficulties stood in the 
 way till the very last years of his life, when his health 
 and energy were running out. When he was gone, the 
 pressure of responsibility descended with all its weight 
 
 172 
 
INFORMERS AND DEFAMERS 
 
 on the present writer, whose most earnest wish was 
 not to be driven personally soon to break silence on 
 the fatal and unlucky subject of Lord Byron's private 
 adventures. The public were more than willing to hear 
 no more of them, and it seemed that poachers might 
 consider Byron ground hardly worth their visits. Truth 
 could then still for a time sleep in the shade, and the 
 Byrons wait without hurry for that fuller peace which 
 cannot stand secure on impenitent falsehood and per- 
 sistent injustice. 
 
 Careful, scrupulous, and not unduly deferred execution 
 of Lady Byron's trust was imperative on her repre- 
 sentatives. An interval of quiet expectation and reflec- 
 tion was reasonable, and it would have been well if for 
 so long there could have been a general hoUday from 
 Byronese shows, hysteria and farce. It should have been 
 plain to the most vulgar intelligence that the low comedy 
 of Byronese attitudes in Victorian costume was played 
 out. Lord Byron was not a mendicant, and would have 
 loathed and spurned Byronification by puffs, advertise- 
 ments and mendicity. 
 
 Manoeuvres and hostilities were not as was hoped 
 abandoned. Strange invaders reappeared, intent upon 
 campaigns — futile and unprovoked, but sufficient to 
 splash " a noteless blot on a remembered name." State- 
 ments and personalities of an unusual description were 
 circulated, which the Byrons must absolutely repudiate 
 and condemn, and that in the most and indeed only 
 effectual manner — by plain truth and tangible evidence — 
 practical exposure of pseudo-Byronese manipulations 
 and fables. Outlaws from all the accepted courtesies and 
 usages even of press manners and customs, like Lady 
 Byron and her family, have no assent to give to final and 
 absolute decrees of falsehood. The unpopularity of 
 disestablishing favourite delusions has no terrors for 
 those who are already misrepresented. 
 
 Full and final truth about the past and the dead is 
 unattainable and inconceivable except by " a mind in a 
 state of consciousness in which all phenomena are simul- 
 
 173 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 taneously instead of successively presented " ; ^ but 
 " the first of all gospels is that a lie cannot endure for 
 ever." ^ " Lies exist only to be extinguished " ^ by 
 those oppressed. There is no reason to-day for endur- 
 ance of the lies about the Byrons that would not equally 
 be a reason on every other day for all time. All Lady 
 Byron's original motives for silence have long ceased to 
 affect any one. Lord Byron and his loves and hates are 
 phantoms that haunt not the twentieth century. No one 
 will catch any moral epidemic from him. The holiness of 
 family ties can no longer be sullied by the witchcraft of 
 Manfred and Astarte. 
 
 1 Mansel, " Letters, Lectures and Reviews," p. 119. Gladstone once said to 
 the Hon. L. Tollemache : " I will give you something to think over — Have time 
 and space any existence outside the human intelligence ? " (" Talks with Mr. Glad- 
 stone," p. 82). 
 
 * Carlyle, " French Revolution.'' 
 
 174 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 "when we dead awake" 
 
 " Facta est super me manus Domini, et eduxit me in spiritu 
 Domini : et dimisit me in medio campi, qui erat planus ossibus : 
 . . . Et dixit ad me : Fili hominis putasne vivent ossa ista ? 
 Et dixi : Domine Deus, tu nosti, Et dixit ad me : Vaticinate 
 de ossibus istis : et dices eis : Ossa arida audite verbum Domini. 
 Haec dicit Dominus Deus ossibus his : Ecce ego intromittam in 
 vos spiritum, et vivetis. . . . Et prophetavi sicut praeceperat 
 mihi : et ingressus est in ea spiritus, et vixerunt : steteruntque 
 super pedes suos exercitus grandis nimis valde." 
 
 " I was dead for many years. They came and bound me fast 
 and sunk me down in a vault with barred windows and muffled 
 walls, — so that no one on the earth above could hear the cries 
 from my tomb. But now I half begin to rise up from the dead." 
 " It is when we dead awake, that we first see what is irreparable 
 — what we havenever had — our life." 
 
 " Seems she not like resurrection personified ? " ^ 
 
 THE dead Byrons wake to reveal themselves. The 
 posthumous phantoms of three tragic figures will 
 tell of wasted lives, wasted l6ves, the tangle of strife and 
 suffering which for them made up existence. They 
 stand up—" distinct but distant " — in the " moonlight 
 of other days " — as living and yet unfathomable as any 
 of the innumerable host of dead whose ghosts speak in a 
 few fragments of hieroglyph. The history of the three 
 Byrons is summed up in some words of the Norse wizard, 
 as, " Empty dreams— idle dead dreams." The love that 
 
 1 " Jeg var dad i mange ar. De kom og bandt mig. Snarte armene sammen 
 pS ryggen. — Sa ssenkte de mig ned i et gravkammer med jernstsnger for lugen. 
 Og med polstrede vaegge, — sa ingen ovenover pa jorden kunde hare gravskri- 
 gene — . Men nu begynder jeg si halvvejs at sta op fra de d0de." 
 
 "Det uopettelige a^r vl farst,— . . . nar vi dede vagner, . . . Vi s^r, at vi 
 aldrig bar levet." 
 
 "S^r bun ikke ud som den levendegjorte opstandelse .' " (Henrik Ibsen 
 '' N4r vi d0 de vagner "). 
 
 1 75 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 blossoms in earthly life — the beautiful, wonderful riddle 
 of life upon earth — that love perished ^ in all of them 
 together with the blending of their lives — with no 
 possible resurrection. The separation of each from all 
 was consciously and verily for all life and time.^ Their 
 resurrection is that of the irreparable. 
 
 Bringing the dead Byrons into undistorted vision 
 ought to be a work of compression. True history is 
 necessarily a fragment, and of that fragment all is not 
 wanted. It is selection that constitutes a clear and 
 faithful picture. In the choice of materials it has been 
 thought right to exclude from this book mere amplifica- 
 tions of documentary evidence — to concentrate atten- 
 tion on the dominating points. This is not an attempt 
 to amuse, but a struggle for honour and life, for resurrec- 
 tion. During several years there has been long and full 
 consideration, and many consultations with all those 
 sufficiently conversant with the facts. Candid criticisms 
 have left in existence little of the first form of this frag- 
 ment, which has undergone two or three transformations 
 from end to end. If friends could only help to rewrite 
 as well as condemn what is submitted to them, the ulti- 
 mate result might be better. Unfortunately, removal 
 of rubbish is only the beginning of reconstruction — and 
 of something like despair to an unskilled hand, who 
 cannot make the work what it should be, but must carry 
 it through without indefinite delay over a vain pursuit 
 of perfection. 
 
 The highest authority consulted did not give and could 
 not be asked for any purely literary advice, but frankly 
 and fully gave his opinion of the effect of the evidence 
 and its treatment from a strictly judicial and ethical 
 point of view. Sir Leslie Stephen, K.C.B., as he presently 
 became, authorized a statement in this place, that he had 
 long rejected the hypothesis to which he once gave some 
 
 1 " Tom de dr0mme. 0rkesl0se — dade dramme. Vort samliv har ingen 
 opstandelse efter sig." " Den kserlighed, som er jordlivets, — det dejlige, vidun- 
 derlige jordlivs, — de gadefulde jordlivs, — den er ded i os begge " (" Nar vi 
 d0de vagner "). 
 
 2 " Manfred ; Say, shall we meet again ? Phantom : Farewell I " 
 
 176 
 
"WHEN WE DEAD AWAKE" 
 
 support, viz., of resentment and illusion in Lady Byron 
 which developed into false charges against Mrs. Leigh. 
 Sir Leslie Stephen also most kindly permitted full refer- 
 ence to his important communications and correspond- 
 ence on this subject, beginning in 1887. The only claim 
 upon his attention was that at an early period of his 
 labour at the " Dictionary of National Biography," he 
 had followed others and been persuaded into belief of the 
 surmise that " Lady Byron had become jealous of 
 Byron's public and pointed expressions of love for his 
 sister, contrasted so forcibly with his utterances about 
 his wife, and brooding over her wrongs had developed 
 the hateful suspicions communicated to Mrs. Stowe, and, 
 as it seems, to others." It might have been hoped that 
 he at least would from the first have considered the 
 matter to be still unsettled, and judged that, on the one 
 hand. Lady Byron's real opinion of Mrs. Leigh required 
 to be known by less meagre evidence than a few letters 
 selected for show by Mrs. Leigh herself, and, on the other 
 hand, that Mrs. Stowe's narrative, made on the strength 
 of a recollection of Lady Byron's statement thirteen 
 years before, might be inaccurate on important points. 
 A reserve of judgement on Lady Byron would have been 
 the natural attitude for the great and just national 
 biographer. Extreme unwillingness to believe in the 
 possibility of such facts as verily had existed may have 
 made reading and writing about Lord Byron distasteful, 
 but one might sooner have expected from Sir Leslie 
 Stephen total avoidance of the subject than a half- 
 hearted search in matters mentioned at all. In a serious 
 work of reference nothing but rigorously proved fact need 
 be included. Conjectures, and more particularly edify- 
 ing conjectures that appeal to sentiment, are worse than 
 useless unless verified. It has been said that " with 
 ordinary minds, such as much the greatest part of the 
 world are, 'tis the suitableness, not the evidence of a truth 
 that makes it assented to." ^ 
 Had they been attended to, plenty of proofs existed in 
 
 ' Dr. South. 
 
 A. 177 N 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Lord Byron's own poems of April, May, and July, 1816, 
 and it was even admitted in the most fulsome puffs of Mrs. 
 Leigh in 1869-70, that the so-called " hateful suspicions " 
 already existed as widespread reports long before they 
 could have developed inside Lady Byron's mind in the 
 manner suggested. Sir Leslie Stephen's language about 
 Lady Byron was measured, but his condemnation of her 
 was in substantial accordance with the views of men 
 whose epileptic violence, bad taste and vulgarity were 
 utterly foreign to him. He did not himself consider that 
 very deep moral infamy was inherent to his " hypothesis 
 of illusion," and of course no one has a right to put into 
 his words any meaning inconsistent with his own inter- 
 pretation. His sanction of the charges against Lady 
 Byron seemed serious and far-reaching enough to render 
 a personal appeal not altogether inappropriate, except 
 for the amount of trouble inflicted on him and most 
 liberally undertaken. There are few in any rank or 
 quarter who could or would have done what he did, who 
 have his insight and impartiality when seriously at work, 
 or to whom it would have been safe to offer unlimited 
 confidence. More accurate knowledge of the facts was 
 given to Sir Leslie Stephen in 1887 — too late for correc- 
 tion of his article. He completely altered his views and 
 wrote his opinion ^ that the papers shown to him " en- 
 tirely refute the hypothesis of such an illusion as I had 
 suggested. They prove that Lady Byron's conduct was 
 thoroughly honourable, that it was dictated by conscien- 
 tious motives, and by convictions not due to resentment 
 or illusion." Since then a long time has elapsed, but 
 there has been no fitting opportunity for making known 
 to the public Sir Leslie Stephen's definitive opinion, 
 though that was always considered desirable. In 1900, 
 in consequence of his former examination of private docu- 
 ments, Sir Leslie Stephen kindly undertook to look at a 
 large collection of important documents (including those 
 in the present volume), together with a first draft for 
 " Astarte." It was submitted to him that the Byron 
 
 1 December i8th, 1887. 
 178 
 
"WHEN WE DEAD AWAKE" 
 
 family felt themselves obliged on every ground of self- 
 respect and honesty to vindicate Lady Byron's conduct 
 by destroying the tissue of falsehood woven and still 
 weaving about their house. They wished to know Sir 
 Leshe Stephen's wishes concerning reference to the 
 correspondence with him, and whether he had any 
 further remarks to make. 
 
 It must first be stated distinctly that after giving full 
 consideration to the whole subject, he felt that if he had 
 had to decide on the propriety of publishing at all, he 
 would have leaned to answer that fundamental question 
 in the negative. If Lady Byron had not been concerned, 
 he would have been very sorry to see any revelation 
 made, and even the necessity of making it for her sake 
 seemed to him to be a painful one. 
 
 However, he drew up an outhne of the form of a 
 possible brief statement of the case in case it should be so 
 decided. Five propositions were suggested by Sir Leslie 
 Stephen, and as it would be impossible to improve upon 
 them much, they shall now be given with a few additions 
 and modifications as a summary of the case, which will 
 be established beyond dispute by documentary evidence 
 in the second part of " Astarte." ^ 
 
 1 . Lady Byron believed from the first the story of the 
 connection with Mrs. Leigh, though she was always 
 striving to disbeUeve it during her residence with Lord 
 Byron, and for most at least of that time persuaded her- 
 self that she did not beHeve it. 
 
 2. She believed it on grounds which satisfied Lushing- 
 ton, her legal adviser, and other competent persons. At 
 the same time they aU advised her that while the proofs 
 and impressions were such as left no doubt on her mind, 
 they were decidedly not such as could have been brought 
 forward to establish a charge of that nature — should the 
 facts be boldly denied — and she be challenged to bring 
 forward the grounds of the imputation. 
 
 3. Her friendly intercourse with Mrs. Leigh (which has 
 been the great argument against her early belief in the 
 
 * Now Chapters I. to V. — See Introduction, p. vi, 
 
 179 N 2 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 story) was approved by her friends, who took care to 
 place on record the reasons for her behaviour. 
 
 4. She was not certain at the time (nor is it now cer- 
 tain) that the connection had lasted after her marriage, 
 and she believed Mrs. Leigh to have been desirous of 
 promoting her happiness during the marriage. 
 
 5. The grounds of her suspicion not only satisfied 
 other people at the time, but were in fact justified. Mrs. 
 Leigh admitted the facts afterwards, and Lady Byron 
 endeavoured to influence her so as to make a renewal of 
 the connection impossible. 
 
 Sir Leslie Stephen wrote : ^ 
 
 " These propositions and any others that might be 
 desirable could be stated simply and straightforwardly. 
 You would also say that you would give documents 
 enough to place them beyond doubt, but would not give 
 more than was necessary for that purpose. 
 
 " Such documents would be easily selected from the 
 papers. The statement witnessed by her friends is con- 
 clusive for one point, and the letters from Lord Byron to 
 Mrs. Leigh [and other correspondence of Mrs. Leigh's in 
 1 8 19 — L.] are conclusive for another. 
 
 " Now what I thought was that if these propositions 
 were clearly proved, the essential case is made out, the 
 fictions about Lady Byron would be completely confuted. 
 A great deal of course would remain vague, but it would 
 be impossible for anyone to suppose that Lady Byron 
 invented the story afterwards, or was under an illusion. 
 All such reasons would be cut down finally, and that 
 seems to be the essential point. . . . 
 
 " I have, I confess, still a wish that the truth of the 
 story could be left without explicit confirmation. I 
 admit, however, that that would be difficult, because it 
 would leave an opening for the supposition that Lady 
 Byron had been hasty and over-suspicious, though not 
 intentionally unfair. 
 
 " Anyhow, I have written all this, because I feel very 
 
 1 April 9th, 1900, to the Earl of Lovelace. 
 180 
 
"WHEN WE DEAD AWAKE" 
 
 strongly that you should make it perfectly clear that you 
 published solely from a sense of obligation, and publish 
 only as much as is necessary. My notion was that the 
 scheme which I have suggested would make this clear. 
 
 " You have very strong reasons for defending Lady 
 Byron. Moreover, there is much to be said for the 
 opinion that even in regard to Lord Byron the truth 
 should be known. I will not argue the point, but my view 
 would be that if you deliberately decide that the facts 
 should be known, nobody would have a right to complain. 
 The point of casuistry cannot be settled by argument, but 
 is finally mattei' of your own instinct and sense of 
 justice." 
 
 These remarks define the actual position, and it only 
 remains to be mentioned that Sir Leslie Stephen's advice 
 has been followed by omitting hundreds of important 
 and interesting documents, which would only have 
 increased the mass of evidence and information without 
 otherwise altering the case. These pages were of course 
 not inspired by him, and do not claim to represent his 
 views except where and so far as his own words are 
 quoted ; but none of the material facts contained in Lady 
 Byron's papers were kept back from him, and nothing 
 is now kept back that could affect the real ultimate 
 judgement. 
 
 When the false maternal taint has been burnt out of 
 the tragedy of Astarte, the whole of the mystery of the 
 Byron story is dispelled. A structure of deception is 
 inherently a greater evil than the most painful of reve- 
 lations. The silences have been irrevocably broken. 
 Nothing remains but to cut the ground from under the 
 feet of those who would seek and perhaps manufacture 
 some substitute for the truth, as easily and recklessly as 
 the calumnies about Lady Byron were produced, if the 
 truth were longer concealed. That there was some 
 potent necessity for the separation was really put beyond 
 a doubt by the well-known agreement of opinion between 
 three such men as Sir Robert Wilmot Horton, Sir Francis 
 
 i8i 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Doyle, and Dr. Lushington. The younger Sir Francis 
 Doyle wrote an unanswerable page in his interesting 
 " Recollections and Opinions," which clearly demon- 
 strated that a separation on trivial grounds could not 
 possibly have been forced through with the collusion of 
 those three able and honourable men of the world. 
 Some obstacle to reunion of exceptional gravity must 
 have been known to them to render possible such deter- 
 mined action as they took in combination with each 
 other. All alternative explanations, graduating from 
 murder down to bigamy, are more heinous or repulsive 
 than incest with a half-sister, the senior by four years, 
 met again almost as a stranger after many years' absence 
 without correspondence. His memory has less than 
 nothing to gain from all the possible degrading and dis- 
 gusting suppositions that might be invented and decoy 
 prospective purchasers, in the event of a high tide of 
 Byronese folly, curiosity and ill-nature. There were 
 many baseless reports in 1816, and Mrs. Leigh, for 
 obvious reasons, gave very faint discouragement to those 
 which diverted attention from herself. She almost sug- 
 gested, on one occasion, a comparison between her 
 brother and Lord Ferrers, faintly affecting a hope that 
 the mystery rnight not be that ! ^ An obvious subter- 
 fuge, for, had she really thought Lord Byron in danger 
 of being tried for his hfe, even to save herself she could 
 hardly have given a hint like a common informer. It is 
 right to state most distinctly that the separation papers 
 leave no possible place for other charges besides the two 
 commonplace ones of adultery and cruelty, and that con- 
 nected with Mrs. Leigh. Many reports of other matters 
 were circulated by Lord Byron's enemies in 1816, and 
 were not altogether displeasing to Mrs. Leigh, though 
 entirely discredited by Lady Byron's papers. 
 
 The exposure of a melancholy and wicked conspiracy 
 against Lady Byron's character does not involve un- 
 
 * [The fourth Earl Ferrers had been hanged for murder. My grandmother 
 used to say that, as a privilege accorded to his rank, it was with a silken rope. — 
 Ed.] 
 
 182 
 
"WHEN WE DEAD AWAKE" 
 
 qualified eulogy. If records and witnesses are to be 
 believed, she acted well and nobly in all that related to 
 her separation, except that perhaps she need not have 
 fastened the door so irrevocably against all possibility 
 of reconciliation in a remote future. She felt herself that 
 had there been one person less amongst the living, she 
 " might have had duties, however steeped in sorrow." 
 It is true that the end would have been the same. That 
 third person long survived Lord Byron, thus de facto and 
 dejure keeping him asunder from his wife, even supposing, 
 which is by no means estabHshed, that he was ever 
 serious about wishing to return to Lady Byron, the 
 parting having been quite as much his act as hers. 
 
 No one ever admired the genius of Byron more than 
 she, though the spell of his power no longer held her. 
 His creations still were a spectacle of exceeding beauty, 
 — distant, but seductive and dangerous. All the splen- 
 dours of the world seemed to her now but a mystery of 
 wickedness. She found rest and serenity in a sanctuary 
 of renunciation ; and averted her gaze from the tangle 
 of human adventure, judged after one desperate outlaw. 
 Her youth was a sacrifice, and she was prepared far a 
 universal aboHtion of youth by edict. She almost per- 
 suaded herself into views worthy of the old thorough- 
 going divines who thought to extinguish corporeality 
 and bring the world to an end.^ 
 
 1 " L'enseignement eccl^siastique a un inconvenient : un bon pretre vous 
 prend afEectueusement par les deux mains le dos tourn^ au monde, et il vous 
 dit : ' Mon cher enfant, ne regardez pas derriere vous ; c'est un spectacle tres 
 siduisant, mais tres dangereux ; ^ premiere vue, c'est plus beau que tout, et 
 Ton croirait que c'est Dieu m^me qui a fait ces merveilles apparentes (ne vous 
 retournez done pas, mon enfant, quand je vous parle) ; c'est I'oeuvre du diable, 
 mais d'un coloris si trompeur ! (Voila encore que vous vous retournez !)' 
 • • • 
 
 " La morale de tout cela, c'est qu'on n'a gout k ce qui dure que quand on a 
 ^prouv^ le peu de valeur de ce qui passe. J'ai vu k Cologne, sur un autel, des 
 colliers, des bracelets, des couronnes que de grandes princesses ^taient venues 
 d^poser 14 dans leurs soucis. Qu'est-ce a dire, sinon qu'elles avaient vu toutes 
 les splendeurs du monde et qu'elles ne valaient pas la sombre s^r^nit^ du temple ? 
 Encore faut il avoir port^ cBs rubis, ces ^meraudes, pour savoir qu'il arrive un 
 moment ou les yeux n'y prennent plus de plaisir. 
 
 " Si vous ne lisez pas la vie de lord Byron, vous ne saurez pas bien que de 
 beaux chevaux, au grand g^nie po^tique, I'art de tuer au pistolet une mouche a 
 
 183 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 This would not be the place to attempt an account of 
 Lady Byron's character, but it is no duty of piety and 
 affection to deny that there were in her some grave and 
 even disastrous deficiencies, of which she was not uncon- 
 scious towards the close, when she looked back upon her 
 life, and was waiting for death. There was nothing 
 fundamentally evil in her defects ; they were like the 
 inversions of virtues, but not the less dangerous for that, 
 and charged with potential destruction for her own 
 welfare and the happiness of others. Her peculiar posi- 
 tion isolated her from that contact with her own equals 
 which might have checked the progress of undesirable 
 mental and moral tendencies. She ought to have made 
 the effort — a painful one — to keep her place in society, 
 whereby, not impossibly, she might have preserved 
 better, even bodily health, and still more, soundness of 
 judgement, happiness for herself and for all who depended 
 upon her. In her absence " that great blockhead the 
 world " was fatly prejudiced against her. Her uncon- 
 cealed contempt for ambition, popularity, success and 
 fashion of itself made her an object of suspicion to all 
 classes of English opinion. The ground was ready for 
 ridicule, insult and the vilest delations. Unknown, and 
 therefore odious, she was condemned unheard by the 
 united suffrage of the meanest and the highest, by the 
 select respectabilities, and the whole scum and weeds of 
 England. About the middle of the nineteenth century, 
 most preposterous accounts of her were circulated ; and 
 they were credited not merely by chimney-sweeps, but 
 also by fastidious lords and ladies. Had she been there, 
 such fables would have been extinguished without 
 thought or effort by a palpable reaUty. 
 On June 20th, 1815, Ticknor wrote of her : 
 " While I was there Lady Byron came in. She is 
 pretty, not beautiful — for the prevalent expression of 
 her countenance is that of ingenuousness. . . . She 
 
 vingt pas, les grands yeux de la Fornarina, les forSts qui pendent sur la valUe 
 de Lac^dtoone, toutes les recherches de la civilisation, et tons les plaisirs de la 
 vie sauvage, laissent un grand ennui au fond de I'ame. Faites venir alors 
 saint Thomas d'Aquin " (X. Doudan to M. Raulin, 6 Septembre, 1843). 
 
 184 
 
ANNE ISABELLA MILBANKE IN HER 
 TWENTIETH YEAR 
 
 After a Miniature by George Hayter (1812) 
 
"WHEN WE DEAD AWAKE" 
 
 ... is rich in intellectual endowments, . . . possesses 
 common accomplishments in an uncommon degree, and 
 adds to all this a sweet temper." 
 
 " June 23rd, 1815. I went by appointment to see 
 Lord Byron. He was busy when I first went in, and I 
 found Lady Byron alone. She did not seem so pretty to 
 me as she did the other day ; but what she may have lost 
 in regular beauty she made up in variety and expression 
 of countenance during the conversation. She is diffi- 
 dent, — she is very young, not more, I think, than nine- 
 teen — but is obviously possessed of talent, and did not 
 talk at all for display. For the quarter of an hour during 
 which I was with her, she talked upon a considerable 
 variety of subjects — ^America, of which she seemed to 
 know considerable ; of France, and Greece, with some- 
 thing of her husband's visit there, — and spoke of all with 
 a justness and a light good humour that would have 
 struck me even in one of whom I had heard nothing." 
 
 " June 26th, 181 5. I again met Lady Byron, and had 
 a very pleasant conversation with her until her carriage 
 came. . . . [Mrs. Siddons] formed a singular figure by 
 Lady Byron, who sat by her side, all grace and delicacy,'- 
 and this showed Mrs. Siddons's masculine powers in the 
 stronger light of comparison and contrast." 
 
 Ticknor finally ^ saw Lady Byron in her husband's box 
 at Drury Lane, June 27th, 181 5, when he wrote : 
 
 " Lady Byron more interesting than I have yet seen 
 her." 
 
 Ticknor wrote [later] of Lady Byron (July 14th, 1835) : 
 
 " The upper part of her face is still fresh and young ; 
 the lower part bears strong marks of suffering and sorrow. 
 Herwhole manner is very gentle and quiet, — not reserved, 
 but retiring, — and there are sure indications in it of deep 
 feeling. She is much interested in doing good, and 
 seemed anxious about a school she has established, to 
 
 ^ [I must record here that the portrait by J. Ramsay named " Lady Byron " 
 in the " Letters and Journals of Lord Byron," Vol. iv., p. 66, which is far from 
 depicting a person " all grace and delicacy," is a spurious one. See Note IL, 
 p. 318.— Ed.] 
 
 * [I.e., for the last time before the separation. — Ed.] 
 
 185 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 support, as well as educate, a number of poor boys, so as 
 to fit them to be teachers. She talked well, and once or 
 twice was amused, and laughed ; but it was plain that 
 she has little tendency to gaiety. . . . Her whole appear- 
 ance and conversation gratified me very much, it was so 
 entirely suited to her singular position in the world." 
 
 Mary Clarke (afterwards Madame Mohl), after seeing 
 Lady Byron, July 23rd, 1838, thought her prim, refined, 
 observant, devout, honest, respectable, fond of informa- 
 tion, not the least pretty, clever or amusing, but not 
 exactly stupid. 
 
 In remarkable contrast to this depreciation is Sir 
 WiUiam Molesworth's impression in 1833. He liked her 
 much : " she is a calm, dignified and certainly very clever 
 person ; expresses herself remarkably well and clearly, 
 rather stern in manners. We got on very well, as she is 
 almost a Radical, and we talked on education." 
 
 She was observed with much curiosity at Count Moje's 
 reception in the Academie Franjaise, December 30th, 
 1840. Chateaubriand was there to support his old friend 
 Mole, saw Lady Byron, and thought she looked as if she 
 had " pas assez de songes." 
 
 One of her defects was a want of suppleness ; " any 
 argument founded on expediency causes her to take a 
 decidedly opposite course." ^ She was not enough of a 
 politician, too much absorbed in high and stoical ideals 
 for herself and others. After the separation, this took 
 the form of saying and acting : " Happiness no longer 
 enters into my views." She too completely gave up all 
 that was congenial to youth, — " to bear and expiate a 
 past which was not hers." ^ She renounced the world of 
 enjoyment, like the founder of a severe monastic order, 
 and would have forced everyone under her power to Uve 
 a life of Spartan self-denial, and devotion to a somewhat 
 despotic philanthropy. Her ideal was like that of Pascal, 
 whom she particularly admired, in his renunciation of 
 the world. The devil she said she did not believe in, 
 
 1 From a letter of 1853. 
 
 '^ R. L. Stevenson, " Olalla." 
 
 186 
 
"WHEN WE DEAD AWAKE" 
 
 but under dislike of the name, the thing afterwards 
 defined by Huxley as the primacy of Satan, became to 
 her also virtually ever present. Her horror of the flesh 
 was almost excessive. For the government of the young 
 she adopted a system of coercion, which, amongst other 
 drawbacks, was self-destructive in its extreme severity. 
 She did not absolutely insist on cutting ofE all the 
 pleasures of life from girls, who are comparatively sub- 
 missive to family, chastity and law. But boys were to 
 be held without respite under restraint, deprived of the 
 appropriate amusements for their time of Hfe, condemned 
 to the society of the old and wise ; lest they should be 
 tempted to drink, gambling, and, above all, women. 
 She thought early profligacy more natural and even more 
 fatal to a man than to a woman, and held rightly enough 
 that the male reprobate is sure to end in an ignominious 
 old age. The force of this idea — exceeding dread of vices 
 the effects of which she had witnessed — took away from 
 her all sense of proportion of means to end. In her 
 extreme desire to stamp out vice and inforce asceticism, 
 she was not unlike the holy pontiff, Pius V, stated by a 
 chronicler to have been so occupied in re-establishing 
 and improving " his admirable inquisition " ^ that the 
 concerns of the people went to ruin. So Lady Byron 
 wasted energy on useless, abortive, or mischievous 
 schemes and illusions — co-operation, education, phreno- 
 logy, juvenile delinquents — and missed the good she 
 might have done within her own natural circle.^ She 
 
 ^ " Ce saint pape, tout occupy, comme on sait, de sa juste haine contre 
 I'Wrdsie et du r^tablissement de son admirable inquisition, n'eut que du m^pris 
 pour Tadministration temporelle de son £tat " (Stendhal, " Les Cenci," " traduc- 
 tion du Tidt contemporain ; il est en italien de Rome, et fut icx\t le J4 septembre, 
 
 1599 ")• 
 
 2 [An old friend, Mr. H. de Fellenberg Montgomery, who had lived from 
 boyhood in closest intimacy with Lady Byron and her family, writes the follow- 
 ing protest : — 
 
 " Lady Byron took a very important part in many movements for the benefit 
 of the people, and I believe that if the secret about her and Mrs. Leigh had not 
 been a bar to any life of her appearing shortly after her death, there would 
 probably have been a record published, and very properly, of her work during 
 the last forty years of her life, and her correspondence with many distinguished 
 men of that period. ... It is much to be regretted that circumstances made 
 
 187 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 seemed almost insensible to the ridiculous side of the 
 Utopia she dreamed of; unconscious of the dreariness 
 and futility of the world if transformed into a reforma- 
 tory by educational philanthropists, or a paradise for 
 Unitarian Saints.^ 
 
 The illusion of absolute Spiritualism, the impossibilities 
 of universal Altruism, were for her a refuge from the 
 hypocrisy and injustice of the world. Her circumstances 
 had trained her to a heroism of indignation against pubUc 
 or private wrong ; whilst she struck at least one good 
 observer as by nature " a woman capable of profound 
 and fervid enthusiasm, with a mind of rather a romantic 
 and visionary order." ^ Before her twenty-fourth birth- 
 day she had nothing more to learn of the sway of misery 
 and guilt. Her own visions and romance were judged 
 and ended. She was left to stern contemplation of the 
 surrounding system — softened by intense pity for the 
 wretched. 
 
 Church and State were under a dead weight of oppres- 
 sion tempered by the brutality of the rabble. A spirit 
 of revolt was in her as much as it ever was in Lord Byron. 
 She abjured the frivolous despotism of society, civil 
 coercion, bloodthirsty mobs, persecuting Protestantism, 
 greasy Methodism, the Judaic incubus. Vindictive 
 repression even of crime seemed hateful to her. She 
 could see no distinct boundary line between constables 
 and outlaws. Some outcasts were wicked and dangerous 
 
 such a memoir impossible at the time. ... I regret that ' grave and disastrous 
 deficiencies ' should be attributed to her, or that her conduct in turning her back 
 on a society which was mainly occupied in amusing itself, in order to try and 
 relieve the distresses of the poor (wUch in those days were great and grievous) 
 was altogether a mistake, and not rather a merit. My grandfather Fellenberg 
 [Emmanuel de Fellenberg of Berne, the great educationalist. — Ed.] wrote for 
 publication, under the lithograph of his portrait, the following words : — 
 " ' Den Reichen gebricht es selten an Hiilfe 
 
 Stehe du den Armen und Verlassenen bei.' " — Ed.] 
 
 ^ " En presence d'un relachement moral comme celui dont nous sommes les 
 t^moins, on se figure volontiers que I'ceuvre de la r6forme sociale consisterait a 
 donner au monde un peu d'honnSteti." ..." S'il n'est pas le fondateur, 
 Channing est vraiment le saint des unitaires." . . . " Le moindre inconvenient 
 du monde de Channing serait qu'on y mourrait d' ennui " (Renan, " Etudes 
 d'Histoire Religieuse "). 
 
 ' " Records of a Girlhood," by Frances Anne Kemble, i. 212. 
 
 188 
 
"WHEN WE DEAD AWAKE" 
 
 more by training than nature, and might once have been 
 saved, or yet be reclaimed. Her theory of the unreality 
 of evil was not very consistent with ascetic rigour. She 
 persuaded herself that man habitually falsified himself 
 by seeming bad, Hke assuming a disguise, and that good- 
 ness was human nature stripped of its disguise and seen 
 absolutely as it is. Perversion was an illusion. Duty 
 and self-denial were (with a Httle assistance and educa- 
 tion) the natural mode of being of almost everyone. All 
 the kindred absolutisms, religious, poHtical, social, or 
 personal, were alike repugnant to her ; and she was 
 disposed to love all who like herself were calumniated 
 and oppressed — Catholics, Negro slaves, the poor Irish 
 goaded into rebellion,-'- heretics like the Unitarians, 
 against whom every hand was raised. She was attracted 
 towards Channing by the mild and tolerant spirit of his 
 generation of American Unitarians. But she could no 
 more have found room for herself in the mean and frigid 
 halting-place of Unitarianism, than she would have been 
 drawn into the time-honoured fane of Catholicity — so 
 mysterious in its spacious grandeur -without apparent 
 soHdity.^ Many of the sectaries would have liked to 
 make a good heretic of her, but in this they were bound 
 to fail. She was impervious to dogmas of faith, ortho- 
 dox or heretical, Protestant or Popish, The way to 
 Rome was impenetrably closed to her, but she was a 
 very bad Protestant.^ She rejoiced over any one who 
 
 ^ Lady Byron's antipathy to the dominating system of Church and State in 
 Ireland -was inherited from her mother, Judith Milbanke, who had -written to 
 Mary Noel (an aunt), May 24th, 1797 : " certainly Ireland is at present a very 
 horrible place to be in. ... I observe parties of Seddon's regiment are often 
 ordered out to quell the poor oppressed Irish, who are driven desperate, and now 
 must be subdued at all Events." In 1843, during the O'Connell prosecution, 
 Lady Byron heartily desired a change in the Irish Church arrangements, and 
 looked forward with hope to a virtual Repeal of the Union. 
 
 ^ Renan has somewhere compared the cathedral of his native Triguier — 
 marvel of lightness, with forest-fike nave massed over void, foolhardy attempt 
 to realize in granite an impossible ideal — to the Catholic Church in its barbaric 
 vastness, strange witchcraft and beauty — and want of solidity. I cannot find 
 the passage, but take another description of the great stone book of his infancy 
 from the " Souvenirs." 
 
 ' Like Lord AmpthiU, who was thought so charming at the Vatican that some 
 true believer asked Pius IX whether he might not be on the way to be a 
 
 189 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 stood out against worldly inducements and even family 
 influence to " work out the will of his conscience." 
 
 A son of some lifelong friends changed his religion and 
 sacrificed a good income in 1850. She wrote : " I always 
 
 regretted that did not become a Catholic. — His 
 
 character would have been the better for it. The struggle 
 to prevent it shortened his father's Hfe — Had the step 
 been resolutely taken, the struggle would have been 
 precluded — . . . He is at least one who will never offer 
 a prayer to Mammon — Should the time ever come 
 when such a communication would be proper, pray say 
 how much I honor him. . • . When aU strife between 
 the nearest Relatives is ended by final measures, the 
 natural feelings flow forth again, for the cause of restraint 
 is removed. It must be a great happiness to those who 
 have ceased to be in a position of Antagonism." 
 
 Some years before that a young woman who was more 
 than a daughter to her had taken the same step. Lady 
 Olivia Acheson was the child of one of her dearest 
 friends, Lady Gosford. Lady Byron's affection for both 
 was very strong. On Lady Gosford's death, she took 
 this much-loved OHvia more than ever to her heart. 
 Lady Olivia went into charitable works and a convent 
 at Birmingham, and in 185 1 she was ill, and probably 
 felt she was not long for this world. (She died in March, 
 1852, to the extreme grief of her adopted mother.) In 
 June, 185 1, Lady Byron went to Birmingham for a 
 meeting which was to be the last, and on the 12th she 
 wrote : " Olivia said to me — ' I could not help thinking 
 this morning how happy it would make me to see you a 
 Catholic before I die ! ' You will conceive that this was 
 to be met by sympathy not opposition and with tender- 
 ness and gratitude. She cannot conceive Faith to exist 
 out of a collective body — and because she sees me alone, 
 she believes me without Faith. I reminded her how 
 many of her Catholics had in their day stood alone — 
 
 Catholic. " He will never get there," said the Pope, " but you may be pleased 
 to hear that he is a very bad Protestant, — -ma posso dim che i pessimo pro- 
 testante." 
 
 190 
 
"WHEN WE DEAD AWAKE" 
 
 what self-denial it required, what fidelity to God, — not 
 to join in outward as well as in inward communion with 
 the beloved, and I felt it at that moment. — " 
 
 Lady Byron was, during her visit to Birmingham, 
 introduced to John Henry Newman, whose impression 
 was stated to be that she would never come to his religion. 
 There was a secret antagonism between them, because 
 she thought he encouraged Lady Olivia to go out against 
 Dr. Bence Jones's injunctions. In those days doctors 
 dreaded fresh air for her malady, which was consumption. 
 Lady Byron remarked that, phrenologically, Newman's 
 veneration was excessive, logic and benevolence wanting. 
 She had quite as much aversion as he for the popular 
 Protestantism of that time, in other words, the dogma- 
 tism of the uninformed, the alliance of fanaticism with 
 vulgarity.^ She wished for no penal laws to suppress 
 old beliefs or young enthusiasms, but impartial liberty 
 for all, even for the enemies of liberty. Like Renan she 
 held that the iniquities and absurdities of spiritual 
 potentates or demagogues would become harmless with 
 equal law — the unfailing sterilizer of the reciprocal rage 
 and hate of Calvin and Philip the Second. ^ No outcry 
 for preventive statutes, royal supremacy or popular 
 control of other people's religion got sympathy from her. 
 What she applauded was the cry of free minds and large 
 hearts : " Dream not that divine truth can be bought 
 with the coin of human injury." She felt all the scorn of 
 
 1 In a letter of Lady Byron's of 1842 I find the following quotation from a 
 new book of HaUam's (he had compared the Reformation of the sixteenth 
 century to the Revolutionary innovations starting from 1789) : 
 
 " In each the characteristic features are a contempt for antiquity, a shifting 
 of prejudices, an inzoard sense of self-esteem leading to an assertion of private 
 judgment in the most uninformed, a sanguine confidence in the amelioration of 
 human affairs, a fixing of the heart on great ends, with a comparative disregard 
 of things intermediate." 
 
 " Le protestantisme partait d'une foi tres absolue. Loin de correspondre k 
 un afiaiblissement du dogmatisme, la R^forme marque une renaissance de 
 I'esprit chrftien le plus rigide " (Renan, " Les Ap6tres," p. xli). 
 
 ^ " Si, au lieu de faire conduire Polyeucte au supplice, le magistral remain 
 I'eut renvoy^ en souriant et en lui serrant amicalement la main, Polyeucte n'eut 
 pas recommence ; peiit-6tre m4me, sur ses vieux jours, eut-il ri de son escapade 
 et fut-il devenu uni Jirme de bons sens " (Renan, " Conferences d'Angleterre," 
 p. Z07). 
 
 191 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 James Martineau for " religious liberties held on no 
 tenure of immutable justice, but only during theo- 
 logical good behaviour." ^ Pity for sufferers from 
 extremes of cruelty — ^however long ago — and whether 
 innocent or not, made her friendly even to those aliens 
 in race and religion who are well able to take care of 
 themselves — adepts at gain and retaliation. 
 
 " Wroth without cause — revenged without a wrong — 
 
 * * * 
 Racked by an idle lust of useless gold — 
 
 * * * 
 
 A people nationless — ^whom every land — 
 Receives to punish — & preserves to brand 
 Yet still enduring all — & all in vain — 
 The doomed inheritors of scorn & pain — 
 Untaught by sufferance — ^unreclaimed from ill — 
 Hating & hated — stubborn Israel still " ^ 
 
 She was influenced by the worth of some individuals of 
 the Jewish invasion, and would not think them guilty 
 of the principles and practice of their own old books — 
 books which more than anyone she considered to be the 
 most pernicious popular reading. She was unwilling to 
 discover the claim and boast by the present Jews of 
 identity with the Jacobins of the Old Testament.^ 
 
 ^ " No one thinks of insisting on humility of mind as a condition for the 
 franchise, or denying the alderman's gown except to the shoulders of modest 
 innocence ; and as little can we make the temper of a Church the qualifying 
 ground of its civil freedom." " Had this (the pretensions of Rome) been a 
 secret twenty years ago [in 1829], the removal of Catholic disabilities would 
 lose not only every noble, but every respectable feature ; and would be degraded 
 from an act of legislative rectitude to the level of a defeated bargain, or an 
 extorted boon. But it was no secret : the repeated parliamentary debates, 
 the protracted controversies between the established and the disabled com- 
 munion, had long brought out every feature of the case ; and nothing was done 
 but with open eyes " (James Martineau in the " Westminster Review," January, 
 1851). 
 
 * From Lord Byron's manuscript (in Lady Byron's papers) of his fragment 
 " Magdalen." 
 
 * " Moise est un conventionnel parlant du haut de la Montagne " (James 
 Darmesteter as quoted by M. Bourget in " L'Etape "). 
 
 Both destructives and conservatives have found in the Bible what never was 
 there, but it is more specious to classify Joel and Amos amongst the coUectivists 
 
 192 
 
"WHEN WE DEAD AWAKE" 
 
 Whilst decidedly alienated from the Old Testament, she 
 was not unreservedly attached to the New, which with 
 her hardly ranked above Tacitus, Dante, Pascal, Chateau- 
 briand,^ Wordsworth and Shakespeare. Christ was for 
 her the Man of Sorrows, the Poet of the deathbed, who 
 knew what was in man, and had compassion upon all. 
 He was " the friend of all the distressed," who remained 
 till the end, when Dante and Shakespeare were powerless 
 to console. Her own brightest side showed itself to 
 those who were in presence of trouble, pain, remorse, or 
 death. She could give very great comfort, having deep 
 feeling with self-command, ability to turn her own mind 
 and other people's away from present scenes, from the 
 darkness and dread of the last hour. 
 
 Wisdom about the conduct of life flowed too late into 
 Lady Byron's mind. But she was capable of learning 
 by experience and always candid. After looking back 
 on many afflictions and some mistakes, she once wrote 
 very late in her life to a friend : 
 
 " It has appeared to me from the consequences of 
 many facts in my own and others' conduct, that all 
 exaggerations of a good feeling are chastised with great 
 severity. I believe I may say without exception that I 
 have never been ill-used to any great extent, except by 
 those for whom I had gone beyond the common limits of 
 
 than to convert Moses into the first Jacobin, thus condemning him to the com- 
 pany of " the first Whig." 
 
 The accounts of the age of the prophets are full of revolutionary crimes, such 
 as the murder of Jezebel, recalling the massacres of September, or the butchery 
 of the priests of Baal, like those of the Paris commune ; andundoubtedly the 
 Old Testament in the hands of demagogues since the Reformation has been used 
 to instigate and excuse manifold atrocities. The subversive tendencies of parts 
 of the Old Testament have been made the most of by Semitic agitators in their 
 enmity to the invaded communities. It has been well said of some modern 
 Jewish ideas that : " On y lisait le ressouvenir des persecutions et I'audace 
 intellectueUe d'une race qui, ayant trop souffert, ayant trop connu les pires 
 extremit^s du sort, ne tremble pas devant la perspective de bouleversements 
 moins terribles que ses anciennes miseres " (" L'^tape "). 
 
 ^ Lady Byron was a special student of the newly-recovered authentic text 
 of the " Pens^es." She read with me in Latin the " Germania," and the first 
 books of the " Annals." I well remember her exceptional interest in Chateau- 
 briand — his tomb on the Grand B^ in the midst of his own sea — " cette patrie 
 qui voyage avec nous," and the " Mimoires d'outre Tombe." 
 
 A. 193 O 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 kindness. I have not quite made out the sequences by 
 which such results can be accounted for. Perhaps the 
 kindness directed to those channels was withdrawn from 
 others which had a better right to it. I think it was, 
 in one or two cases, but not in the majority. Perhaps 
 the kindness itself was alloyed by some mixture of 
 personal indulgence or self-complacency. Had it been 
 purer, would it have brought bitter instead of pleasant 
 fruits ? And besides, I may suppose there was a want 
 of adaptation in the benefits to the" nature of the persons 
 to be benefited, in other words, a want of judgment. 
 Still the consequences have looked like a stern retribu- 
 tion. . , . 
 
 " What you have said concerning the exhaustion of 
 good feelihgs by their effusion,^ is not less true of bact 
 feelings, and I therefore consider the latter as arrows 
 spent when they have left the bow. It appears to me 
 foUy to act upon the supposition that because they were 
 once aimed at me, they would still be aimed." 
 
 Never were words more applicable to Lord Byron 
 (cf. p. 3)- . 
 
 The blend in Lady Byron of generosity, fortitude, 
 sternness, gentleness, affection, altruism and implaca- 
 bility struck two men with amazement at a time of 
 
 ^ This was possibly inspired by jn passage of Cardinal Newman's. I only 
 know it as given in " Polonius " (Pickering, 1852, Ixxi) : " God has made us 
 feel in order that we may go on to act in consequence of feeling. If, then, 
 we allow our feelings to be excited without acting upon them, we do mischief to 
 the moral system within us, just as we might spoil a watch or other piece of 
 mechanism by playing with the wheels of it. We weaken the springs, and they 
 cease to act truly. . . . For instance, we will say we have read again and again 
 of the heroism of facing danger, and we have glowed with the thought of its 
 nobleness ; we have felt how great it is to bear pain and to submit to indignities 
 rather than wound our conscience, and all this again and again when we had 
 no opportunity of carrying our good feelings into practice. Now suppose at 
 length we actually come to trial and let us say our feelings become roused, as 
 often before, at the thought of boldly resisting temptations to cowardice. 
 Shall we therefore do our duty, quitting ourselves like men ? Rather, we are 
 likely to talk loudly and then run from the danger — why ? rather let us ask, 
 why not f What is to keep us from yielding f Because we /«eZ aright ? Nay, 
 we have again and again felt aright, and thought aright, without accustoming 
 ourselves to act aright, and though there was an original connection in our 
 minds between feeling and acting, there is none now ; the wires within us, as 
 they may be called, are loosened and weakened." 
 
 194 
 
"WHEN WE DEAD AWAKE" 
 
 supreme sorrow and difficulty — one of whom wrote with 
 the fideUty and attachment of thirty-seven years, the 
 other with the concentrated bitterness of a rupture that 
 was hardly Lady Byron's fault and not entirely his. 
 
 Lady Noel Byron had written to the Earl of Lovelace 
 on January 4th, 1853 : 
 
 " To you, Lovelace, I have been the most faithful 
 of friends & at no time more actively & self-sacrificingly 
 than in the last year & a half." 
 
 And in his answer of January 6th, 1853, were these 
 remarkable words : 
 
 " And yet with all your severity and coldness which 
 drives me into these indignant remonstrances with you, 
 the last page of your letter is too true for me not to re- 
 echo and confirm it. You have been too noble and gene- 
 rous (in some things) self-denying in all for me not to bear 
 ready testimony to it. In most fine qualities you have 
 not your equal on earth, and my love for you is as ardent 
 as ever however you may repel it. I hold you in respect 
 and admiration more than ever — but your want of sym- 
 pathy (in spite of all your gentleness) with those who do 
 not feel exactly as you do, has cruelly destroyed what 
 of certainty hope & comfort remained to me." 
 
 Dr. Lushington had a few months earher, during a very 
 distressing period of illness and trouble — that of the last 
 illness of Lady Byron's daughter- — ^written of his friend 
 of so many years : 
 
 " If there be a wonderful person in this world it is Lady 
 NB : her energy of mind, her bodily exertions, the 
 strength of her affection, the cool decision of her judg- 
 ment, all increase instead of diminishing by the con- 
 tinued severity of the trial — I am in boundless admira- 
 tion of her — of her heart, intellect and governed mind- 
 Most brightly she shines in this dark shade of 
 Affliction " 1 
 
 But the character and life of Lady Byron are not 
 public property. She was condemned by a Pharisee 
 
 1 The Rt. Hon. Stephen Lushington, D.C.L., to Frances Carr, September 2nd, 
 1852. 
 
 195 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 race with usurped jurisdiction. The false witness against 
 her was not consciously or intentionally the work of her 
 husband. Criminal use was made of his dreadful, but 
 not wholly unnatural and insincere, words. The shame 
 and the guilt belong to strangers who intervened without 
 right and accused without cause. 
 
 196 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 ADDITIONAL LETTERS ^ : FROM ANNE ISABELLA 
 BYRON, AUGUSTA LEIGH AND THERESE VILLIERS 
 
 rTTTHEN after two months of uncertainty (January 
 L V V and February, 1816) the theory of Byron's mad- 
 ness was finally abandoned by the doctors, the full 
 meaning of certain words and acts of his, which had 
 hitherto been ignored by Lady Byron as being based 
 upon insane illusions, had to be faced. Among other 
 consequences a change in her relations with Mrs. Leigh 
 became inevitable. The full story of this period will 
 be found in Chapter IIL, p. 60, and onwards. It is 
 there told how Mrs. Leigh's intimate friend, Mrs. Villiers,^ 
 pressed Lady Byron to discredit publicly the rumours 
 then widely current about the guilty connection between 
 Byron and Augusta, and how Lady Byron was compelled 
 to explain her position fully to Mrs. Villiers. 
 
 The forty letters or portions of letters here given begin 
 almost immediately after this explanation had taken 
 place. They are printed in full so far as they are relevant 
 to " Astarte," and the only omissions are passages of a 
 purely domestic or temporary interest. They comprise 
 the earlier portion (May to September, 1 8 1 6) of a very long 
 and voluminous correspondence. They show how — 
 beginning with a resolution to break off all intercourse 
 with Mrs. Leigh except such as might have to be feigned 
 in public — ^Lady Byron quickly yielded to feelings of pity 
 and sympathy for one who was in fact her fellow victim ; 
 how she welcomed with thankfulness Mrs. Leigh's 
 asseverations that no actual guilt had taken place since 
 
 * See Introduction, pp. viii and ix. 
 ^ See p. 57, note 2. 
 
 197 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Byron's marriage, and how finally she yielded to her 
 longing to see and speak again with Augusta. The two 
 women appear to have been irresistibly drawn to each 
 other. They met in the early days of September, 
 1816, and the complete acknowledgraent by Augusta 
 of her guilt and Byron's, made verbally, was at once 
 communicated by Lady Byron to Mrs. ViUiers. From 
 allusions in Lady Byron's memoranda to many things 
 said by Augusta, it is evident that their conversations 
 were long and detailed. It was an unburdening of 
 hearts on both sides. 
 
 Augusta was made aware that Mrs. Villiers, hitherto 
 the most determined champion of her supposed innocence, 
 now knew all. A short period of embarrassment ensued 
 between them. Mrs. Villiers' letter of September 15 to 
 Lady Byron, and Mrs. Leigh's letter to Lady Byron on 
 September 17 commenting on her words, show how 
 this embarrassment was boldly ended by Mrs. Villiers, 
 and how Augusta acquiesced in her knowledge of the 
 truth. 
 
 It was at this meeting in September that Augusta 
 entered into the compact with Lady Byron under which 
 for years she sent her Byron's letters to herself regularly 
 as she received them, and undertook to act in all things 
 regarding him by Lady Byron's advice. 
 
 For the next few years the correspondence between 
 the sisters-in-law consists mainly of comments on these 
 letters of Byron's, with anxious discussions of his possible 
 return to England, and of the effect on the pubHc of the 
 more or less distinct allusions to Augusta in his published 
 poems. A few phrases from some of the letters here 
 printed were quoted by the author in Chapter III., and 
 ten more letters of later date, with the passionate out- 
 burst from Byron (May 17, 18 19) which occasioned 
 them, will be found in Chapter IV. 
 
 Byron's own letters to Augusta and three to Lady 
 Byron will be found in Chapter XL 
 
 The italics in all these letters are those of the writers 
 themselves. The notes are throughout mine. — Ed.] 
 
 198 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (i) 
 
 Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Villiers. 
 
 Kirkby. May 6 1816. 
 Private. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Villiers, I have burnt your letter, which 
 relieved me from some anxiety. I should have great 
 
 consolation in thinking that A was more deluded 
 
 than deceiving in the opinions she now declares — for, to 
 me,_dupUcity is the most unpardonable crime — the only 
 one that could alienate my kindness from her. Your 
 argument that the Physician should know the whole of 
 the Malady, would lead me to regret that a natural 
 horror of the subject, and a feeling for her, had kept 
 me so long silent to you — and even when I did speak, 
 the only effect I meant to produce was that of inclining 
 you to forgive whilst you lamented this impression on 
 my mind, without at all convincing you of its justice. 
 Nor do I now assert that it is in my power to convince 
 you, though my own opinion is unalterable — but you 
 shall receive any information by which you can be enabled 
 to do her good. My great object, next to the Security 
 of my Child, is, therefore, the restoration of her mind to 
 that state which is religiously desirable. I differ from 
 you in regard to the effects of an unequivocal communica- 
 tion. It is easier for the injured than the guilty to 
 pardon, & I doubt if any woman would forgive to 
 another such an avowal. I have sometimes thought 
 that a tacit understanding existed between her and me 
 — particularly when she beUeved him acquitted by 
 Insanity, and seemed herself sinking under the most 
 dreadful remorse — but her tone has since changed from 
 penitence to pride. It is scarcely possible she could on 
 various occasions have supposed me unconscious, unless 
 that tenderness towards her which encreased my grief 
 & compassion, rendered her blind to impressions that 
 anyone, situated as I was, must have received — and I 
 do not conceive that the repetition of his words to me in 
 private, could make a change in her feelings, if what 
 passed in her presence did not. 
 
 199 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 In regard to the promise — if there were such a previous 
 condition she would attribute to it any subsequent 
 kindness on my part — which would therefore lose every 
 beneficial or consolatory effect to her — but I hope to 
 reconcile & surmount these obstacles by some means — 
 Perhaps no human power can create the spirit of humility 
 and repentance which I pray God to bestow upon her — 
 If you would do her good, you judge most wisely in 
 appearing wholly unsuspicious — Let us not be impatient 
 with a " mind diseased " — but wait to assist the effects 
 of Time — Absence — and I hope — Solitude — ^for it is not 
 whilst reflection is excluded by the engagements of 
 Society, that moral principle can be revived — Nor do I 
 think it can be forced upon the mind by sudden or 
 violent means — Whatever may be the intermediate 
 circumstances, it wiU be in her power to reclaim my 
 friendship whenever it can really serve her for more than 
 worldly purposes — to speak seriously as I feel, I regard 
 this as a Christian duty — 
 
 There are parts of my conduct I wish to explain to 
 you — particularly how I came to express satisfaction in 
 her remaining in London during my first visit here — ^ 
 though before I left it I had strongly advised her removal 
 for her own sake. I had even told her what D" Baillie 
 said, upon the presumption of Insanity, that he ought 
 not to be left with any ^ young woman after my depar- 
 ture. My anxiety to prevent her continuing in the 
 house was such, that I thought it my duty to confide 
 to Mrs. Byron ^ only, the horrible desires he had enter- 
 tained and gave her permission to communicate them 
 to A — if absolutely necessary to save her from impru- 
 dence about him. I afterwards wrote to M"^ B — from 
 hence, saying that my apprehensions were relieved by 
 Capt. B's residence in the house — A's letters to me 
 here also weakened these impressions of existing danger, 
 
 ^ Lady Byron had gone to Kirkby in April of the preceding year to see 
 her uncle, Lord Wentworth, on his deathbed. 
 * Underlined twice. 
 ^ Mrs. Sophia Byron, " Aunt Sophy." 
 
 200 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (i) 
 
 which I was always struggling to repel. Still it was 
 only when my enfeebled & distracted state of mind was 
 worked upon by the representations of hazard to Lord 
 B — if left alone, that I uttered those expressions, which 
 almost all her letters were calculated to extort — & before 
 I left this place, I decidedly expressed to her my convic- 
 tion that those fears which were the alledged causes of 
 her stay were groundless. 
 
 I will observe about Col. Leigh — but I wrote to him 
 such a letter the first time I came here, as must have 
 answered the effect I then intended, of preventing his 
 suspicions, which could only do harm — 
 
 Say you have received this — & if its contents can be 
 of any use, I will not regret the pain which every dis- 
 cussion of this topic costs me — 
 
 Believe me — very truly & affectionately yours 
 
 AIB 
 
 P.S. — My late maid's trunks, when opened in conse- 
 quence of the execution, were found to contain divers 
 stolen goods — so much for the respectable witness — ! 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Villiers to Lady Byron. 
 
 Thursday May 9th. [1816]. 
 My dear Lady Byron 
 
 Your kind letter reached me very safely yester- 
 day — and I sincerely thank you for it. Whatever steps 
 you take towards the attainment of the objects you 
 have in view will, I have no doubt, be right, & I can 
 only again repeat that if I can in any degree contribute 
 to either I shall at all times be most happy (&) ready to 
 comply with your wishes — Nothing can be more amiable 
 than all your feelings towards poor A. & I trust the time 
 will come when she will fully appreciate them. Her 
 fever has not yet subsided — and the wretched condition 
 of her own affairs must and will for a time, prevent all 
 retrospective recollections turning to good account. 
 Her expressions of conscious innocence to me are cer- 
 tainly wonderful — but I think I can, under various pre- 
 
 201 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 tences, check intemperate language to all but myself, 
 where it wiU do no harm. It is very good of you to enter 
 into any details with me explanatory of your conduct — 
 I feel I have no possible right to ask them — ^yet your 
 confidence almost inclines me to risk being indiscreet. 
 If I am so — send me no answer — but I feel so sure that 
 you had a good reason for every action, that I wish if 
 possible to be able to assign such to myself, as well as 
 others, for one thing — namely — your having urged A. to 
 come to town during your confinement. — ^This circum- 
 stance was mentioned to me by A. in consequence of 
 her having heard both from the Wilmots and me that 
 Ld. Byron had allowed himself to advance opinions 
 publickly wh. could not but create the reports that had 
 been circulated — & she says " if Ly. B. had ever heard 
 such reports or if she had not treated them with the 
 contempt they deserved, would she have invited me to 
 come ? " I confess I constantly used this argument my- 
 self while she was in Piccadilly & this makes me perhaps 
 doubly anxious to be set right in this particular. Nothing 
 could be more natural than your wish for her to remain 
 a few days after you left town under all the circum- 
 stances you mention — Dr. Baillie's opinion was entirely 
 suppressed to me — and so have many other things not 
 unnaturally — tho' alas all this confirms the recent 
 impression I have received. 
 
 The anecdote of your maid is very satisfactory — I 
 never thought much faith shd. be given to her evidence 
 but this ought to be known. Always believe me very 
 affectionately yours 
 
 T. V. 
 
 Lady Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers. 
 
 Kirkby. May 12. 18 16. 
 
 My dear Mrs Villiers — I consider it as a very kind 
 proof of your wish to do me justice that you desire to 
 know my reasons, which I shall have real satisfaction 
 in submitting to you — 
 
 202 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (i) 
 
 It must be remembered that my Conviction was pro- 
 gressively formed, and not till lately fixed — and though 
 my suspicion had b^en awakened very early, it was not 
 at the period you allude to, sufficiently corroborated to 
 have been made a principle of conduct without risking 
 a cruel injury to one who professed herself most affec- 
 tionately & disinterestedly devoted to my welfare. 
 There was no medium — I must either have treated her 
 as guilty or innocent — ^My Instinct too strongly dictated 
 the former, but the evidence then rested chiefly on his 
 words & manners, & her otherwise unaccountable assent 
 & submission to both. If you regret that I did not 
 attach more weight to my own wretched doubts, you 
 wiU not dislike the feeling which rejected them as long 
 as possible. Besides at the time of her return to Picca- 
 dilly, I conceived there was no danger to her from him, 
 as his inclinations were most averse from her, & absorbed 
 in another direction — and believing that the residence 
 of any human being in the house would be the means of 
 saving myself and my child, I had but her to look to, 
 and was almost compelled to banish the ideas that 
 would have deprived me of this last resource. Never- 
 theless before I allowed her to come, for she had many 
 times offered it, I seriously urged her to reflect on the 
 consequences that might ensue to herself. During her 
 last visit my suspicions as to previous circumstances 
 were most strongly corroborated — above aU by her con- 
 fessions & admissions when in a state of despair & dis- 
 traction. They were of the most unequivocal nature 
 possible, unless she had expressly named the subject of 
 her remorse and horror. I have answered them in as 
 pointed a manner — ^and have urged to her that every- 
 thing was expiable by repentance, when she repeatedly 
 said she had forfeited all hope of salvation^ — I must have 
 had a heart of iron could I then have cast her off— No — 
 she was only dearer to me, and I felt more bound to be 
 the support of one whom I thought broken-hearted. I 
 honor you — and love you for being her determined 
 friend — ^it is the best privilege of an unblemished reputa- 
 
 Z03 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 tion to be kind to victims like her. Do not trouble 
 yourself about her unjust language concerning me. If 
 it had been my principal object to gain worldly opinion, 
 you must be sensible that I should have acted dif- 
 ferently throughout. Perhaps she does not feel towards 
 me the anger she may think it necessary to show. You 
 observe her omissions. It has appeared to me that all 
 she has or has not said, has had so studied a reference 
 to one consideration as to prove that it constantly 
 occupied her thoughts. — Guilt has often betrayed itself 
 by the endeavour to make out a good case — and I will 
 venture to assert that her letters, if aU produced to- 
 gether, would strongly tend to such an effect, by pro- 
 viding against it — ^When I teU you that Ld. B. made 
 two, and I believe three of the worst women in London 
 his confidantes on this subject, even in detail — and 
 even on paper — you will not wonder at the report 
 — I have been the means of silencing its principal 
 sources. . . . 
 
 Ever yours affectly. 
 
 A. I. B. 
 
 I have written to thank Col. L for a letter apprizing 
 
 me of the event ^ which you of course have heard. 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Villiers to Lady Byron. 
 
 Saturday May i8th (1816). 
 
 You do me but justice, my dear Lady Byron, but you 
 do it in the kindest manner, when you say that you 
 believe it was from a wish to do you justice, & not from 
 any motives of impertinent curiosity that I ventured 
 to ask the question I did. Nothing I am sure can be 
 more satisfactory to my mind than your answer — and if 
 it were possible (which I hardly think) for you to stand 
 higher in my estimation than you did before, it would 
 be from the explanation you have so fuUy and kindly 
 given me on the only point which still perplexed me. It 
 
 ' Birth of Mrs. Leigh's son Frederick. 
 204 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (i) 
 
 is a matter of great regret, (I will not say of reproach) to 
 me to find how frequently I have been induced from 
 A's partial statements, which I believed made with the 
 most unreserved confidence, to give the very worst 
 advice possible. She frequently wrote to me in the 
 autumn stating your urgent requests to her to go to 
 town, her alarm that things were not going on well, and 
 that you thought she might be of use. Col. L's humeur 
 at her going & asking my advice — ^her offers of going, 
 & your admonitions to her to reflect on the consequences 
 were suppressed — & I unequivocally advised her going, 
 telling her that after all the kindness she had experienced 
 from you she should not hesitate to make the only 
 return in her power. In short it is useless now to go over 
 the numerous instances where I now find I have been 
 made accessory to her doing the very things she ought 
 most to have avoided — all this cannot be recalled — the 
 object must be now to reduce her tone again from pride 
 to penitence — & to produce a change in her feelings for 
 her own sake as well as for that of others. 
 
 I fancy that I now understand & read her mind upon 
 this subject — I may be wrong — but I will give you my 
 reasons — She frequently asserted to me in her letters 
 when she first left town that she knew the reports 
 originated in M. House ^ & were circulated by Ly. C. L.^ 
 I told her in reply that tho' what she said might be true, 
 yet that Ld. B. had by his imprudent way of talking 
 given ample grounds for such reports — She then expressed 
 herself with great warmth — assuring me I had been 
 misinformed, that whoever ventured to assert that he 
 had so done spoke untruly, for that he had given her his 
 solemn word of honor that he never had said anything 
 that could give rise to any report of the kind, that she 
 must believe his word, could not, would not believe him 
 dishonourable, &c., &c. To all this I briefly replied that 
 two years ago he had advanced at Holland House the 
 most extraordinary theory upon such subjects, & that 
 
 ^ Melbourne House. 
 ' Lady Caroline Lamb. 
 
 205 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 the person from whom I heard it was one whose veracity 
 was undoubted — When she found I alluded to things 
 said in general terms, & not any direct allusion to her, 
 she softened — said it was a pity he wd. say such things 
 that she had often remonstrated in vain — that he only 
 said these things to surprise people & that his words did 
 him more harm than his actions &c !: — All this and many 
 other things of the same sort lead me to believe that he 
 did give his word of honor that he had never betrayed 
 her to you or to anyone else, more than by such things 
 as may have passed in her presence, which she may think 
 do not after all amount to proof & might be set down to 
 the score of his general cruelty to you — ^her submission 
 & almost tacit acknowledgment at the moment I con- 
 ceive to have arisen from her conviction of his insanity 
 & consequent dread of his betraying her. Now I cannot 
 but think that if she was told by some proper person, & 
 perhaps no one could do this so properly as Mr. Wilmot, 
 how completely he had committed her to you : if she 
 could be told certain facts which could only be known 
 to you thro' him & which perhaps she must feel to be 
 true — if above all she could be made to believe the fact 
 you mention in your letter of his having even betrayed 
 her in writing to two or three women, surely nobody but 
 Calantha'^ could remain infatuated after that — ^With 
 such knowledge absence would essentially save her. 
 Without it I cannot but foresee a probable evil — that 
 from the state of their circumstances he may propose to 
 her to go abroad to him, she may think it a better alter- 
 native than starvation (believing the world ignorant) & 
 Col. L. is quite capable of acquiescing in it. You say she 
 would never forgive you for such an avowal of your 
 knowledge — but who is to suffer for her unforgiveness — 
 not you — but her — & this she has sense enough to see 
 after the first entetement is over — & her affection for 
 her children will I think prevent her attempting to 
 make any resistance that shd. produce an eclat which 
 must terminate in her ruin and theirs. I really feel 
 
 ' Heroine of Lady Caroline Lamb's novel of " Glenarvon." 
 206 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (i) 
 
 ashamed of the quantity I have written — nothing can 
 excuse it but your extreme kindness & tenderness 
 towards poor A. I do not believe she ever now alludes 
 to her impression of your coldness to anyone but me, at 
 least she tells me not — but I don't believe it would 
 signify the least now. The general impression, as far as 
 I am a judge, is so perfectly now what it should be — a 
 very judicious letter of yours ^ which I have seen circu- 
 lated respecting Ld. B.'s systematic cruelty has done 
 much good, & even this most extraordinary production 
 " Glenarvon " tends to do you justice in the eyes of the 
 world — for nobody doubts the correctness of Glenarvon's 
 character — Of course you have read it & did you ever 
 read such a book ? 
 
 A. never told me of your promise to her about Georgy 
 nor do I know now what it is — Pray tell me — ^Whatever 
 it is I cannot but consider it a most extraordinary act of 
 kindness. 
 
 Believe me my dear Lady Byron I most willingly give 
 credit to whatever expressions of kindness & regard you 
 are good enough to bestow upon me for few things can 
 be so gratifying to me as in any degree to possess your 
 affection or good opinion — & I am too anxious to retain 
 them not to rejoice at your unchanging disposition — ^it 
 is perhaps but a poor return though a very true one to 
 tell you how sincerely I am ever affectionately yrs 
 
 T. V. 
 
 Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Villiers. 
 
 Kirkby. May 23. 18 16. 
 My dear Mrs. Villiers — 
 
 I will first state my objections to the plan of a 
 full & immediate communication — then tell you what 
 will I think effect all the desired ends without risk of 
 
 any sort 
 
 " The fever has not yet subsided " — it is perhaps the 
 crisis — and would you submit to one in a state of 
 delirium or " infatuation " a point of conduct on which 
 
 ^ See postscript to Lady Byron's letter of May 23. 
 207 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 all the future welfare of that individual must depend ? 
 From all I learn of her present temper, no result but 
 that of precipitate desperation can be expected. She 
 would defy accusation till she would force me to what I 
 most deprecate — ^to countenance the report, and it 
 could afford me no satisfaction that the effects of her 
 imprudent resentment should recoil upon herself. A 
 short absence has been said to increase passion — a lone 
 one to exhaust it — and I think this peculiarly true of 
 dispositions like hers. Any compulsory attempt to 
 divide, has, with every one, the effect of attaching the 
 feeUngs more closely, but they may die away if not kept 
 alive by the presence of their object. I am decidedly 
 of opinion that he wUl not wish her to follow him — but 
 were there such a probability, I would use every power 
 to prevent it — Might she not be driven to this alterna- 
 tive by finding her reputation here even more precarious 
 than she had imagined ? — if she does not know how far 
 he has betrayed her, which I partly doubt from her 
 anticipations of the Report in a particular quarter, (as 
 I could show you in a letter of hers to me previous to 
 my father's proposal of a separation) and from what I 
 have heard him say to her — I beheve you read her 
 motives justly, and I fear that much of the despair, 
 which I hoped to be the work of returning Conscience, 
 arose from her dread of exposure. 
 
 The measure which I propose to take appears to me 
 to unite the following advantages — that it wiU make 
 herself acquainted with my real opinions & feelings, 
 without binding me to avow them pubhcly, should she 
 be desperate in the first impulse — that it wiU neverthe- 
 less suspend this terror over her, to be used as her future 
 dispositions & conduct may render expedient — ^whilst 
 it leaves her the power of profiting by my forbearance, 
 without compelling the utterly degrading confession of 
 her own guilt 
 
 I intend then to write to her in substance as foUows : 
 [Lady Byron now gives a short rSsumS of her letter of 
 June 3rd to Mrs. Leigh which follows this one. — Ed.] 
 
 208 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (i) 
 
 I wish to recur once more to my former letters of 
 which she told you to justify her second visit. As I 
 wrote to her upon condition she should burn, I am 
 anxious not to avail myself of that circumstance to deny 
 anything she might otherwise have shown in her 
 defence — My letters certainly expressed both confidence 
 & affection. The only reason for her visit that I dwelt 
 upon was the possibility of preventing mischief to him 
 — & were she conscious of a cause why she could not 
 have that power, the whole ground of my receiving her 
 was taken away — & she could not to herself assign any 
 other. He had threatened to bring a mistress into the 
 house during my confinement — and to this moment I 
 believe he would, had she not been there — So that 
 between his actual cruelty — and her seeming kindness 
 I can scarcely say I had an option. One of the most 
 singular circumstances was this : After his visit for a 
 week to Six M. — ^ (Aug. 3 1) she wrote to me more than 
 once saying she had things that might be very material 
 to communicate to me — but would not trust them on 
 paper. When she came, and I asked what they were — 
 having been most anxious to see her for that reason as 
 well as others, she made an embarrassed excuse, & had 
 nothing to communicate. 
 
 As she had in the summer expressed anxiety about 
 Georgiana's welfare in case of her death, I promised to 
 give every care in my power to the welfare of her Child, 
 in such an event. I then wrote to her that though I 
 foresaw a time and circumstances when her feelings 
 would be estranged from me, this promise would not 
 be affected thereby. My pecuniary powers are now 
 diminished — ^my intention, as I told you is the same — 
 With regard to all this I wish to recall to your mind 
 what I believe I told you — that my reasons might not 
 convince others as perfectly as they convince myself, 
 because — / have seen & heard, whilst others must 
 depend not only upon my veracity, but in part on my 
 discernment — and on this account should you hereafter 
 
 ^ Mrs. Leigh's house, Six Mile Bottom, near Newmarket. 
 *• 209 P 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 form an opinion different from mine, I should not think 
 it any injustice to me, unless you were to condemn me 
 
 for a conviction to myself irresistible 
 
 Yours affect'''. 
 
 A. I. B. 
 
 P.S. — I will trouble you to communicate my letter to 
 Mr. Wilmot '^ — ^He will tell you how he became unavoid- 
 ably acquainted with my opinion, though it could not 
 be deposited with one who deserved more entire con- 
 fidence. 
 
 I say nothing of your kindness — nor of the length of 
 my letter — believing that you will understand what I 
 suppress. 
 
 I do not know what letter of mine can have been 
 shown about, as I never wrote any on the subject that 
 I did not mean to be private, though I have no doubt it 
 was circulated with the kindest intentions. 
 
 Lady Byron to the Hon*" Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Monday June 3rd 1816. 
 
 My dear Augusta, 
 
 Before your Confinement I would not risk 
 agitating you, but having the satisfaction of knowing 
 you are recovered, I wiU no longer conceal from yourself 
 that there are reasons founded on such circumstances in 
 your conduct, as, (though thoroughly convinced they 
 have existed) I am most anxious to bury in silence, 
 which indispensably impose on me the duty of limiting 
 my intercourse with you — 
 
 I should more deeply lament this necessary con- 
 sequence of causes,— (on the supposition of which, 
 whilst in any degree doubtful, it would have been unjust 
 to act) — if your feelings towards me could give me the 
 power of doing you any good, — but you have not 
 disguised your resentment against those who have be- 
 friended me, and have countenanced the arts which have 
 been employed to injure me — Can I then longer beUeve 
 
 1 Robert Wilmot Horton, Lord Byron's cousin. 
 210 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (i) 
 
 those professions of affection, and even of exclusive zeal 
 for my welfare, which I have been most reluctant to 
 mistrust ? — And on this ground my conduct, if known, 
 would be amply & obviously justified to the world. I 
 shall still not regret having loved and trusted you so 
 entirely — May the blessing of a merciful God be with 
 you & those nearest you — I am truly interested in the 
 welfare of your children, and should your present 
 unhappy dispositions be seriously changed, you will 
 not then be deceived in considering me as one who will 
 afford every service and consolation of your most 
 
 faithful friend 
 
 A. L Byron. 
 
 Kirkby 
 
 June 3. 1816. 
 I attest this to be a true copy of a letter from Lady 
 Byron to Mrs. Leigh, sent according to date — 
 
 Ralph Noel. 
 Kirkby Mallory 
 June 3rd. 1816. 
 
 Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers. 
 
 Endorsed : ^ June 4th 1816. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Villiers 
 
 Our present unanimity of opinion is a great 
 comfort to me — I entertain no doubt whatever as to the 
 propriety of the measure which I have taken according 
 to your wishes, but not till my own mind was convinced 
 they were most judicious — My Sincerity must atone for 
 this uncomplimentary speech — I would send you a copy 
 of my letter to her, but I may wish to say that I have not 
 given one — By avoiding all ambiguity of meaning I have 
 precluded the occasion for further explanation — yet, 
 though I have expressed myself thoroughly convinced, 
 and that no doubt remains of the existence of these 
 circumstances, I have said everything that could soften 
 the blow — every thing that I truly feel — Notwithstanding 
 
 ^ Apparently by Mrs. Villiers. Where necessary all Lady Byron's letters to 
 Mrs. Villiers were thus endorsed. 
 
 211 J'2 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 the hope of cure, I could not inflict this wound without 
 a degree of pain, the dread of which had perhaps before 
 swayed my reason against your arguments — I think her 
 first feeling wiU be terror — ^her second pride — & under 
 what influence she may reply I cannot conjecture — It is 
 dreadful to remember that this disease of her mind has 
 been increasing constantly since 1813 — 
 
 I am going on Saturday to Lowestofle in Suffolk, for 
 sea-air, which is quite necessary to me, as I feel more 
 weakness now than during my greater exertions — 
 Sleepless nights, and head-achy days — I take my Child 
 — It is stouter and stronger than any boy or girl of a 
 year old that I ever saw, and so goodhumoured that it 
 will be a very agreeable companion. 
 
 Will you think of Lowestoffe ? — Besides the subject 
 of our mutual interest I shall wish to hear of you — and 
 above all to be remembered as 
 
 Yours very affectionately 
 
 A. I. B. 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers to Lady Byron. 
 
 {Extract.) 
 
 Knightsbridge. Saturday 
 [June 8th 1816]. 
 
 I thank you exceedingly for communicating to me that 
 you had taken the measure proposed— You will easily 
 imagine my anxiety for the result — To-day I feel very 
 sanguine — because I have had a letter from her which 
 must have been written since she received ypurs, & in 
 which she does not say one word of you or your letter — 
 I am willing to hope & believe that this is conclusive as 
 to her intention of taking it as she oughtT— quietly at 
 least — & if quietly surely it must be gratefully — Her 
 letters of late have been dejected & melancholy to the 
 greatest degree, & that of to-day more so than ever — 
 Her letters to Ld. F. Bentinck (who is, as you probably 
 know, very much in her confidence & very kind to her) 
 are, he tells me, more melancholy than ever — but I do 
 
 212 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (i) 
 
 not hear a word of any particular cause. Pray have the 
 kindness to write me a line whenever you hear from her, 
 for it is a very nervous moment — if your letter has had 
 the desired effect, by which I mean if it makes her feel 
 convinced she has been betrayed — I am persuaded that 
 every other feeling one wishes her to have will follow of 
 course, & you will have been the means of saving her 
 both here & hereafter — 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 Six Mile Bottom. 
 
 June 6th 1816. 
 My dear Annabella 
 
 As I always mistrust the first impulses of my 
 feelings, & did not wish to write under the influence of 
 such as your letter could not fail to produce, I would 
 not answer it by return of post. I cannot say that I am 
 wholly surprised at its contents. Your silence towards 
 me during so long an interval and when all obvious 
 necessity for it must have ceased formed so decided a 
 contrast to your former kindness to me — and to what 
 my Conscience tells me my conduct towards you deserved 
 from you that it could not but require some explanation. 
 I have often thought of— though not determined — to 
 ask it — ^when my health strength & spirits w"^ allow me 
 — if my feelings have been wounded by your silence, 
 how much more deeply they must now be so by your 
 
 expressions I need not — cannot say To general 
 
 accusations I must answer in general terms — and if I 
 were on my death Bed I could affirm as I now do that I 
 have uniformly considered you and consulted your 
 happiness before and above any thing in this world. No 
 sister ever could have the claims upon me that you had 
 — I felt it — & acted up to the feeling to the best of my 
 judgement. We are all perhaps too much inclined to 
 magnify our trials, yet I think I may venture to pro- 
 nounce my situation to have been ^ to he still one of 
 extraordinary difficulty. I have been assured that the 
 
 213 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 tide of public opinion has been so turned against my 
 Brother that the least appearance of coolness on your 
 part towards me would injure me most seriously — & I 
 am therefore for the sake of my children compelled to 
 accept from your compassion the " limited intercourse " 
 which is all you can grant to one whom you pronounce 
 no longer worthy of your esteem or affection ! But the 
 time may come when your present convictions and 
 opinions will change — in the interim I feel how hopeless 
 would be every attempt to defend myself. The only 
 person whose testimony could avail me in proving how 
 strictly and invariably I have done my duty by you— I 
 have heard from y' own lips you consider unworthy of 
 belief. On the particular points of accusation — ist. my 
 " not having disguised my resentment to those who 
 
 befriended you " I know of nothing but the change 
 
 of manner to Miss Doyle, which was discussed between 
 us y" last time I saw you — and, 2nd. " my having coun- 
 tenanced the acts which were employed to injure 
 you " ! ! ! really you must have been cruelly mis- 
 informed and / cruelly injured I ask not however by 
 whom — for I feel I scarcely could forgive them. Before 
 you judge and condemn me on the first point — you 
 ought to consider that I as well as you may have had 
 provocation — ^that it was impossible hearing and seeing 
 all I did I should not be under the influence of some 
 degree of irritation — not against those who w"^ " be- 
 friend YOU 1 " but whom I often thought condemned 
 OTHERS ^ too severely. I will not however say more at pre- 
 sent than that you need not indeed regret having loved 
 & trusted me so entirely — & the sincerity of my affection 
 for you y exclusive zeal for your welfare all ^ to whom I 
 ever spoke of you — and who witnessed my conduct can 
 fully prove. I would not dwell a moment on having 
 done what was only my duty and inclination but in self- 
 defence 
 
 My " present unhappy dispositions " ! I have 
 
 1 Underlined twice. 
 
 ' Underlined three times. 
 
 214 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (i) 
 
 indeed in outward causes sufficient to make any one 
 wretched but inward peace which none can take away — 
 It never occurred to me you could act but on the strictest 
 sense of duty — therefore I'm convinced you do so now 
 towards me. 
 
 God bless you — for every mark of kindness which you 
 have bestowed on me & mine of which neither time or 
 circumstances can efface the recollection. 
 Believe me gratefully & af'' y" 
 
 A. L. 
 
 Will you be so good as to acknowledge the receipt of 
 the Bulletin ^ to L^ Noel. I think it unnecessary to 
 trouble her as I write to you — I am sorry to hear her 
 ace* of y"" health 
 
 Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers. 
 
 Lowestoffe — 
 June 15. 1816. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Villiers — 
 
 Having made a visit of two days on the road, I 
 only arrived here yesterday, and found your letter — The 
 material parts of the answer which I have received are 
 that she acquiesces in the limited intercourse, and seeks 
 no further explanation — of course she does not plead 
 guilty, but her assertions are not exactly to the foint, 
 though it is evident she perfectly understands me — 
 There is no offensive or irritating expression towards 
 me, and notwithstanding the share which prudence may 
 have had in preventing any such, I felt much more 
 affected than I should have been by her indulgence of 
 more angry feelings — In short it is perhaps the best 
 letter she could have written — How bitter it is to corre- 
 spond on altered terms with one whom we have not 
 ceased to love 
 
 Do you not consider it mutually advisable, since you 
 have given me so much reason to consult you as my 
 
 1 The bulletin as to the health of the child, Ada Byron, 8ent by Lady Noel 
 to Mrs. Leigh for transmission to Lord Byron. 
 
 215 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 friend likewise, that I should write to her occasionally 
 without adverting further to this subject ? — I do not 
 expect that her affections wiU ever be detached from him, 
 but I trust they wiU be purified by reflection and sorrow 
 — I do not think it essential to penitence that we should 
 hate those who have sinned with us — ^we may, without 
 this equally deplore the transgression, and resolve 
 against its renewal. 
 
 I was the object of some obtrusive curiosity on my 
 journey, particularly at Ely and Peterborough — At 
 Bury I was presented with the "Farewell to England " 
 — I think it a feebler effusion of the same sentiments as 
 in the Fare thee well — ^Habits of misrepresentation 
 necessarily entail a degree of self-delusion — ^we say 
 things to persuade others till we persuade ourselves — 
 and I have always found this so true of Lord Byron, that 
 I am inclined to think he now really believes himself tht 
 injured person. When the whole force of such an 
 imagination is turned to deceive the conscience it is too 
 easy to find " a flattering unctipn " — and it is perhaps 
 one of the most melancholy & fatal misapplications of 
 human powers. 
 
 I am writing in full view of the sea, & not many yards 
 distant — ^The House adjoining mine wiU be inhabited by 
 my friend the young Lady Gosford — one of those whom 
 I value most and whose society is Hkely to be the more 
 salutary to me, as she is wholly unconnected with the 
 causes of my deeper feelings — I have not seen her for 
 the last three years — ^My health will improve in this 
 quiet life, & then I shall have more power to enjoy 
 the blessings which remain, & of which I am most 
 sensible — 
 
 Believe me 
 
 Yours very affectly. 
 
 A. L B. 
 
 I find I have not time to write to Mr. Wilmot by 
 this post — will you tell him he shall hear from me 
 soon. 
 
 216 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (i) 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers to Lady Byron. 
 
 Knightsbridge, June 19th [1816]. 
 
 My dear Lady Byron — 
 
 Your letter has been quite a relief to my mind, 
 tho' I in some degree anticipated its contents from the 
 tone of all A's late letters to me — but still it is a weight 
 oif my mind that she should decidedly have taken the 
 tone she has — at first her letters to me were all gloom & 
 despair — speaking of her misery — of always having some 
 fresh calamity — of her exertions to support herself on 
 account of her baby &c. — all which might apply to her 
 fresh pecuniary difficulties & J was therefore not called 
 upon to make any comment but what related to such 
 distresses — a total silence with respect to you and every 
 thing concerning you de part ^.d' autre for a whole w^ek 
 — I then thought that absolute silence on my part at 
 such a moment was almost a tacit avowal of my know- 
 ledge of what was passing, & as it was for her sake 
 desirable that this should not appear I mentioned having 
 heard that you were iU & gone to Lowestoffe & that 
 probably this prevented your writing. Three letters 
 arrived but no reply to this— -at last came one with this 
 sentence at the fag end — " I have written in such 
 hurries lately I have I believe forgot to tell you that the 
 last bulletin from Kirkby brought me also a few fines 
 from Ly. B. I fear she is in very bad health." !!!!!! I 
 expressed my surprise at her having forgot to teU me this 
 & merely asked if the letter was kind — ^To this she has 
 not replied tho' I have had two letters from her since, & 
 I don't think it necessary to say any paore. 
 
 I consider that what has pass'd must be conclusive 
 with respect to your greatest object — the safety of your 
 Child — the production of this correspondence should it 
 ever become necessary, & her quiet acquiescence in your 
 proposal must be sufficient for your purpose — as far 
 therefore as this goes, & as far as being convinced she 
 wiU not bring absolute & immediate ruin upon herself by 
 an idat, I feel perfectly satisfied — I agree with you as 
 
 217 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 a general principle " that it is not essential to penitence 
 
 that we should hate those who have sinned with us " 
 
 but this I look upon as a singular case— & nothing but 
 a change of feeling can in this instance prevent a recur- 
 rence of sin should the opportunity recur by his coming 
 home. What has pass'd with you will effectually prevent 
 her going to him even if he were to propose it— but that 
 is all. Did you tell her of his having betrayed her to 
 others or do you think it possible to do this ? Could 
 she once be brought to believe this fact, I should hope 
 much from it — She tells me she has not heard from him 
 for a great while & I hear elsewhere that he is living at 
 Geneva in such bad company that no English there 
 visit him & hardly any natives — I wish from my soul 
 he may be so occupied with fresh pursuits as to neglect 
 her entirely — that would be her best chance — 
 
 She is ordered to come to London for the Pss. Mary's 
 marriage which I am very sorry for — the tourhillon of 
 that, & her present exertions to sell the Six mile will 
 give her no time for reflection. 
 
 As you very kindly ask my opinion as to your occa- 
 sionally writing to A. on indifferent subjects I must say 
 that I think your doing so will be very kind & very 
 useful to her — & she must acknowledge to herself that 
 it is so — to you it wiU afford the gratification that the 
 consciousness of performing an act of charity must give 
 — I perfectly believe what you conjecture as to the 
 probability of Ld. B. considering himself the aggrieved 
 person — I have seen self delusion practised in that way 
 to an almost incredible degree in more instances than 
 one — 
 
 I am very sincerely anxious to hear that you derive 
 benefit from sea air & change of scene & rejoice that you 
 have a friend at Lowestoffe — total solitude feeds more 
 than cures any deep affliction — 
 
 The first impression made by the " Fare thee well " 
 is completely done away with — & I have repeatedly 
 heard great surprise expressed lately at your extra- 
 ordinary forbearance & endurance — & not a word of 
 
 218 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (i) 
 
 your obduracy — ^Murray told me the Farewell to England 
 was not Lord B.'s — & it is not published by him — 
 Augusta has been dreadfully annoyed by the publication 
 of the lines to her " fearing as everything was misrepre- 
 sented these might be perverted too." I told her the 
 
 only objectionable part was the instead of her name, 
 
 as I saw no reason for mystery between them — that I 
 thought it very unfair of Ld. B. to imply she controuled 
 him considering what his actions were — " Still may thy 
 spirit rest on mine," &c. but that was aU.^ ... I sent 
 your letter to Mr. Wilmot as his anxiety on the subject 
 was as great as mine — but I have not seen him alone 
 since to hear what he says — ^Adieu my dear Lady B. — 
 I am ashamed to see the quantity I have been writing 
 — I will not be such a bore again, but pray let me hear 
 from you, for I can with truth say that no one can feel 
 a greater interest in all that concerns you than I do & 
 that I am in the fullest acceptation of the words 
 
 Most aflFectionately yrs 
 
 Therese Villiers. 
 
 [The letter to which the following is an answer has 
 not been preserved. — Ed.] 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 6 Mile Bottom. 
 Saturday June 22 (1816).'' 
 My dear Annabella — 
 
 Your letter is very acceptable — & more like com- 
 fort than any thing in any shape I have had this long 
 time — for one word of kindness from you is I assure you 
 
 of more value than many from others 1 rejoice 
 
 to hear so good an ace* of dear little A has she more 
 
 than the 2 teeth of which I heard from Lady Noel .? I 
 wish you could tell me anything as favourable of your 
 own health. [Here comes a long passage about her 
 children's health and her domestic troubles. — Ed.] Now 
 my dear A — here is a sheet of paper as usual full of 
 
 ' See Appendix D. 
 
 ' All Mrs. Leigh's letters are endorsed with full dates by Lady Byron. 
 
 219 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 m 
 
 .yself — Of course you received my answer to y' last — 
 since which I have written you 3 others — all unsent—k 
 all my hope & wish is to see you once more — I fancied 
 my last letter might perhaps appear written ■pettishly— 
 & to you I could not bear the thought of this— so I 
 intended to have dispatched one today if only to say 
 that I was persuaded you thought you were acting right 
 by me & that even considering what you must think of me 
 I owe you gratitude— putting the present out of the 
 question — y' past kindness can never be forgotten— 
 perhaps— & I earnestly hope it— that as I have often 
 told you you once thought too well of me, you may some 
 day discover you now think too ill — God bless you my 
 dear A — 
 
 Ever y' grateful & aff** 
 
 AL. 
 
 If I am not alone don't allude to this subject as I 
 w*^ not add such a grievance to those which already 
 abound. 
 
 Lady Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers. 
 
 Endorsed: June 28. 1816. 
 My dear Mrs. ViUiers — 
 
 I am sorry too on some accounts that A. is going 
 to Town, but may you not do some good by seeing her, 
 & contribute to dispel her delusions ? Except at one 
 period I have always found her much more collected & 
 prepared to repel suspicion than he was — and I have 
 always observed the remarkable difference, that his feel- 
 ings — distinct from practice — ^were much more sensitive 
 & correct on all moral questions than hers. She did not 
 appear to think these transgressions of consequence. Her 
 self-condemnation has seemed so exclusively attached 
 to what preceded my marriage, that, in opposition to 
 every other probability, it has led me to doubt a positive 
 renewal subsequently — but it is not uncommon in such 
 cases for a compromise to be made with conscience when 
 mischief has not been intended — I had another letter 
 
 220 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (i) 
 
 from her yesterday — and I shall give you an extract for 
 the more you know, the better you will be enabled to 
 judge— 
 
 [Lady Byron now gives a copy of the same extracts 
 from Mrs. Leigh's letter of June 22, very slightly abridged, 
 as have been printed here.] 
 
 ... It is the idea of his occasional derangement 
 which I suppose still continues, that prevents the 
 estranging effect his dishonourable disclosures would 
 otherwise have upon her — It comes in too well to indulge 
 her blindness, and palliate his offences. I am disposed 
 to trouble you with a copy of my reply, and request you 
 to return it as I have no other — I shall be very glad if you 
 think it well-calculated for the purpose I shall not give 
 up, whilst I have any hope of being as much her friend 
 as I wish. I feel for you when you will next meet her. 
 
 In a Postcript she desires me not to write on the sub- 
 ject except when she is alone, as she does not wish this 
 to be added to other " grievances " ! What is to rouse 
 a feeling which appears completely done away, of the 
 nature & magnitude of the offence (to whiph, even as an 
 imputation, she is strangely insensible) I know not — I 
 have endeavoured to touch her by expressing my own 
 sentiments more fully — and was anxious to avoid every 
 appe-[arance] ? of obtruding an obligation, — ^when I 
 
 withdrew esteem —Believe me 
 
 Yours most affectly. 
 
 A. I. B. 
 
 Lowestoffe — June 28. 
 
 Lady Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Endorsed:'^ Copy June 30th i8i6. 
 
 My dear A 
 
 I did not mention your former letter only because 
 any allusion to that subject must be as painful to me as 
 to you, unless I could with sincerity express a change of 
 opinion on the maUrial point. In respect to the effects 
 
 * By Lady Byron. 
 221 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 produced by those recent parts of your conduct which 
 were openly unfavourable to me, I am willing to believe 
 you did not wish to injure me — and indeed I have made 
 every allowance — Personal considerations have had no 
 weight in this instance and so far I hope you are not mis- 
 taken in the charitable construction you put on my 
 motives. I thought that expressions of kindness might 
 be offensive with such a communication, & for that 
 reason I forbore to say much of what was in my heart 
 towards you — I mu?t disclaim aU acknowledgements for 
 feelings I cannot resign — there is nothing to wound your 
 pride in accepting them — and it will be some consola- 
 tion to me if you really value them — & if they lead you 
 to forgive the sincerity of my avowal. 
 
 Do not pain me by recurring to obligations. If I 
 could think you owed me any, it would be only for the 
 endurance of trials of which I endeavoured to keep you 
 
 ignorant — though you were their cause 1 was not the 
 
 less anxious to spare your feelings — to hope and trust 
 for the future even when I could not but have the 
 strongest doubts of the past. Yet I rejected suspicion 
 and threw myself on your generosity. You need not 
 regret the want of other testimonies to the personal kind- 
 ness & attention by which, notwithstanding the unhappy 
 impression on my mind, you have alleviated my other 
 misery — For this I am still grateful — and shall always 
 express myself so. 
 
 You express a desire to see me If I might think only 
 
 of myself I would go to you this moment — but I may not 
 sacrifice others — & it is due to the future welfare of my 
 child, perhaps eventually to your own, that I should at 
 present act on principles contrary to my inclinations. 
 From these considerations our personal intercourse must 
 be suspended — though I will never appear to avoid you — 
 In time circumstances, & above aU, your own conduct, 
 may lessen or encrease the objections which now appear 
 — and it will indeed be a moment of comfort to me, that 
 you ever have real comfort in meeting me as your friend 
 & sister. 
 
 222 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (i) 
 
 You will remember that when I made you a promise 
 respecting Georgiana,^ I told you that no future estrange- 
 ment between us would make any difference in its fulfil- 
 ment — for I then instinctively felt much of what has 
 since been brought more fully to my conviction — I will 
 now only assure you that Georgiana could never learn 
 from me anything but affection for her Mother, if you 
 would stiU trust her with me — 
 
 A. L B. 
 
 Lowestoffe — June 30 1816. 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 6 M. B.2 
 
 Wednesday Evg. July 3 (18 16) 
 
 When I begin writing to you my dear Annabella one 
 thought crowds so fast upon another that I become quite 
 bewildered — and every attempt I make to express my- 
 self is perfectly unsatisfactory to myself — I fear must be 
 so to you — I regret this the more as all I hear from you 
 only serves to increase my sense of the obligations I owe 
 you — I shall not however say much of them — in the first 
 place because I am dumb always when I feel deeply — 
 and in the next it might only add to the appearance of 
 duplicity (which with y' present opinions) you must 
 believe me guilty of — I only wish every past & present 
 thought could be open to you — you would then think 
 less ill of me than you do now — I declare — after the 
 strictest examination of my own heart, there is not one 
 act or thought towards yourself I would not wish you 
 
 acquainted with — You say my dear A / have been 
 
 the cause of your sufferings — if I have it has been inno- 
 cently — this must be my only consolation — Had I even 
 entertained the slightest suspicions of any " doubts " of 
 yours — I never could or would have entered your house 
 — perhaps I did wrong as it was to do so — but I was under 
 delusion certainly — (I don't mean mai). The little 
 portion of peace now remaining is in the reflexion that 
 
 ^ Georgiana Leigh, afterwards Mrs. Trevanion. 
 ' Six Mile Bottom. 
 
 223 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 I endeavoured to do right. I bless God daily who alone 
 has enabled me to preserve that — & I fervently pray 
 that He will also enable me to endure my present trials 
 & all future ones it may seem fit to Him to iiiflict so as 
 eventually to turn them into blessings. For your sake 
 — and not to prolong a discussion (so) painful to you— 
 so useless to me — I will try to be brief as possible — 
 
 Dearest A I have not wronged you. I have not 
 
 abused your generosity — I accept with gratitude & shall 
 ever value every kind feeling of yours aniong my greatest 
 blessings — I should have the same comfort I have ever 
 felt in meeting you " as my Friend y Sister " since 
 intentionally I have never injured you. You would pity 
 me did you know what I must ever feel either in your 
 absence or presence for having been the cause of one 
 moment's unhappiness to you ! but rely upon one thing. 
 I wiU never seek to see you while it is your wish I should 
 not — One ray of comfort & hope suggested itself in the 
 thought that we may meet again — that my future conduct 
 may conduce to it — ^Tell me — ^pray — of anything in that 
 which could by possibility atone for the past— in pity — 
 tell it me dearest A. that I may have one more chance 
 of happiness — 
 
 (Thursday. 4th July.) In respect to the " recent 
 farts of my conduct o-penly unfavourable to you " — ^will 
 you at a convenient opportunity explain what they 
 were ? for I really cannot guess — & surely I had friends 
 who w'^ have sincerely told me of such circumstances in 
 my conduct. Dear A. surely you have been mis- 
 informed — supposing me actuated by no better motive 
 — regard for myself should have deterred me from such 
 acts. I certainly have never wished to injure you — nor 
 do I think I could had I desired it — ^I have another thing 
 to say on the subject of my transmitting accounts of 
 little A. A. It was imposed upon me without consulting 
 me — though I heard the intention mentioned in a vague 
 manner like others — ^My head was not then equal to 
 judge whether it w"^ be right or wrong — & indeed I 
 never considered it a certainty, till too late to dechne it. 
 
 224 
 
LAPY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (i) 
 
 Ever since the receipt of your first letter — I have 
 wished to do so — & have only been deterred by the fear 
 of exciting suspicions which I would not do for the world. 
 As long as I thought myself secure of your approbation, 
 affection and esteem I really would never, have never, even 
 to spare myself, declined any thing for the comfort or 
 good of either party — but — now ^ I do owe it to myself & 
 others to avoid every possibility however remote of 
 incurring censure — I wish I knew how to manage this ! 
 I have hitherto made it a rule to avoid every subject 
 which might create or renew irritation 
 
 Your kind offer about Georgiana — There is no human 
 Being to whom I would so soon entrust her as you — I 
 cannot say more except that all ^ your kindness will ever 
 be gratefully felt & remembered — every act, & I am fully 
 aware how more & more I owe you gratitude — God bless 
 you, my dearest A 
 
 All this is quite unsatisfactory to me — as perfectly 
 inadequate to express my feelings to you — I am so sorry 
 you are not better — it is a comfort that L'' Gosf ord is with 
 you & that you have no uneasiness about little A. A. — 
 How is your Mother ? I conclude not at Lowestoffe — 
 you talked of Tunbridge for her & I hope she has tried 
 it — I expect George ^ on Sunday — & as our letters are 2 
 days on the road I fear I can't hear from you by that 
 day — I believe I shall be obhged to go to Town — perhaps 
 next week — I will let you know if I do — 
 
 I am interrupted & obliged to conclude in haste — 
 Ever y'' most grateful & aff° 
 
 A. L. 
 
 ^ Underlined twice. 
 ' Colonel Leigh. 
 
 225 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 ADDITIONAL LETTERS : FROM ANNE ISABELLjIl BYRON, 
 AUGUSTA LEIGH AND THERESE VILLIERS (continued) 
 
 Lady Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers. 
 
 L. July 8. 1816. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Villiers — I cannot delay communicatmg 
 to you, though I can do so but imperfectly for want of 
 leisure, the very great comfort & strong hopes I have 
 derived from the answer to my last letter of which I 
 sent you a copy. — ^Her eyes seem to be opened, and her 
 feelings awakened in a manner that convinces me she 
 was wholly ignorant of her having been the cause of so 
 much suffering to me — She speaks from her heart I am 
 sure — admits respecting what preceded my marriage as 
 much as she could do on paper — maintains her innocence 
 since, but seems to be suddenly made sensible of her 
 extreme self-delusion — confesses she might be wrong in 
 ever entering my house, that she would not had she known 
 my doubts — ^finally she entreats me in the most humble 
 & affecting manner to point out in pity to her anything 
 by which she may " atone for the past " — She appears 
 to have been overcome by a sense of what she considers 
 generous & kind on my part, & the great thing now is 
 not to interrupt this strain of returning feeling — and of 
 gratitude — for I have always thought that motive very 
 powerful with her — 
 
 I cannot write to her again at present on account of 
 his'^ return — but I will whenever I can, and have a 
 confident hope of restoring the better part of her mind 
 — though I have found a persevering affection fruitless 
 in one instance — here there is much more to assist me — 
 
 I am now convinced it has been more of self-delusion 
 than duplicity. — At one time as you know, appearances 
 
 ^ Colonel Leigh. 
 226 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 were so strong as to shake this opinion — but I return to 
 it with a feeling of real consolation — In your sanction I 
 have a valuable support, but were I to stand alone, / 
 never would forsake her — Those who judge by cold & 
 general rules might condemn me — but I am justified by 
 my motives, and trust I shall be so by the result likewise — 
 Your feehngs are most friendly towards her, but should her 
 pride or self-delusion at any future moment excite your 
 displeasure, I now ask you to forgive her for my sake — 
 
 It is to you I am indebted for the particular suggestion, 
 by following which an effect so gratifying to me has been 
 produced — She very properly expresses a wish to decline 
 transmitting the accounts of my child — & I understand 
 ffom what she says that she will decline all correspondence 
 with him — 
 
 Mr. W[ilmot] expressed some thoughts of rebuking her 
 for the unfavourable impressions she might have given 
 or encouraged respecting me — but unless such errors 
 were renewed (which I now think quite impossible) it is 
 certainly desirable not to create irritation by making me 
 in any way an occasion of reproach — it would interfere 
 with my present views — and how much better to influence 
 by gratitude than by fear — My heart is full and I hope 
 you will read it better than I can write it — believe me 
 My dear Mrs. V-- — 
 
 Yours most affectly. 
 
 A. I. B. 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers to Lady Byron. 
 
 \Extract.'\ 
 
 Knightsbridge. 
 Tuesday July gth [i8i6]. 
 
 No words can tell you my dear Lady Byron the comfort 
 & relief which your last letter just arrived has afforded 
 "le — The extract which you sent me in your former one 
 was, to my mind, anything but satisfactory— it wa.s 
 confession without penitence— & I thought I saw a 
 fancied security of ignorance in all the world but you (of 
 
 227 g 2 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 whose generous discretion she had no fear,) that would 
 prevent any change of feeling or conduct, except towards 
 you individually — & I will own to you that I found my 
 feelings more changed towards her than I ever meant 
 they should be — I felt that I could not answer for my 
 forbearance if she should in conversation to me either 
 express herself too warmly towards him, or too coldly 
 towards you — & I was growing quite nervous at the 
 thoughts of her return to Town — ^All this is done away 
 completely by the perusal of your last letter — I think I 
 am justified in saying very confidently that her mind 
 was purity & innocence itself, & now her eyes are really 
 opened as to the enormity she has been led into, her 
 former feelings & principles will I reaUy hope & believe 
 return with double force — ^provided always — that he 
 does not return — & that I trust is a very improbable 
 event — Her having a just sense of gratitude to you is a 
 great point in her favour — & the more she reflects on 
 your unparalleled kindness to her the more it must 
 increase daily. There is an expression in her last letter 
 to me which struck me at the moment I read it but does 
 so much more forcibly now — Speaking of her own 
 grievances, & some that had lately occurred to us, she 
 says "What a world this is ! & yet I am quite unfit for 
 the next " — ^it shows how much the horror of her past 
 conduct is uppermost in her mind — & if it does but 
 continue so, the next step must be to try with your kind 
 assistance, to make herself more fit for the next — it is 
 now in a good train & every letter of yours wiU do more 
 and more good — I fancy she will be in town (at the 
 Apartments in St. James's) about next Saturday. I see 
 her great anxiety is to come before Hobhouse goes. 
 
 Lady Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers. 
 \_Extract.'\ 
 
 Lowestoffe, 
 July nth 1816. 
 
 Your letter has done me so much good that I have 
 nearly forgotten all the evils of physique & morale. 
 
 228 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 Your views and mine entirely coincide — I shall 
 enclose, probably to-morrow, a letter to Augusta to 
 your care (with a note you can show her), as I am very 
 anxious she should have it before the conference with 
 Hobhouse — I must regret that she means to have one — 
 I know not whether his be the perversion of wilfulness 
 or weakness, but he has a morbid delight in the worst 
 parts of human nature, and a bitter spirit of infidelity 
 which even supposing him honest, (and I have doubts) 
 render him likely to do more harm than good — She 
 disliked & mistrusted him, and suddenly, after I left 
 Lord B — changed — I have never understood why — 
 
 The principal points of my letter to her will be-^To 
 press still more on her delusion — for else her eyes may 
 close again, and I feel it would be a false delicacy that 
 might lead me to abstain from probing the wound — 
 My tenderness will however naturally increase with the 
 pain I give, and will in her present temper, obtain for- 
 giveness for my motives — I shall concede as much as 
 possible for her good intentions towards me — She says — 
 " I have not wronged you — I have not abused your 
 generosity " — ^When Delusion has once been carried so 
 far, it is difficult to say to what it may not extend — but 
 surely by these assertions she must mean that she has 
 been innocent since my marriage — I have a little difficulty 
 in accounting for some things on this supposition, but 
 ^h.eY certainly are not strong enough to justify a contrary 
 opinion. ... 
 
 Lady Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 Endorsed Co^y. July nth, 1816. Third letter. 
 
 Lowestoffe. July n 18 16. 
 
 My dear A 
 
 I must make my opinion fully understood, for 
 you think it unjust to you, and you would not, if you 
 knew it better. That we may never mistrust each other 
 again, it is necessary that we should now be perfectly 
 confidential — 
 
 229 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 I have always felt that " Duplicity " was foreign to 
 your character, and if I said I could not believe your 
 professions (when so much conspired to render them 
 doubtful) I rather meant I could not depend on them-- 
 for knowing how far your " delusion " had been carried 
 and not knowing you were so sensible of it as you now 
 express yourself, to what might I not reasonably appre- 
 hend it did, or would extend ? I felt it on every account 
 incumbent on me to awaken you to it, if I could — no 
 longer to spare your feeHtigs or my own by concealing 
 the real nature of circumstances — Thus what has 
 appeared to you most cruel was meant most kind, and 
 it is my comfort to remember that at the many times 
 from the first week of my marriage, when that thought has 
 nearly driven me to madness one unkind or incon- 
 siderate feeling towards you has never actuated me — 
 wherever my judgment has erred forgive its weakness — 
 I am most anxious not to perceive the delusions of 
 others more clearly than my own. 
 
 In the last part of the time we were under the same 
 roof, you wiU now remember some things by which I 
 intimated that I knew more than you thought, and 
 almost offered myself to your confidence — not to betray 
 it, as it has been betrayed — but that I might have more 
 power to befriend you, if you were sincerely desirous to 
 atone for the past " — for I knew more of your dangers 
 than you did and acted as if you had trusted me in 
 counteracting them to the best of my power — Of this I 
 could give proofs — I appeal to the past, not to oppress 
 you with a sense of obligations which your intentions 
 towards me have amply repaid, but in hopes that you 
 will find consolation in trusting one whose friendship 
 has been thus tried & will not fail — It is equally in your 
 power to secure my entire confidence & esteem by per- 
 severing in those principles of strict self-examination & 
 duty which you speak of as governing you at present — 
 As you do not, and never have attempted to deceive me 
 respecting previous facts, of which my conviction is 
 unalterable, I rely the more on your simple assertion of 
 
 230 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 having " never wronged me " intentionally — 1 believe 
 it implicitly — and I lament that you misjudgingly 
 pursued a line of conduct so difficult for yourself — so 
 dangerous & I believe so prejudicial to the ungoverned 
 feelings of another — and inevitably tending to continue 
 or renew his criminal recollections. Pardon a word I 
 will never repeat — Dearest Augusta — You will think, 
 perhaps justly, that I erred in encouraging you myself — 
 but my situation was most extraordinary — I could not, 
 till a late period, bear to admit things to wyj^// sufficiently 
 to act upon them — and resisted what would have 
 brought absolute conviction to any other person — and 
 you were to me the kindest friend & comforter — I could 
 tell you much of the struggles in my mind, but since it 
 makes you unhappy to think you were the occasion of 
 them, I will entreat you only to think of the consolation 
 you can afford me — better perhaps than anyone — 
 
 When I speak of the necessity of confidence, do not 
 suppose I wish to exact any confession — ^Let the past be 
 understood now, to be buried in future — and whenever 
 we do meet, I hope you will not imagine I am under the 
 influence of any feeling that could distress you, — for I 
 have often felt in your presence, under much more 
 painful circumstances, all that I could now feel — & it 
 has had no effect on me but that of rendering me more 
 tenderly fearful of adding to the pain & oppression I 
 believed you already felt — From this motive I have 
 appeared unconscious of a thousand allusions, as 
 intelligible to me as to you— To my husband I had 
 another motive for assuming ignorance, having had 
 reason to think that my life & every hope might depend 
 upon it— You will feel that it was impossible to go on 
 thus — and it would alone have formed a sufficient ground 
 for the step I took— When I tell you that step has been 
 conducive to my peace of mind — something may be 
 added to your own— God grant that we all who have 
 been partakers of misery may be partakers of eternal 
 peace, and may I be judged hereafter by the truth of all 
 I now reveal ! 
 
 231 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Your own friends have acknowledged that " the lan- 
 guage you held " after my separation was " certainly 
 injurious to me," — I quote the words of one — I have 
 heard from many others of the disadvantageous impres- 
 sions of my feelings which had been received from your 
 conversation, not that you were said to blame me 
 directly, but your representations of circumstances made 
 my conduct appear cold & cruel — Of course my parents 
 have been more hurt at this than I was. 
 
 After what I have expressed of my own conviction it 
 is necessary I should solemnly declare that it is impossible 
 the report should have arisen in any way from me or my 
 connections — To them it occasioned entire surprise — 
 I was only too well prepared for it. 
 
 I confide in you to consult my welfare as much as 
 your own with regard to the suppression or communica- 
 tion of what has passed between us to the person whom 
 it next concerns. — I have totally resigned the idea 
 of receiving justice from him — and fear he will see 
 every thing in a perverted light — I think it desirable he 
 should have no ground to imagine me unkind towards 
 you — 
 
 Write to me & teU me if you can that I am stiU as 
 dear to you as I shall ever wish to be — and trust me as 
 being most truly 
 
 Your affec* 
 
 A. I. B. 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 St J. P.(i) 
 Monday. (15 July 1816) 
 
 I am particularly anxious to write to you my dearest 
 
 A yet uncertain whether I shall be able to do so 
 
 fully — as I am every moment interrupted — & expecting 
 somebody on business — I received yr letter from Mrs. V. 
 late on Saturday — it is quite impossible for me to say 
 what I feel towards you for all the kindness past present 
 
 1 St. James's Palace. 
 232 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 contained in it — but I think you understand that sort 
 of difficulty on my part — & if not I too well know how 
 you can make allowances. 
 
 The delusion to which I alluded — was an entire unsus- 
 ficion — that you even suspected — that I caused or added 
 to your misery — which every thing on your part & many 
 on that of another tended to confirm — as I now remember 
 " some things " to which you allude — ^you may also 
 some which could not but deceive me — it is still like a 
 
 horrid dream to me my dearest A that / caused yr 
 
 sufferings whose whole anxiety was at least to mitigate 
 them — I felt it as my only consolation to do all I could, 
 & indeed to the best of my judgment I did it. Many a 
 time I should have felt it one to have confided unre- 
 servedly in you — but concealment appeared a duty under 
 such circumstances — & you know I am of a sanguine 
 disposition & to the very last had hopes of better for 
 you — & for him. I lament from my heart — all the 
 Mwintentional errors to which you allude. I can never 
 accuse you of injustice — but I am not sure even now if 
 on one point you are not mistaken — & I don't know how 
 to explain myself — What can I say to you of my present 
 & past feelings — except that I wish my heart were open 
 to you — that you might judge of its weaknesses & point 
 out the remedy — I hope it is not presumption in me to 
 say that some of its feelings w^ be such as to give you 
 
 consolation — ^My dear A ■ I am perfectly unable to 
 
 decide how to act for the best respecting him & his 
 knowledge of what has passed between us — if only / 
 was concerned in y" consequences I should care less — 
 Certainly it is desirable he should have no ground to 
 imagine you unkind towards me — but as yet — I have 
 had positive injunctions never to mention anybody or 
 anything except the little girl — of whom I've transmitted 
 the bulletins. I have now a safer opportunity than y* 
 post of sending any particular communication as his 
 friend H. is to set out to join him next Sunday — I wish 
 you to reflect on what I had better do— I really must 
 now entirely mistrust my own judgment — there are 
 
 233 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 dangers to be apprehended both ways — at least I see 
 many from his ignorance. 
 
 I must not forget — & I write so uncomfortably I fear 
 I shall half I w'^ & could say — that I am equally surprised 
 & hurt at what you quote as the language of any friend 
 of mine — I must say that I could no longer consider 
 any one in that light who could say such a thing of 
 not to me — & I declare to you no one ever even hinted 
 it — on the contrary — the few to whom I could not help 
 speaking always manifested surprise at the part I took — 
 not knowing circumstances — ^when I had told as much 
 of them as I could, I always repHed to arguments " if you 
 knew all you would think differently " — but my situation 
 was so difficult I ought not to be surprised at having 
 incurred censure — & only feel it because I never met 
 with it openly. If you mean by my representation of 
 circumstances that I have mentioned the idea of insanity 
 
 — I certainly did dear A but always at the same time 
 
 that you were the particular object of irritation & 
 aversion & the consequences of that quite insupportable 
 — ^in short I cannot reproach myself with even a thought 
 prejudicial to you — & I am deeply hurt at what you tell 
 me — I never thought the report came from you or yours 
 — I know too well how to account for it. When I talk 
 of difficulties I've had to encounter don't think I mean 
 to complain of them^Pm sensible of their original cause 
 — & am & have been most anxious to atone for that. 
 Your friendship & kindness is the greatest comfort I have 
 
 — my dear A Heaven wiU reward for all — I never can 
 
 express myself as I wish towards you — Tell me of any 
 thing I can do — or any wrong feeling you may discern — 
 This letter is all confusion owing to many perplexing 
 circumstances which prevent me from writing calmly — 
 interruptions & the fear of them 
 
 Tuesday. (i6th July, 1816). 
 
 I could not get a frank for this yesterday— which 
 worried me as I wished to have despatched this letter all 
 imperfect as it is — but I really cannot express myself as 
 
 234 
 
AUGUSTA LEIGH 
 
 From a Miniature by J. Holmes 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 I wish to you & therefore must trust to you to under- 
 stand me — & make allowances for what is deficient — 
 there are more things I would write to you — ^Would to 
 God that our hearts had been open to each other from 
 the first — it might have saved me unintentional errors — 
 I hope iny dear A you won't think it wrong in me to 
 desire this; — you are the only being on this earth whom 
 I could have wish'd to confide in. 
 
 I've been interrupted & can only now say my dear A — 
 
 y" most affec^ & grateful 
 
 [a dash for signature.] 
 
 I shall remain here all this week — & until after the 
 R . . . 1 Marriage. 
 
 Lady Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 Endorsed copy. Fourth letter. 
 
 Lowestoft. 
 
 July 17. 1816. 
 
 My dearest A 
 
 Indeed, indeed I cannot say all the comfort your 
 letter has given me. I do most heartily wish with you 
 that we had trusted each other more fully — and acknow- 
 ledge that my own uncertainty of conduct might deceive 
 you, & embarrass yours — I knew not what was best — my 
 indecision might be weakness — and if it has injured you, 
 I deeply regret it — but I did not see things as clearly 
 whilst they wejre passing, as I do in reviewing them — 
 and the excuse I make for myself I of course extend to 
 you. You are very kind in understanding me as you 
 do, for I am well aware that the very fear of giving pain 
 sometimes makes me appear unfeeling. I hope I under- 
 stand you as well as any human being can another — 
 will you still think me mistaken " on one point " when 
 I say I am now thoroughly convinced that if from the 
 hour we first met all your conduct had been open to me 
 I could not have found in it any thing to reproach you 
 with — for that your errors of judgment, however to be 
 regretted, were -perfectly innocent — God knows what 
 
 23s 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 satisfaction I have in making this acknowledgement 
 — & in resigning doubts as to those parts of your 
 conduct which have but transiently existed & will 
 never return to wrong you. Tell me if this is satis- 
 factory ? 
 
 It was not of my sufferings in general — but of particular 
 ones that I spoke of you as the cause, &, as I never 
 expressed any feeling towards you which was not 
 sincere, you must not imagine I had less comfort in you 
 than I had — I only did not tell you how that comfort 
 was at times embittered. 
 
 You ask me to tell you any thing in which I may 
 imagine you err — ^The only return I can make is to open 
 my thoughts — & you must judge if they are right or 
 wrong — It seems to me that you dwell too much on the 
 pain you involuntarily occasioned me, and not enough 
 on the irreparable injury you did him by the voluntary 
 sacrifices (for to principles & feelings like yours they 
 must have been entirely sacrifices) which you once made 
 to his immediate indulgences. Perhaps with you he has 
 not given way to the frantic agonies of Remorse — alas ! 
 far from repentance, which I have seen awakened by any 
 thing in connection with that fatal remembrance. I 
 know there were other causes for his Despair, but I 
 believe this to have been as baneful as any — and it made 
 all succeeding intimacy unavoidably injurious. As far 
 as any human being is concerned, it is towards him not 
 me, that expiation is due — I have often regretted that 
 the last time we met some bitter feelings (not towards 
 you) which were only the momentary consequences of 
 my situation at the time, influenced me, and may lead 
 you to suppose that I have relinquished a fruitless 
 anxiety for his ultimate good — But I believe Heaven is 
 always open & this hope for him is still dear to me, as 
 the only one that can remain of those that once more 
 nearly concerned me. I have a difficulty in advising as 
 to the communication, from being so ignorant of his 
 present dispositions — I conceive that his fear of my 
 penetration would as in other cases, create hatred — & I 
 
 236 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 do not see the evils of postponing the disclosure — but 
 if the evils are to you, act so as to avoid them, & 
 you will fulfil my wishes — I will reflect further on this 
 point. 
 
 Do not feel any more concern that your expressed 
 sentiments were misunderstood. From what you teU 
 me it could not be your fault & I must say that there 
 was no unfriendly intention towards you in the admis- 
 sion by others of what they saw differently — I hope you 
 will not be under the painful necessity of renewing that 
 topic with any who do not enter into your feelings as I 
 should. 
 
 I have good accounts from Kirkby. Little A 
 
 continues quite well — and I am better — ^The renewal of 
 our confidence in each other has done me good — it is a 
 comfort to say as well as to feel that I am 
 
 Yours most affec"' 
 
 A. L B. 
 
 Lady Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers. 
 
 L. Wednesday. 
 
 (July 17th 1816). 
 
 My dear Mrs. V 
 
 I have an answer — all that it ought to be or that 
 I could desire — It thoroughly convinces me of her 
 innocence in regard to all the period with which I was 
 concerned — and that every error towards me has not 
 been of the heart but the judgment— I feel most thankful 
 for this conviction & these feeHngs — 
 
 I hope Mr. W ^ is sensible of the propriety, indeed 
 
 necessity of an indulgent conduct imder these circum- 
 stances—I have no time— but you will be too happy to 
 know thus much for me to need any excuse. 
 
 Yours most affectly. 
 
 A. I. B. 
 
 1 R. Wilmot Horton. 
 237 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 [Part of the following letter is quoted in Chap. III., 
 p. 6i]. 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers to Lady Byron. 
 
 Knightsbridge. 
 
 July i8th i8i6. 
 
 My dear Lady Byron 
 
 I almost fear you must have thought me ungrate- 
 ful for all the kindness of all your letters by having been 
 silent so long — but in truth my silence has proceeded 
 from a wish to have it in my power to communicate 
 anything to you respecting poor A. — which should be 
 at $U satisfactory. I cannot tell you much now — but 
 your letter of yesterday just arrived determines me to 
 write — She came sooner than she expected being ordered 
 to come up for the Regent's fete — She wrote to me the 
 preceding day to prepare her dress for her, & therefore 
 when we first met (an interview wh. I own / dreaded 
 beyond measure) our whole conversation turned on 
 Gauzes y Sattins — but I was foolishly dissatisfied — I 
 thought her looking quite stout & well (wh. bye the bye 
 she still does) & perfectly cool & easy, having apparently 
 nothing on her mind but what there was abundance of 
 ostensible cause for — this rather provoked me — the 
 next day I had your letter to give her & I will own to 
 you it made me so nervous I could not do it — indeed 
 considering all that had passed on your subject before 
 she left London it would have been quite unnatural for 
 me to have given it without asking to see it, or questioning 
 her as to its contents — I therefore left it in the Carriage, 
 & at the end of my visit I told her I had it there & would 
 send it in by the servant. She looked rather surprised 
 but not alarmed — I sent it with its envelope to me — the 
 next day I went there — but determined to ask no 
 questions — at last — when the Child & maid were in the 
 room she asked me if she shd. return me your note — I 
 said " oh yes," & then asked if yours to her was kind. 
 She said " very much so " — " particularly so " — I 
 
 238 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 merely replied " I was sure it would be — remember I 
 always told you how kind she was about you " — to this 
 no reply — I ask'd about your health she said it was but 
 indifferent — & then the subject dropped — & has never 
 been renewed — Yesterday, for the first time, she dined 
 here, & was here between 4 and 5 hours, & I must say 
 that in my life I never saw any thing equal to her dejec- 
 tion — her absence — ^her whole mind evidently preoccupied 
 & engrossed — & apparently insensible of being in society 
 — ^Mr. v., who really exerted himself & commanded him- 
 self much better than I expected to shew her as much 
 kindness as before, tells me that while I was called out 
 of the room to speak to a person, he could not extract 
 an answer — even a monosyllable from her — except when 
 he joked about the predicted destruction of the world 
 to-day — & said (a propos to some arrangements which 
 the boys wanted to make) " We need not give ourselves 
 any trouble about it for the world will be at an end 
 to-morrow & that will put an end to aU our cares " — 
 she quite exclaimed before the boys, the servants, &c., 
 " I don't know what you may all be but I'm sure I'm 
 not prepared for the next world, so I hope this will last " 
 — this seemed the only topic that roused her — This looks 
 well for her mind — if this feeling is well kept up I hope 
 every thing from it with time — but do not think me brutal 
 or even unkind if I tell you the work is not done yet — I 
 accidentally found yesterday by her question about 
 foreign postage of letters that she was going to write to 
 Ld. B. to-day — it is perhaps natural even necessary that 
 she should write for the purpose of breaking off that 
 correspondence — but till thatI is fairly & completely 
 broken through — there will be but httle good done 
 depend upon it — & as nobody can do anything but you 
 I mention this that you may enforce its necessity in any 
 manner you think best — From my manner to . her 
 individually I am positive she cannot guess that I am 
 better informed than when we last met — but what she 
 may infer from my total silence on his subject I know 
 
 1 Underlined twice. 
 239 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 not — but I am sure she thinks / have a motive for she 
 scarcely ever mentions him herself, & if she does, it is 
 in a sort of way as if she was shy of his name which 
 never was the case before — She told me she was sure my 
 parcel had gone safe (a parcel I had entrusted to Mr. 
 Fletcher for a person at Lausanne) as they had passed a 
 day at Lausanne — Another day she told me she had seen 
 Messrs Hobhouse & Davies together & that they were 
 going to Geneva directly — upon which I merely said 
 " is Lord B. still there " — She said " yes — or near there " 
 & then told me something of a boat in which he was goii^g 
 round the Lake & that Hobhouse said his crew would be 
 drowned by his management, but that he wd. be safe 
 by swimming. Then after the fete she told me Miss 
 Mercer had come up & spoken to her there, had been 
 very gracious & enquired very much about Geneva, & 
 this I think in the whole week she has been in town are 
 the only instances of her mentioning or rather alluding 
 to him. 
 
 She has ceased to speak of Mr. Wilmot with any harsh- 
 ness, & in short I hope there is a very great amendment — 
 but if the evil is not well eradicated, I feel convinced 
 that he [Byron] will regain at pleasure his ascendancy 
 over her mind — Mr. W. has as yet had no private 
 conversation with her but he told me last night he meant 
 to have some & to talk of you — your merits &c. — & to 
 say that he knew there were people who considered you 
 as cold hearted, unforgiving, &c & that he advised her 
 (A) to put a stop to that sort of language whenever she 
 heard it in any friends of hers, or it would be the worse 
 for her — I see no objection to this — but he promises me 
 to do it in a kind way. He tells me he is going abroad 
 with Mr. Ward [Lord Dallas] for six weeks — ^A. will I 
 beUeve stay till after the I2th August. Nothing can be 
 worse than their affairs, pecuniarily — nothing can be 
 more tiresome & impracticable than Colonel L. of which 
 alas ! she seems more than ever aware — ^What they are 
 to do I cannot guess. The Duke of Leeds is to petition 
 Lord Liverpool, but in these days of reduction he can 
 
 240 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 have no chance unless by an arrangement such as was 
 proposed last year with Warwick Lake — A's child is a 
 fine one & she goes on nursing successfully ! ! 
 
 Now I think I have told you all I know about her & 
 tho' it is dully & prosily told I know the subject will 
 interest you — Depend upon it she will never open her 
 heart to me — or indeed to anyone — but to me she could 
 not — considering the part she has frequently made me 
 take in her concerns upon a perfect persuasion of her 
 innocence for the last three years. I daresay you are 
 quite right in believing that she never transgressed 
 during your residence in Piccadilly — I can perfectly 
 imagine her having quieted her conscience by that 
 salve — & it accounts (satisfactorily) for much of her 
 conduct. 
 
 [I omit a passage dealing with the health of Lady 
 Byron & Mr. Villiers, which follows here. — Ed.] 
 
 God bless you my dear Lady Byron — Do not hate me 
 for this voluminous production — the next shall be more 
 laconic — but in all ways & at all times you will find me 
 most truly and 
 
 Affectionately yours, 
 
 T. V. 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 \Extract.'\ 
 
 St. J.= P. 
 
 Saturday (20th July 1816.) 
 
 It is comfort to me to think my letter gave you 
 any or that I can have been y" means of contributing 
 to restore peace in the slightest degree — I know I never 
 can feel sufficiently grateful for the blessing you are to 
 
 me my dearest A Don't I pray reproach yourself 
 
 — any indecision in your conduct was caused I am con- 
 vinced by kindness & consideration which no other 
 human being would have shown in similar circumstances 
 — What you say my dear A on the "one point" is 
 indeed " satisfactory "—in y* greatest ^ degree to me— I 
 
 ' Underlined twice. 
 A. 241 '^ 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 have not time now to say how much so — or half I wish — 
 but I don't like to lose this frank or let pass this post 
 without thanking you & acknowledging the receipt of 
 your letter. 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 (London.) 
 Tuesday Night (July 23rd 1816). 
 
 My dearest A — ^Do not imagine that either silence or 
 an uncomfortable letter are proofs of forgetfulness on 
 my part. Without doing much, I have scarcely a 
 moment of peace & quiet here — constant interruptions 
 of one sort or other — & from a remains of nervous 
 weakness I believe — my head becomes so confused that 
 I cannot collect my thoughts so as to express one-half 
 of them to you. I have felt quite vexed at the recollec- 
 tion of the hurry I wrote to you in — yet I could not help 
 it. You are so kind & good to me I would not have you 
 think that I feel it one bit less than I really do — & it is 
 impossible you can know how much that is — but I know 
 you will make allowances. You(r) last letter my dearest 
 A was such a comfort to me — y"' greatest I can at 
 present receive — since I think from it you do " under- 
 stand me as weU as any human being can another," & 
 I have suffered a great deal from the idea that you might 
 & did mistake on one point. Don't reproach yourself — 
 or imagine I could ever reproach you for past doubts — 
 it was but too natural you should have had them & none 
 but you would so kindly have dismissed them. Thank 
 
 you my dear A for complying with my request — & 
 
 offering your thoughts — I am certain they are right & 
 I assure you I always mistrust my own & endeavour to 
 examine into every motive. Tell me always when you 
 see anything wrong & believe me that greatest act of 
 friendship will be most gratefully felt and acknowledged. 
 I never witnessed any thing like what you have alas ! & 
 describe to have been his Agonies — & whatever I have 
 suffered I have always carefully concealed from him, 
 
 242 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 altho' could I have hoped for any good effect it might 
 have been greater kindness not to have done so I have 
 
 said but httle of him my dearest A fearing you 
 
 might mistake y* nature of my feelings — I am certain 
 they are & ever have been such as you could not dis- 
 approve — If I did but know how to contribute to his 
 ULTIMATE ^ good ! but Alas ! I do not — tho' like you that 
 hope is cherished as the dearest of all — I rely upon your 
 offering me your thoughts upon this & every point my 
 dearest A — that is to say if you see no objection to 
 yourself in so doing — I am perhaps raising up melancholy 
 recollections & doing you harm — then tell me so sincerely 
 & every thing else you would wish to say to me — & how 
 I can by any means contribute to your comfort — I have 
 thought much about the communication you allude to 
 in yr last letter — & think certainly that it would be 
 better at least postponed — I have been forbid to mention 
 any & every thing but his child — & it was a relief to me 
 — for without I could do any good I would much rather 
 be silent — I have written by his two friends — ^whose 
 departure however will not I believe take place before 
 Saturday or Sunday — & only swerved from the rule 
 indicated to me so far as to say I had met with y^ greatest 
 
 kindness from you. Dearest A it must ever give me 
 
 great concern to think that anything I could have said 
 wore the appearance even of unkindness towards you — 
 I have very long avoided " that topic," except when I 
 thought I could change opinions injurious to you — & I 
 have even experienced that my very silence has been 
 turned against me ! so it is difficult to know what to do 
 — yet I beheve that is the safest hne 
 
 this letter has as usual met with 10,000 interruptions 
 but it must go " with all its imperfections on its head " 
 
 •I hope your health continues to improve & y' of little 
 Ada to be perfect — I fear I must remain here till after 
 y^ 1 2th when My Mistress gives a great affair to which 
 I shall be summoned— nothing gooi at home, except that 
 my darlings are well ' 
 
 "■ Underlined twice. 
 
 243 K2 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Georgey's love and she is going to write to you imme- 
 diately 
 
 Ever my dearest A 
 
 Most affec"' & gratefully y" 
 
 finished Wed''. 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Vuliers to Lady Byron. 
 [Extract-I 
 
 Knightsbridge. 
 Saturday July 27th [18 16]. 
 
 I SO much wish to believe that A is in a good way 
 
 that I try to think her letters to you sincere, tho' there 
 are some things I cannot quite reconcile to my mind — 
 if I understand you right you have implied to her that 
 the continuation of your friendly intercourse with her 
 depends upon the cessation of hers with him & I think 
 I also understand that when she declined being the 
 transmitter of the bulletins of the Child she implied to 
 you that she should relinquish the correspondence alto- 
 gether. Now this I know she has not done — for since my 
 last letter to you I have seen upon her table a thick 
 unsealed letter addressed by her to him — How far it 
 would be expedient or prudent (for the reasons you very 
 justly alledge) for her to break off this intercourse 
 abruptly is another question — & one on which she ought 
 to consult you, & on which your judgment & opinion 
 should be her guide, but considering all that has passed 
 she must not say one thing to you, & do another — Ton 
 are, I grant, the only human being in whom she can 
 confide, in whom it is fair & reasonable to expect her to 
 confide, be her penitence what it may — but in you she 
 is now bound to confide implicitly — & to you she is bound 
 to obey implicitly. 
 
 God bless you dear Lady B — 
 
 Always most truly & affectionately yrs. 
 Therese Villiers. 
 244 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 Lady Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers. 
 
 Lowestoft. July 28 
 
 (1816) 
 
 I am happy to say, my dear Mrs. Villiers, that I have 
 
 no reason to suspect A of acting a double part about 
 
 the correspondence — She submitted it to my opinion 
 whether she should immediately make the communica- 
 tion to him which must be preparatory to any change, 
 and I advised that it should be postponed, as I thought 
 it required mature consideration — She was therefore at 
 present to send the same formal accounts as before, for 
 she told me he had forbidden her to write about any- 
 thing but the child — She says that in her last letter she 
 has only mentioned respecting me that I had shown 
 her " the greatest kindness " — This is all well and I am 
 now leading her on to promise that she will never renew a 
 confidential intercourse by letter — or any personal inter- 
 course — I find it necessary to gain step by step, and to 
 disclose my views less abruptly than with some. She 
 is perpetually relapsing into compromises with her 
 conscience, and is at present under one of these delu- 
 sions, which I cannot show you better than in the 
 words of her letter, on which I shall animadvert very 
 severely, as there is no fallacy more dangerous than 
 that which makes a merit of feelings when the conduct is 
 culpable — 
 
 " I have said Httle of him, my dearest A fearing 
 
 you might mistake the nature of my feelings — I am 
 certain they are & ever have been such as you could not 
 disapprove " ! 
 
 In another melancholy instance of crime, I have very 
 lately heard the excuse, that there was " no error in the 
 jjgart " — Upon such principles what may not be justified ? 
 It is sad to think of a mother impressing lessons of this 
 nature on the minds of her children — and of Georgy 
 particularly, who requires the best instruction — I wish 
 very much to see A — — and it has only been from con- 
 sideration for her good, which may be best promoted by 
 
 24s 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 withholding something, that I have not yet promised to 
 see her — 
 
 Lady Granville having received a strong impression 
 
 against A which, when she visited me, I could 
 
 not counteract any further than by expressing my own 
 kind feelings, I thought it right in the present state of 
 things between A & me, to write to Lady G. requesting 
 as a favour to myself, that she would show the same 
 
 kindness to A as formerly. Lady G. has written to 
 
 me saying that in consequence she called upon her. 
 Having taken all the care I could of her character in the 
 world, I have now only to attend to her character in 
 more material respects — & for this task I have at least 
 patience enough — 
 
 I feel so much as if you were an old friend that I cannot 
 afford you a new pen, but hope you wUl be able to make 
 out what is scrawled with this — I did not wish to leave 
 the impression of any duplicity on your mind for another 
 hour — 
 
 Ever yours most aflectly. 
 
 A. L B. 
 
 Lady Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 LowestoflFe July 30 
 1816. 
 
 It is in hearts like yours & mine, dearest A- 
 
 where kind feelings have so much power, that their 
 excess even in the shape of sacrifice, is to be guarded 
 against — and those particular ones to which we have 
 yielded too much ought to be those from which we should 
 afterwards withdraw as much as possible — Certainly 
 when regard for the welfare of others also enjoins us to 
 withdraw — 
 
 Consider all the reasons against any future personal 
 intercourse between you & him by an earher regard to 
 which evils might have been prevented — First — ^his 
 inclinations to misuse it — against a return of which you 
 can never feel secure in a character so unstable — & you 
 
 246 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 would thus expose him to temptation — If you have been 
 sanguine in the disinterested hope of contributing 
 actively to his good, / have indulged it for you beyond 
 the^ bounds of reason, & have always most earnestly 
 desired that you should have the comfort of being 
 instrumental to that end — but your chance of being so, 
 at least by any personal endeavours, has I fear been 
 sacrificed — Associations most prejudicial to a good 
 influence from you, have subsisted too deeply & too 
 habitually in his mind — ^What has passed on his part 
 since my marriage, in my presence, as well as in my 
 absence, must on reconsideration, convince you they 
 were in no degree done away — Owr visit to SMB^ — even 
 the first night of it will make you sensible of this — He 
 then made me most cruelly sensible of what engrossed 
 his thoughts & actuated his conduct — His visit to you 
 afterwards, when his resentment was excited by the 
 blameless principle of your opposition, in short, many 
 more facts I shall not recall, lead to the same conclusion 
 — ^His feelings towards you have varied — & they were 
 seldom suppressed with me — Sometimes he has spoken 
 of you with compassion — sometimes with bitter scorn — 
 & sometimes with dispositions still more reprehensible 
 — The only time when I believe he was really on the 
 very brink of Suicide, was on an occasion relating to his 
 remorse about you — If I think you have something to 
 atone for to him, much more do I think he owes you 
 atonement. Till you feel that he has in reality been 
 your worst friend — indeed, not your friend — you cannot 
 altogether think rightly — yet I am far from thinking 
 any uncharitable feelings are to follow — forgive him — 
 desire his welfare — but resign the pernicious view of 
 being his friend more nearly — do not think me cruel — 
 you would not if you knew how happy it would make me 
 that wishes which I do not misunderstand, & even feel 
 for you, could accord with any reasonable or rehgious 
 consideration of the relative circumstances. 
 
 There is another reason too of the greatest weight — 
 
 1 Six Mile Bottom. 
 247 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 For the sake of your children — both as respects the 
 world's opinion of yourself and still more from the injury 
 young minds must receive in the society of one so 
 unprincipled — I feel most anxious for your children in 
 this respect, & for dear Georgiana particularly, whom, 
 as you must remember he had every disposition to 
 injure — & you will not be offended when I say also that 
 I think his mind too powerful for you — I could not feel 
 secure that he would not bewilder you on any subject — 
 The nature of his character (which I could make clearer 
 to you than it is) gives him great advantage over any one 
 in this respect. 
 
 You seem to have understood from the anxiety I 
 retain that he should become more fit for another 
 world, that I have yet some idea of assisting that end 
 personally No — Such hope is as far from me as from you 
 — & it would only be in one circumstance that I would 
 ever consent to see him again — Alas — my dear A — ^you 
 do not, I believe, know him — The Selfishness of strong 
 passions, & when Romance is made the colouring & the 
 mask of Vice, is not so easily perceived, as the selfishness 
 of a calmer temper & less fascinating imagination — and 
 the arts of a character naturally open and ingenuous, till 
 it was changed & taught to deceive at an early age by the 
 dreadful necessity of concealment — is not as obvious as 
 the duplicity of one whose heart was less formed for 
 confidence — Such, as I once told you are the fatal effects 
 of a Solitary Secret — it Chills & hardens & absorbs — & 
 the heart which it does not break must become depraved 
 — if Religious feelings do not save it — 
 
 I should not advise you for his sake to restrict your 
 correspondence further than by keeping always in view 
 to rectify instead of soothing or indulging his feelings — 
 by avoiding therefore all phrases or marks, which may 
 recall wrong ideas to his mind — & even should this 
 excite his irritation, it will do him less injury than com- 
 pHance — and let me also warn you against the levity & 
 nonsense which he Hkes for the worst reason, because it 
 prevents him from reflecting seriously — at a distance you 
 
 248 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 may perhaps be better able to say things occasionally 
 which will make an impression — the more so, as you are 
 not suspected of preaching — or of knowing what, when 
 we meet, I may perhaps impart. 
 
 I will stop — perhaps already I have gone too far in 
 using the privilege you allow me — But I will hope not to 
 be quite useless to one I love so well — ^Let me know what 
 opinions you may form on the subjects of my letter & 
 believe me always — 
 
 Your most affec'® 
 
 A. I. B 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 Monday night (August 5 1816). 
 
 I have considered my dearest A all the reasons you 
 have kindly represented against future personal inter- 
 course & others which you have not & I perfectly agree 
 with you it is most desirable to avoid it — at the same 
 time I think it w'^ be very difficult for me & might lead 
 to consequences very injurious to more than me to make 
 any open declarations about it. Consider the appearance 
 to the World & to some in particular to whom I can't 
 state all my reasons — & the effects on him — at the same 
 time I would as entirely-^ as possible avoid it — but do 
 reflect on many reasons for doing it prudently — At 
 present there seems little prospect of my being exposed 
 to this difficulty. I have no idea of his returning & if I 
 gave way to my own forebodings, they w'' incline me to 
 think we should never meet again — but to dwell on such is 
 
 useless 1 assure you most solemnly — most truly — 
 
 I have long felt that he has not been my friend — but from 
 my heart I forgive him — & pray to God to forgive him 
 & change his heart — to restore him to peace — & there is 
 nothing I would not do which could be done consistently 
 with my duty to God & to others to contribute to his 
 good — how far & whether I may ever be able to do so it 
 is I think impossible to foresee — sinct futurity is veiled 
 
 ^ " Entirely " underlined twice. 
 249 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 from us — I perfectly agree with you my dearest A that 
 the fresent presents no hope of the sort — pray do not 
 misunderstand me — supposing he returns, nothing could 
 induce me 
 
 Wei^. I left off there dearest A. & have not been able 
 to resume — I was going to say that nothing should induce 
 me to see him again so frequently or in the way I have 
 done — but that merely I see difficulties in saying / will 
 never see you again — which I think you w^ understand 
 or if I could see you I could explain — I only hope it 
 won't appear to you that I am thinking of my own 
 gratifications — 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 Friday (August 9 1816). 
 Dearest A/ 
 
 I've been thinking with dismay of the letter full 
 of blots & scratches & imperfections of every description 
 which I sent you the other day — how it was — or how it 
 is I scarcely know — but I am in one constant hurry & 
 worry — I lay {sic) in my Bed thinking aU I would say to 
 you & when I get up my thoughts are all put to flight by 
 1 0000 worries of the moment — however I am thankful 
 for the kind allowances you make for me & for the pros- 
 pect of a remedy in the hope of seeing you — my dearest 
 A — it is too kind of you to wish it & think of it — I hope 
 & think I can spin out my stay till the time you mention — 
 I had not determined positively to go next week — tho' I 
 suppose towards the middle of it I might be at hberty 
 
 to do so 1 don't know what good I could do at home 
 
 — except as far as regards my Bairns — perhaps I may 
 be of more use here — ^where we have friends who are 
 trying to do us good — if we will let them. I am most 
 anxious to see you — & I do suppose you would not 
 object to my mentioning your wish to see me here to my 
 Husband — if you do — say so truly — & don't think y° 
 worse of me for venturing to say to you / wish to see you 
 — I know not whether it may appear a want of some 
 feeling — but indeed there is so much I have to say to 
 
 250 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 you which it w** be endless to write — putting every other 
 reason out of the question & there are many others 
 dearest A — perhaps sadly selfish ones. I am very sorry 
 to hear that L'' Gosford is so unwell, I have looo times 
 iiitended begging you to say something in return for her 
 kind message in y" letter to Georgey — 
 
 How is y' health my dearest A — & how is little A A 
 — I will write again in a day or two — but I really think 
 I may venture to say that my stay can be contrived very 
 well — ^let me hear from you when you have a moment — 
 I dine with M"" ViUiers to-day & will give y"' message — 
 God bless you & believe me ever y'^ most grateful & 
 affec 
 
 A L 
 
 Lady Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers. 
 
 Lowestoft. Aug. 13 — (1816). 
 
 My dear M^ Villiers, 
 
 I desired A — to tell you I was decided to go 
 to London by her remaining there, as I agree with you 
 in thinking an interview particularly desirable — As I 
 shall probably see her before you, I must again request 
 to know your opinion on some points which I must be 
 prepared to discuss — and in order that you may be 
 enabled to judge, I will give you some extracts from her 
 last letters. 
 
 [Extracts follow from Mrs. Leigh's letter of Aug. 5. 
 —Ed.] 
 
 I have deferred all further discussion till we meet — 
 Now do you think I must then require the promise of 
 her never voluntarily seeing him again, or shall I limit 
 it to this that she will never see him at his house or her 
 own ? — 
 
 I shall put myself and bairn in a Lodging somewhere 
 between Knightsbridge and Green Street which will be 
 the principal attractions to me^and I will do as I would 
 be done by, by making use of you — If anything should 
 happen to prolong A's stay in Town, I should be glad 
 
 251 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 to have a little more time here. Have you heard I am 
 turned Methodist ? — so I read in a letter from London 
 a few days ago, and I hope I am not become an Antino- 
 mian (a sect which abounds here) for they hold that 
 the more sins one commits the better chance one has of 
 Heaven — 
 
 I am very glad that I shall see you — and not so 
 miserably as when we last met. 
 
 Yours most affec"' 
 
 A. I. B. 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers to Lady Byron. 
 
 Knightsbridge 
 August 17th 1 816. 
 
 My dear Lady Byron, 
 
 It does me good to think I shall see you so soon 
 
 — and the thing that pleases me the most in A is her 
 
 decided wish to stay to see you — She might so easily 
 have avoided it as the Court attendance is over, & 
 Mr. Leigh very cross at her being here — She had there- 
 fore ample pretence for going, (tho' I don't think her 
 empressement to return to him great) but ever since you 
 announced to her your intention of coming she has 
 apparently been quite determined to stay — 
 
 ... I found Lady Melbourne with A the other 
 
 day — She (Ly. M.) seemed much annoyed at my entry, 
 but as I did not think much good could come of that 
 visit, I did not make a precipitate retreat but outstayed 
 
 her — I asked no questions & A told me nothing of 
 
 what she had said— She told me a few days ago she had 
 had a letter from him that he had just read Glenarvon 
 & only remarked that it was precious stuff ^ — I made 
 little or no reply — this silence must astonish her & I am 
 anxious to hear if she will remark upon it to you — I own 
 I am NOW ^ very sanguine about her & have the greatest 
 hopes that your approaching interview will complete her 
 reformation I might almost say salvation — Pray let me 
 
 ' Underlined twice. 
 252 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 know what day you come — Could I be of any use about 
 a lodging for you ? I had not heard of your Methodistical 
 turn — 
 
 God bless you my dear Lady B. 
 
 Yours ever most aflectly. 
 T. V. 
 
 [On_ August 31st Lady Byron came to London and the 
 interview took place in which Mrs. Leigh made the fuU 
 confession described in Chapter IIL, p. 65. 
 
 I insert here a memorandum in Lady Byron's hand- 
 writing, undated, which was found with her correspon- 
 dence of this time with Mrs. Leigh. It appears to me to 
 be notes written by her preparatory to her interview with 
 Mrs. Leigh.— Ed.] 
 
 Undated [September ? 18 16.] 
 
 Do you sorrow most for the sin or for the consequences ? 
 — for the offence towards God — or the injury towards 
 your fellow-creatures ? 
 
 Do you sufficiently feel that every thought associated 
 with such sin, is sinful, that the heart may be criminal 
 though the actions are innocent ? — And that in his state 
 of mind & after what has past all aflfection for you must 
 be more or less of this kind, therefore in seeking to keep 
 it alive, or even in allowing it as may have appeared to 
 you innocently, you have encouraged his guilt of heart, 
 and distanced his repentance — ^Are you sincerely resolved 
 never to indulge him or yourself in this self-deceiving 
 way again ? and strictly to confine your manifestations 
 of Interest for him to what is required by the following 
 considerations — provided they do not interfere with the 
 determination of never being again on terms of familiar 
 affection with him — 
 
 1. To prevent exasperating him to a disclosure — 
 
 2. To prevent such appearances as would tacitly 
 disclose your relative circumstances — 
 
 253 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Whenever you have any communication with him, 
 question your own heart most scrupulously whether 
 these be simply your objects — ^whether you are not 
 deceived by the wish of still being dear to him, or by the 
 dread of those consequences from his displeasure, which 
 led you to incur God's anger — 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 [Undated.] 
 Dearest A 
 
 I am so sorry for your bad night — & for your 
 idea of my uncomfortableness — which is however quite a 
 fancy of your own — but I daresay I looked something or 
 other which made you fancy. Pray have a good night & 
 write me a 2^ post note to say when I am likely to see 
 you again, & tell me you are no longer sorry. I assure 
 you I only feel & felt pleasure & comfort in seeing you 
 &c., ALL ^ at least that I am now capable of feeling — 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers to Lady Byron. 
 
 The Lady Byron 
 
 Lower Seymour Street. 
 
 September I2th 1816. 
 My dear Ly. B. — 
 
 I have kept your servant unmercifully but 
 unavoidably — 
 
 I thought I had acted ^ better than it seems I have 
 done — yet perhaps it may turn out for the best — You 
 ask my opinion & I hardly know what to say — for this 
 is a new point of view — but if you can (I doubt the 
 ■possibility) induce her to confide in me it would be very 
 advisable — perhaps the only way of effecting this would 
 be by offering to speak to me yourself, so that she should 
 have no confessions to make — I think I should on my 
 part only make the condition of being ask'd no questions 
 as to the sources of my information, tho' I would assure 
 
 ^ Underlined twice. 
 " Underlined twice. 
 
 254 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 her, & with truth, that it came from quarters uncon- 
 nected with you, and originating with him — you of 
 course know I mean Lady G.-*- I can also with truth 
 say that the reason of my being told was kindness to 
 her to prevent my injuring her by over zeal — She never 
 must know of any communication of yours — If she wd. 
 consent to this it might be of use in your absence — per- 
 haps — as she suspects my knowledge — otherwise it has 
 always struck me that her knowing it was known by people 
 who continued their affection for her might diminish her 
 horror of the crime, wh. is already not too great — 
 
 If you can determine her to this measure I will be 
 guided entirely by you as to my management of her — I 
 will not see her to-day before I see you & will be with 
 you before 4 — I think Aunt S.^ might be stopped by the 
 
 mention of other facts than those wh. concern A but 
 
 more of this when we meet — 
 
 Yrs ever & most affectionately 
 [Finishes at edge of paper.] 
 
 Lady Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Undated [September ? 1816.] 
 
 My dearest A 
 
 Mrs. Villiers has just left me — I was not mistaken 
 as to the subject of our conversation — She had attached 
 no credit to the report but after you left Town before, 
 had received detailed information which originated with 
 
 loy^ £ from an authority she could not doubt — This 
 
 she asserted upon her honour, though she requests not 
 to be questioned as to the Informant, who was actuated 
 by no other motive than to prevent her from precipi- 
 tating you into greater dangers by her imprudent & 
 ignorant zeal— She has since acted the part she thought 
 most friendly towards you, avoiding the duplicity of 
 appearing to have any feeling towards him but horror, 
 which was much increased by his treachery— I need not 
 dwell upon her feehngs towards you— Grief is the pre- 
 
 1 Probably Lady Granville. 
 • Sophia Byron. 
 
 2SS 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 dominant one — She wished to consult with me, and also 
 to make me the medium of this communication to you, 
 being herself too ill at present to undertake a conver- 
 sation with you upon it — She wishes to be spared in this 
 respect, but will see you before you leave Town or not 
 as you are inclined, and desires you to consider her as a 
 friend whom in any emergency you may turn to, & 
 consult — as you have formerly done — and that she will 
 
 write to you unreservedly when Col: L is absent — 
 
 This is the substance of what^past — I hope I said for 
 you all that you would think right — and I trust it is 
 better that I should have been consulted by her — 
 Believe me she is truly kind (though her feeling is very 
 deep) — More to-morrow — Pray come early — God bless 
 & protect you & yours — 
 
 A I B 
 
 I have read the lines ^ to you — & think they ought not 
 to be seen by any one — 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 White Hall 
 Thursday Night 
 [September 12, 1816.] 
 Dearest A. 
 
 I scarcely know what to say except that I wUl 
 be with you early ^ to-morrow — & that I am grateful to 
 
 you & to M" V I don't think I can see her — & 
 
 yet I wish you not to say so — and in fact I can't just 
 now say what I wish — If you have the lines, keep them. 
 God bless you — 
 
 Lady Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers. 
 [Endorsed by Mrs. Villiers] Septr. i8i6. 
 My dear Mrs. Villiers — 
 
 A is with me — and wishes me to express her 
 
 most grateful sense of all your kindness, on which she 
 will not trespass by any thing that could agitate you in 
 
 1 Epistle to Augusta. See Appendix F. 
 ^ Underlined twice, 
 
 256 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (n) 
 
 your present state— and wiU therefore decline your 
 tnendly offer of calling upon her to-day— at the same 
 time that she feels great comfort in the hope of hearing 
 from you — ^Thank you once more for all your considera- 
 tion for me— & still more for her & believe me, 
 
 Ever yours most affectly., 
 A. L B. 
 The above was written under A's inspection— I have 
 only to add that I see all I could wish in her towards 
 you — & the humblest sense of her own situation — I have 
 told her from you that the informant you alluded to 
 was no relation of hers— & she will not enquire further— 
 I have settled with Murray to cut out those lines & give 
 them to her — She has shown me of her own accord his 
 letters to her — having only suppressed them because of 
 the bitterness towards me — they are absolute love letters 
 — and she wants to know how she can stop them — No 
 more time— But you shall hear from E. Farm. 
 
 Lady Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers. 
 
 E. Farm.i 
 
 Septr. 14 (i 8 1 6). 
 
 My dear Mrs. Villiers — I am inclined, on consideration, 
 to apprehend some disadvantages in a communication 
 to the Wilmots — and my reasons are chiefly from the 
 nature of Mr W's character — His defect certainly is 
 vanity, and I suspect that might be wounded by her 
 having placed confidence in any one, besides myself, 
 
 preferably to him & Mrs W Now I am sure it is 
 
 not her wish to extend it to them, and I see no good, on 
 the contrary harm, in her ever thinking them in possession 
 
 of it — Mr W did injury before, without meaning it, 
 
 to her state of feelings, by trying to alarm instead of 
 softening — of this I am now thoroughly convinced — He 
 requires to be softened himself, and had not the tact 
 which makes good intentions acceptable to people's 
 feelings — With very useful executive powers in the time 
 
 ' Lord Auckland's house — Eden Farm. 
 
 A. 257 S 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 of action, he cannot lay them aside in the time of rest, 
 and when things had better be left to take their own 
 course, is always wanting to do something — of these 
 facts I wish to make you aware for the future benefit of 
 all parties — 
 
 A consults me with the deepest feeling upon this 
 
 point — whether she did not owe it to you voluntarily to 
 renounce all connection with you, for your future sake — 
 in case of any disclosure — and I really believe she would 
 sacrifice any thing to prevent your suffering by your 
 generosity — I told her that as a wife and mother I 
 thought she ought to avail herself of your friendship — 
 The knowledge that you could & would forgive her 
 transgressions only seemed to humble her more — I have 
 nothing to regret in my own conduct towards her, at 
 least I hope not, except that I was at one time inclined 
 to adopt Mr. W's system — 
 
 Do you not think you have reason to write to Lady 
 G ^ and soften her ? — 
 
 The effect of knowing that she was still further 
 betrayed, was such as made her determine at first never 
 to write to him again — but this is not to be desired — nor 
 any violent resolution — I only mention it as it shows 
 the feelings you wished to arise — 
 
 I cannot say with how much satisfaction, though of a 
 melancholy kind in some respects, I review my visit to 
 Town — in the hope of its having contributed something 
 to the welfare & comfort of those who are dear to me — 
 and amongst such friends I can never forget you — 
 
 Yours most affectly., 
 
 A. I. B. 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Geo. Villiers to Lady Byron. 
 
 [i South Place. Knightsbridge] 
 
 Sunday [September 15, 1816] 
 
 You misunderstood me dear Lady B. I never meant 
 that the Wilmots should know what had passed between 
 
 ' Lady Granville. 
 258 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 Augusta & me — the question I asked you related entirely 
 to what had passed between A. & you ^ — the knowledge 
 of which would I thought tend to soften him— & as I 
 thought it possible that I might see them before you 
 would, I wished to ask you whether there should be any 
 and what restrictions to my communication as to what 
 had passed with you. 
 
 I am persuaded you see M' W's character in a very 
 true light — I have long been convinced that Vanity was 
 his weak point — His conduct towards you when called 
 upon to interfere gave me a good impression of his head 
 and heart — & I think there is a great deal of agrement 
 in his society but I think his sarcasms can be very bitter 
 — & bitterness at this moment towards poor A would 
 be a cruelty. I have more difficulty in making out 
 M" W's character as she is more reserved — but at all 
 events you may rely on my never communicating to 
 either what has recently passed between A & me and of 
 which I must tell you more — 
 
 When I got your note and found she declined 
 seeing me I felt I was doing unkindly by her, & I could 
 not reconcile myself to it — I thought she would always 
 have a dread of our first meeting and it was selfish in me 
 to put it off. 
 
 I therefore wrote her a very long letter from the impulse 
 of the moment assuring her that as my compassion had 
 been excited & my affection not alienated when I first 
 heard /or truth, all that I had so long rejected with scorn, 
 it was not likely to be so now that I knew from you that 
 she was all that we could wish and all that I trusted she 
 w^ ever be — I told her that I considered her the Victim 
 to the most infernal plot that had ever entered the heart 
 of man to conceive, that I wish'd I could think the Plot 
 was over, but I was positive it was not — that I warned 
 her to be on her guard & that the best precaution she 
 could take was unbounded unreserved confidence in you 
 — that not a letter — a note — a word should pass between 
 her & him without being submitted to you — that you 
 
 ^ Underlined twice. 
 259 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 were her Guardian angel & the only person who could 
 assist her to counteract the execrable villany of the 
 other. I told her that my horror, my detestation, my 
 execration of the person who had beguiled & betrayed 
 her exceeded all my powers of expression and that with 
 the exception of forgiveness no other feehngs than those 
 I described could, should or ought to exist in her mmd 
 towards him — I hope you will not think me wrong in 
 speaking of him in such strong terms but I thought it 
 well she sh'^ be impressed with the idea that such must ^ 
 be the feelings of those who knew such facts. I told her 
 that I w^ call upon her for a minute in the course of the 
 day but I w'^ not talk on the subject — I went accordingly 
 — She commanded herself better than I expected very 
 kind in her manner & evidently wished to dine with me 
 — I therefore pressed it. My aunt brought her & carried 
 her home and Georgy too — ^we had no conversation — 
 M"^ V. was particularly kind to her & she got on very 
 well — She gave me the enclosed note which pray burn 
 when read — I own I am very glad this has passed — I am 
 glad she was horror struck with his further treachery — 
 all this wiU help to alienate her feelings from him — I 
 spoke very strongly of those lines to her — I wonder 
 whether he still possesses many of her former letters to 
 him — They alone would be proof positive — & he may 
 certainly turn them against her if his revenge is roused — 
 his word only would hardly succeed now — I think you 
 have great reason my dear L'' B. to rejoice in your 
 efforts to save this unfortunate being, for I do really 
 believe & hope they will be rewarded by success — I 
 am going to L'' Clarendon's today and shall not return 
 till tomorrow Ev* at the End of the week I beHeve we 
 go to Worthing — but always direct here — ^and pray write 
 soon 
 
 Most affectionately Y" ever 
 
 T V 
 
 ' Underlined twice. 
 
 260 
 
LADY BYRON AND MRS. LEIGH (ii) 
 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lady Byron. 
 
 S. M. B. 
 Tuesday [September] I7*[i8i6] 
 
 Dearest A 
 
 Your letter has given me the greatest comfort 
 and I do not dread your misunderstanding my un- 
 expressed feelings towards you — for all your kindness & 
 consideration — I am glad to think I have anticipated 
 your advice as much as possible by endeavouring to 
 avoid a recurrence to the past — it has certainly been very 
 unsuccessfully as yet — / can't understand the incon- 
 sistency of his fears — & his actions constantly tending 
 to realize them ! ! Thank you looooo times my own 
 dear Sis — for all your kind thoughts for me — I shall be 
 glad that you see M"^ V again I have a very great dread 
 of her thinking me a perfect stone! & perhaps she will 
 believe you that I am not — I feel I can't undeceive her 
 — for the more anxious I am — the less I am able — She 
 terms you my Guardian Angel & I am sure you are so — 
 Towards another person — she is very violent in her 
 expressions of resentment — & it is I daresay very 
 natural but I think it better not to say a word in answer — 
 tho' in fact / am the one much the most to blame — & 
 quite inexcusable^ — You know — I trust — that I am 
 anxious to make every atonement — & will assist me — 
 Your suspicions — Do they particularly allude to my own 
 Maid ? I have thought of that, but can't perceive 
 any cause for them there ; the great partiality always 
 manifested towards him I think w'' prove that — but my 
 blindness about other things as you say ought to make 
 me more watchful. I arrived safe on Saturday — & 
 found things better in some ways than I expected — the 
 alarm I hinted at to you was nothing — the Spirits better 
 than they have been for some time but without any 
 particular reason, for affairs are ye same — so of course 
 durability can't be expected. He is gone to-day into 
 
 1 Nearly three years before, Byron had written to Lady Melbourne of 
 Augusta : " it was not her fault " ; and had begged Lady Melbourne not to 
 speak so harshly of her to him, " the cause of all." 
 
 a6i 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Hertfordshire till Friday or Saturday — yesterday — rode 
 to meet Lord & L'' D^- in their way North — they are 
 lately returned from Geneva & were told very seriously 
 that I was there disguised as a Page — their informer 
 could not be persuaded that it was not so — ^Pray my 
 dearest A do you think that the allusions in C H ^ — can 
 do any harm — I did not read them — I have not heard 
 from Murray in answer. When I write to B. it will be 
 as you advise — Do not show the letter I sent you to 
 M'" V. I should think it wrong to any but you — My 
 Guardian Angel ! 
 
 I am not sure whether yr letter was read — but it was 
 exactly the sort of thing to have made the best impres- 
 sion — how kind in you dearest A. there was an enquiry 
 as I expected as to your reception & manner &c — I 
 replied as we had agreed w*^ be best which was quite 
 satisfactory — I have no time for more now — but believe 
 dearest all I would say for yr kindness — & do write to 
 me — say how you & Ada are — Georgey sends her 
 love — 
 
 Ever yr most grateful & aflfec. 
 
 A. L. 
 
 ' Darlington. 
 
 » " Childe Harold." 
 
 262 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 additional letters : byron and augusta 
 The Hon. Mrs. Leigh to Lord Byron. 
 
 The 
 
 (Enclosing hair.) 
 
 
 
 [Post Mark] 
 
 [seal : 
 
 
 1 Byron " Augusta "] 
 
 Newmarket 
 
 4 Bennet Street 
 
 
 St. James's 
 
 Free 
 
 London. 
 
 29 NO 29 
 
 
 1813 
 
 Partager tous vos sentimens 
 ne voir que par vos yeux 
 n'agir que par vos conseils, ne 
 vivre que pour vous, voila mes 
 voeux, mes projets, & le seul 
 destin qui peut me rendre 
 heureuse 
 
 [Enclosed is a small packet containing a lock of fine 
 dark brown hair tied with white silk. Inside the paper 
 of the packet, and underneath the lock of hair, is written 
 in autograph : 
 
 AUGUSTA 
 
 On the outside of the paper containing the hair is written 
 by Lord Byron] : 
 
 La Chevelure of 
 the one whom I 
 most loved + 
 
 [Of the following thirty-four letters, thirty-one are to 
 Mrs. Leigh and three to Lady Byron. Of these I 
 
 263 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 possess in most cases both the original letters and Lady 
 Byron's copies from them, which she took under the 
 advice of Colonel Doyle and Dr. Lushington, whose 
 anxiety to guard against any future misrepresentation of 
 facts has been already described.^ Some of these 
 originals are from Lady Byron's papers and some from a 
 packet given many years ago by the late Mr. Murray ^ to 
 Lord Lovelace and his sister. Mr. Murray, who had 
 been a generous creditor to Mrs. Leigh in the distresses of 
 her later years, bought these letters after her death from 
 her heirs. It has been possible to supply some lost 
 portions and erasures, made by Mrs. Leigh, from Lady 
 Byron's copies. 
 
 The letter of July 20, 18 19, to Lady Byron may per- 
 haps give the false impression that, after their parting, 
 he wrote to her frequently and on indifferent matters. 
 That is far from being the case. But since she has been 
 supposed to have been unsympathetic to him on the 
 subject of his poetry, it is worth noting how — the pen 
 once in hand — ^he recurred naturally to the old habit of 
 talking to her about the scenery and subjects of his verse. 
 
 I have made no attempt to reproduce the dashes, 
 which (in all the letters that I have seen) Byron habitually 
 used instead of punctuation marks ; nor the peculiar 
 method of apparently doubling the letter " s " — so that, 
 for instance, " yours " becomes " yourss " — ^which he 
 adopted in his later years.' — Ed.] 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Diodati Aug' 27* 1816. 
 [First line scratched out] 
 
 Your confidential letter is safe, and all the others. 
 This one has cut me to the heart because I have made you 
 uneasy. Still I think all these apprehensions — ^very 
 groundless. Who can care for^such a wretch as C ,* 
 
 ^ See Chap. II., p. 46, and Chap. III., p. 59. 
 ' Father ,of the present head of the firm. 
 ' See Chap. V., p. iii. 
 * Lady Caroline^Lamb. 
 
 264 
 

 P 
 
 W 
 
 ^; 
 I — . 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 H • 
 
 O 
 H 
 
 °^ 
 
 en Z 
 W O 
 
 S So 
 O 
 
 O 
 O 
 
 w 
 1-1 
 
 o 
 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 or believe such a seventy times convicted liar ? and in 
 the next place, whatever she may suppose or assert — I 
 never " committed " any one to her but myself. And 
 as to her fancies — she fancies any thing — and every body 
 
 — Lady M ^ &c &c Really this is starting at 
 
 shadows. You distress me with — no — it is not you. 
 
 But I have heard that Lady B '.is ill, & I am so sorry 
 
 — but it's of no use — do not mention her again — but I 
 shall not forget her kindness to you. 
 
 I am going to Chamouni (to leave my card with Mont 
 Blanc) and I mean to buy some pretty granite & spar 
 playthings for children (which abound there) for my 
 daughter — and my nieces — You will forward what I 
 select to little Da — & divide the rest among your own. 
 I shall send them by Scrope ; this goes by another 
 person. I shall write more and longer soon. 
 
 do not ht^wtcasy — and do not " hate yourself " if 
 you hate eitK^r let it be me — but do not — it would kUl 
 me ; we are the last persons in the world — who ought — 
 or could cease to love one another. 
 
 Ever dearest thine ^ 
 + B 
 
 P.S. I send a note to Georgiana. I do not under- 
 stand all your mysteries about "the verses" & the 
 Asterisks ; but if the name is not put asterisks always 
 are, & I see nothing remarkable in this.' I have heard 
 nothing but praises of those lines. 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Diodati — Geneva 
 
 Sept. 8th 1816. 
 
 My dearest Augusta, 
 
 By two opportunities of private conveyance I 
 have sent answers to your letter delivered by Mr. H.^ 
 S * is on his return to England and may probably 
 
 ^ Lady Melbourne, 
 
 ' For facsimile of signature, lee p. 286. 
 
 * Hobhouse. 
 
 * Scrope Davies. 
 
 365 
 
 3 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 arrive before this. He is charged with a few packets of 
 seals — necklaces — balls &c. & — I know not what — 
 formed of Chrystals, Agates, and other stones, all of 
 them from Mont Blanc bought and brought by me on 
 and from the spot — expressly for you to divide among 
 yourself and the children, including also your niece 
 Ada, for whom I selected a ball (of Granite — a soft 
 substance by the way — but the only one there) where- 
 withal! to roll and play when she is old enough, and 
 mischievous enough, & moreover a Chrystal necklace ; 
 and anything else you may like to add for her — the 
 love ! 
 
 The rest are for you and the nursery, but particu- 
 larly Georgiana, who has sent me a very nice letter. 
 I hope Scrope will carry them all safely, as he promised. 
 There are seals and all kinds of fooleries, pray like 
 them, for they come from a very curious place (nothing 
 like it hardly in all I ever saw) to say nothing of the 
 giver. 
 
 And so — Lady B. has been " kind to you " you tell 
 me — " very kind " — umph — it is as well she should be 
 kind to some of us, and I am glad she has the heart & 
 the discernment to be still your friend ; you was ever so 
 to her. I heard the other day that she was very unweU. 
 I was shocked enough — & sorry enough, God knows, 
 but never mind ; H. tells me however that she is not 
 ill ; that she had been indisposed, but is better and well 
 to do — ^This is a relief. As for me I am in good health, 
 & fair, though very unequal spirits ; but for all that — 
 she — or rather the Separation — has broken my heart. 
 I feel as if an Elephant had trodden on it. I am con- 
 vinced I shall never get over it — but I try. I had 
 enough before I knew her and more than enough, but 
 time & agitation had done something for me ; but this 
 last wreck has affected me very differently. If it were 
 acutely it would not signify ; but it is not that — I 
 breathe lead. While the storm lasted and you were all 
 pitying and comforting me with condemnation in 
 Piccadilly, it was bad enough & violent enough, but it's 
 
 266 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 worse now ; I have neither strength nor spirits nor 
 inclination to carry me through anything which will 
 clear my brain or lighten my heart. I mean to cross 
 the Alps at the end of this month, & go — God knows 
 where — by Dalmatia up to the Arnauts again, if nothing 
 better can be done ; I have still a world before me — 
 
 this — or the next. H has told me all the strange 
 
 stories in circulation of me & mine — not true.^ I have 
 been in some danger on the lake (near Meillerie) but 
 nothing to speak of ; and as to all these " mistresses " 
 — Lord help me — I have had but one. Now don't 
 scold — but what could I do ? A foolish girl, in spite of 
 all I could say or do, would come after me, or rather 
 went before for I found her here, and I have had all the 
 plague possible to persuade her to go back again, but 
 at last she went. Now dearest, I do most truly tell 
 thee that I could not help this, that I did all I could to 
 prevent it, and have at last put an end to it. I was not 
 in love nor have any love left for any, but I could not 
 exactly play the Stoic with a woman who had scrambled 
 eight hundred miles to unphilosophize me, besides I had 
 been regaled of late with so many " two courses and a 
 desert " (Alas !) of aversion, that I was fain to take a 
 little love (if pressed particularly) by way of novelty. 
 And now you know aU that I know of that matter, & it's 
 over. Pray write, I have heard nothing since your last, 
 at least a month or five weeks ago. I go out very little, 
 except into the air, and on journeys, and on the water, 
 and to Coppet, where M* de Stael has been particularly 
 kind and friendly towards me, and (I hear) fought battles 
 without number in my very indifferent cause. It has 
 (they say) made quite as much noise on this as the other 
 side of " La Manche " — Heaven knows why, but I seem 
 destined to set people by the ears. 
 
 Don't hate me, but believe me ever 
 Yrs. most affec"' 
 
 B 
 
 1 From here the latter half of this letter is printed in " Letters and Journals," 
 Vol. III., p. 347- 
 
 267 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Sept. 14"" 1816. 
 
 My dearest Augusta — 
 
 The paper with the initials came safely with your 
 letter, but the hair was either omitted or had shpt out. 
 You may be sure I looked everywhere carefully, but I 
 suppose you in your hurry forgot it. Pray send (or 
 save for me) two or three — but tie them with a thread — 
 or wrap them in a manner more liable to security. 
 
 I have written to you lately thrice, twice by private 
 conveyance & once by post. This is the fourth since 
 the letter you mention. 
 
 Your having seen my daughter is to me a great satis- 
 faction ; it is as if I had seen her myself. Next to you 
 — dearest — she is nearly all I have to look forward to 
 with hope or pleasure in this world. Perhaps she also 
 may disappoint & distress me, but I wiU not think so ; 
 in any case she will at least love me — or my memory. 
 
 By M'' Davies I sent you for yourself — ^little Da — & 
 my nieces, a variety of Chrystal & other trinkets from 
 Mont Blanc & Chamouni, which I got upon the spot for 
 you all. I hope they will arrive safely. 
 
 In my last letter I mentioned to you the origin of the 
 stories about " mistresses." As to " pages " — there be 
 none such — nor any body else. Such assertions and 
 reports find their own remedy sooner or later. 
 
 If I understand you rightly, you seem to have been 
 apprehensive — or menaced (like every one else) by that 
 infamous Bedlamite [erased] "^ — If she stirs against you, 
 neither her folly nor her falsehood should or shall 
 protect her. Such a monster as that has no sex, and 
 should live no longer. 
 
 But till such an event should occur, you may rely that 
 I shall remain as quiet as the most unbounded Contempt 
 of her, and my affection for you & regard for your feelings 
 can make me. I should never think of her nor her 
 infamies, but that they seem (I know not why) to make 
 you uneasy. What 'tis she may tell or what she may 
 
 ' Caroline Lamb. 
 
 a68 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 know or pretend to know— is to me indifferent. You 
 know I suppose that Lady B" secretly opened, my letter 
 trunks before she left Town, and that she has also been 
 (^during or since the separation) in correspondence with 
 that self-avowed Hbeller & strumpet [erasedj^ wife. 
 This you may depend upon though I did not know it till 
 recently. 
 
 _ Upon such conduct I am utterly at a loss to make a 
 single comment — beyond every expression of astonish- 
 ment. I am past indignation. 
 
 There is perhaps a chance of your seeing me in Spring, 
 as I said befqre I left England ; but it is useless to form 
 plans, and most of all for me to do so. I may say (as 
 Whitbread said to me of his own a short time before his 
 decease), that " none of mine ever succeeded." 
 
 We purpose making a short tour to the Berne Alps 
 next week, and then to return here and cross the Simplon 
 to Milan. Your letters had better be always directed 
 to Geneva Paste Restante and my banker (Mr. Hentsch, a 
 very attentive and good man), will take care to forward 
 them, wherever I may be. 
 
 I have answe'red Georgiana's letter & am yexy glad 
 she likes her little cousin. How carne Ada's hair fair ? 
 — she will be like her mother and torture me. However 
 if she is kind to you-— and when the time comes — if she 
 will continue so, it is enough. 
 
 I do not write to you in good spirits, and I cannot 
 pretend to be so, but I have no near nor immediate cause 
 of being thus, but as it is ; I only request you will say 
 nothing of this to Hobhouse by letter or message, as I 
 wish to wear as quiet an appearance with him as possible ; 
 — besides I am in good health & well without. 
 
 The Jerseys are here ; I am to see them soon. Mad° 
 de Stael still very kind & hospitable, but Rocca (to whom 
 she is privately married) is not well, with some old 
 wounds badly cured. 
 
 IfJ see anything very striking in the Mountains I 
 will tell thee. To Scrope I leave the details of Chamouni 
 
 » Wm. Lamb'i. 
 269 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 & the Glaciers & the sources of the Aveiron. This 
 country is altogether the Paradise of Wilderness — I wish 
 you were in it with me — & every one else out of it — 
 Love me, A., ever thine — 
 
 B. 
 
 [Mrs. Leigh wrote about the above letter to Lady 
 Byron : 
 
 " Sept. 27. The first sentence relates to 2 or 3 hairs 
 of a Great Man, which I sent by way of curiosity "... 
 
 " And then about you my dearest A Do you 
 
 know I'm sorry to suspect Fletcher of that communica- 
 tion — for no one else could "... 
 
 " I will tell you what I have answered which was very 
 little ... in answer to the accusations — y® first — 
 ' Who could tell him such a thing ! which I couli not 
 believe ' " . . . 
 
 " Sept. 30. Do tell me if I can do anything about you 
 for I cant tell you the grief it is to me his having such 
 ideas — if ^ he really has them — I sometimes indeed ojten 
 think it a real madness and you know not how I have 
 been doomed to witness this perverted, way of seeing 
 things — not only in him — thinking real friends enemies — 
 right — wrong — and so on " . . . 
 
 " About the Trunks — Could not I say something true 
 to contradict such a vile Calumny ! Do advise me — 
 and consider yourself as what I consider most "... 
 
 Lady Byron answered : 
 
 " Oct. 2. . . . All that is said of CL appears to me 
 nothing but the effect of apprehension — and the design 
 to blacken me by association with her (which will how- 
 ever make me more cautious) is another effect of fear in 
 order to invalidate any future disclosure which he may 
 suspect or know it is in my power to make so as to 
 convince others — the temper of the whole letter is 
 decidedly that of a conscience enraged by anticipating 
 judgment here as well as hereafter — and which by way of 
 precaution against the former would persecute un- 
 
 ^ Underlined twice. 
 270 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 relentingly all whom he has made to know him — From 
 this view his adoption (if not invention) of my being a 
 Picklock is easily explained — for such a suspicion of my 
 means of information would entirely discredit my 
 testimony — But there also seems another disposition in 
 parts of the letter — to alarm and annoy you notwith- 
 standing the professed feelings of consideration and 
 affection — This is evident in the hint about Whitbread— 
 (the old threat of Suicide) — and I think also in this very 
 suggestion of my having opened his papers — letters of 
 
 yours probably " . . . 
 
 " To return once more to CL — I never wrote a single 
 line to her from the time of my separation tUl that note 
 of which you know merely declining her visit — so that 
 the story of a correspondence is utterly false." . . . 
 
 — Ed.J 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Ouchy. Sep' 17. 181 6 
 
 My dearest Augusta, 
 
 I am thus far on my way to the Bernese Alps & 
 the Grindenwald, and the Tungfrau (that is the " Wild 
 woman " being interpreted — as it is so perverse a 
 mountain that no other sex would suit it), which journey 
 may occupy me about eight days or so, and then it is my 
 intention to return to Geneva, preparatory to passing 
 the Simplon 
 
 Continue you to direct as usual to Geneva. I have 
 lately written to you several letters (3 or 4 by post and 
 two by hand) and I have received all yours very 
 safely. I rejoice to have heard that you are well. You 
 have been in London too lately, & H. tells me that at 
 your levee he generally found L"^ F. Bentinck — pray why 
 is that fool so often a visitor f is he in love with you ? I 
 have recently broken through my resolution of not 
 speaking to you of Lady B — but do not on that 
 account name her to me. It is a reUef — a partial relief 
 to me to talk of her sometimes to you — but it would be 
 none to hear of her. Of her you are to j udge for yourself, 
 
 271 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 but do not altogether forget that she has destroyed your 
 brother. Whatever my faults might or may have been 
 — Sl?e — was not the person marked out by providence to 
 be their avenger. One day or another her conduct will 
 recoil on her own head ; not through me, for my feelings 
 towards her are not those of Vengeance, but — mark— 
 if she does not end miserably tot ou tard. She may think 
 — talk — or act as she will, and by any process of cold 
 reasoning and a jargon of " duty & acting for the best " 
 &c., &c., impose upon her own feelings & those of others 
 for a time — but woe unto her — the wretchedness she 
 has brought upon the man to whom she has been every- 
 thing evil [^'"^^P' '"effacTd ''''""] will flow back into its 
 fountain. I may thank the strength of my constitution 
 that has enabled me to bear all this, but those who bear 
 the longest and the most do not suffer the least. I do 
 not think a human being could endure more mental 
 torture than that woman has directly & indirectly 
 inflicted upon me — within the present year. 
 
 She has (for a time at least) separated me from my 
 child — & from you — but I turn from the subject for the 
 present. 
 
 To-morrow I repass Clarens & Vevey ; if in the new 
 & more extended tour I am making, anything that I 
 think may please you occurs, I will detail it. 
 
 Scrope has by this time arrived with my little presents 
 for you and yours & Ada. I still hope to be able to see 
 you next Spring, perhaps you & one or two of the children 
 could be spared some time next year for a little tour here 
 or in France with me of a month or two. I think I 
 could make it pleasing to you, & it should be no expense 
 to L. or to yourself. Pray think of this hint. You have 
 no idea how very beautiful great part of this country is 
 — and women and children traverse it with ease and 
 expedition. I would return from any distance at any 
 time to see you, and come to England for you ; and when 
 you consider the chances against our — but I won't 
 relapse into the dismals and anticipate long absences—— 
 
 The great obstacle would be that you are so admirably 
 
 272 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 yoked — and necessary as a housekeeper-^and a letter 
 writer — & a place-hunter to that very helpless gentle- 
 man your Cousin, that I suppose the usual self-love 
 of an elderly person would interfere between you & any 
 scheme of recreation or relaxation, for however short a 
 period. 
 
 What a fool was I to marry — and you not very wise — 
 my dear — ^we might have lived so single and so happy — 
 as old maids and bachelors ; I shall never find any one 
 like you— nor you (vain as it may seem) like me. We 
 are just formed to pass our lives together, and therefore 
 — ^we — at least — I — am by a crowd of circumstances 
 removed from the only being who could ever have loved 
 me, or whom I can unmixedly feel attached to. 
 
 Had you been a Nun — and I a Monk — that we might 
 have talked through a grate instead of across the sea — 
 no matter — my voice and my heart are 
 
 ever thine — 
 B 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Diodati. October i^* 1816. 
 
 My dearest Augusta, — 
 
 Two days ago I sent you in three letter-covers a 
 journal^ of a mountain-excursion lately made by me & 
 M' H.2 in the Bernese Alps. I kept it on purpose for 
 you thinking it might amuse you. Since my return 
 here I have heard by an indirect Channel that Lady B. 
 is better, or well. It is also said that she has some inteii- 
 tion of passing the winter on the Continent. Upon this 
 subject I want a word or two, and as you are — I under- 
 stand — on terms of acquaintance with her again you 
 will be the properest channel of communication from 
 me to her. It regards my child- It is_ far from my 
 intention now or at any future period (without miscon- 
 duct on her part which I should be grieved to anticipate), 
 
 1 " Letters and;" Journals,'' Vol. III., p. 349- 
 
 2 Hobhouse. 
 
 A. 273 ' 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 to attempt to withdraw my child from its mother. I 
 think it would be harsh ; & Though it is a very deep 
 privation to me to be withdrawn from the contemplation 
 and company of my little girl, still I would not purchase 
 even this so very dearly ; but I must strongly protest 
 against my daughter's leaving England, to be taken over 
 the Continent at so early a time of life & subjected to 
 many unavoidable risks of health & comfort ; more 
 especially in so unsettled a state as we know the greater 
 part of Europe to be in at this moment. I do not choose 
 that my girl should be educated Hke Lord Yarmouth's 
 son (or run the chance of it which a war would produce), 
 and I make it my personal & particular request to Lady 
 Byron that — in the event of her quitting England — the 
 child should be left in the care of proper persons. I 
 have no objection to its remaining with Lady Noel & 
 Sir Ralph, (who would naturally be fond of it), but my 
 distress of mind would be very much augmented if my 
 daughter quitted England without my consent or 
 approbation. I beg that you will lose no time in making 
 this known to Lady B. and I hope you will say something 
 to enforce my request, I have no wish to trouble her 
 more than can be helped. My whole hope — and prospect 
 of a quiet evening (if I reach it), are wrapt up in that 
 little creature — Ada — and you must forgive my anxiety 
 in all which regards her even to minuteness. My 
 journal will have told you all my recent wanderings. I 
 am very well though I had a little accident yesterday. 
 Being in my boat in the evening the pole of the mainsail 
 slipped in veering round, & struck me on a nerve of one 
 of my legs so violently as to make me faint away. 
 M" H° & cold water brought me to myself, but there 
 was no damage done — no bone hurt — and I have now 
 no pain whatever. Some nerve or tendon was jarred — 
 for a moment & that was all. To-day I dine at Coppet ; 
 the Jerseys are I believe to be there. BeHeve me ever 
 & truly my own dearest Sis. most affectionately and 
 entirely yours 
 
 B 
 
 274 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. '' 
 
 Milan Oct"^ 15. 1816. 
 
 My dearest Augusta 
 
 I have been at Churches, Theatres, Hbraries, and 
 picture galleries. The Cathedral is noble, the theatre 
 grand, the library excellent, and the galleries I know- 
 nothing about — except as far as liking one. picture out 
 of a thousand. What has delighted me most is a manu- 
 script collection (preserved in the Ambrosian library), 
 of original love-letters and verses of Lucretia de Borgia 
 & Cardinal Bembo ; and a lock of her hair — so long — 
 and fair & beautiful — and the letters so pretty & so 
 loving that it makes one wretched not to have been born 
 sooner to have at least seen her. And pray what do you 
 think is one of her signatures P — why this -f a Cross — 
 which she says " is to stand for her name &c." Is not 
 this amusing ? I suppose you know that she was a 
 famous beauty, & famous for the use she made of it ; & 
 that she was the love of this same Cardinal Bembo 
 (besides a story about her papa Pope Alexander & her 
 brother Csesar Borgia — which some people don't believe 
 — & others do), and that after all she ended with being 
 Duchess of Ferrara, and an excellent mother & wife 
 also ; so good as to be quite an example. All this may 
 or may not be, but the hair & the letters are so beautiful 
 that I have done nothing but pore over them, & have 
 made the librarian promise me a copy of some of them ; 
 and I mean to get some of the hair if I can. The verses 
 are Spanish — the letters Italian — some signed — others 
 with a cross — but all in her own hand-writing. 
 
 I am so hurried, & so sleepy, but so anxious to send you 
 even a few lines my dearest Augusta, that you will for- 
 give me troubling you so often ; and I shall write again 
 soon ; but I have sent you so much lately, that you will 
 have too many perhaps. J thousand loves to you from 
 ffie — which is very generous for I only ask one in return 
 
 Ever dearest thine 
 
 B 
 
 27.5 T 2 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Milan. Ocf 26'' 1816. 
 
 My dearest Augusta — 
 
 It is a month since the date of your last letter — 
 but you are not to suppose that your letters do not arrive. 
 All the assertions of the post being impeded are (I believe) 
 false ; and the faults of their non-arrival are in those 
 who write, (or rather do not write) not in the conveyance. 
 I have hitherto written to you very regularly, indeed 
 rather perhaps too often, but I now tell you that I will 
 not write again at aU, if I wait so long for my answers. 
 I have received no less than three letters from one person 
 all dated within this month of Oct'', so that it cannot be 
 the fault of the post, and as to the address — I particularly 
 stated Geneva, as usual poste restante, or to the care of 
 Mons' Hentsch Banquier Geneva — ^perhaps the latter 
 is safest. I mention all this — not from any wish to 
 plague you— but because ["'"S^°«!r"'] circumstances 
 perhaps make me feel more keenly anything which looks 
 like neglect ; and as among my faults towards you, 
 that at least has not been one, even in that in which I 
 am often negligent — viz. — ^letter writing — pray do not 
 set me the example, lest I follow it. 
 
 I have written twice since my arrival at Milan and 
 once before I left Geneva. My Diodati letter contained 
 some directions about my daughter Ada, and I hope 
 you received that letter & fulfilled my request as far as 
 regards my child. I wish also to know if Scrope deHvered 
 the things entrusted to him by me, as I have no news of 
 that illustrious personage. Milan has been an agreeable 
 residence to me, but we propose going on to Venice next 
 week. You will address however as usual (to my bankers) 
 to Geneva. I have found a good many of the noble as 
 well as literary classes of society intelligent, & very kind 
 & attentive to strangers. I have seen all the sights, & 
 last night among others heard an Improvisatore recite, 
 a very celebrated one, named Sgricchi. It is not an 
 amusing though a curious effort of human powers. I 
 
 276 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 enclose you a letter of Monti (who is here & whom I 
 know), the most famous Italian poet now living, as a 
 specinien of his handwriting. If there are any of your 
 acquaintance fond of collecting such things you may 
 give it to them ; it is not addressed to me. 
 
 I shall write again before I set out 
 believe me ever & truly 
 
 B 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Oct-^ aS"- 1816.— 
 
 My dearest Augusta — 
 
 Two days ago I wrote you the enclosed'- but the 
 arrival of your letter of the 12"" has revived me a little, 
 so pray forgive the apparent " humeur " of the other, 
 which I do not tear up — from lazyness — and the hurry 
 of the post as I have hardly time to write another at 
 present. 
 
 I really do not & cannot understand all the mysteries 
 & alarms in your letters & more particularly in the last. 
 All I know is — that no human power short of destruction 
 — shall prevent me from seeing you when — where — & 
 how — I may please — according to time & circumstance ; 
 that you are the only comfort (except the remote possi- 
 bility of my daughter's being so) left me in prospect in 
 existence, and that I can bear the rest — so that you 
 remain ; but anything which is to divide us would drive 
 me quite out of my senses ; Miss Milbanke appears in 
 all respects to have been formed for my destruction ; I 
 have thus far — as you know — regarded her without 
 feelings of personal bitterness towards her, but if directly 
 or indirectly — but why do I say this ? — You know she 
 is the cause of all — ^whether intentionally or not is little 
 
 to the purpose You surely do not mean to say that if 
 
 I come to England in Spring, that you & I shall not meet ? 
 If so I will never return to it — ^though I must for many 
 
 * The preceding letter. 
 277 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 reasons — business &c &c — But I quit this topic for the 
 present. 
 
 My health is good, but I have now & then fits of 
 giddiness, & deafness, which make me think hke Swift — 
 that I shall be like him & the withered tree he saw— 
 which occasioned the reflection and " die at top " first. 
 My hair is growing grey, & not thicker ; & my teeth are 
 sometimes looseish though still white & sound. Would 
 not one think I was sixty instead of not quite nine & 
 twenty ? To talk thus — Never mind — either this must 
 end — or I must end — but I repeat it again & again — 
 that woman has destroyed me. 
 
 Milan has been made agreeable by much attention and 
 kindness from many of the natives ; but the whole tone 
 of Italian society is so different from yours in England ; 
 that I have not time to describe it, tho' I am not sure 
 that I do not prefer it. Direct as usual to Geneva — 
 hope the best — & love me the most — as I ever must love 
 you. 
 
 B 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Venice. Dec^ iS"" 1816. 
 
 My dearest Augusta — 
 
 I have received one letter dated ig**" Nov"' I think 
 (or rather earlier by a week or two perhaps), since my 
 arrival in Venice, where it is my intention to remain 
 probably till the Spring. The place pleases me. I 
 have found some pleasing society — & the romance of the 
 situation — & it's extraordinary appearance — together 
 with all the associations we are accustomed to connect 
 with Venice, have always had a charm for me, even 
 before I arrived here ; and I have not been disappointed 
 in what I have seen. 
 
 I go every morning to the Armenian Convent {oi friars 
 not Nuns — my child) to study the language, I mean the 
 Armenian language, (for as you perhaps know — I am 
 versed in the Italian which I speak with fluency rather 
 
 278 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 than accuracy), and if you ask me my reason for studying 
 this out of the way language — I can only answer that it is 
 Oriental and difficult, & employs me — which are — as 
 you know my Eastern & difficult way of thinking — 
 reasons sufficient. Then I have fallen in love with a 
 very pretty Venetian of two & twenty,^ with great black 
 eyes. She is married — and so am I — which is very 
 much to the purpose. We have formed and sworn an 
 eternal attachment, which has already lasted a lunar 
 month, & I am more in love than ever, & so is the lady — 
 at least she says so. She does not plague me (which is 
 a wonder) and I verily believe we are one of the happiest 
 — unlawful couples on this side of the Alps. She is very 
 handsome, very Italian or rather Venetian, with some- 
 thing more of the Oriental cast of countenance ; accom- 
 plished and niusical after the manner of her nation. 
 Her spouse is a very good kind of man who occupies 
 himself elsewhere, and thus the world goes on here as 
 elsewhere. This adventure came very opportunely to 
 console me, for I was beginning to be " like Sam Jennings 
 very unappy " but at present — at least for a month past 
 — I have been very tranquil, very loving, & have not 
 so much embarassed myself with the tortures of the last 
 two years and that virtuous monster Miss Milbanke, 
 who had nearly driven me out of my senses. — ["Se^]^ 
 
 Hobhouse is gone to Rome with his brother and sister 
 — but returns here in February : you will easily suppose 
 that I was not disposed to stir from my present position. 
 
 I have not heard recently from England & wonder if 
 Murray has published the po's sent to him ; & I want 
 to know if you don't think them very fine & all that — 
 Goosey my love — don't they make you " put finger in 
 eye ? " 
 
 You can have no idea of my thorough wretchedness 
 from the day of my parting from you till nearly a month 
 ago though I struggled against it with some strength. 
 At present I am better — thank Heaven above — & 
 
 1 Marianna (or Marianina) Segati. 
 
 ^ The erasure is probably by Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 279 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 woman beneath — and I will be a very good boy. Pray 
 remember me to the babes, & tell me of little Da^— who 
 by the way — is a year old and a few days over. 
 
 My love to you all & to Aunt Sophy^ : pray tell her in 
 particular that I have consoled myself ; and tell Hodgson 
 that his prophecy is accomplished. He said — ^you 
 remember — I should be in love with an Italian — so I 
 am. — 
 
 ever dearest yrs. 
 
 B. 
 
 P.S. I forgot to tell you — that the Demoiselle'^ — ^who 
 returned to England from Geneva — went there to produce 
 a new baby B., who is now about to make his appearance. 
 You wanted to hear some adventures — there are enough 
 
 I think for one epistle. Pray address direct to Venice 
 
 — Poste Restante. 
 
 Lord Byron to Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Venice Jany IS* 1817. 
 My dearest Augusta. 
 
 I wrote to you twice within the last and present 
 months. Your letter of the 24* arrived to-day. So 
 you have got the po's. Pray teU me if Murray has 
 omitted any stanzas in the publication ; if he has I shall 
 be very seriously displeased with him. The number 
 sent was 118 to the 3'' Canto. ^ You do not mention the 
 concluding 4 to my daughter Ada which I hoped 
 would give you pleasure at least. I care not much 
 about opinions at this time of day, and I am certain in 
 my mind that this Canto is the best which I have ever 
 written ; there is depth of thought in it throughout 
 and a strength of repressed passion which you must feel 
 before you find ; but it requires reading more than once, 
 because it is in part metaphysical, and of a kind of 
 metaphysics which every body will not understand. I 
 
 ^ Sophia Byron. 
 
 * Jane Clairmont, step-daughter of William Godwin. See "Letters and 
 Journals," Vol. III., pp. 347 and 427. 
 » Of " Childe Harold." 
 
 280 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 never thought that it would he popular & should not 
 think well of it if it were, but those for whom it is 
 intended will like it. Pray remember to tell me if any 
 have been omitted in the publication. The lines on 
 Drachenfels originally addressed to you, ought to be (& 
 I suppose are) in the centre of the Canto — and the 
 number of Stanzas in the whole ii8 — besides 4 of ten 
 lines beginning with " Drachenfels " the Hnes which I 
 sent to ou (sic) at the time from Coblentz — with the 
 violets dearest -[-. 
 
 Have you also got Chillon & the Dream 8c do you 
 understand the latter ? 
 
 If Murray has mutilated the MS. with his Toryism, or 
 his notions about family considerations I shall not 
 pardon him & am sure to know it sooner or later & to 
 let him know it also. 
 
 I wrote to you the other day about Ada, if the answer 
 is still refused I shall take legal measures to enforce it, 
 and have ordered H.^ to do so. Remember I do not seek 
 this, I wish it not, I regret it, but I require an explicit 
 promise that Ada shall on no consideration quit the 
 country, whether the mother does or no, and by all 
 that is most sacred, there is no measure which I will not 
 take to prevent it, failing in a reply to my just demand. 
 So say — and so I will do. They will end by driving me 
 mad, I wonder they have not already. 
 
 Of Venice I gave you some account in one of my 
 letters. I have not much to add to it. I told you that I 
 had fallen in love and that I shall probably remain here 
 till the Spring, and that I am studying the Armenian 
 language. 
 
 Marianina is not very well to-day, and I shall stay 
 with her to nurse her this Evening. It is the Carnival, 
 but the height of the Masquing is not yet begun. Catalani 
 comes here on the 20th, but we have famous Music 
 already, and a better opera than in London and a finer 
 theatre, the Fenice by name, where I have a box, which 
 costs me about 14 pounds sterling for the season instead 
 
 ^ Hanson, his solicitor. 
 281 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 of four hundred as in London, and a better box and a 
 better opera, besides the music the Scenery is most 
 superb. There is also a ballet inferior to the singing. 
 The Society is Uke all foreign Society. There is also a 
 Ridotto. My paper's out. 
 
 Ever yrs. 
 
 B 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Venice, February 25th 1817. 
 
 Dearest Augusta, 
 
 I believe you have received all my letters, for I sent 
 you no description of Venice, beyond a slight sketch in a 
 letter which I perceive has arrived, because you mention 
 the " Canal &c." that was the longest letter I have 
 written to you from this city of the seventy islands. 
 
 Instead of a description of the lady whom Aunt Sophy 
 wants to have described, I will show you her picture, 
 which is just finished for me, some of these days or other. 
 The Carnival is over, but I am not in a descriptive mood, 
 and will reserve all my wonders for word of mouth, 
 when I see you again. I have nothing which would 
 make you laugh much, except a battle some weeks ago 
 in my apartment, between two of the fair " sect " 
 (sisters in law) which ended in the flight of one and the 
 fits of the other, and a great deal of confusion and eau 
 de^ologne, and asterisks, and aU that. The cause was 
 — one paying me an evening visit. The other was gone 
 out to a Conversazione, as was supposed for the evening, 
 but lo and behold, in about half" an hour she returned 
 and entering my room, without a word, administered 
 (before I could prevent her) about sixteen such slaps to 
 her relation, as would have made your ear ache only to 
 hear them. The assaulted lady screamed and ran away, 
 the assailant attempted pursuit, but being prevented 
 by me, fairly went into asterisks, which cost a world of 
 water of all sorts, besides fine speeches to appease, and 
 even then she declared herself a very ill used person, 
 
 282 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 although victorious over a much taller woman than 
 herself. Besides she wronged my innocence, for nothing 
 could be more innocent than my colloquy with the other. 
 You may tell this to Sophy if she wants amusement. 
 I repeat (as in my former letter) that I really and truly 
 know nothing of P.P.^ 
 
 I have published nothing but what you know already. 
 
 I am glad to hear of Ada's progress in her mother 
 tongue, I hope you will see her again soon. What you 
 " hope " may be, I do not know, if you mean a reunion 
 between Lady B. and me, it is too late. It is now a 
 year, and I have repeatedly offered to make it up, with 
 what success you know. At present if she would rejoin 
 me to-morrow, / would not accept the proposition. I 
 have no spirit of hatred against her, however, I am too 
 sensitive not to feel injuries, but far too proud to be 
 vindictive. She's a fool, and when you have said that, 
 it is the most that can be said for her. 
 
 ever very truly yrs. 
 B. 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Rome May lo"" 1817. 
 My dearest Augusta 
 
 I have taken a flight down here (see the Map), 
 but shall return to Venice in fifteen days from this date, 
 so address all answers to my usual head- (or rather 
 heart-) quarters — that is to Venice. I am very well, 
 quite recovered, & as is always the case after all illness — 
 particularly fever — got large, ruddy, & robustous to a 
 degree which would please you — & shock me. I have been 
 on horse-back several hours a day for this last ten days, 
 besides now & then on my journey ; proof positive of 
 high health, & curiosity, & exercise. Love me — & don't 
 be afraid — I mean of my sicknesses. I get well, & shall 
 
 1 Lord Ernie explains this as referring to " Peter or Patrick Pattieson," 
 the fictitious character under which Scott disguised the authorship of the 
 first series of the "Tales of my Landlord." See " Letters and Journals." 
 Vol. IV., p. 56. 
 
 283 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 always get so, & have luck enough still to beat most 
 things ; & whether I win or not — depend upon it — I 
 will fight to the last. 
 
 Will you tell my wife " mine excellent Wife " that she 
 is brewing a Cataract for herself & me in these foolish 
 equivocations about Ada, — a job for lawyers — & more 
 hatred for every body, for which — (God know^), there is 
 no occasion. She is surrounded by people who detest me 
 — Brougham the lawyer — ^who never forgave me for 
 saying that M" G* Lambe was a damned fool (by the 
 way I did not then know he was in love with her) in 1814, 
 & for a former savage note in my foolish satire, all which 
 is good reason for him — but not for Lady B" ; besides 
 her mother — &" &" &° — so that what I may say or you 
 may say is of no great use — howevev^-say it. If she 
 supposes that I want to hate or plague her (however 
 wroth circumstances at times may make me in words & 
 in temporary gusts or disgusts of feeling), she is quite 
 out — I have no such wish — & never had, & if she 
 imagines that I now wish to become united to her again 
 she is still more out. / never mil. I zvould to the end 
 of the year succeeding our separation — (expired nearly 
 a month ago. Legal reckoning), according to a resolution 
 I had taken thereupon — but the day & the hour is gone 
 by — and it is irrevocable. But all this is no reason for 
 further misery & quarrel ; Give me but a fair share of my 
 daughter — the half — my natural right & authority, & I 
 am content ; otherwise I come to England, & " law & 
 claw before they get it," all which will vex & out live 
 Sir R. & L" N.^ besides making M" Clermont bilious— 
 & plaguing Bell herself, which I really by the great God ! 
 wish to avoid. Now pray see her & say so — it may do 
 good — & if not — she & I are but what we are, Be God 
 knows that is wretched enough — at least to me. 
 
 Of Rome I say nothing — you can read the Guide-book 
 — which is very accurate. 
 
 I found here an old letter of yours dated November 
 1 816 — to which the best answer I can make — ^is none. 
 
 1 Noel. 
 
 284 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 You are sadly timid ^ my child, but so you all shewed 
 yourselves when you could have been useful — particu- 
 larly 2 b^^ never mind. I shall not forget him, 
 
 though I do not rejoice in any ill which befalls him. Is 
 the fool's spawn a son or a daughter? you say one — & 
 others another ; so Sykes works him — let him — I shall 
 live to see him & W.^ destroyed, & more than them— 
 & then — but let all that pass for the present. 
 
 yrs. ever 
 
 B 
 
 P.S. Hobhouse is here. I travelled from V 
 
 quite alone so do not fuss about women &° — I am not so 
 rash as I have been. 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Venice. June 3'' 1817. 
 Dearest Augusta — I returned home a few days ago 
 from Rome but wrote to you on the road ; at Florence 
 I believe, or Bologna. The last city you know — or do 
 not know — is celebrated for the production of Popes — 
 Cardinals — painters — & sausages — besides a female pro- 
 fessor of anatomy, who has left there many models of 
 the art in waxwork, some of them not the most decent. 
 — I have received all your letters I believe, which are 
 full of woes, as usual, megrims & mysteries ; but my 
 sympathies remain in suspense, for, for the life of me I 
 can't make out whether your disorder is a broken heart 
 or the earache — or whether it is you that have been ill 
 or the children — or what your melancholy & mysterious 
 apprehensions tend to, or refer to, whether to Caroline 
 Lamb's novels — ^M" Clermont's evidence — ^Lady Byron's 
 magnanimity — or any other piece of imposture ; I know 
 nothing of what you are in the doldrums about at present. 
 I should think all that could affect you must have been 
 over long ago ; & as for me — leave me to take care of 
 myself. I may be ill or well — in high or low spirits — in 
 
 1 " Sadly timid " is substituted for " a sad coward," erased. 
 ' George Byron. 
 ' Wilmot. 
 
 285 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 quick or obtuse state of feelings— like any body else, 
 but I can battle my way through ; better than your 
 exquisite piece of helplessness G. L.-^ or that other poor 
 creature George Byron, who will be finely helped up in a 
 year or two with his new state of life — I should like to 
 know what they would do in my situation, or in any 
 situation. I wish well to your George, who is the best 
 of the two a devilish deal — but as for the other I shan't 
 forget him in a hurry, & if I ever forgive or allow an 
 opportunity to escape of evincing my sense of his conduct 
 (& of more than his) on a certain occasion — write me 
 down — what you will, but do not suppose me asleep. 
 " Let them look to their bond " — sooner or later time & 
 Nemesis will give me the ascendant — & then " let them 
 look to their bond." I do not of course allude only to 
 that poor wretch, but to all — to the 3^ & 4"" generation 
 of these accursed Amalekites & the woman who has been 
 
 the stumbling block of my 
 
 June 4* 1817. 
 
 I left off yesterday at the stumbling block of my 
 Midianite marriage — but having received your letter of 
 the 20*'' May I will be in good humour for the rest of this 
 letter. I had hoped you would like the miniatures, at 
 least one of them, which is in pretty good health ; the 
 other is thin enough to be sure — & so was I — & in the 
 ebb of a fever when I sate for it. By the " man of 
 fashion " I suppose you mean that poor piece of affec- 
 tation and imitation Wilmot — another disgrace to me & 
 mine — that fellow. I regret not having shot him, 
 which the persuasions of others — & circumstances which 
 at that time would have rendered combats presumptions 
 against my cause — prevented. I wish you well of your 
 indispositions which I hope are slight, or I should lose 
 my senses. 
 
 Yours ever 
 
 very & truly 
 
 ^ Colonel George Leigh. 
 286 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Venice — June 19th 1817. 
 
 Dearest Augusta, — 
 
 Since the pictures are so bad — they need not be 
 copied — the poor painter seems to have been ignorant 
 of the art of flattery. — It is to be recollected that I was 
 ill at the time — & had been so for months — that one of 
 them was done in the climax of a slow fever — and that 
 the other is an attempt to supply the health which I 
 had not recovered. — Send me Holmes's print — one or 
 two copies — they can come by the common post — not 
 being heavy. — The last (the Venice) need not be 
 copied. 
 
 I fear that not any good can be done by your speaking 
 to U Biron (sic) — but I think it my duty to give fair 
 warning — because they have broken their word; — they 
 are not aware that if I please I can dissolve the separa- 
 tion — which is not a legal act — nor further binding than 
 
 the will of the parties ; 1 shall therefore not only take 
 
 all proper and legal steps — but the former correspondence 
 shall be published — & the whole business from the 
 beginning investigated in all the courts of which it is 
 susceptible ; — unless the reasonable assurance which I 
 have required with regard to my daughter be accorded 
 — & now — come what may — as I have said — so will I 
 
 do & have already given the proper instructions to the 
 
 proper persons — to prepare for the steps above men- 
 tioned. 
 
 [A half sheet, partly written upon by Lord Byron, is 
 here torn off, and the letter continues on another and 
 sihaller sheet as follows.] 
 
 Recollect only that I have done all in my power to avoid 
 this extremity. 
 
 I am not at Venice but a few miles on the mainland — 
 on the road to Padua — address as usual to Venice. I 
 
 ride daily. 
 
 yrs. truly 
 
 B 
 
 287 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 P.S. I repeat to you again and again — that it would be 
 much better at once to explain your mysteries — than to 
 go on with this absurd obscure hinting mode of writing. 
 What do you mean ? what is there known ? or can be 
 known ? which you & Z do not know much better ? & 
 what concealment can you have from me ? P never 
 shrank — and it was on your account principally that I 
 gave way at all — for I thought they would endeavour 
 to drag you into it — although they had no business with 
 anything previous to my^ marriage with that infernal 
 fiend, whose destruction I shall yet see. Do you suppose 
 that I will rest while any of their branch is unwithered ? 
 do you suppose that I will turn aside till they are trodden 
 under foot ? do you suppose that I can breathe till they 
 are uprooted ? Do you believe that time wiU alter 
 them or me ? that I have suffered in vain — that I have 
 been disgraced in vain — that I am reconciled to the 
 sting of the scorpion — & the venom of the serpent ? 
 
 which stung me in my slumber ? If I did not believe 
 
 — that Time & Nemesis — & circumstances would requite 
 me for the delay — I would ere this have righted myself. 
 — But " let them look to their bond " 
 
 [This letter, as in all those where Byron expresses 
 anger, is punctuated with long and vehement dashes of 
 the pen. — Ed.] 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Venice Sep'' 21^* 1818.— 
 
 Dearest Augusta — 
 
 I particularly beg that you will contrive to get 
 the enclosed letter safely delivered to Lady Frances,' 
 & if there is an answer to let me have it. You can write 
 to her first & state that you have such a letter — at my 
 request — for there is no occasion for any concealment at 
 
 1 Underlined twice. 
 
 ' Substituted for " the," erased. 
 
 3 Wedderburne Webster. 
 
 288 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 least with her — & pray oblige me so far, for many- 
 reasons. 
 
 If the Queen dies you are no more a Maid of Honour — 
 is it not so f AUegra ^ is well, but her mother (whom 
 the Devil confound) came prancing the other day over 
 the Appennines — to see her shild ; which threw my 
 Venetian loves (who are none of the quietest) into great 
 combustion ; and I was in a pucker till I got her to the 
 Euganean hills, where she & the child now are, for the 
 present. I declined seeing her foj- fear that the conse- 
 quence might be an addition to the family ; she is to 
 have the child a month with her and then to return 
 herself to Lucca, or Naples, where she was with her 
 relatives (she is English you know), & to send Allegra 
 to Venice again. I lent her my house at Este for her 
 maternal holidays. As troubles don't come single, here 
 is another confusion. The chaste wife of a baker — 
 having quarrelled with her tyrannical husband — ^has run 
 away to me (God knows without being invited), & resists 
 all the tears & penitence and beg-pardons of her discon- 
 solate Lord, and the threats of the police, and the priest 
 of the parish besides ; and swears she won't give up her 
 unlawful love (myself), for any body, or any thing. I 
 assure you I have begged her in all possible ways too to 
 go back to her husband, promising her all kinds of 
 eternal fidelity into the bargain, but she only flies into 
 a fury ; and as she is a very tall and formidable Girl of 
 three and twenty, with the large black eyes and handsome 
 face of a pretty fiend, a correspondent figure and a 
 carriage as haughty as a Princess — ^with the violent 
 passions & capacities for mischief of an Italian when they 
 are roused — I am a little embarrassed with my un- 
 expected acquisition. However she keeps my household 
 in rare order, and has already frightened the learned 
 Fletcher out of his remnants of wits more than once ; 
 we have turned her into a housekeeper. As the morals 
 of this place are very lax, all the women commend her 
 
 1 Alba or Clara Allegra Biron, his natural daughter by Jane Clairmont. See 
 note, p. 280. 
 
 A. 289 " 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 & say she has done right — especially her own relations. 
 You need not be alarmed — I know how to manage her 
 — and can deal with anything but a cold blooded animal 
 such as Miss Milbanke. The worst is that she won't let 
 a woman come into the house, unless she is as old and 
 frightful as possible ; and has sent so many to the right 
 about that my former female acquaintances are equally 
 frightened & angry. She is extremely fond of the child, 
 & is very cheerful & goodnatured, when not jealous ; 
 but Othello himself was a fool to her in that respect. 
 Her soubriquet in her family was la Mora from her 
 colour, as she is very dark (though clear of complexion), 
 which literally means the Moor so that I have " the Moor 
 of Venice " in propria persona as part of my household. 
 She has been here this month. I had known her (and 
 fifty others) more than a year, but did not anticipate 
 this escapade, which was the fault of her booby husband's 
 treatment — who now runs about repenting & roaring 
 like a buU calf. I told him to take her in the devil's 
 name, but she would not stir ; & made him a long speech 
 in the Venetian dialect which was more entertaining to 
 anybody than to him to whom it was addressed. You 
 see Goose — that there is no quiet in this world — ^so be a 
 good woman — & repent of y"" sins. 
 
 [The next letter preserved is the important one of 
 May 17, 1 8 19, printed in full, with the correspondence 
 between Mrs. Leigh and Lady Byron concerning it, in 
 Chapter IV., pp. 81 to 99.] 
 
 Written in the Wrapper of a Letter from Lord 
 Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 [Ravenna July 1819] 
 
 AUegra is well at Venice ^There are also a fox, some 
 
 dogs and two monkies, all scratching, screaming and 
 fighting — in the highest health and Spirits. Fletcher is 
 
 290 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 flourishing. Lady B. has refused a character to his wife, 
 a little revenge of a-piece with her own. You say nothing 
 of Ada, how is she ? doubtless Lady Noel is as immortal 
 as ever. Her death would do too much good for 
 Providence to permit it in this state of sublunary things. 
 If you see my Spouse — do pray tell her I wish to marry 
 again and as probably she may wish the same, is there 
 no way in Scotland ? without compromising her imma- 
 culacy — cannot it be done there by the husband solely ? 
 
 Lord Byron to Lady Byron. 
 
 (Enclosing verses of a German poet.) 
 
 Ravenna. July 20th 1819. 
 
 I have received from Holstein (I believe) the annexed 
 paper of the Baroness of Hohenhausen &c. and the 
 inclosed letter of a Mr. Jacob (or Jacobssen) and as they 
 " ardently wish it could reach you " I transmit it. 
 You will smile, as I have done, at the importance which 
 they attach to such things, and the effect which they 
 conceive capable of being produced by composition, but 
 the Germans are still a young and a romantic people, 
 and live in an ideal world. Perhaps it may not offend 
 you, however it may surprise, that the good people on 
 the frontiers of Denmark have taken an interest in your 
 domestic Affairs, which have now, I think, nearly made 
 the tour of Europe, and been discussed in most of its 
 languages, to as little purpose as in our own. If you 
 like to retain the enclosed, you can do so, an indication 
 to my Sister that you have received the letter will be a 
 sufficient answer. I will not close this sheet without a 
 few words more. Fletcher has complained to me of 
 your declining to give his wife a character, on account 
 of your " doubts of her veracity in some circumstances 
 a short time before she left you." If your doubts allude 
 to her testimony on your case during the then discussion, 
 you must or at least ought to be the best judge how far 
 she spoke truth or not ; / can only say that She never 
 had directly or indirectly, through me or mine, the 
 
 291 U2 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 slightest inducement to the contrary, nor am I indeed 
 perfectly aware of what her Evidence was, never having 
 seen her nor communicated with her at that period or 
 since. I presume that you will weigh well your justice 
 before you deprive the woman of the means of obtaining 
 her bread. No one can be more fully aware than I am 
 of the utter inefficacy of any words of mine to you on 
 this or on any other subject, but I have discharged my 
 duty to Truth in stating the above, and now do yours. 
 
 The date of my letter, indeed my letter itself, may 
 surprize you, but I left Venice in the beginning of June, 
 and came down into Romagna ; there is the famous forest 
 of Boccacio's Story and Dryden's fable hardby, the 
 Adriatic not far distant, and the Sepulchre of Dante 
 within the walls. I am just going to take a Canter (for 
 I have resumed my Tartar habits since I left England) 
 in the cool of the Evening, and in the shadow of the 
 forest tiU the Ave Maria. I have got both my saddle 
 and Carriage horses with me, and don't spare them, in 
 the cooler part of the day. But I shall probably return 
 to Venice in a short time. Ravenna itself preserves 
 perhaps more of the old Italian manners than any City 
 in Italy. It is out of the way of travellers and armies, 
 and thus they have retained more of their originaHty. 
 They make love a good deal, and assassinate a little. 
 The department is governed by a Cardinal Legate 
 (Alberoni was once legate here) to whom I have been 
 presented and who told me some singular anecdotes of 
 past times — of Alfieri &c. and others. I tried to discover 
 for Leigh Hunt some traces of Francesca, but except her 
 father Guido's tomb, and the mere notice of the fact in 
 the Latin commentary of Benvenuto da Imola in M.S. 
 in the library, I could discover nothing for him. He 
 (Hunt) has made a sad mistake about " old Ravenna's 
 clear-shewn towers and bay " the city lies so low that you 
 must be close upon it before it is " shewn " at all, and 
 the Sea had retired four miles at least, long before 
 Francesca was born, and as far back as the Exarchs and 
 Emperors. They tell me that at Rimini they know as 
 
 292 
 
LORD BYRON IN ALBANIAN DRESS 
 
 A posthumous Portrait by T. Phillips, R.A., who had previously 
 painted the loell-known similar portrait from life. At Ockham. 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 little about her now — as they do here — so I have not 
 gone there, it lies in the way to Rome, but I was at 
 Ronie in 1817. This is odd, for at Venice I found many 
 traditions of the old Venetians, and at Ferrara a plentiful 
 assortnient of the House of Este, with the remains of the 
 very Mirror, whose reflection cost at least a dozen lives, 
 including those of Parisina and Ugo. I was wrong in 
 placing those two naughty people in a garden. Parisina 
 was a Malatesta of Rimini, and her daughter by Niccolo 
 of Este was also put to death by some Italian Chief her 
 husband in nearly the same manner as her mother. 
 Her name was Ginevra. So that including the alliance 
 of Francesca with Launcelot Malatesta of Rimini, that 
 same Malatesta family appears to have been but indif- 
 ferently fortunate in their matrimonial speculations 1 
 
 have written to you thus much, because in writing to 
 you at all I may as well write much as little. I have not 
 heard of Ada for many months but they say " no news 
 is good news " she must now be three years and almost 
 eight months old. You must let her be taught Italian 
 as soon as she can be taught any language but her own, 
 and pray let her be musical, that is if She has a turn 
 that way. I presume that Italian being a language of 
 mine, will not prevent you from recollecting my request 
 at the proper time. 
 
 I am 
 
 &c. 
 B 
 
 Bologna. August 31st. 
 
 1819. 
 
 This letter was written as far back as July 20th at 
 Ravenna, but I delayed putting it in the post till my 
 return here which will account for the interval between 
 the date and the arrival of the letter, if it arrives. Pray 
 state to Augusta that you have received it, on account 
 of the inclosures. I want no other answer. I should 
 like to have a picture of Miss Byron, when she can 
 conveniently sit to Holmes or any other painter. Addio. 
 
 293 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Second sheet of a letter (the first sheet of which is 
 destroyed — towards Sept. lo 1819.) 
 
 Pray tell Waite to take a post-chaise ; for if our Dentist 
 follows our Barber, there will be ne'er a tooth or hair 
 left which people can depend upon for a half year's 
 engagement. 
 
 I am truly sorry for Blake, but as you observe with 
 great truth and novelty " we are none of us immortal." 
 It were to be wished however that Coachmen did not 
 help people over the Styx — that used to be watermen's 
 work and fare. — 
 
 You say nothing in favour of my return to England. 
 — ^Very well — I will stay where I am — and you will never 
 see me more. 
 
 [A portion of the paper on which the next passage is 
 written is here cut out by Mrs. Leigh. — Ed.] 
 
 Yrs ever 
 B 
 
 P.S. 
 
 I sent Lady Byron the other day a letter — 
 enclosing some letters from Germany to me concerning 
 her chiefly, and which the writers wished her to have. 
 Ask her by letter if she has received that letter. I want 
 no answer but a mere acknowledgment to you or to 
 M" Murray of the arrival of my letter. 
 
 I want also a picture of Ada — and my miniature (by 
 Holmes) of you. Address to Venice as usual. Allegra 
 is here with me, in good health & very amiable & pretty, 
 at least thought so. She is English, but speaks nothing 
 but Venetian. " Bon di, papa " &° ^c*^ she is very droll, 
 and has a good deal of the Byron — can't articulate the 
 letter r at all — frowns and pouts quite in our way — blue 
 eyes — light hair growing darker daily — and a dimple in 
 her chin — a scowl on the brow — white skin — sweet voice 
 
 294 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 — and a particular liking of Music — and of her own way 
 in every thing — is not that B. all over ? 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Venice. Nov"^ 28"" 1819. 
 My dearest Augusta, — 
 
 Yours of the i ith came to-day — many thanks. I 
 may be wrong, and right or wrong, have lived long 
 enough not to defend opinions ; but my doubts of the 
 funds were Douglas Kinnaird's, who also told me that 
 at the investment Lady B. or her agents had demurred. 
 I know nothing of England but through Douglas and 
 Hobhouse, who are alarming reformers, and the Paris 
 papers which are full of bank perplexities. The Stake 
 concerns you and your children who are in part my heirs, 
 
 and Lady B and her child who have a jointure and 
 
 aU that to come out of it. She may do as she pleases — 
 I merely suggest — it is all your affair as much as mine. 
 Since I wrote to you last I have had with all my house- 
 hold & family a sharp tertian fever. I have got well 
 but AUegra is still laid up'though convalescent ; and her 
 nurse — and half my ragamuffins — Gondoliers, Nurses — 
 cook — footmen Sa" I cured myself without bark, but 
 all the others are taking it like trees. I have also had 
 another hot crater, in the shape of a scene with Count 
 Guiccioli who quarrelled with his wife, who refused to 
 go back to him, and wanted to stay with me — and elope 
 — and be as good as married. At last they made it up 
 — but there was a dreadful scene ; if I had not loved her 
 better than myself, I could not have resisted her wish 
 but at thirty one years, as I have, and such years as 
 they have been — you may be sure — knowing the world 
 that I would rather sacrifice myself ten times over — ^than 
 the girl, who did not know the extent of the step she 
 was so eager to take. He behaved well enough, saying 
 " take your lover or retain me — but you shan't have 
 both," the lady would have taken her lover as in duty 
 bound — not to do — but on representing to her the 
 
 29s 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 destruction it would bring on her family (five unmarried 
 sisters) and all the probable consequences — she had the 
 reluctant good grace to acquiesce and return with him 
 to Ravenna. But this business has rendered Italy 
 hateful to me, and as I left England on account of my 
 own wife, I leave Italy because of another's. You need 
 not be frightened — there was no fighting — nobody fights 
 here — they sometimes assassinate, but generally by proxy 
 — and as to intrigue, it is the only employment ; but 
 elopements and separations are still more serious than 
 even with us being so uncommon, and indeed needless ; 
 as excepting an occasionally jealous old gentleman — 
 every body lets their spouses have a man or two — 
 provided he be taken with decency. But the Guiccioli 
 was romantic and had^read " Corinna " — in short she 
 was a kind of Italian Caroline Lamb — but very pretty and 
 gentle, at least to me ; for I never knew so docile a 
 creature as far as we lived together, except that she had 
 a great desire to leave her husband who is sixty years 
 old — and not pleasant. There was the deuce — ^for her 
 father's family (a very noble one of Ravenna), were 
 furious against the husband — (not against me) for his 
 unreasonable ways. You must not dislike her, for she 
 was a great admirer of you, and used to collect and seal 
 up all your letters to me as they came that they might 
 not be lost or mixed with other papers ; and she was a 
 very amiable and accomplished woman, with however 
 some of the drawbacks of the Italian character now 
 corrupted for ages. 
 
 All this — and my fever — ^have made me low and ill ; 
 but the moment Allegra is better we shall set oflF over 
 the Tyrolese Alps, arid find our way to England as we 
 can, to the great solace of M' Fletcher, who may perhaps 
 find his family not less increased than his fortune during 
 his absence. I cannot fix any day for departure or 
 arrival — so much depending on circumstances — but we 
 are to be in voyage as soon as it can be undertaken with 
 safety to the child's health. As to the Countess G. if I 
 had been single and could have married her by getting 
 
 296 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 her divorced, she would probably have been of the 
 party ; but this being out of the question — though she 
 was as " all for love or the world well lost " — I, who know 
 what " love " and " the world " both are, persuaded her 
 to keep her station in society. 
 
 Pray let Ada's picture be portable as I am Hkely to 
 see more of the portrait than of the original. Excuse 
 this scrawl. Think that within this month I have had 
 a fever — an Italian husband and wife quarrelling; — a 
 sick family — and the preparation for a December journey 
 over the mountains of the Tyrol all brewing at once in my 
 cauldron. 
 
 yours 
 
 [The signature is as in letter of Sept. 2ist, 1818. — Ed.] 
 
 P.S. I enclose her last letter to me by which you may 
 judge for yourself — that it was a serious business— I 
 have felt it such, but — ^it was my duty to do as I did as 
 her husband offered to forgive everything if she would 
 return with him to Ravenna and give up her liaison. 
 
 I wiU talk to you of my American scheme when I see 
 you — 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Venice. Dec"^ 4*'" 18 19 
 
 My dearest Augusta — 
 
 The enclosed letter is from Douglas Kinnaird. 
 
 You can send it to Ly B & hear what she says. If 
 
 they — that is the trustees — approve, I can have no 
 objection. I wish you too to express your own opinion 
 — as, in case of my not marrying again & having a son 
 — you & yours must eventually be my heirs according 
 to my WiU, made 5 years ago, since the marriage. 
 
 You need not answer to this place, as I expect to be 
 in or near England by the new year. We propose setting 
 out in a few days. 
 
 I wrote to you a long letter about ten days ago 
 
 297 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 explaining why &" &" I think of leaving Italy so soon. 
 If you address a line to Calais it will I trust be met by 
 yrs ever 
 
 most affct 
 
 B 
 
 [In a letter dated Dec. 23rd, printed in " Letters and 
 Journals," Byron explained that he had postponed this 
 journey. — Ed.] 
 
 Lord Byron to Lady Byron. 
 
 Ravenna. Deer. 31st 1819. 
 
 Anything — like or unlike — copy or original will be 
 welcome, I can make no comparison, and find no fault, it 
 is enough for me to have something to remind me of 
 what is yours and mine, and which, whatever may be 
 mine, will I hope be yours while you breathe. It is my 
 wish to give you as little further trouble as can be helped, 
 the time and the mode of sending the picture you can 
 choose ; I have been taught waiting if not patience. 
 The wretchedness of the past should be sufficient for 
 you and me without adding wittingly to the future more 
 bitterness than that of which time and eternity are 
 pregnant. While we do not approximate we may be 
 gentle, and feel at a distance what we once felt without 
 mutual or self-reproach. This time five years (the fault 
 is not mine but of Augusta's letter loth Deer, which 
 arrived to-day) I was on my way to our funeral marriage. 
 I hardly thought then that your bridegroom as an exile 
 would one day address you as a stranger ; and that Lady 
 and Lord Byron would become byewords of division. 
 This time four years I suspected it as little. I speak to 
 you from another country, and as it were from another 
 world, for this city of Italy is out of the track of armies 
 and travellers, and is more of the old time. That I 
 think of you is but too obvious, for three hours have not 
 passed, since in society where I ought not to think of 
 you, though ItaHan customs and Italian, perhaps even 
 English, passions attach more importance and duty to 
 
 298 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 such liaisons than to any nuptial engagement, the prin- 
 cipal person concerned said to me — " tu pensi di tua 
 moglie "—it was so right a conjecture that I started and 
 answered why do you think so f The answer was — 
 " because you are so serious — and she is the woman whom 
 I believe tu ami piu ed ami sempre " — If this had been 
 said in a moment of anger or of playfulness, I should 
 have thought it the consequence of ill humour or curiosity, 
 but it was said without any such prologue, in a time of 
 indifferent things and much good company. Countesses 
 and Marchionesses and all the noble blood of the de- 
 scendants of Guido di Polenta's — cotemporaries with 
 names eloquent of the middle ages. 
 
 I was nearly on the point of setting out for England in 
 November, but a fever the epidemic of the Season 
 stopped me with other reasons ; Augusta can tell you 
 all about me and mine if you think either worth the 
 enquiry. But the object of my writing is to come. 
 
 It is this — I saw Moore three months ago and gave 
 to his care a long Memoir written up to the Summer of 
 1816, of my life which I had been writing since I left 
 England. It will not be published tiU after my death, 
 and in fact it is a " Memoir " and not " confessions." I 
 have omitted the most important and decisive events 
 and passions of my existence not to compromise others. 
 But it is not so with the part you occupy, which is long 
 and minute, and I could wish you to see, read and mark 
 any part or parts that do not appear to coincide with 
 the truth. The truth I have always stated — but there 
 are two ways of looking at it — and your way may not 
 be mine. I have never revised the papers since they 
 were written. You may read them and mark what you 
 please. I wish you (to) know what I think and say of 
 you and yours. You will find nothing to flatter you, 
 nothing to lead you to the most remote supposition that 
 we could ever have been, or be happy together. But I 
 do not choose to give to another generation statements 
 which we cannot arise from the dust to prove or disprove 
 — without letting you see fairly and fully what I look 
 
 299 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 upon you to have been, and what I depict you as being. 
 If seeing this, you can detect what is false, or answer 
 what is charged, do so — your mark shall not be erased. 
 
 You wiU perhaps say zvhy write my Hfe ? Alas ! — I 
 say so too, but they who have traduced it and blasted it, 
 and branded me, should know — that it is they, and not 
 I — are the cause. It is no great pleasure to have lived, 
 and less to live over again the details of existence, but 
 the last becomes sometimes a necessity and even a duty. 
 
 If you choose to see this you may, if you do not — ^you 
 have at least had the option. 
 
 B 
 
 January I9t. 
 
 [Part of the above letter is printed in Chap. V., 
 pp. I0I-2. — Ed.J 
 
 Lord Byron to the Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Ravenna. August 19* 1820. 
 
 My dearest Augusta — 
 
 I always loved you better than any earthly 
 existence, and I always shall unless I go mad. And if I 
 did not so love you — still I would not persecute or oppress 
 any one wittingly — especially for debts, of which I know 
 the agony by experience. Of Colonel Leigh's bond, I 
 really have forgotten aU particulars, except that it was 
 not of my wishing. And I never would nor ever will be 
 pressed into the Gang of his creditors. I would not take 
 the money if he had it. You may judge if I would dun 
 
 him having it not 
 
 Whatever measure I can take for his extrication will 
 be taken. Only tell me how — for I am ignorant, and 
 far away. Who does and who can accuse you of 
 " interested views " ? I think people must have 
 gone into Bedlam such things appear to me so very 
 
 incomprehensible. Pray explain 
 
 yors ever 
 & truly 
 
 Byron 
 300 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 Fragment of a letter from Lord Byron to the 
 Hon. Mrs. Leigh, apparently 1820, from a half- 
 burnt sheet. The remainder is missing. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 Hobhouse cares about as much for the Queen as he does 
 for S*. Paul's. One ought to be glad however of any- 
 thing which makes either of them go to Church. I am 
 also delighted to see you grown so moral. It is edifying. 
 Pray write, and beheve me ever dearest A, 
 
 Yours 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Ravenna. ^^''^ iS"" 1820 
 
 My dearest Augusta — >/ 
 
 You will •I-iope'have received a discreetly long 
 letter from me — not long ago, — ^Murray has just written 
 that Waite — is dead — ^poor fellow — ^he and Blake — both 
 deceased — what is to become of our hair & teeth. — ^The 
 hair is less to be minded — any body can cut hair — 
 though not so well — but the mouth is a still more serious 
 concern. 
 
 Has he no Successor ? — ^pray tell me the next best — 
 
 for what am I to do for brushes & powder f And then 
 
 the Children — only think — ^what will become of their 
 jaws ? Such men ought to be immortal — & not your 
 stupid heroes-^orators & poets. 
 
 I am really so sorry — that I can't think of anything 
 else just now. — ^Besides I liked him with all his Cox- 
 combry. 
 
 Let me know what we are all to do, — & to whom we 
 can have recourse without damage for our cleaning — 
 scaling & powder. — 
 
 How do you get on with your affairs ? — and how does 
 every body get on. 
 
 How is all your rabbit-warren of a family ? I gave 
 you an account of mine by last letter. — The Child Allegra 
 is well—but the Monkey has got a cough— and the tame 
 
 301 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Crow has lately suflfered from the head ache. Fletcher 
 
 has been bled for a Stitch — & looks flourishing again 
 
 Pray write — excuse this short scrawl — 
 yours ever 
 
 B 
 
 P.S. 
 
 Recollect about Waite's Successor — ^why he was 
 only married the other day — & now I don't wonder so 
 much that the poor man died of it. 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Ravenna. lo'"'^ zist 1820. 
 
 Dearest Augusta, 
 
 Inform Lady B. that I am obliged by her readiness 
 to have Ada taught Music and Italian, according to my 
 wish (when she arrives at the proper period) and that in 
 return I wiU give her as little trouble as can be avoided 
 upon the subject of her education, tutelage, and guardian- 
 ship. A Girl is in all cases better with the mother, unless 
 there is some moral objection, and I shall not allow my 
 own private feelings to interfere with what is for the 
 advantage of the Child. She may bring her up in her 
 own way ; I am so sensible that a man ought to have 
 nothing to do with such matters, that I shall in another 
 year, either put Allegra (my natural daughter) into a 
 Convent, or send or bring her to England, to put her in 
 some good way of instruction. Tell Lady B. that I have 
 written to her two letters within these three or four months. 
 I do not say this because I desire an answer, for I have 
 no such expectation, but simply that She may know 
 that they have been sent, as the Italian post in these 
 times is always treacherous and sometimes tyrannical 
 enough to suppress letters. Will you for the same reason 
 inform Murray that for six weeks I have had no letters, 
 although for fifty reasons he ought to have written. 
 Either the Post plays false or he is a shabby fellow. 
 
 The State of things here is what cannot be described. 
 Not ten days ago the Commandant of the troops was 
 
 302 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 assasinated at my door, and died as he was being carried 
 into my apartments ; he lay on Fletcher's bed a corpse 
 for eighteen hours, before the Government ventured to 
 remove him. He was shot in walking home to his 
 barrack at 8 in the Evening. All this is little to what 
 wiU be — if there is a Neapolitan war. The Itahans are 
 right however, they want liberty, and if it is not given, 
 they must take it. What you say of the Queen is of no 
 consequence, it is the state of things which is shewn 
 that imports. I have written and written to Lady B. 
 to get us out of the funds — ^wiU she wait till they go ? 
 I know more of those things than you or she do, both at 
 home and abroad ; and those who live wiU see strange 
 things. 
 
 [Torn off here.] 
 
 Lord Byron to Lady Byron. 
 
 R^ January nth 1821. 
 
 I have just heard from Mr. Kinnaird that (through 
 the jugglery of Hanson) Mr. Bland (with the advice of 
 Counsel) has refused to consent to the Irish loan on 
 mortgage, to Lord Blessington. As you of course did 
 not do this intentionally, I shall not upbraid you or 
 yours, though the connection has proved so unfortunate 
 a one for us all, to the ruin of my fame, of my peace, and 
 the hampering of my fortune. I suppose that the 
 trustees will not object to an Enghsh Security — ^if it can 
 be found — though the terms may necessarily be less 
 advantageous. I had, God knows, unpleasant things 
 enough to contend with just now, without this addition, 
 I presume that you were aware that the Rochdale Cause 
 also was lost last Summer. However it is appealed upon, 
 but with no great hopes on my part. The State of 
 things here, you will have seen, if you have received my 
 two letters of last month. But the grand consolation 
 is that all things must end, whether they mend or no. 
 
 yrs. ever 
 
 B 
 
 303 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 P.S. I wrote to thank you for yovir consent about the 
 futurities of Augusta's family. 
 
 I had set my heart upon getting out of those infernal 
 funds, which are all false, and thought that the difficulties 
 were at length over. Yours has been a bitter connection 
 to me in every sense, it would have been better for me 
 never to have been born than to have ever seen you. 
 This sounds harsh, but is it not true ? and recollect that 
 I do not mean that you were my intentional evil Genius 
 but an Instrument for my destruction — and you yourself 
 have suffered too (poor thing) in the agency, as the 
 lightning perishes in the instant with the Oak which it 
 strikes. 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Ravenna. June 22d. 1821. 
 
 My dearest A. — 
 
 What was I to write about ? I live in a different 
 world. You knew from others that I was in tolerable 
 plight, and all that. However write I will since you 
 desire it. I have put my daughter in a convent for the 
 present to begin her accomplishments by reading, to 
 which she had a learned aversion, but the arrangement 
 is merely temporary till I can settle some plan for her ; if 
 I return to England, it is Hkely that she will accompany 
 me — if not — I sometimes think of Switzerland, and some- 
 times of the Italian Conventual education ; I shall hear 
 both sides (for I have Swiss Friends — ^through Mr.- Hopp- 
 ner the Consul General, he is connected by marriage with 
 that country) and choose what seems most rational. 
 My menagerie — (which you enquire after) has had some 
 vacancies by the elopement of one cat, the decease of 
 two monkies and a crow, by indigestion — but it is still 
 a flourishing and somewhat obstreperous establishment. 
 
 You may suppose that I was sufficiently provoked by 
 Elliston's behaviour, the more so as the foreign Journals, 
 the Austrian ones at least (who detest me for my politics) 
 had misrepresented the whole thing. The moment I 
 knew the real facts from England, I made these Italical 
 
 304 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 Gentry contradict themselves and tell the truth — the 
 former they are used to — the latter was a sad trial to 
 them, but they did it, however, by dint of Mr. Hoppner's 
 and my own remonstrances. 
 
 Tell Murray that I enclosed him a month ago (on the 
 2d.) another play, which I presume that he has received 
 (as I ensured it at the post Office) you must help him to 
 decypher it, for I sent the only copy, and you can better 
 make out my griff onnage ; tell him it must be printed 
 (aye and published too) immediately, and copied out, 
 for I do not choose to have only that one copy. 
 
 Will you for the hundredth time apply to Lady B. 
 about the funds, they are now high, and I could sell out 
 to a great advantage. Don't forget this, that cursed 
 connection crosses at every turn my fortunes, my feelings 
 and my fame. I had no wish to nourish my detestation 
 of her and her family, but they pursue, like an Evil 
 Genius. I send you an Elegy upon Lady Noel's recovery 
 — (made too [here about fourteen lines of the autograph 
 are cut off] 
 the parish register — I will reserve my tears for the 
 
 demise of Lady Noel, but the old will live forever 
 
 because she is so amiable and useful. 
 
 Yours ever & [illegible. — Ecj 
 
 B 
 
 P.S. 
 
 Let me know about Holmes.^ Oh La ! — is he as 
 great a mountebank as ever ? 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Ra— Sep." 13*" 
 
 (1821) 
 
 My dearest A./ — 
 
 From out the enclosed as well as the former parcel 
 (a few posts ago), select some of the best-behaved curls, 
 and set them in a golden locket for Ada my daughter. 
 Round the locket let there be this Italian inscription 
 
 1 The miniature painter, 
 A. 305 ^ 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 " II Sangue non e mai Acqua." And do not let the 
 engravers blunder. It means " Blood is never water," 
 and alludes merely to relationship, being a common 
 proverb. I should wish her to wear this — that she may 
 know she has (or had) a father in the world. Let the 
 bill for the locket be sent to Mr. Kinnaird, and let him 
 deduct it from my accounts. 
 Do this and prosper ! 
 
 yrs ever 
 
 B 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Oct."' sth 1821.— 
 
 My dearest Augusta/ 
 
 Has there been nothing to make it grey ? to be 
 sure the years have not. Your parcel wiU not find me 
 here — I am going to Pisa, for the winter. The late 
 political troubles here have occasioned the exile of all 
 my friends & connections, & I am going there to join 
 them. You know or you do not know that Madame 
 La Comtesse G. was separated from her husband last 
 year (on account of P.P. Clerk of this parish ^), that the 
 Pope decided in her favor iSc gave her a separate main- 
 tenance & that we lived very quietly & decently — she 
 at her father's (as the Pope decided) and I at home — 
 tiU this Summer. When her father was exiled, she was 
 obliged either to accompany him or retire into a Convent 
 — such being the terms of His Holiness's deed of divoice- 
 ment. They went to Pisa by my recommendation & 
 there I go to join them. 
 
 So there's a romance for you. I assure you it was not 
 my wish nor fault altogether. Her husband was old — 
 rich — & must have left her a large jointure in a few 
 years ; but he was jealous, & insisted &.°, & she Hke all the 
 rest would have her own way. You know that all my 
 loves go crazy, and make scenes — and so — " She is the 
 sixteenth Mrs. ShufHeton." Being very young — very 
 
 ^ See note, p. 283. 
 306 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 romantic— and odd— and being contradicted by her 
 husband besides, & being of a country where morals are 
 no better than in England, (though elopements and 
 divorces are rare — and this made an uncommon noise — 
 the first that had occurred at Ravenna for two hundred 
 years — that is in a public way with appeals to the Pope 
 &") you are not to wonder much at it ; she being too a 
 beauty & the great Belle of the four Legations, and 
 married not quite a year (at our first acquaintance) to a 
 man forty years older than herself who had had two 
 wives already & a little suspected of having poisoned his 
 first. 
 
 We have been living hitherto decently & quietly. 
 These things here do not exclude a woman from all 
 society as in y'' hypocritical country. It is very odd that 
 all my fairs are such romantic people ; and always 
 daggering or divorcing — or making scenes. 
 
 But this is " positively the last time of performance " 
 (as the playbills say), or of my getting into such scrapes 
 for the future. Indeed — I have had my share. But 
 this is a finisher ; for you know when a woman is 
 separated from her husband for her Amant, he is 
 bound both by honour (and inclination at least I 
 am), to live with her all his days ; as long as there is no 
 misconduct. 
 
 So you see that I have closed as papa begun, and you 
 will probably never see me again as long as you live. 
 Indeed you don't deserve it — for having behaved so 
 coldly — when I was ready to have sacrificed every thing for 
 you — and after [S^f] taken the farther 
 always ^ 
 
 It is nearly three years that this " liaison " has lasted. I 
 was dreadfully in love — and she blindly so — for she has 
 sacrificed every thing to this headlong passion. That 
 comes of being romantic. I can say that, without being 
 so' furiously in love as at first, I am more attached to 
 her than I thought it possible to be to any woman 
 
 1 The words in italics are erased (apparently not by the writer) and partly 
 illegible. " You " is underlined. 
 
 307 X2 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 after three years — (^except one ^ who was she can you 
 guess ?) ^ 
 
 and have not the least wish nor prospect of separation 
 from her. She herself, (and it is now a year since her 
 separation, a year too of all kinds of vicissitudes &°) is 
 still more decided. Of course the step was a decisive 
 one. If Lady B. would but please to die, and the 
 Countess G.'s husband (for Catholics can't marry though 
 divorced), we should probably have to marry — though 
 I would rather not — thinking it the way to hate each 
 other — for all people whatsoever. 
 
 However you need not calculate upon seeing me again 
 in a hurry, if ever. How have you sent the parcel, and 
 how am I to receive it at Pisa ? I am anxious about the 
 Seal — not about Hodgson's nonsense. What is the fool 
 afraid of the post for ? it is the safest — the only safe 
 conveyance. They never meddle but with political 
 packets. 
 
 Yours 
 
 P.S. Tou ought to be a great admirer of the future 
 Lady B. for three reasons, i^"'' She is a grand patroness 
 of the present Lady B. and always says " that she has no 
 doubt that " she was exceedingly ill-used by me — 2'^^ 
 She is an admirer of yours ; and I have had great 
 difficulty in keeping her from writing to you eleven 
 pages, (for she is a grand Scribe), and 3*"^ she having 
 read " Don Juan " in a French translation — made me 
 promise to write no more of it, declaring that it was 
 abominable &" &" that Donna Inez was^ meant for 
 Lady B. & in short made me vow not to continue it — 
 (this occurred lately) & since the last cantos were sent to 
 England last year). Is this not altogether odd enough ? 
 She has a good deal of us too. I mean that turn for 
 ridicule like Aunt Sophy and you and I & aU the B's 
 Desire Georgiana to write me a letter I suppose she can 
 by this time. 
 
 ' Erased (apparently not by the writer) and hardly legible. 
 * Underlined twice. 
 
 308 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 Opened by me — and the Seal taken off — so — don't accuse 
 the post-office without cause 
 
 B — that's a sign — a written one where the 
 wax was. 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Pisa. March 4th 1822. 
 My dearest Augusta, 
 
 I write two words to acknowledge your letter. I 
 certainly felt a good deal surprized that you did not 
 write immediately to announce that event/ but it was 
 probably for some good nursery reason, that you did not. 
 I regret the pain which the privation must occasion to 
 Sir R. N. and to \J B., but I shall not pretend to any 
 violent grief for one with whom my acquaintance was 
 neither long nor agreeable. Still I bear her memory no 
 malice. I am a little disappointed that Georgy should 
 not write, it is proper that my nephews and nieces should 
 cultivate some acquaintance with me, otherwise the 
 interest I feel for them may diminish unavoidably from 
 total estrangement. It has ever been my object (if I 
 live long enough) to provide as far as I can for your 
 children, as my daughter by Ly. B is rich enough already, 
 and my natural daughter also will have a decent pro- 
 vision. I shall try what I can to save or accumulate 
 some funds for this purpose (if Fortune be favourable) 
 and should therefore like to hear now and then from my 
 " residee legatooi' " as I am not likely to see much of 
 them for the present. If it should seem odd that I do 
 nor prefer my own family, I think there are some reasons 
 which will suggest themselves to you however, as it is 
 quite impossible that any thing which reminds me of 
 that unhappy connection with & B's family can excite 
 the same unmixed, feeling which exists where there are 
 no divisions. 
 
 yrs ever & truly 
 
 Noel Byron ^ 
 
 1 Death of Lady Noel. 
 
 ^ Byron was now legally bound to assume the name of Noel, his wife 
 having inherited the Noel estates from her mother. 
 
 309 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Genoa. Octr. 12th 1822. 
 
 My dearest Augusta, 
 
 My date will inform you that I am an hundred 
 miles or better nearer to you than I was. Address to 
 Genoa where we all are for the present — ^i.e. The family 
 of Count Gamba, who left Ravenna in 1821 with me on 
 account of the political troubles, together with myself 
 &c. &c. &c. 
 
 Lady B. has done a very acceptable thing to me — and 
 I presume to you — in sending you the game, it is the 
 first thing of the kind too for these seven years, for what 
 with trustees, lawyers, bankers, and arbitrators, both 
 sides have hitherto proceeded as they did in the feudal 
 times, when people used to shake hands with iron 
 gauntlets on through a hole in the door, after being 
 searched for concealed arms, by way of ascertaining the 
 sincerity of their politeness. You cannot conceive how 
 much things harass me, and provoke me into expressions 
 which I momentarily feel ; it appears to me that persons 
 who are in our peculiar situation, and can never see each 
 other as long as they live again, should at least be 
 courteous in their distance, because they never can come 
 in contact. She has lately had a chance of having the 
 estate to herself, for I was for four days confined to my 
 bed, in " the worst inn's worst room " at Lerici, on 
 my way here, with a very painful attack of bile and 
 rheumatism and I know not what besides — no physician 
 but a young Italian in no great practice — ^however I got 
 over it, and on my journey further got well again. The 
 English Physician here says I am bilious, and must take 
 the " blue pill " &c. I have no objection to take all 
 the colours of the rainbow if they can make them into 
 a prescription. 
 
 I saw Mr. Hobhouse at Pisa before I left it, he is gone 
 to Rome I believe. He told me that the Rev** Thomas 
 Noel (who married us) had requested him to ask me for 
 the promise (in case of the incumbent's demise) of some 
 
 310 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 living or other at Kirkby Mallory. I wish you would 
 ask Lady B. about it, for in the first place I know nothing 
 of any living, and in the next place, to this hour I do not 
 know whether the estate is in her, or in me, or in the 
 trustees, or whether the living is in her gift, or mine, or 
 anybody's or nobody's. I greatly fear by what I hear 
 on those subjects that we shall have all to go into Chan- 
 cery which — Heaven knows — is but a prospect of no 
 pleasing augurey. About the living you may tell her 
 that / (if I have a voice in the matter) can have no views 
 or preferences, that as T. Noel is the son of Ld. W. and, 
 poor fellow, in the awkward situation of seeing what 
 should have been his own in the possession of others, 
 had his father observed the rights of the Church, it is 
 but fair that the Church should give him some portions of 
 what should have been his rights. If therefore he can 
 obtain Lady B's promise, I will not withhold mine, but 
 in any case (supposing that the whole right was vested 
 in me) I should not put myself in opposition to her, if 
 she had any other views upon the subject. But I know 
 little or nothing of the matter. 
 Address to Genoa — yrs ever & truly 
 
 N. B. 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 Genoa. J*' 27*'' 1823, 
 
 My dearest Augusta — Your informant was as usual 
 in error. Do not believe all the lies you may hear. 
 Hobhouse can tell you that I have not lost any of my 
 teeth hitherto, since I was 12 years old, and had a back 
 one taken out by Dumergue to make room for others 
 growing, and so far from being fatter — at present I am 
 much thinner than when I left England, when I was not 
 very stout — the latter you will regret the former you will 
 be glad to hear. Hobhouse can tell you all particulars, 
 -though I am much reduced since he saw me, and more 
 than you would like. I write to you these few Unes in 
 haste, perhaps we may meet in Spring, either here, or in 
 
 311 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 England. Hobhouse says your coming out would be 
 the best thing which you could do, for yourself and me 
 too — ever yrs most affectly 
 
 N. B. 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 (Genoa) June 23'^ 1823. 
 My dearest Augusta, 
 
 Tell Lady B. that she did quite right — and I am 
 glad that she did so without hesitation. I do not know 
 where the law lies (it lies always I believe) but I never 
 would have promised the living to any one without her 
 approbation, but have rather left the nomination to 
 herself. 
 
 I sail for Greece in about a fortnight, address to Genoa 
 — as usual — letters will be forwarded, yrs ever 
 
 N. B. 
 
 [At the foot are the following words in Mrs. Leigh's 
 writing, addressed to Lady Byron : ] 
 
 Just rec*^ my dearest A only time to send & beg you 
 to return it. 
 
 Lord Byron to The Hon. Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 October 8, 1823. 
 
 I wish you could obtain from Lady B some account 
 
 of Ada's disposition, habits, studies, moral tendencies, 
 and temper, as well as of her personal appearance, for 
 except from the miniature drawn five years ago (and 
 she is now double that age nearly) I have no idea of even 
 her aspect. When I am advised on these points, I can 
 form some notion of her character, and what way her 
 dispositions or indispositions ought to be treated, and 
 though I will never interfere with or thwart her mother, 
 yet I may perhaps be permitted to suggest, as she 
 (Lady B.) is not obliged to follow my notions unless she 
 likes — ^which is not very likely. Is the girl imaginative ? 
 At her present age I have an idea that I had many 
 
 312 
 
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 OO 
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 i ^|^ ^ 
 
BYRON AND AUGUSTA 
 
 feelings and notions which people would not believe if 
 I stated them now, and therefore I may as well keep them 
 to myself. Is she social or solitary, taciturn or talkative, 
 fond of reading or otherwise, and what is her tic? — I 
 mean her foible — is she passionate ? I hope that the 
 Gods have made her any thing save poetical — it is enough 
 to have one such fool in a family. 
 
 313 
 
NOTES BY THE EDITOR 
 
 NOTE I 
 
 MR. EDGCUMBE'S THEORY 
 
 THE necessity has been pointed out to me of dealing with 
 Mr. R. Edgcumbe's book, " Byron, the Last Phase," published 
 in 1909. 
 
 Mr. Edgcumbe's thesis is to the effect that Byron and his 
 early love, Mary Chaworth (Mrs. Chaworth Musters), met again 
 in the summer of 18 13, and that the child, Elizabeth Medora 
 Leigh, born in April, 18 14, was the result of their intercourse. 
 He supposes that Mrs. Leigh pretended to be the mother of this 
 child in order to shield another woman, whom, as he himself 
 acknowledges, she had not known more than three months. 
 (There is, in fact, so far as I can ascertain, no evidence that she 
 ever did know her.) He does not attempt to explain how a 
 married woman, living surrounded by family and friends and 
 servants, contrived to go through a bogus confinement and 
 introduce a make-believe child into her house without detection. 
 He goes on to assume that after this Mrs. Leigh corresponded 
 with Lady Byron for years, sending letters to her to read which 
 she pretended had been addressed by Byron to herself, when in 
 fact they had been sent to her for transmission to Mrs. Chaworth 
 — that in doing so she avowed that she had been guilty of incest, 
 and acknowledged Byron's fatherhood of her child, Elizabeth 
 Medora. And all this for the sake of a comparative stranger, 
 whose guilt, if she had been guilty, would have been as nothing 
 compared to that assumed by Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 There was a very able article by the late Andrew Lang in the 
 Fortnightly Review of August, 1910, on " Byron and Mary 
 Chaworth," in which, from publicly printed sources only, he 
 completely exposed the absurdities of Mr. Edgcumbe's inventions. 
 He writes : — 
 
 " Byron's liaison with Mrs. Chaworth Musters, says Mr. 
 Edgcumbe, was of June- July, 181 3. The lady was then living 
 at Annesley, near Byron's place, Newstead Abbey. We therefore 
 expect evidence from Mr. Edgcumbe proving that Byron did 
 reside at Newstead Abbey on occasion, in June-July, 1813. 
 
 314 
 
NOTES BY THE EDITOR 
 
 Not only does he produce no such evidence, but his own statement, 
 slipshod enough, proves, if it proves anything, that Byron never 
 was at Newstead or near it in June, 1813 ; nor is any proof 
 afforded that he was there in July." 
 
 • • . . 
 
 " Far from proving that Byron got into a new and very serious 
 scrape in June, near Newstead, Mr. Edgcumbe's evidence- 
 Byron's letters — ^proves that the scrape dates from the end of 
 July, when Byron was quite certainly in London, cheered by 
 Mrs. Leigh's presence, yet with his ' soul scorching in the blackest 
 mood.' . . . 
 
 " When next he ventures into the field of secret history, and 
 attacks a dead lady's reputation, Mr. Edgcumbe may find it 
 desirable to pay close attention to his dates, his topography, 
 and his logic." . . . 
 
 Mr. Lang wrote again much to the same effect, " A Scapegoat 
 for Byron," in the Morning Post, October 7th, 1910, in which he 
 gibbeted yet another foolish book, " The Love Affairs of Lord 
 Byron," by Mr. Francis Gribble. Complete confirmation of Mr. 
 Lang's intuition exists (unknown to him) in the unpublished 
 letters of Lord Byron to Lady Melbourne, which form an almost 
 daily record of his movements from September, 1812, until the 
 end of 1 8 14. Lady Melbourne was the mother-in-law of Lady 
 Caroline Lamb, and Byron's extremely intimate and confidential 
 relations -with the elder lady began with their combined en- 
 deavours to restrain the vagaries of poor half-mad Lady Caroline. 
 He soon fdl into the habit of writing to Lady Melbourne full 
 descriptions of all his social doings, and especially of his love 
 affairs. The record for the summer of 181 3 is particularly full, 
 and nowhere does Mrs. Chaworth's name appear in it. 
 
 Byron's liaison with Lady Oxford came to an end about 
 June 28th, 1813, when she departed for the Continent with her 
 husband, and immediately after this event Mrs. Leigh came to 
 join him in London, and remained there for some weeks. During 
 the months of July and August and part of September, Byron 
 remained almost uninterruptedly in London, his only absences 
 being two sojourns of a few days at Mrs. Leigh's home, Six Mile 
 Bottom, near Newmarket, and at Cambridge, which is in the 
 same neighbourhood. On August 5th he teUs Lady Melbourne 
 that Mrs. Leigh has returned with him from Newmarket to 
 London, and that they contemplate going abroad together. 
 The next few letters are answers to the remonstrances that Lady 
 Melbourne made against this course — remonstrances which evi- 
 dently helped to shake his resolution (see Chapter II., pp. 33 — 34). 
 
 315 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 September 21st finds him at Aston Hall, Rotherham, where 
 (evidently encouraged by Lady Melbourne) he immediately 
 applied himself to a hot courtship of Lady Frances, the young 
 wife of his host and friend, Wedderburne Webster. This was his 
 first acquaintance with the lady, and it is therefore impossible 
 that the words " I am ... in a far more serious, and entirely 
 new scrape " in his letter to Moore, of August 22nd (" Letters 
 and Journals ") should apply to her. With interludes of a few 
 days in London, and of two expeditions for a night or two from 
 Aston to Newstead, he spent his whole time until October 19th 
 at Aston Hall with the Websters. And for the two short stays 
 at Newstead, above mentioned, he had with him the first time 
 Wedderburne Webster alone, and the second time Lady Frances 
 also and all their guests. Mr. Edgcumbe chooses to imagine 
 that at this time Byron went from Newstead to visit Mrs. 
 Chaworth at Annesley. The daily, almost hourly, record of 
 events, that he was now sending to Lady Melbourne, shows that 
 no such thing happened or was ever contemplated. 
 
 He was for the moment completely absorbed in his chase of 
 Lady Frances. He cynically describes to Lady Melbourne the 
 poor little lady's agitations and her tearful and fluttering resist- 
 ance. It is satisfactory to be able to record that, though appa- 
 rently much moved and shaken, and though she had no love for 
 her foolish and profligate husband. Lady Frances did ultimately 
 resist Byron, and that he was not altogether unchivalrous towards 
 her. 
 
 From the end of October until January, 18 14, Byron remained 
 in London. He continued to correspond for a time with Lady 
 Frances, and he sent her a picture of himself (see " Letters and 
 Journals," Vol. H., p. 350). He was uneasy lest the husband, 
 who had become suspicious, sh^ald challenge him to a duel. All 
 this is minutely reported to Lady Melbourne ; but his letters 
 soon begin to show that his thoughts were once more occupied 
 with the same object as in July and August, namely, Augusta 
 Leigh. 
 
 On January 8th, 18 14, occurs the first mention of Mrs. Chaworth 
 Musters. He tells Lady Melbourne that he had received two 
 letters from his " old love of all loves," and he encloses the last 
 for Lady Melbourne to read and advise upon. He gives a short 
 history of his youthful friendship with Mrs. Chaworth and his 
 boyish adoration of her, and says that they had hardly met 
 since her marriage. Her letters apparently ask him to come and 
 see the writer, and suggest his giving his help and support to 
 her in her matrimonial difficulties. More letters followed, and 
 were again sent on to Byron's correspondent. He is careful to 
 
 316 
 
NOTES BY THE EDITOR 
 
 explain to Lady Melbourne that " she is a good girl " and that it 
 is an entirely fraternal part that he is being asked to play. He 
 does not relish the role, and he does not think that it is in Mrs. 
 Chaworth's own interest that he should take it up. Finally, he 
 decides to go and visit Mrs. Chaworth from Newstead, whither 
 he is bound on January 17th, and where he remained three weeks 
 with Augusta for his companion. But though he says that she 
 (Augusta) especially urged him to do so, he did not go to see 
 Mrs. Chaworth. He writes to Lady Melbourne, February 6th, 
 with some compunction, that what with snowstorms and other 
 obstacles, and his own " sluggishness " on the subject, he finds 
 himself after aU leaving Newstead for London, without having 
 paid the important visit. 
 
 Three months after this, in April, 1814, was born Elizabeth 
 Medora Leigh. I wish I could print the letter that Byron wrote 
 on the occasion to Lady Melbourne, and other letters from the 
 same series. But though our family possess more than one set 
 of carefully authenticated copies, the letters themselves are not 
 ours to publish. 
 
 The only other allusion to Mrs. Chaworth in these letters 
 occurs six months later, on October 31st, 1814. Byron and 
 Augusta had been together at Hastings in July and August of 
 that year, and he writes that " poor Mrs. Chaworth " had gone 
 mad in the house there where she succeeded them as tenant, and 
 was now very Ul in London. 
 
 Mr. Edgcumbe states that when Bryon left England (two 
 years later) Mrs. Chaworth's " mind gave way." If so, it was not 
 for the first time. 
 
 A good and clear account of all that concerns this poor lady 
 will be found in Miss E. C. Mayne's " Byron," Vol. I., Chapter IV. 
 
 317 
 
NOTE II 
 
 A PORTRAIT MIS-NAMED LADY BYRON 
 
 THE family of the late Lady Byron being convinced that the 
 portrait by Ramsay to which her name is attached in the 
 Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, Vol. IV, p. 66, is a spurious 
 one, I undertook to coUect evidence on the subject. This I 
 embodied in an article with illustrations published in Ihe 
 Connoisseur of October, 1917, which has since been reprinted as 
 a pamphlet, entitled "A Portrait Mis-named Lady JByron," of a 
 convenient size for keeping with the book. From this I give the 
 following extracts : — 
 
 . . . In answer to my inquiries, Messrs. Browne, of Newcastle- 
 upon-Tyne, write : — 
 
 " We bought the picture at the sale of an old Newcastle solicitor 
 in 1897, who had a taste for buying old paintings. This old 
 collector had bought it at the artist's sale — the artist lived and 
 died in Newcastle. Written on the wooden stretcher of the 
 canvas in a contemporary hand were the words, ' Portrait of 
 Lady Byron.' " 
 
 I asked Messrs. Browne and Browne if they could give me 
 names and addresses of any descendants of James Ramsay, 
 but they were unable to do so. The sole evidence, therefore, 
 which connects this picture with Lady Byron is the inscription 
 on the stretcher in an unknown hand, which may or may not be 
 " contemporary." Nowhere in the very voluminous correspon- 
 dence of Anne Isabella Milbanke and her parents before her 
 marriage and after, in possession of the family, is there the slightest 
 allusion to this portrait or to James Ramsay. There is, on the 
 other hand, frequent mention of the sittings to George Hayter 
 in 1 812, and the miniature that he painted was regarded as a 
 satisfactory likeness.^ Annabella Milbanke was at that time 
 twenty years of age. She is shown as a pretty young girl of 
 slender figure, with brown hair and blue eyes. The nose is 
 somewhat retrousse and very clean-cut and refined. The marked 
 characteristic of the face is the breadth of the brow and eyes as 
 contrasted with the very short and somewhat narrow chin. 
 The same proportions may be seen in her portrait as a child by 
 
 1 Seep. 184. 
 318 
 
NOTES BY THE EDITOR 
 
 Hoppner {frontispiece), and again in the daguerrotypes taken in 
 her old age. The portrait by Ramsay, on the other hand, is of a 
 middle-aged woman, large and strongly made, the eyes not far 
 apart, and with no special width of brow, the nose thick and 
 blunt in shape, and the chin decidedly long and rounded. 
 
 Byron himself thus describes his future wife : — ^ 
 
 " There was something piquant and what we term pretty in 
 Miss Milbanke. Her features were small and feminine, though 
 not regular. She had the fairest skin imaginable. Her figure 
 was perfect for her height, and there was a simplicity, a retired 
 modesty about her which was very characteristic, and formed a 
 happy contrast to the cold, artificial formality and studied 
 stiffness which is called ' fashion.' " 
 
 The roundness of her face suggested to Byron the pet name of 
 " Pippin." ... 
 
 The dress in this picture and in the miniature of Lady Byron 
 by Hayter are both of the same period, that of the French 
 Empire ; both have the hair dressed in masses of short curls on 
 the forehead, a fashion imitated from old Roman Imperial busts. 
 There is, therefore, nothing to confuse the extreme contrast 
 between the two women portrayed. The elder one is slightly 
 draped about with a lace scarf or veil, an evident effort to mini- 
 mise the unbecomingness of a tight and scant light-coloured 
 garment on a person of her type. About this portrait Mr. William 
 de Morgan wrote to me some years ago : — 
 
 " My dear Lady Lovelace, — ^The portrait on page 66 of 
 Vol. IV. of Murray and Prothero's ' Byron ' is certainly not the 
 late Lady Noel Byron. I was really very familiar with her face 
 in childhood and early manhood, and it would be mere affectation 
 in me to qualify my opinion in order not to seem too positive in 
 my way of stating it. 
 
 " I suspect that Lady Anne Blunt is right in thinking this 
 portrait a younger version of that of Mrs. Byron in the same 
 volume.2 {jad I been told that this last had been supposed also 
 to be a portrait of the poet's wife, I should have assigned exactly 
 similar reasons for disputing its authenticity. 
 
 " I think if I had to make choice of an epithet that would not 
 describe the countenance of the almost ethereally delicate, 
 almost painfully serious, almost disconcertingly precise lady 
 (whom I remember vividly), it would be one that my mind at 
 once applied to the original or originals of each of these portraits— 
 the adjective _;'o»w/. It may be said that the tragedy of her life 
 
 1 Medwin's " Conversations with Lord Byron," pp. 44, 45. 
 
 2 Portrait by Stewardson, belonging to John Murray, Esq. 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 had left its mark upon her. But then this supposed portrait is 
 palpably older than she was at the date of its occurrence. 
 
 " On the other hand, the word stoical associates itself in my 
 mind with Lady Noel Byron^ — not implying severity or grimness — 
 and I feel sure there was mighty little stoicism in any sense in 
 the original of either of these portraits. 
 
 " Murray and Prothero must surely have accepted this por- 
 trait on the strength of seemingly indisputable authentication, 
 because so many stiU living remember the supposed original as 
 plainly as myself. But folk are never to hand when wanted and 
 don't get consulted. 
 
 " Believe me, dear Lady Lovelace, 
 " Always sincerely yours, 
 
 " Wm. De Morgan." 
 
 (It is, perhaps, now better known than formerly that Mr. De 
 Morgan was not only distinguished as a writer, but also as an 
 artist, and his evidence, therefore, is that of a trained observer.) 
 
 I asked Lady Anne Blunt also to put in writing the 
 views I had often heard her express, and she has done so as 
 follows : — 
 
 " That portrait to which you refer — of the middle-aged woman 
 dressed in Empire fashions, said to be by James Ramsay, R.A. — 
 at page 66 of Vol. IV. of Murray's ' Letters and Journals ' of 
 my grandfather, reminded me at once when I saw it of a picture 
 I possess 1 of my Gordon of Gight great-grandmother. I 
 never was more surprised than on finding it described as being a 
 representation of my MUbanke grandmother, to whom it never 
 could have had the remotest resemblance at any time in her 
 life." . . . 
 
 From the " Life of Thomas Woolner, R.A.," by his daughter, 
 page 193 : — May i-jth, i860. 
 
 " Yesterday I had to go and see a cast taken of the left hand 
 of Lady Noel Byron, wife of the poet. The summons said it was 
 essential that an honorable man should do it or I should not 
 have been troubled. I do not much like taking casts of anyone 
 dead, but could not refuse in this case, as I know so many of their 
 friends. But I am glad I did go, for a nobler sight I never saw- 
 she looked as if she were living, and had just dropped to sleep, 
 and as proud as a queen in all her splendour. I think there was 
 never anything finer than her brow and nose. . . . She seems to 
 have been almost adored by those about her. . . ." 
 
 1 This is a replica of the portrait by Stewardson, owned by Mr. John Murray. 
 
 320 
 
NOTE III 
 
 BYRON'S HAIR 
 
 MISS E. C. MAYNE gives ("Byron," Vol. I., Chapter VIII.), 
 on the authority of Scrope Davies, a story to the effect 
 that Byron's hair was artificially curled. This may seem to be a 
 small matter, but the statement was profoundly irritating to the 
 late Lady Anne Blunt, who flatly denied it. Whatever Byron 
 may have chosen to do to his hair on a particular occasion it 
 did, curl naturally. Lady Anne said that her grandmother. 
 Lady Byron, was wont to describe her husband's curly head. 
 Lady Anne also argued that the story was disproved by Byron's 
 well-known passion for bathing and swimming on every possible 
 opportunity, and before all sorts of witnesses. Artificial curls 
 will not bear wetting. If Byron had been seen to go into the 
 water with a curly, head and to come out of it with lanlj and 
 snaky locks, the fact would surely have been recorded. And 
 would so vain a man have ever risked such an exfose ? But I 
 can produce other evidence. 
 
 In a little old mother-o'-pearl box, set in gold, are kept, to- 
 gether with Lady Byron's wedding ring, two small packets, 
 docketed in Lady Byron's handwriting. On the first is written : — 
 
 " This lock of Lord Byror/s Hair, I cut off after our 
 marriage. A. I. N. B." 
 
 and on the second : — 
 
 " Lord B.'s hair from Fletcher, taken after his death." 
 
 In the first packet is a short thick piece of hair, tightly curled 
 in a broad ring. If a finger is inserted in it, the hair closes round 
 it like a spring. The colour is a warm chestnut brown. It is soft 
 enough but not very fine. The vigour of life seems still to b« so 
 strong in it, that it is almost incredible that it should have ceased 
 to grow more than a hundred years ago. 
 
 In the second packet the piece of hair is longer and thinner. 
 It is of a much duller and darker brown, and here and there is a 
 white thread in it. Instead of one broad ring, there are several 
 small thin ones. It does not curl so vigorously, but it does curl.^ 
 
 I See letter of September 13th, 1821, p. 305. 
 K. 321 ■^ 
 
NOTE IV 
 
 MARY ANNE CLERMONT 
 
 WHEN Byron wrote his vitriolic poem, " A Sketch," he 
 chose to pour out the venom that filled his soul upon a 
 humble and faithful creature, of whom he can have known but 
 little, and who had never harmed him or his. Only twelve days 
 before he had written his tender " Fare thee well " to his wife. 
 His mood had now changed, but he could not decently write so 
 soon in bitterness of her, nor do more than indirectly accuse her 
 parents. 
 
 Mrs. Clermont had never been, as he imagined, a domestic 
 servant. It is intolerable that he should have insulted in her 
 person a whole class of honest folk. She had been Miss Milbanke's 
 governess, and remained a warm friend and trusted counsellor 
 of the whole family. She was never an inmate of Lord Byron's 
 house until the birth of his child, when, as she says in a statement 
 describing the miseries and terrors of the young wife (to which 
 she took her oath), " Mrs. Leigh intreated me to come and sleep 
 in the house at the time of Lady Byron's confinement, saying 
 ' if he continues in this way God knows what he may do ! '" 
 " This way " meant Byron's outbreaks of savage aversion for his 
 wife, which alarmed all who witnessed them.^ 
 
 There is no record anywhere in any letters of the family, or 
 statement of Lady Byron's, of any interference on Mrs. Clermont's 
 part in Lord Byron's married life, or any efforts of hers to detach 
 his wife from him. She saw and guessed a good deal, but she 
 does not appear to have been fully confided in by Lady Byron 
 until some time after she had left his roof. 
 
 Her important rdle began when Sir Ralph Noel cagie to London 
 to negotiate the separation, and she remained with him at 
 Mivart's Hotel, acting as a kind of confidential secretary. Lady 
 Noel was the greater part of this time at Kirkby with her daughter, 
 and it was Mrs. Clermont who assisted at all the interviews with 
 lawyers, who collected information for -them, cross-questioned 
 the doctors about Lord Byron's health, and wrote daily, almost 
 hourly, accounts of all that went on to the two anxious women 
 
 I See pp. 39—40. 
 322 
 
NOTES BY THE EDITOR 
 
 in the country. Lady Byron was tortured with doubt as to her 
 husband's insanity. Mrs. Clermont does her utmost to satisfy 
 her demands for every detail that can be given about him and 
 for every word that the doctors say. Nothing decisive can be 
 got from them. Mrs. Leigh reports confused sayings of Byron's, 
 but against that must be set the fact that he is continually 
 drinking brandy, in spite of all that the doctors can do to prevent 
 it. Mrs. Leigh's letters torment Lady Byron with descriptions 
 of his melancholy and his bad health. Mrs. Clermont writes to 
 liady Noel : " I have always thought Mrs. Leigh weak about 
 her brother." To Lady Byron she writes : " I have no doubt 
 that, although he has been always wishing and endeavouring to 
 drive you to a separation, his pride at least will suffer dread- 
 fully ; but he is a being whose whole talents seem to be employed 
 in bringing unhappiness upon himself, and it is not in the power 
 of any mortal to prevent him doing so." 
 
 As to his health, she says : " I find Lord Byron has his dinner 
 and goes to the play as usual. I hope you have got over your 
 alarm about him. Pray do not be so weak as to mind Mrs. 
 Leigh's Ohs and Ahs." 
 
 Sir Ralph Noel's firmness in negotiation was evidently doubted 
 by his wife and daughter. Lady Byron writes : " Pray don't 
 lei Sir R. stir a step or write a line without the legal counsels. . . . 
 I have some fears of his being led to commit himself by some 
 artful people." Mrs. Clermont assures her that he is being 
 carefully watched over. 
 
 When Lady Noel joined the conclave in London for a few days 
 Lady Byron — alone at Kirkby with her child — had a new cause 
 for anxiety. She knew her mother's impetuosity of character. 
 " I hope " (she writes to Mrs. Clermont) " you will find my 
 mother reasonable and temperate." . . . Again three days 
 later : — 
 
 " I hope you will keep my mother sober. She will break my 
 heart if she takes up the thing in bitterness against him. The 
 more I think of the whole conduct on his part, the more un- 
 accountable it is — I cannot believe him all bad, though the case 
 is quite as hopeless as if he were." . . . Again Mrs. Clermont 
 soothes her and preaches patience. Some time must elapse 
 before there can be any certainty about Lord B.'s mental 
 condition. 
 
 Throughout this difficult time Mrs. Clermont's influence is 
 always for moderation, for calmness, for generosity as to money 
 terms (in this she was knocking at an open door), and for justice 
 even to the guilty. 
 
 On March gth she writes to Lady Nod : " In regard to Mrs. 
 
 323 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Leigh you have I think been very unjust, as I am confident 
 however maliciously he (Byron) may act, it never has been her 
 wish to take it (the chUd) from A.,i nor ever will be, although I 
 fear she must have felt herself much hurt of late by a change of 
 manner on this side. I know she has acted weakly but I do 
 firmly believe her intentions have been good — nor can I ever 
 forget the kindness A. experienced from her the latter part of 
 the time she was in piccadilly {sic). Even for her life I believe 
 we may thank Mrs. Leigh." 
 
 In the same letter she had written triumphantly : " I have at 
 last the happiness to inform you that this business is in a fair 
 way to be settled, without the Law." 
 
 Lord Byron, doubtless, knew of her presence at Sir Ralph's 
 side and of the help that she rendered to him and his advisers. 
 Thus his wrath fastened upon her. It is amusing to read her 
 matter-of-fact narrative of events from day to day with her 
 homely comments on them, and to contrast them with his wild 
 and extravagant accusations against her, and his imaginings of 
 dark and mysterious plotting. Her actions were entirely open 
 and honest, and they were not taken untU after Lord Byron had 
 himself driven his wife out of his house and had openly declared 
 married life to be intolerable to him. What motive need such a 
 woman have, beyond the simple affection and pity which breathes 
 from all her letters for the young creature who had been her 
 care from childhood ? 
 
 When Byron wrote the " Fare thee well," he did not send it 
 to his wife. She read it first in print. But when he wrote the ; 
 " Sketch," a copy was sent at once to the victim. She writes f 
 about it to Lady Noel, April loth, 1816 : — 
 
 " You and I are now the Objects of his Satire, he has wrote a 
 long copy of verses in which I am a Gorgon and paid by you for 
 some secret service. It is sufficiently Blackguard for any poet 
 of St. Giles's." 
 
 She describes the letter she had written to Lord Byron and 
 continues : 
 
 " I do not expect any good from the measure, but A. thought 
 it might prevent the publication of the verses." 
 
 The letter is as follows : — 
 
 -<- 
 
 April 9, 1 81 6. 
 My Lord,— 
 
 In consequence of an attempt which your Lordship has 
 made to injure my character, I take the liberty of requesting to 
 be made acquainted with the grounds on which I am accused of 
 ' Annabella (Lady Byron). 
 
NOTES BY THE EDITOR 
 
 being a false witness and those other charges which you are 
 pleased to alledge against me. If favoured with this information, 
 I have no doubt of being able to prove in the most satisfactory 
 manner that such accusations are wholly unfounded. I have 
 hitherto, my Lord, said very little, nor could I have deemed 
 myself of sufficient importance to have any weight in the scale 
 of public opinion where your Lordship was concerned, had you 
 not yourself attached importance to what you call falsehoods 
 devised by me. The little I have said is strictly true, and what 
 more / may be compelled to say, shall be equally so, and my name 
 will always be added to whatever I may write hereafter, as it 
 has been to whatever I have written heretofore.'- 
 I am, my Lord, 
 
 Your Lordship's 
 
 Obedient humble servt. 
 
 M. A. Clermont. 
 She may be left with the last word. 
 
 ^ This is an allusion to an anonymous letter that she had received in February, 
 which she believed to have been from Lord Byron. 
 
 3*5 
 
APPENDIX A 
 
 Extract from Colonel Francis Hastings Doyle's letter 
 TO Robert John Wilmot Horton about the burning of 
 THE Memoirs. 
 
 Montague Square, May iS"", 1825. 
 
 1 CERTAINLY did consider myself as, in some degree, repre- 
 senting Lady Byron at the meeting which took place at Murray's. 
 Lady Byron told me at Beckenham, I think the day before, that 
 she had received some communication from M'' Hobhouse on the 
 subject of this manuscript — to the effect, as well as I recollect, 
 that M'' Moore was disposed to deliver it up to Lord Byron's 
 family, and that it was very desirable to obtain it from him — and 
 Lady Byron then requested me to act for her, in the event of its 
 being necessary for her to do anything in the matter. I came to 
 town immediately afterwards but certainly without any expecta- 
 tion that I should be called upon to take any steps in the business 
 till I had heard further from her — I found, however, to my 
 surprise that M' Moore was waiting at my house with a view of 
 speaking to me on the subject. . . . 
 
 The only thing in his conversation material to the present point, 
 was that he ended by saying to me, that altho in his opinion many 
 parts of the memoirs might be published without impropriety, 
 yet if Lord Byron's famUy thought otherwise he was ready to 
 deliver up the whole— he begged me, however, distinctly to bear 
 in mind that by the words " Lord Byron's family " he must be 
 understood not to mean Lady Byron or to include her, as he 
 seemed to think it might not be considered honorable on his part 
 under the circumstances to deliver up papers to her which had 
 been confided to him by Lord Byron, but he appeared to apply 
 the term more particularly to M"^ Leigh. This conversation I 
 communicated to you almost immediately afterwards, and I 
 believe it corresponded with what M'' Moore had previously said 
 to you. My going afterwards to Murray's was quite accidental — 
 you called upon me and requested me to accompany you there, 
 which I did. What passed there it is unnecessary for me to repeat 
 as you were present. I will only observe, however, that M' Moore 
 having expressly stated to me that he would not deliver up the 
 manuscript to Lady Byron, but that he would place it entirely at 
 
 327 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 M" Leigh's disposal, I did not consider myself as having any power 
 on the part of Lady Byron to oppose or sanction any particular 
 disposition of it which M'^= Leigh might think proper to make, and 
 when you signified her wish that it should be destroyed — I 
 regarded myself only as a-,witness and not as a party to the pro- 
 ceeding. Lady Byron certainly gave no consent to the destruction 
 of the manuscript either directly or indirectly — she never could 
 have known that it was intended to destroy it because I believe 
 that intention was communicated for the first time at the meeting 
 in question : The point at issue before us was not whether the 
 Manuscript should be destroyed but whether it should be sup- 
 pressed — or partially published. 
 
 APPENDIX B 
 
 THE following lines, referred to on pp. 34, 35, 36, are taken 
 from a copy which belonged to Lady Byron : 
 
 I speak not — I trace not — I breathe not thy name — 
 There is love in the sound — there is Guilt in the fame — 
 But the tear which now burns on my cheek may impart 
 The deep thoughts that dwell in that silence of heart. 
 
 2. 
 Too brief for our passion — too long for our peace — 
 Was that hour — can it's hope — can its memory cease ? ^ 
 We repent — we abjure — we will break from our chain 
 We must part — we must fly to — unite it again ! 
 
 3- 
 
 Oh ! thine be the gladness — and mine be the Guilt 
 Forgive me — adored one — forsake — if thou wilt — 
 But the heart which is thine shall expire undebased 
 And Man shall not break it whatever thou may'st. 
 
 4- 
 
 Oh ! proud to the mighty — but humble to thee 
 
 This soul in it's bitterest moments shall be 
 
 And our days glide as swift — and our moments more sweet 
 
 With thee at my side — than the world at my feet. 
 
 One tear of thy sorrow — one smile of thy love 
 
 Shall turn me or fix — shall reward or reprove — 
 
 And the heartless may wonder at all I resign 
 
 Thy lip shall reply — not to them — but to mine — 
 
 1 The manuscript is not altogether easy to decipher at this place. The line 
 IS substituted for an erased line which ought perhaps to be read : 
 " Were the minutes— whence hours can never release." 
 328 
 
APPENDIX B 
 
 The first three lines of the 5th stanza were first written : 
 
 And thine is that love which I would not forego 
 Though that heart may be bought by Eternity's woe 
 But if thine too must sufEer — Oh ! take it again, ^ 
 
 and then erased and replaced by the four lines which are nearly 
 identical with the printed version. 
 
 APPENDIX C 
 
 Opening Lines to " Lara." 
 
 she Is 
 
 WHEN thou art gone — the loved, the lost — the one 
 Whose smile hath gladdened though perchance undone- 
 Whose name too dearly cherished to impart 
 Dies on the lip but trembles in the heart ; 
 
 sudden 
 Whose -vefji^ mention can almost convulse 
 
 lightens through 
 And firoe to epeed the ungovernable pulse — 
 
 so keenly 
 Till the heart leaps responsiv e to the word 
 
 that hardly 
 
 We fear ite- throb can ecarcoly beat unheard — 
 
 Then sinks at once beneath that sickly chill 
 That follows when we find her absent Still- 
 such is 
 When thou art gone — too far again to bless — 
 Oh God — how slowly comes Forgetfulness — 
 
 faithless 
 Let none complain how4dl«-and how brief 
 
 brain's remembrance — bosom's 
 
 The mourner'p m e mory — or the - lovcr'o grief — 
 Or e'er they thus forbid us to forget — 
 Let Mercy strip the memory of regret, — 
 Yet — selfish still — we would not be forgot — 
 What lip 
 who dare say—" my Love — remember not, — " 
 
 ^ Compart : 
 
 " Say that thou loath'st me not— that I do bear 
 This punishment for both — that thou wilt be 
 
 One of the blessed— and that I shall die " 
 
 (P. 75 ; quoted from " Manfred.") 
 
 329 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Azora doareot. 
 
 Oh best — and dearest — thou whose thrilling name- 
 
 My heart adores too deeply to proclaim — 
 
 My memory almost ceasing to repine 
 
 Would mount to Hope if once secure of thine. — 
 
 Meantime the tale I weave must mournful be — 
 
 lives on 
 As absence to the heart that pantc for thee. — 
 
 APPENDIX D 
 
 Stanzas to Axjgusta. 
 
 WHEN all around grew drear and dark, 
 And reason half withheld her ray — 
 And hope but shed a dying spark 
 Which more misled my lonely way ; 
 
 In that deep midnight of the mind, 
 And that internal strife of heart, 
 
 When dreading to be deem'd too kind, 
 The weak despair — the cold depart ; 
 
 When fortune changed — and love fled far. 
 And hatred's shafts flew thick and fast, 
 
 Thou wert the solitary star 
 
 Which rose and set not to the last. 
 
 Oh ! blest be thine unbroken light 1 
 That watch'd me as a seraph's eye. 
 
 And stood between me and the night, 
 For ever shining sweetly nigh. 
 
 And when the cloud upon us came, 
 
 Which strove to blacken o'er thy ray — 
 
 Then purer spread its gentle flame 
 And dash'd the darkness all away. 
 
 Still may thy spirit dwell on mine, 
 And teach it what to brave or brook — 
 
 There's more in one soft word of thine 
 Than in the world's defied rebuke. 
 
 330 
 
APPENDIX D 
 
 Thou stood'st, as stands a lovely tree, 
 That still unbroke, though gently bent, 
 
 Still waves with fond fidelity. 
 Its boughs above a monument. 
 
 The winds might rend — the skies might pour, 
 But there thou wert — and still wouldst be 
 
 Devoted in the stormiest hour 
 To shed thy weeping leaves o'er me. 
 
 But thou and thine shall know no blight 
 
 Whatever fate on me may fall ; 
 For heaven in sunshine will requite 
 
 The kind — and thee the most of all. 
 
 Then let the ties of baffled love 
 
 Be broken — thine will never break ; 
 
 Thy heart can feel — but will not move ; 
 Thy soul, though soft, will never shake. 
 
 And these, when all was lost beside. 
 
 Were found, and still are fix'd in thee ; — 
 
 And bearing still a breast so tried, 
 Earth is no desert — ev'n to me. 
 
 APPENDIX E 
 
 Extract from " Childe Harold." Canto 3. 
 
 LV. 
 
 AND there was one soft breast, as hath been said, 
 Which unto his was bound by stronger ties 
 Than the church link'd withal ; and — though unwed, 
 That love was pure — and far above disguise, 
 Had stood the test of mortal enmities 
 Still undivided, and cemented more 
 By perU, dreaded most in female eyes ; 
 But this was firm, and from a foreign shore 
 Well to that heart might his these absent greetings pour ! 
 
 I. 
 The castled Crag of Drachenfels 
 Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine, 
 Whose breast of waters broadly swells 
 Between the banks which bear the vine, 
 
 331 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 And hills all rich with blossomed trees, 
 And fields which promise corn and wine, 
 And scattered cities crowning these, _ 
 Whose far white walls along them shine. 
 Have strewed ^a scene, which I should see 
 With double joy wert thou with me. 
 
 2. 
 And peasant girls, with deep blue eyes, 
 And hands which offer early flowers, 
 Walk smiling o'er this Paradise ; 
 Above, the frequent feudal towers 
 Through many green leaves lift their walls of gray ; 
 And many a rock which steeply lowers. 
 And noble arch in proud decay. 
 Look o'er this vale of vintage-bowers ; 
 But one thing want these banks of Rhine, — 
 Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine ! 
 
 3- 
 I send the lilies given to me — 
 Though long before thy hand they touch, 
 I know that they must withered be. 
 But yet reject them not as such ; 
 For I have cherished them as dear, 
 Because they yet may meet thine eye, 
 And guide thy soul to mine even here. 
 When thou behold'st them drooping nigh, 
 And know'st them gathered by the Rhine, 
 And offered from my heart to thine ! 
 
 4- 
 
 The river nobly foams and flows — 
 
 The charm of this enchanted ground. 
 And all its thousand turns disclose 
 Some fresher beauty varying round ; 
 The haughtiest breast its wish might bound 
 Through life to dwell delighted here ; 
 Nor could on earth a spot be found 
 To Nature and to me so dear — 
 Could thy dear eyes in following mine 
 Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine ! ^ 
 
 1 Mary Godfrey wrote to Thomas Moore, Dec. 24th, 1816 : " How do you 
 like Lord Byron's last gloomy productions f He now comes out openly and 
 fairly — the hero of his own tale. 
 
 " Some people say those pretty lines, from the banks of the Rhine, are 
 addressed to his sister. Others will not allow that they can be addressed to a 
 sister," — Moors's Correspondence, viii. 222. 
 
APPENDIX F 
 APPENDIX F 
 
 Epistle to Augusta. 
 
 MY sister ! my sweet sister ! if a name 
 Dearer and purer were, it should be thine ; 
 Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim 
 No tears, but tenderness to answer mine ; ^ 
 Go where I will, to me thou are the same — 
 A loved regret which I would not resign, 
 There yet are two things in my destiny — 
 A world to roam through, and a home with thee.^ 
 
 The first were nothing — had I still the last, 
 It were the haven of my happiness ; 
 But other claims and other ties thou hast. 
 And mine is not the wish to make them less. 
 A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past 
 Recalling, as it lies beyond redress ; 
 Reversed for him our grandsire's fate of yore. 
 He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore. 
 
 If my inheritance of storms hath been 
 In other elements, and on the rocks 
 Of perils overlook'd or unforeseen, 
 I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks. 
 The fault was mine ; nor do I seek to screen 
 My errors with defensive paradox ; 
 I have been cunning in mine overthrow. 
 The careful pilot of my proper woe. 
 
 Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward. 
 My whole life was a contest, since the day 
 That gave me being, gave me that which marr'd 
 The gift, — a fate, or wiU, that walk'd astray ; 
 And I at times have found the struggle hard. 
 And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay : 
 But now I fain would for a time survive. 
 If but to see what next can well arrive. 
 
 ^ Compare : " a thousand loves — to you from me — which is very generous for 
 I only ask one in return " (p. 79). 
 
 * Compare : " What a fool I was to marry — and j;o« not very wise — my dear 
 — we might have lived so single and so happy — as old maids and bachelors . . . 
 we are just formed to pass our lives together " (p. 79). 
 
 333 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Kingdoms and empire in my little day 
 I have outlived, and yet I am not old ; 
 And when I look on this, the petty spray 
 Of my own years of trouble, which have roU'd 
 Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away : 
 Something — I know not what — doth stUl uphold 
 A spirit of slight patience ; — not in vain 
 Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain. 
 
 Perhaps the workings of defiance stir 
 Within me, — or perhaps a cold despair, 
 Brought on when ills habitually recur, — 
 Perhaps a kinder clime or purer air, 
 (For even to this may change of soul refer, 
 And with light armour we may learn to bear,) 
 Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not 
 The chief companion of a calmer lot. 
 
 I feel almost at times as I have felt 
 In happy childhood ; trees and flowers and brooks 
 Which do remember me of where I dwelt 
 Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books. 
 Come as of yore upon me, and can melt 
 My heart with recognition of their looks ; 
 And even at moments I could think I see 
 Some living thing to love — but none like thee.^ 
 
 Here are the Alpine landscapes which create 
 A fund for contemplation ; — to admire 
 Is a brief feeling of a trivial date ; 
 But something worthier do such scenes inspire : 
 Here to be lonely is not desolate, 
 For much I view which I could most desire, 
 And, above aU, a lake I can behold 
 Lovelier, not dearer, than our own of old. 
 
 Oh that thou wert but with me ! — ^ but I grow 
 The fool of my own wishes, and forget 
 The solitude which I have vaunted so 
 Has lost its praise in this but one regret ; 
 
 1 Compare in Manfred : " I have wander'd o'er the earth, And never found 
 thy likeness " (p. 75) ; and p. 79 : "I shall never find any one like you." 
 
 2 Compare : " I wish you were in it [this paradise of wilderness] with me and 
 everyone else out of it " (p. 78) : 
 
 " The sole companion of his wanderings 
 
 And watchings " 
 
 (" Manfred." See p. 71.) 
 
 334 
 
APPENDIX F 
 
 There may be others which I less may show ; — 
 I am not of the plaintive mood, and yet 
 I feel an ebb in my philosophy, 
 And the tide rising in my alter'd eye. 
 
 I did remind thee of our own dear Lake, 
 By the old Hall which may be mine no more. 
 Leman's is fair ; but think not I forsake 
 The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore : 
 Sad havoc Time must with my memory make, 
 Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before ; 
 Though, like all things which I have loved, they are 
 Resign'd for ever, or divided far. 
 
 The world is all before me ; I but ask 
 Of Nature that with which she will comply — 
 It is but in her summer's sun to bask, 
 To mingle with the quiet of her sky. 
 To see her gentle face without a mask. 
 And never gaze on it with apathy. 
 She was my early friend, and now shall be 
 My sister — tUl I look again on thee. 
 
 I can reduce aU feelings but this one ; 
 And that I would not ; — for at length I see 
 Such scenes as those wherein my life begun. 
 The earliest — even the only paths for me — 
 Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun, 
 I had been better than I now can be ; 
 The passions which have torn me would have slept ; 
 I had not suffer' d, and thou hadst not wept.^ 
 
 With false Ambition what had I to do ? 
 Little with Love, and least of all with Fame ; 
 And yet they came unsought, and with me grew. 
 And made me all which they can make — a name. 
 Yet this was not the end I did pursue ; 
 Surely I once beheld a nobler aim. 
 But all is over — I am one the more 
 To baffled millions which have gone before. 
 
 And for the future, this world's future may 
 From me demand but little of my care ; 
 I have outlived myself by many a day ; 
 Having survived so many things that were ; 
 
 ^ Compare : " What is she now f a sufferer for my sins " (quoted at p. 73 
 from " Manfred "). 
 
 335 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 My years have been no slumber, but the prey 
 Of ceaseless vigils ; for I had the share 
 Of life which might have fiU'd a century, 
 
 Before its fourth in time had pass'd me by. 
 
 And for the remnant which may be to come 
 I am content ; and for the past I feel 
 Not thankless, — for within the crowded sum 
 Of struggles, happiness at times would steal 
 And for the present I would not benumb 
 My feelings further. — ^Nor shall I conceal 
 That with aU this I still can look around 
 
 And worship Nature with a thought profound. 
 For thee, my own sweet sister, in thy heart 
 I know myself secure, as thou in mine ; 
 We were and are — I am, even as thou art — 
 Beings who ne'er each other can resign ; ^ 
 It is the same, together or apart, 
 From life's commencement to its slow decline 
 We are entwined — let death come slow or fast, 
 
 The tie which bound the first endures the last ! 
 
 APPENDIX G 
 
 (Mrs, Villiers's Copy of Miss Mercer Elphinstone's surreptitious copy, 
 from proof lent by Murray to a friend of Miss Mercer Elphinstone.) 
 
 Stanzas to [Augusta]. 
 
 Differences in the Printed Version given in the Margin. 
 
 THO' the day of my destiny's over 
 And the star of my fate had declined — 
 Thy soft heart refused to discover 
 The faults which so many could find — 
 Tho' thy soul with my grief was acquainted 
 It shrunk not to share it with me — 
 And the love which my spirit hath painted 
 It never hath found but in the 
 
 1 Compare : " We are the last persons in the world — who ought — or could 
 
 cease to love one another " 
 
 " I am by a crowd of circumstances removed from the only being who could 
 
 ever have loved me — or whom I can unmixedly feel attached to " (pp. 78, 79). 
 
 ' Compare : 
 
 " her whom of all earthly things 
 That lived, the only thing he seem'd to love, — 
 As h?, indeed, by blood was bound to do, 
 
 The lady Astarte, his " 
 
 (" Manfred," quoted at p. 71. 
 
APPENDIX G 
 
 2. 
 
 Then when nature around me is smiling 
 
 The last smUe which answers to mine 
 
 I will* not believe it beguiling 'do not 
 
 Because it reminds me of thine — 
 
 And when winds are at war with the Ocean 
 
 As the breasts I believ'd in with me — 
 
 If their billows excite an emotion 
 
 It is that they bear me from thee — ^ 
 
 3- . . 
 
 Tho' the rock of my lost* hope is shivered *my last 
 
 And its fragments are sunk in the wave hope 
 
 Tho' I feel that my Soul is delivered 
 
 To pain — it shall not be its slave — 
 
 There is many a pang to pursue me 
 
 They may crush but they shall not condemn* *contemn 
 
 They may torture but shall not subdue me 
 
 'Tis of thee that I think — not of them — 
 
 4- , . 
 
 Tho' human — thou didst not deceive me — 
 
 Tho' woman — thou didst not forsake — 
 
 Tho' loved — thou forborest to grieve me — 
 
 Tho' slandered — thou never couldst shake — 
 
 Tho' trusted — thou didst not betray* me *disclaim me 
 
 Tho' parted — it was not to fly — 
 
 Tho' watchful 'twas not to defame me — 
 
 Nor mute — that the World might belie — 
 
 5- . . 
 Yet I blame not the World — nor despise it — 
 Nor the War of the many with one — 
 
 If my Soul was not fitted to prize it 
 'Twas folly not sooner to shun — 
 And if dearly that error hath cost me — 
 And more than I once could foresee 
 I have found that whatever it lost me 
 It could not deprive me of thee — 
 
 6. 
 
 From the wreck of the past which has* perished *_hath 
 
 Thus much I at least may recall perish'd 
 
 It hath taught me that what I most cherished 
 Deserved to be dearer* than all. *dearest of all 
 
 1 Compare: "who see nothing in England but the country which holds 
 you — or around it but the sea which divides us " (p. 83). 
 
 A. 337 Z 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 In the Desert a fountain is springing — 
 In the wild* waste there still is a Tree *in the wide 
 
 And a bird in the Solitude singing waste 
 
 Which speaks to my Spirit of thee ! — '• 
 
 [Appendix H, containing passages from M. Paul Bourget's 
 writings applicable to the Byron drama, is omitted. See Intro- 
 duction, pp. vi. — vii.] 
 
 APPENDIX I AND J^ 
 
 Extracts from the " Saturday Review," September 4th 
 to December 25th, 1869.* 
 
 September ^th, 1869. 
 
 THE great Byron mystery has been revealed on authority 
 which, not so much by reason of any confidence which we 
 give to the authenticator of the history, as on the intrinsic and 
 internal evidence of the history itself, we are compelled, though 
 not without some natural misgiving and reluctance, to accept. 
 Mrs. Beecher Stowe tells us her ghastly story in the pages of 
 " Macmillan's Magazine," the editor of which congratulates 
 himself upon being selected as the organ of gratifying the curiosity 
 and interest of the world. We envy neither this gentleman nor 
 his contributor their very peculiar topics of congratulation. 
 
 ^ In July, 1816, these stanzas were shown (probably by Madame de Stael 
 to Elizabeth Hervey, who wrote about them (in the same letter which is quoted 
 at pp. 17, 18) : 
 
 " But to show you his inconsistency, whilst pretenxiing to mourn his separation 
 from your friend, he has filled three Pages of paper not forming a part of ' Childe 
 Harold 'with tender effusions addressed to another woman, whom he says, he 
 has ever found true and faithful to him, who is ever in his thoughts, and when 
 forsaken by others, from her alone he derives consolation ! Pray who is this 
 paragon ? " 
 
 ' The lettering of this Appendix in the original edition is retained. 
 
 ' These able and eloquent pages are still of interest, being one of the very few 
 bright spots in a dreary tangle of misrepresentation. It would be unfortunate 
 if the identity of the acute Saturday essayist were lost, now that former servicet 
 to a just cause ought to be recognized. 
 
 [After the publication of " Astarte " the author was told, on the authority of 
 Mr. Watts Dunton, that these articles had been written by Mrs. Lynn-Linton. 
 This was a mistake. I have now learnt that they were the work of the Rev. 
 William Scott (1813 — 1872), one of the founders of the Saturday Review. The 
 articles in Temple Bar (afterwards published as the " Vindication of Lady 
 Byron ") were by Mr, John Fox (1800 — 1880). 
 
 _By_ the kindn^ess of Sir John Charles Fox, Senior Master of the Chancery 
 Division (son of Mr. John Fox), I have seen correspondence between these two 
 gentlemen which puts the authorship of their above-named writings quite 
 beyond « doubt. — Ed.] 
 
 338 
 
APPENDIX I AND J 
 
 We shall not be at the trouble of giving an abstract or abridge- 
 ment of Mrs. Stowe's story. Not one of our readers can be 
 ignorant of its substance, which is that the cause of the separation 
 of Lord and Lady Byron was the discovery by the wife of an 
 adulterous and incestuous connection existing between her 
 husband and the only woman in the world with whom he could 
 commit that crime. Her position towards Lord Byron was that 
 of Tamar to her half-brother Amnon. Mrs. Stowe tells us " that 
 the whole history of Lord and Lady Byron in its reality has long 
 been perfectly understood in many circles in England." Mrs. 
 Stowe always writes in a loose, careless, inaccurate way, and in 
 this instance she moreover indulges in very bad taste in telling 
 her story. . . . We are sorry to say that we believe it to be the 
 true one. . . . The very first time it was ever announced in print 
 was three months before Mrs. Stowe's publication. In an able 
 and interesting paper published in the " Temple Bar Magazine " 
 of June last on " Lord Byron's Married Life," ^ as far as we know, 
 this crime of incest was first publicly charged on Lord Byron, and 
 we are bound to say that that article, remarkable for ability, good 
 taste, and right feeling, has had far more effect in compelling us 
 to the conclusion that this is the true solution of the mystery than 
 Mrs. Stowe's very unpleasant narrative, or any confidence which 
 \ye repose in a writer so inaccurate, and in other ways so positively 
 repellent, as the authoress of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." Again, we 
 say, we accept this version, not on account of the external 
 evidence which is brought to support it, so much as on its internal 
 probability. . . . 
 
 Is the story, through \vhatever unpleasant channel it reaches 
 us, true ? Have we got the solution of the great mystery f For 
 the trvith of the story is quite independent of the particular form, 
 which is unsatisfactory enough, in which we receive it. As we 
 have already hinted, we think, though we think it with reluctance, 
 that the balance t)f probability is on the whole much in its favour. 
 It is intrinsically probable, and something more than probable, 
 not only from internal -evidence but from the whole cloyd of small 
 corroborative external details, not one of which perhaps is in 
 itself conclusive, but the cumulative force of which taken together 
 seems to be irresistible. The' argument is of a critical nature, and 
 though possibly weak in this or that single link, becomes very 
 irnpressive from the multitude of indirect and casual illustrations 
 and slight confirmations of which it is capable. . , . 
 
 We have gone through Moore's Memoirs relating to this period, 
 l8 13-18 15, and it is unquestionable and undeniable that it affords 
 
 1 Se» "Astarte," pp. 113, 143 an4 i6i. 
 
 339 Z2 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 great corroboration to Mrs. Stowe's — or Lady Byron's — narrative. 
 Byron's life up to that time had been bad enough ; but now there 
 appears something secret, mysterious, and hidden, a frequent 
 reference to some especial guilt and agony, which shows that 
 something had happened very different from all that had happened 
 before ; some guilt different in kind from the unclean and coarse 
 and drunken life of the previous years. It is not so much on what 
 Byron says, as on what he hints, that we found this judgement. 
 There is, we all know, in cases of great sin a strange, unnatural, or 
 perhaps natural, dallying and playing round the fatal secret. It 
 is concealed perhaps, but it is always on the very point of being 
 revealed, as though, which is perhaps true, there were some horrid 
 fascination in crime which aU but compels the criminal to avow it. 
 Read by the lurid light of Mrs. Stowe's narrative, what Byron 
 said in his letters to Moore at this time, what he inserted in his 
 Diary, and the poems which he wrote, become of the highest 
 interest and significance. . . . 
 
 From other notices, the exchange of books and letters, we find 
 that he was in daily communication with his half-sister. May 4th, 
 he sent Moore a song, which, by the way, was never published tiU 
 after his death, which seems at this time significant : 
 
 " I speak not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name, 
 There is grief in the sound, there is guilt in the fame ; 
 
 # m- * 
 
 Too brief for our passion, too long for our peace 
 
 Were those hours — can their joy or their bitterness cease f 
 
 We repent — we abjure — ^we will break from our chain, 
 
 We will part — ^we will fly — to unite it again ! 
 
 Oh ! thine be the gladness and mine be the guilt," etc., etc. 
 
 As we have said, not one of these expressions is conclusive, but 
 taken together they become important. 
 
 We now come to the separation. . . . Dr. Lushington, who had 
 at first thought a reconciliation probable, on further information 
 communicated by Lady Byron, altered his opinion, declared it to 
 be " impossible," and added that if such an idea should be enter- 
 tained, he could not, professionally or otherwise, take any part 
 towards effecting it." The writer in " Temple Bar," to whose 
 acute paper, published three months before Mrs. Stowe's, we have 
 already done justice, argues with great force that whatever the 
 offence in Lord Byron's case was, it must have been in the eyes 
 of this great ecclesiastical lawyer equivalent to that which the 
 House of Lords had in a celebrated judgement declared to be of 
 
 340 
 
APPENDIX I AND J 
 
 such an aggravated nature that " duty to God and man " made 
 reconciliation impossible. That offence was incest. ^ . . . 
 
 As soon as Byron was clear of England, he wrote the famous 
 verses " To Augusta," which were never published till after his 
 death, beginning, 
 
 " My sister, my sweet sister." 
 
 It is certainly open to anybody to say that it might be only 
 fraternal love which dictated the very strong language of this 
 remarkable poem ; it is also certain on the other hand, that, read 
 by the light of Lady Byron's story, these strange lines are also 
 susceptible of a very different and blacker interpretation. As we 
 have said before, taken by itself, this pstem concludes nothing ; 
 taken in connection with other things, it seems to mean a good 
 deal. The person to whom they were addressed, it must not be 
 forgotten, had a husband, and, as the " Peerage " tells us, " issue." 
 Poets may address their sisters in very affectionate language, but 
 they seldom talk of living, and living for ever, with a married 
 woman, even though she may be a favourite half-sister : 
 
 " Go where I will, to me thou art the same, 
 A loved regret which I would not resign. 
 There yet are two things in my destiny — 
 A world to roam through, and a home with thee. 
 The first were nothing — ^had I still the last, 
 It were the haven of my happiness ; 
 .... even at moments I could think I see 
 Some Uving thing to love, but none like thee. 
 
 » » » 
 
 Oh ! that thou wert but with me ! 
 
 « « * 
 
 Had I but sooner learnt .... 
 I had been better than I now can be ; 
 The passions which have torn me would have slept, 
 I had not suffered, and thou hadst not wept. 
 
 » * » 
 
 We were, and are — I am, even as thou art — 
 Beings who ne'er each other can resign ; 
 
 # » * 
 
 We are entwined, let death come slow or fast." 
 
 Byron's first literary work after the separation was to write 
 " Manfred," a ghastly tale, the interest of which centres on incest. 
 We are quite aware that poets and dramatists are not to be 
 identified with the characters or plots which they draw. Racine 
 
 1 See " Astarte," p. 143- 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 wrote " Ph^dre," but this is no proof that he or any other trage- 
 dian practised the vices of the characters which he draws. We 
 certainly cannot agree with Mrs. Stowe's wild assertion that 
 " anybody who reads ' Manfred ' with this story in his mind will 
 see that it " — the story, we suppose — " is true." But when it is 
 said, on the other hand, as has been said by a writer in the 
 " Times," " that it is almost impossible that a man with the 
 secret of incest on his soul would have written ' Manfred,' " we 
 should say, for the psychological reason to which we have already 
 referred, this is a very likely thing for him to do. 
 
 September nth, 1869. 
 
 . . . Those who, like ourselves, have, with whatever reluctance, 
 been driven to the conclusion that on the whole the charge made 
 against Lord Byron is likely to be true, because the moral pro- 
 babilities against its truth seem to be outweighed by the pro- 
 babilities, however disagreeable, for its truth, can treat with 
 contemptuous indifference the tedious iteration of the paralogism 
 that Lord Byron could not have committed a certain crime 
 because he wrote very fine poems. And yet the majority of the 
 writers in the newspapers harp upon no other string. For our- 
 selves, we shall not enter into controversy with fervid under- 
 graduates, who in the middle of the Long Vacation date from 
 Trinity College, Oxford, nor with the impertinent and utterly 
 untrue suggestion of another newspaper correspondent, that the 
 writer on Byron's life in " Temple Bar " and the writer in the 
 " Saturday Review " are one and the same ; but we content 
 ourselves with reviewing the case as it stands at the moment. . . . 
 
 Mrs. Stowe has been guilty of a scandalous breach of faith as 
 regards Lady Byron, and of extremely bad taste. . . . We are 
 not of those who think that the publication of the true story of 
 Byron would be in itself harmful ; rather the reverse. Our 
 objection is to the time and the manner, not to the matter. The 
 greater Byron's fame and powers, the greater right has the world 
 to know the true man. But that revelation, we think, ought to 
 have been made in 18 16 ; it ought to have been made by Lady 
 Byron herself, or at any rate on her express and undoubted 
 authority, and by those commissioned to execute this stern 
 judicial act. But to get it at this time, and in this indirect and 
 surreptitious way, in a form so nauseous, from such a source, 
 and for such objects,' is a proceeding which we are glad to 
 say has met with almost universal indignation, contempt and 
 condemnation. . . . 
 
 We dismiss very rapidly the " hallucination " theory. Its 
 
 34a 
 
APPENDIX I AND J 
 
 controversial value seems, in the eyes of the newspaper corre- 
 spondents, chiefly to depend on the importance which they attach 
 to a sonorous polysyllable. We do not profess altogether to 
 understand an hallucination of any sort, certainly not of this sort 
 — an hallucination which involves so horrible a charge, and which 
 surrounds such a charge with all sorts of minute, and perfectly 
 unnecessary, details. Lady Byron's character, as she and her 
 friends give it, is one with which we do not altogether sympathize ; 
 indeed, we rather dislike, because perhaps We are unable to realize 
 it. But that her character was very peculiar Lady Anne Barnard ^ 
 shows as clearly as Mrs. Stowe does. That character, be it what 
 it may, is one, we should say, prima facie, least capable of being 
 led away by, or indulging in an hallucination — ^whatever hallu- 
 cinations may be. The upshot of the whole matter and the final 
 alternative is this : Either we must accept this hallucination 
 theory, or we must accept Lady Byron's story. Further than 
 this the matter cannot be carried. 
 
 September z^th, 1869. 
 
 The question is whether what Lady Byron communicated to 
 Mrs. Stowe in 1856 is at variance with what she communicated 
 to Lady Anne Barnard in 1816 ; and further, whether an absolute 
 impossibility is established that Lady Byron could, at the time 
 of the separation in 1816, have entertained the particular charge 
 which she preferred in 1856. . . . 
 
 I. The carriage scene on the wedding-day. In our last article 
 we adduced reasons for comiiig to the very opposite conclusion 
 from Lord Lindsay's on this matter. We still assert that there is 
 no substantial difference between the two accounts. To establish 
 their inconsistency they should both be authenticated by the 
 same narrator at first hand. If we had two documents, one 
 written by Lady Byron in 18 16, and another written by Lady 
 Byron in 1856, and if we found Lady Byron writing one thing in 
 
 1 Lady Byron's communications to Lady Anne Barnard were all made in 
 1816 — not 1818 as was incorrectly stated by Lord Lindsay in a letter (Septem- 
 ber 3rd, 1869) to the " Times." 
 
 Lady Byron saw Lady Anne Barnard in September, 1816, at the beginning 
 (not the end) of a severe two months' illness which kept Lady Anne in bed till 
 November. After recovery, Lady Anne wrote (November 28th, i8i6) to Lady 
 Byron about the third Canto of " Childe Harold." Lady Byron's answer 
 (printed by Lord Lindsay in 1869) was dated December 2nd, 1816, as is proved 
 by the draft in her own handwriting, and the inaccuracy of shifting the date by 
 two years tends to reduce Lord Lindsay's authority on this subject within 
 modest proportions. 
 
 343 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 1816 and another in 1856, we should say that there was an 
 inconsistency. What, however, we have is the account of two 
 narrators, each giving the substance of two different oral com- 
 munications ; and we maintain that the differences are so slight, 
 and the general agreement so complete between the two versions, 
 that the separate accounts confirm, rather than confute, each 
 other. In other words, we apply to these two documents the 
 familiar method by which history and criticism are enabled to 
 reconcile narratives of the same facts which come to us through 
 different channels. . . . 
 
 Many writers — from whom we select the vigorous writer of a 
 high-toned letter in the " Times," — " A Reader of Byron's 
 Letters," ^ which appeared in the same number with Lord 
 Lindsay's second letter — declare that the accusation of incest 
 with his half-sister was known to aU Byron's familiar associates. 
 Our own inquiries among those who were Byron's contemporaries 
 bear out this very important assertion. The charge, whether 
 true or false, dates from 1816, not from 1856. Lord Lindsay 
 proceeds : Lady Byron could not have entertained belief in her 
 husband's incest in 1816, because, ... in talking and writing to 
 Lady Anne Barnard, no trace of the charge exists ... we are 
 surprised that a person of Lord Lindsay's good sense cannot see 
 that Lady Byron's half-confidence given to Lady Anne &c. . . . 
 prove absolutely nothing. We can quite understand, and we see 
 a score of reasons for the fact, that Lady Byron, generally speak- 
 ing, never told the whole truth. Is it so very rare, or so very 
 wrong a thing only to tell half the truth when to teU the whole 
 truth would do a vast deal of harm ? We can conceive a thousand 
 conversations, letters, and documents emanating from Lady 
 Byron which spoke of many troubles of the marriage, and yet 
 said nothing of the incest. But a thousand or two thousand such 
 documents would not show that there was not something behind, 
 and worse, which, for reasons good or bad. Lady Byron stUl 
 thought proper to hide. Lady Byron told Lady Anne many of 
 her sorrows ; therefore she told them all ; therefore one greater 
 sorrow never could have existed. Merely to state this weakest 
 of all arguments, that to divulge half the truth is inconsistent 
 with knowing the whole truth, is to confute it. Put a parallel 
 case. A woman is robbed and ravished ; there may be most 
 forcible reasons why she should say nothing of the rape, though 
 she often referred to the robbery. Therefore, because she always 
 talked of the robbery, the rape never existed. This is Lord 
 Lindsay's argument. . . . 
 
 ^ The same letter that is referred to in " Astarte," p, 126. 
 
 344 
 
APPENDIX I AND J 
 
 Lord Lindsay goes on to express his belief that " Byron was 
 hardly used in being denied a categorical answer to his rightful 
 demand, Why have you cast me off ? " To which we answer that 
 there is no ground whatever for supposing that Byron did not 
 know his wife's grounds for enforcing the separation. What he 
 complains of is, that he " never could get any specific charge in a 
 tangible shape " ; which he might well say — and there is no 
 proof that he ever did more than say it — knowing that the 
 challenge was a very cheap one, and that after the deed of separa- 
 tion it amounted to nothing, since his wife had got all by the 
 separation that she wanted, and moreover had probably pledged 
 herself, or anyhow had the strongest motives, to secrecy. And 
 this is very important ; had Byron been really sincere in his 
 professed wish to have the matter fairly fought out and the whole 
 thing judicially investigated, it was quite in his power to compel 
 the wife to state her reasons and show her whole cause. Lord 
 Byron might have declined to sign the separation deed, and then 
 Lady Byron must have produced her case ; but he signed it. 
 And if he had persisted in his refusal to agree to the separation, 
 and if Lady Byron had not given her reasons, he must have 
 known very well that it was always open to him to institute a 
 suit for the restitution of conjugal rights, which would have 
 brought out the specific charges in a most tangible shape. That 
 he did not take that course shows that he dared not ; and in the 
 teeth of this fact we set little store upon the mere talk about his 
 wish and anxiety for the real reasons on which Lady Byron 
 acted. 
 
 Into Lord Lindsay's remaining argument we must decline to 
 follow him. It is the merely popular ai captandum talk, that let 
 Lord Byron be what he may, let all the evidence be on one side, 
 we will not examine it. He dwells in the love of the British 
 people ; his genius is a star which no malignant vapours can 
 obscure ; we must give Byron credit for not having been a 
 malignant demon, because we do not like to believe it. This sort 
 of bombast reflects as little credit on our estimate of morality as 
 it does on our critical sagacity. . . a fiendish mockery of good, 
 a persistent and malignant hatred of virtue, yet a belief in it, and 
 a concentrated venomous delight in scoffing at what mankind has 
 been taught to believe to be the noble, the virtuous, the just, the 
 beautiful, and the true, make up the Byron of Byron's works and 
 Byron's letters. The Byron of the " True Story " is the comple- 
 ment of the Byron of " Don Juan " ; it just reveals and completes 
 the whole character. After the glorious ode, " The Isles of 
 Greece, the Isles of Greece," which stirs the heart like a trumpet, 
 Byron goes on in the very next stanza : 
 
 345 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 " His strain displayed some feeling — right or wrong : 
 And feeling in a poet is the source 
 Of others' feeling : but they are such liars, 
 And take all colours — like the hands of dyers." 
 
 On this fiendish mock and sneer, worthy of Goethe's demon, 
 Jeffrey remarks by characterizing it as " a strain of cold-blooded 
 ribaldry, in which all good feelings are excited only to accustom 
 us to their speedy and complete extinction, and we are brought 
 back from their transient and theatrical exhibition to the staple 
 and substantial doctrine of the work, the non-existence of con- 
 stancy in woman or honour in man, and the foUy of expecting to 
 meet with any such virtues or of cultivating them for an unbe- 
 lieving world." 1 The Byronic Gospel of Hell could not have 
 
 1 " ' Don Juan ' indeed has great power ; but its power is owing to the force 
 of the serious writing, and to the oddity of the contrast between that and the 
 flashy passages with which it is interlarded. . . . He hallows in order to 
 desecrate ; takes a pleasure in defacing the images of beauty his hands hava 
 wrought ; and raises our hopes and our belief in goodness to Heaven only to dash 
 them to the earth again, and break them in pieces the more effectually from the 
 very height they have fallen. Our enthusiasm for genius or virtue is thus turned 
 into a jest by the very person who has kindled it, and who thus fatally quenchei 
 the sparks of both. It is not that Lord Byron is sometimes serious and some- 
 times trifling, sometimes profligate, and sometimes moral — but when he is most 
 serious and most moral, he is only preparing to mortify the unsuspecting reader 
 by putting a pitiful hoax upon him. This is a most unaccountable anomaly. 
 It is as if the eagle were to build its eyry in a common sewer, or the owl were 
 seen soaring to the mid-day sun. Such a sight might make one laugh, but one 
 would not wish or expect it to occur more than once." (Hazlitt, " Spirit of 
 the Age.") 
 
 An opposite criticism of great force is contained in a letter from the Rev. 
 Frederick WilUam Robertson to Lady Noel Byron, dated July i8, 1850 : 
 
 " Nay, even that sarcasm & that bitter mode of turning into ridicule those 
 feelings which at the beginning of a stanza he had put out so affectingly, & which 
 had formed the whole tone of his earlier works — a bitterness which all th« 
 reviews of the day exclaimed against as unnatural &c. &c. — ^was to me in the 
 last work an indication of returning nature, & a proof that experience had done 
 her work. For what could Eve in Eden have learnt more impressively than 
 that the Beauty & the Knowledge of which she had been enamoured were not 
 the tree of life — that in those very feelings of romance of hers lay her chief 
 danger — & that the voice which seemed to her an angel's whisper was only a 
 serpent's hiss — when she found herself on the very verge of hell at the moment 
 when she expected to be ' as the Gods ' f Nothing is to me more instructive & 
 niore mysteriously true to life than those sudden sneers in the midst of sub- 
 limities of feeling— as if to say—' I know what all this means & how it ends— 
 and yet how beautiful it is to feel I ' " 
 
 And the late distinguished reviewer, G. S. Venables, Q.C., considered (in the 
 " Fortnightly Review," August, 1883) that : " Don Juan, another and a 
 pleasanter reflection of his own personality, may, perhaps, have indicated an 
 approach to a more healthy conception of life." 
 
APPENDIX I AND J 
 
 been more summarily or more completely described than in this 
 famous language of Jeffrey. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The only other contribution to this Byron-Stowe literature 
 which takes an ambitious line is a pamphlet originally published 
 in the " Standard," and authenticated by Mr. Alfred Austin, 
 under the title of " A Vindication of Lord Byron." Mr. Austin 
 ,has certainly succeeded in closing all controversy with ourselves ; 
 but his admirers, among whom he is himself the chief, may judge 
 of his powers to conduct any critical controversy by the following 
 comic specimen : 
 
 " The argument that if an allusion to incest can be construed 
 out of any passage of ' Manfred,' everybody must see that 
 Mrs. Stowe's story is true, and that Byron must have committed 
 incest with his sister [an argument never adduced by any one out 
 of Bedlam or, as far as we know, in Bedlam], may be dismissed 
 with the remark that, if it is good for anything, it is good to 
 show that Byron committed murder as well . . . whereas even 
 Mrs. Stowe's fabulous account of poor Mrs. Leigh bears testimony 
 to the fact that she was'naurdered neither by her brother nor by 
 anybody." Why ? because in " Manfred " the incestuous sister 
 Astarte is murdered by Manfred, the proof of such murder being 
 contained in the following passage : 
 
 " Manfred. I loved her, and destroyed her. 
 Witch. With thy hand f 
 
 Manfred. Not with my hand, but heart — ^which broke her heart ; 
 It gazed on mine, and withered. / have shed 
 Blood, but not hers — and yet her blood was shed ; 
 I saw — and could not stanch it." 
 
 Even a child can see that the murder which Manfred owns to was 
 a metaphorical one, the murder of a broken heart, the blood 
 anything but material and arterial, in shedding which the meta- 
 phorical sister-slayer used " not his hand but heart." What 
 Astarte died of was not a stabbed, but a broken heart. The 
 expressions are figurative throughout. 
 
 This mention of " Manfred " enables us to refer to a minor 
 point on which we have been, not misunderstood, but wilfully 
 misrepresented. We never said that, because Byron made 
 incest tlie subject of one of the first works that he wrote after 
 the separation, therefore he committed incest. We expressly 
 observed that to say this would be as ridiculous as to say that 
 Racine committed incest because he wrote the " Phedre." What 
 we did say was, that it furnished an indirect, not conclusive, but 
 very noticeable, indication of the state of mind in which Byron 
 
 347 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 wrote this tragedy on incest ; that there was some secret, 
 mysterious, and unavowed cause for his special interest in the 
 subject of " Manfred " at that time. Passages have been pro- 
 duced from Byron's letters to show that " Manfred " has nothing 
 to do with Mrs. Leigh. Byron, we are told, says that " the germs 
 of ' Manfred ' are to be found in the journal which he sent to 
 Mrs. Leigh before he left Switzerland." And, it is asked, "if 
 the germs were already known to Mrs. Leigh, why inform her 
 of them in a journal ? " The answer is obvious ; the germs in the 
 journal were the sketches of scenery and the external accompani- 
 ments of the drama ; the moral germ was something very different. 
 We have already said that it is a very striking and perhaps 
 significant thing that Byron, writing to Murray in 1817, says, 
 speaking of the supposed origin of " Manfred," " The conjecturer 
 is out and knows nothing of the matter. / had a better origin than 
 he can devise or divine jor the soul of him." ^ We will add another 
 passage which we have more recently discovered in the Byron 
 Correspondence. Writing to Murray, the 7th of June, 1820, 
 Byron expressly anticipates and confutes the objection that the 
 scenery of the Alps was all that suggested " Manfred." " I 
 never read the ' Faust ' ; but it was the Steinbach [Staubbach ? — 
 L.] and the Jungfrau, and something else, much more than 
 Faustus, that made me write ' Manfred.' " Perhaps somebody 
 will tell us what he thinks this " something else," this " better 
 origin than any conjecturer can devise or divine " for " Manfred," 
 was. Byron himself, in 1820, admits that he had " some difficulty 
 in extricating himself from ' Manfred.' " Of course the two 
 passages do not prove the incest ; but, slipping out in this 
 accidental way, these dark references to some mysterious and 
 secret origin of " Manfred " are, in connection with the " True 
 Story," very remarkable things for Byron to have said. 
 
 ^ This particular letter was communicated to Mrs. Leigh, who wrote about it 
 to Lady Byron (August 5th, 1817) ; 
 
 " I have to relate — that I yesterday had 2 letters sent me to read to M^ M 
 
 in one there was mention of a critique which had been sent upon M.[anfred] & a 
 request to have part of it which had by mistake been omitted & which alluded 
 to the ' origin of this dreadful story ' — that ' whoever the Critic might be he was 
 mistaken as he had a foundation for it which for y^ Soul of him he could not 
 divine ' — I may not give you the words exactly — but that was the sense of the 
 paragraph — & I don't think there is any remedy for the object of his persecu- 
 tion — but it often occurs to me, that it is impossible any longer to remain silent 
 to him — & only the fear of encreasing the evil has hitherto kept me so — some- 
 times I am inclined to remain so — & leave all to Providence — & yet I think it is 
 wrong not to do any thing in one's power to avert evils, at least any thing that 
 is not wrong — & for my children's sake I am more anxious than for myself 
 individually." 
 
APPENDIX I AND J 
 
 October i6th, 1869. 
 
 When Byron might have enforced a public investigation he 
 submitted to a separation : when a public investigation was 
 impossible he professed his willingness to take a course which he 
 knew very well could not be taken. 
 
 Can any contradiction be more complete ? Lady Byron plainly 
 and unequivocally asserts that her husband consented to a separa- 
 tion only under the terror of the threat of going into Court. Lord 
 Byron says that he all along, and up to the very last, offered to go 
 into Court. The point, therefore, to which the issue is narrowed 
 is simply this. Are we to believe Lord Byron or Lady Byron ? 
 
 His whole life was one living lie ;^ and yet we are asked to 
 believe his assertion, backed as it is by no tittle of evidence, and 
 in terms and in every detail contradicted by Lady Byron. What 
 " the document " produced so ostentatiously in the " Academy " ^ 
 tells us is only what we knew before, and what when known is 
 absolutely worthless, and utterly beside the only question worth 
 considering, which is simply this : Whether Lord Byron was 
 guilty of the crime which undoubtedly his wife believed him to 
 have committed ; or whether Lady Byron herself invented — for 
 the hallucination theory is simply puerile — a charge the blackness 
 and guilt of which are not surpassed by the wickedness of the 
 crime alleged. 
 
 October lyd, 1869. 
 
 We are not at all surprised at the importance which is attached 
 to the article on " the Byron Mystery " which appears in the 
 
 1 Or rather — ^was not the life of Byron an incontestable truth which was 
 written down by impostors'? — much as Chateaubriand once said of a greater 
 than Byron : " La vie de Bonaparte 4tait une verity incontestable, que I'impos- 
 ture s'itait chargie d'ecrire." 
 
 ^ The paper referred to was written by Lord Byron at the instigation of 
 Matthew Gregory Lewis, who reported one of Brougham's indiscretions, which 
 ought not to have been noticed, and that Hobhouse and other friends had 
 endeavoured to keep from Byron's knowledge. On going to Byron one day in 
 August, 1817, near Venice, Hobhouse " found Monk Lewis there and this paper 
 just written and sealed — he, Byron — in a state of the greatest agitation calling 
 on Hobhouse to prove that he had done everything to induce you [Lady Byron] 
 to come into Court !& left y« room desiring Hobhouse to read y^ Paper — that he, 
 Hobhouse, had tried Heaven & Ear'th to persuade him not to give it to Monk 
 tewis (whom he abused) in vain — & that only the hour after it was gone, Byron 
 expressed regret he had given and written it ! " (The Honble. Mrs. Leigh to 
 Lady Byron, April 17th, 1818.) 
 
 It was a ludicrous mistake of Byron's that Brougham had been one of Lady 
 Byron's counsel, for which there never was any foundation. But in consequence 
 of this blunder, Byron was always far more excited about Brougham's misdeeds 
 (which certainly were gross enough) than was called for by Brougham's intrinsic 
 importance, 
 
 349 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 " Quarterly Review " just published. ... A most able counsel 
 has been engaged, and has spoken well to his brief, addressing the 
 jury in the well-known free and imperious way in which an 
 advocate hopes to convince public judgement on easy terms 
 because he has easily convinced himself. We must remark, 
 however, that unless he had imported some new, and we will at 
 once admit startling, evidence into the case, there would be 
 nothing to be said, except that the " Quarterly " Reviewer only 
 repeats in better language and with the skill of a veteran practi- 
 tioner, the talk which has been talked in the newspapers for the 
 last six weeks. We have the same protest against the wickedness 
 of meddling with the " world-wide fame and influence " of Byron, 
 and the article, as a whole, though in very good language, only 
 echoes our Tupper's plea : 
 
 " Our English hearts and hearths must not endure 
 The poison-fumes of a sensation-story ; 
 Nor an unproved tale, confused, impure. 
 Defraud us of our Byron's classic glory." 
 
 With some main particulars of the Reviewer's moral code, and 
 therefore with his general estimate of Byron, we are in such 
 direct conflict that we approach the whole subject, not only from 
 different sides, but with different prepossessions. The Reviewer 
 thinks that " Don Juan " is a work suited for " family use " ; he 
 thinks that " to test genius by morality is almost ludicrous " ; 
 and so far is he carried away by his admiration of " the true and 
 noble qualities " of Byron — man as well as poet — that he ventures 
 to misrepresent, as well as condescends to laugh at, those whose 
 detestation of Byron's life is only surpassed by their conviction 
 that his writings as a whole " have a tendency to destroy all belief 
 in the reality of virtue . . . that he has exerted all the powers of 
 his powerful mind to convince his readers, both directly and 
 indirectly, that all ennobling pursuits and disinterested virtues 
 are mere deceits or illusions — hoUow and despicable mockeries 
 for the most part, and, at best, but laborious follie? . . . that 
 love, patriotism, valour, devotion, constancy, ambition, are all 
 to be laughed at, disbelieved in, and despised." . . . And we 
 must remind the " Quarterly " Reviewer that when he denounces 
 as cant and hypocrisy the ludicrous notion of testing genius by 
 morality, what he must mean, if he has any meaning, is that in 
 the presence of such genius as Byron has displayed we have no 
 right to protest when that genius is employed only to represent 
 all virtue as an illusion, and all truth and nobleness of soul as a 
 thing to be mocked and insulted. We at least are not denouncing 
 
 350 
 
APPENDIX I AND J 
 
 Byron's poetry because he has been charged with incest ; but 
 as we have felt, long before Mrs. Stowe wrote, that Byron's poetry 
 as a whole was most mischievous, we certainly did not decline to 
 investigate the " True Story " because Byron wrote " Childe 
 Harold." _ 
 
 This point, as we shall never agree with the " Quarterly Review " 
 on its importance, we pass by, and proceed to the substance of the 
 article. . . The " Quarterly " Reviewer admits that this story — 
 i.e., the charge of incest — told by Lady Byron, was no delusion or 
 illusion, the growth of her later years, but was the substance of 
 the famous communication to Dr. Lushington in 1816. This is 
 certainly clearing the ground, and the action is now at the closest 
 quarters. But, says the " Quarterly " Reviewer, whatever Lady 
 Byron stated, whether in 18 16 or forty years later, in the way of 
 9 charge of incest inculpating Mrs. Leigh, was, and Lady Byron 
 must have known it to be, false. Why f Because, at the very 
 time of the separation the necessity of which Lady Byron based 
 on this alleged incest, we find her writing in the most affectionate 
 language to this very Mrs. Leigh whom she was charging at this 
 very moment with this very incest. . . . The " Quarterly " 
 Reviewer, therefore, argues that, whatever Lady Byron said to 
 her legal advisers, she could have had no ground for it, and that 
 her conduct can only be accounted for on the hypothesis of 
 insanity or monomania. " There is no other hypothesis but 
 insanity on which the moralist can charitably account for her 
 conduct " ; and then we are told of her " monomania " and 
 " self-delusions," The letters are certainly very remarkable . . . 
 We are not going to extenuate the force of these letters ; and we 
 shall not insinuate a doubt as to their genuineness. We feel 
 confident that the " Quarterly " Reviewer is much too scrupulous 
 not to have investigated this point. They seem to have come 
 upon him much as they will come upon other people, as a surprise ; 
 but a surprise so agreeable to his previous prepossessions, that he 
 considers that their internal evidence wiU convince everybody 
 without any external vindication of their startling contents. Not 
 a word is said to account for their unexpected appearance ; they 
 are introduced in the briefest fashion as " letters and extracts 
 addressed by Lady Byron to Mrs. Leigh, now published for the 
 first time." They could only have reached the Reviewer through 
 Mrs. Leigh's surviving daughter, and, as it is not at all likely that 
 these five or six fragments stand alone, the possessor of these 
 epistolary treasures is probably to be congratulated on the 
 possession of other letters from Lady Byron, and most likely from 
 Lord Byron, which must have great literary and other value. We 
 
 3SI 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 trust that we may not be misunderstood as impugning the 
 genuineness of these curious letters ; but as to the way in which 
 they reach us, and the very curious circumstance that they so 
 exactly and precisely fit into the gap which was wanted to be 
 filled up, that they begin and end where they do, and that they 
 appear at this particular moment and in this very nick, or rather 
 in so many nicks, of time and place, these things surprise us almost 
 as much as the contents of the letters themselves. 
 
 But has it occurred to the " Quarterly " Reviewer that whatever 
 difficulties these new materials must present to those who — as it 
 has been phrased — " hesitate to reject Mrs. Stowe's account of 
 the reason that led to the separation of Lord and Lady Byron," 
 they present the same difficulties to himself on his own view of 
 the case ? It is, we are told, quite impossible that Lady Byron 
 should have believed in the charge of incest while she was writing 
 to Mrs. Leigh in the terms we have quoted. But, as a matter of 
 fact, according to the " Quarterly " Reviewer's own testimony, 
 she said that she believed it, and expressed this belief to Dr. 
 Lushington and the military man. The objection to the " True 
 Story " is the co-existence of the charge of incest and the affec- 
 tionate letters to Mrs. Leigh. The objection to the " Quarterly " 
 Reviewer's story is co-existence of these affectionate letters and 
 a monomaniacal or insane belief in a non-existent crime. Surely 
 this is six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. It is, we admit, 
 next to incredible that Lady Byron could have believed in the 
 charge and have written the letters ; but it is equally incredible 
 — which is the " Quarterly " Reviewer's position — that under the 
 influence of monomania or insanity she could have preferred the 
 charge and still have written the letters. Sane or insane makes 
 very little or no difference in the matter. That Lady Byron 
 made the charge in 1816 the Reviewer admits ; and if she made 
 it under the influence of insanity or monomania — as he further 
 argues — her letters to Mrs. Leigh, " now published for the first 
 time," must be as inexplicable to him on his theory as they are to 
 those who have " hesitated to reject the ' True Story.' " 
 
 But we have something further to say on this point of insanity, 
 or madness, or hallucination, or whatever it is. Dr. Forbes 
 Winslow,^ in a letter dated September 8th, and published in the 
 " Standard," and he is a very high authority on such a matter, 
 says : 
 
 1 Born 1 8 10, died March 3rd, 1874— the greatest expert on criminal insanity 
 of his time ; appeared as a witness before a Commons' committee ; and in many 
 celebrated trials his testimony proved mental disease. (Norman Moore, M.D., 
 " Dictionary of National Biography.") 
 
 352 
 
APPENDIX I AND J 
 
 " It is quite inconsistent with the theory of Lady Byron's insanity to 
 imagine that her delusion was restricted to the idea of his having com- 
 mitted ' incest.' In common fairness we are bound to view the aggregate 
 mental phenomena which she e:shibited from the day of the marriage to 
 the final separation and her death. No person practically acquainted 
 with the true characteristics of insanity would aiBrm that, had this idea 
 of ' incest ' been an insane hallucination, Lady Byron could from the 
 lengthened period which intervened between her unhappy marriage and 
 death, have refrained from exhibiting it, not only to legal advisers and 
 trustees (assuming that she revealed to them the fact), but to others, 
 exacting from them no pledges of secrecy as to her mental impressions. 
 Lunatics do for a time, and for some special purpose, most cunningly 
 conceal their delusions, but they have not the capacity to struggle for 
 thirty-six years, as Lady Byron must have done, with so frightful an 
 hallucination, without the insane state of mind becoming obvious to 
 those with whom they are daily associating. Neither is it consistent with 
 experience to supposfe that if Lady Byron had been a monomaniac, her 
 state of disordered understanding would have been restricted to one 
 hallucination. Her diseased brain, affecting the normal action of thought, 
 would in all probability have manifested other symptoms, besides those 
 referred to, of aberration of intellect. During the last thirty years, 
 I have not met with a case of insanity, assuming the hypothesis of 
 hallucination, at all parallel with that of Lady Byron's. I never saw a 
 patient with such a delusion." 
 
 This seems to be conclusive as to the hallucination, or mono- 
 mania, or insanity view. Dr. Winslow is a high authority, and 
 he tells us that such monomania as the " Quarterly " Reviewer 
 attributes to Lady Byron is psychologically impossible. A mind 
 so disordered as to entertain an untrue charge of incest, and to 
 retain this Ulusion through a long life, must have given way on 
 other points. Such insanity, or mental unsoundness, as the 
 " Quarterly Review " attributes to Lady Byron, Dr. Winslow 
 declines to entertain the notion of. 
 
 If, then, we are to yield to the new evidence produced by the 
 " Quarterly Review," and if with Dr. Forbes Winslow we decline 
 for a single moment to believe in Lady Byron's alleged mono- 
 mania, it comes to this, and nothing short of this — that Lady 
 Byron, finding that in Dr. Lushington's judgement the sixteen 
 [sic] reasons ^ alleged by her and her parents in favour of a 
 
 ^ I'he " sixteen reasons for a separation " are a myth. It was a " Quarterly 
 Review " fiction that Lady Byron " prepared a written statement in which 
 sixteen symptoms were mentioned as evidence of insanity." In the version 
 printed by Moore and Murray it was pretended that " articles of impeachment 
 were drawn up against Lord Byron's sanity " — sixteen in number according to 
 them — and of the most watery quality. All this is fabulous as to Lady Byron 
 or her friends. 
 
 A. 353 A A 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 separation failed, and would not hold water, consciously and 
 maliciously and falsely invented the seventeenth [«V]— namely 
 the charge of incest — ^knowing it to be false. She charged her 
 husband with the most frightful of crimes and charged him 
 falsely, knowing well what she was about. Further, for so far 
 does the " Quarterly Review's " argument drive us, we must 
 conclude that Dr. Lushington at once and without any investiga- 
 tion, and simply on the ipsa dixit of this treacherous and calum- 
 nious wife, assumed the truth of this wicked charge and acted on 
 it. Is not this proving rather too much f And yet nothing 
 short of this is proved in the " Quarterly Review," if anything is 
 proved. We can but repeat what we have said throughout, and 
 what we insisted on only a week ago, before " the letters now 
 published for the first time " appeared, that the question is — 
 Whether Lord Byron was guilty of the crime which undoubtedly 
 his wife charged him with ; or whether Lady Byron herself 
 invented a charge, the blackness and guilt of which are not sur- 
 passed by — we will add, are not equal to — the wickedness of the 
 crime alleged ? The " Quarterly " Reviewer is to be credited 
 with this success, that in his zeal to defend Byron from a charge 
 which with perfect good faith he was anxious to repel, he has, 
 whether he intended it or not, raised an accusation of dehberate 
 wickedness against Lady Byron which no person of common 
 sense — we lay the matter of good feeling aside — can for a moment 
 entertain. 
 
 December 2^th, 1869 (after the publication of 
 "Medora Leigh"). 
 
 It is obvious to observe, first, that as far as this hideous auto- 
 biography goes, it confirms to the minutest particulars the 
 story told by Mrs. Stowe as told her by Lady Byron. Here is 
 the " child of sin," told by her own sister that she was not her 
 putative father's daughter, subsequently assured of the same 
 fact by Lady Byron, with the addition that she was Lord Byron's 
 daughter, announcing it to a whole crowd of witnesses — Captain 
 
 De B , Mr. S , Sir George Stephen, Dr. Lushington, the 
 
 Duke of Leeds, Lord and Lady Lovelace, Lady Chichester, all 
 and everybody whom she could get to listen to her story, and 
 above all, confronting her own mother, Mrs. Leigh, with the 
 charge. From not one single person does she meet with a single 
 word of disbelief. Mrs. Leigh, her mother, the person most 
 interested, receives her unnatural child's charge of incest, and 
 does not contradict her. She only never answers the letters. . . . 
 
 The " Quarterly " Reviewer, while admitting that the charge 
 
 354 
 
APPENDIX I AND J 
 
 of incest was vaguely floating about, but in an intangible shape, 
 even during Byron's life, and that even as early as the separation 
 in 1816 it was named by Lord Broughton on Byron's part to 
 Mr. Wilmot Horton ^ [sic] acting on Lady Byron's part, and at 
 last admitting that it was actually " produced, and brought 
 under Byron's notice, before he left England," goes on in his 
 Postscript to ask, not without indignation, " If Lady Byron was 
 openly to adopt it at all, why she did not do so whilst Colonel 
 and Mrs. Leigh, Lord Broughton, and Mr. Wilmot Horton were 
 still living ? " If this Autobiography of Medora Leigh is true at 
 all, it shows that this is precisely what Lady Byron did. . . . 
 
 A single word more. We have been repeatedly confronted 
 with the facts — and they are facts — that Lady Byron lived in 
 close and affectionate intercourse with Mrs. Leigh up to the time 
 at least of Lord Byron's death. We have been asked what we 
 can make of the letters pubUshed in the " Quarterly Review." 
 We have been reminded that it is totally impossible, contrary to 
 all common sense, that Lady Byron could have believed Mrs, 
 Leigh had been guilty of incest and yet could have maintained 
 the intercourse with her of love and kindness and confidence 
 which undoubtedly she professed. Our answer is that we do 
 not understand it ; that we do not profess to be able to account 
 for Lady Byron's character and conduct ; and that we cannot 
 reconcile the letters of 181 6 with her real conviction of the truth 
 of the charge. And we do not profess to account for this diffi- 
 culty, because, in the first place, these letters are fragmentary, 
 and cover a very short space of time ; because, if we had all the 
 letters written to Mrs. Leigh, either by her brother or her sister- 
 in-law, we might be able to form a judgement ; and that as to 
 Lady Byron, her character is very unique, very unintelligible, 
 and one with which as we have no sympathy, so about it we have 
 httle knowledge. Anyhow, all that Lady Byron's character 
 presents itself to us [sic], as described by Mrs. Stowe and con- 
 firmed by other evidence, is, that she entertained wild, fanatical, 
 and fantastical notions about everybody's innate goodness and 
 ultimate salvation. Under the influence of these feelings, which 
 we neither admire nor justify, she is said to have forgiven her 
 husband, forgiven her sister-in-law, forgiven everybody, and to 
 have exhibited towards the sinful and fallen all sorts of, perhaps 
 very angelic, but still very strange, sentiments. Such a woman 
 might do many very strange things under this tnorbidly virtuous 
 
 1 Robert Wilmot only assumed the additional name of Horton "seven years 
 after his unsuccessful mediation between Lord and Lady Byron of March 5th 
 to nth, 1816. 
 
 355 A A ^ 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 temperament, and amongst them she might, though probably 
 no other woman in the world could or would, live in affectionate 
 intercourse with one whom she believed to have been guUty, but 
 repentant, of incest, and with her own husband. It is a very 
 strange thing, we admit, and one very difficult to comprehend. 
 . . . Medora Leigh's Autobiography, if it is true, proves that 
 Lady Byron acted towards her incestuous and adulterous niece 
 much as we are told that it is impossible that she could have 
 acted in a previous case of incest. The fact — if it is a fact — of 
 this second instance of the display of Lady Byron's pecuUar 
 character, announced by Medora Leigh, raises a presumption 
 that the alleged first instance of its exercise in the husband's 
 case, announced by Mrs. B. Stowe, is after all not so wildly im- 
 probable. Medora Leigh's Autobiography, in other words, 
 shows that Lady Byron, strange as was her view of duty, applied 
 it consistently, and we have two entirely independent witnesses 
 to the fact that such was her character and mode of action. 
 
 In conclusion, we must observe that, though the controversial 
 value of this book is next to nothing, yet, so far as it goes, it helps 
 rather Lady Byron's advocates than Lord Byron's apologists, 
 inasmuch as in many particulars it confirms Mrs. Stowe's (by 
 which we mean Lady Byron's) statement ; inasmuch as it dis- 
 poses of one of the " Quarterly " Reviewer's chief arguments, 
 that Mrs. Leigh " died unconscious of guilt," and that Lady 
 Byron never openly specified the charge during Mrs. Leigh's 
 lifetime, but " industriously circulated the posthumous calumny 
 before she was well cold in the grave " ; whereas Medora Leigh's 
 Autobiography proves that Lady Byron specified the charge 
 in 1840 and even goes so far as to say that Mrs. Leigh was openly 
 taxed with it in 1843 ; and lastly, inasmuch as it goes some way 
 to show that, however unintelligible, or even, as we think, un- 
 justifiable, Lady Byron's views about the final triumph of good 
 were, she applied those views consistently and on two occasions. 
 
 APPENDIX K 
 
 Chronology of Persons connected with this History. 
 
 July 28, 1747. Ralph Milbanke born, afterwards Sir Ralph 
 Milbanke, Bart, M.P., and Lady Byron's father. 
 
 November 14, 1751. The Honble. Judith Noel born, after- 
 wards Lady Milbanke, and Lady Byron's mother. 
 
 1752. Elizabeth Milbanke born, afterwards Viscountess 
 Melbourne. 
 
 3S6 
 
APPENDIX K 
 
 November 23, 1759. The Honble. George Villiers born. 
 
 April 22, 1766. Germaine Necker born, afterwards Madame 
 de Stael. 
 
 July 27, 1766. William Henry Vane, Viscount Barnard, born, 
 afterwards third Earl of Darlington and created Duke of Cleveland. 
 
 April 13, 1769. Elizabeth Milbanke married to Sir Peniston 
 Lamb, second baronet, who was born January 29, 1745, was made 
 Viscount Melbourne in 1781, and died July 22, 1828. 
 
 June 8, 1770. Sir Peniston Lamb created Lord Melbourne in 
 the peerage of Ireland. 
 
 1770. Elizabeth Vassall born, afterwards Lady Holland, when 
 divorced from Sir Godfrey Webster. 
 
 November 21, 1773. Hon. Henry Richard Fox born, after- 
 wards third Lord Holland. 
 
 July 21, 1775. George William Frederick (sixth Duke of 
 Leeds, and Mrs. Leigh's half-brother) born.^ 
 
 September 22, 1775. Therese Parker born, afterwards the 
 Honble. Mrs. George Villiers. {See p. 57.) 
 
 September 6, 1776. Lady Mary Henrietta Juliana Osborne 
 born (afterwards Countess of Chichester — ^Mrs. Leigh's half- 
 sister). 
 
 January 9, 1777. Ralph Milbanke married to Judith Noel 
 (Lady Byron's father and mother). 
 
 October 18, 1777. Lord Francis Godolphin Osborne born 
 (afterwards, May 14, 1832, Lord Godolphin) ; Mrs. Leigh's 
 half-brother. 
 
 September 19, 1778. Henry Brougham born in Edinburgh. 
 
 May, 1779. Lady Conyers divorced from the Marquis of 
 Carmarthen. 
 
 1779. Lady Conyers married to the Hon. John Byron. 
 
 January 11, 1781. Lord Melbourne created Viscount Mel- 
 bourne in the peerage of Ireland. 
 
 November 2, 1781. Lord Frederick Bentinck born. (See 
 p. 60.) 
 
 January 14, 1782. Stephen Lushington, D.C.L., M.P., etc., 
 born. 
 
 January 3, 1783. Francis Hastings Doyle born. 
 
 January 26, 1784. The Hon. Augusta Mary Byron (afterwards 
 Mrs. Leigh) born ; daughter of Baroness Conyers and Captain 
 John Byron. 
 
 January 26, 1784. Lady Conyers died (in childbirth). 
 
 December 21, 1784. Robert John Wilinot born ; son of Sir 
 
 * [His parents were the Marquis of Carmarthen and Amelia, Baroness 
 Conyers in her own right.— Ed.] 
 
 357 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Robert WUmot, Bart., by his marriage (September 23, 1783) with 
 Juliana Elizabeth Byron, second daughter of Admiral the Hon. 
 John Byron, and widow of the Hon. William Byron. 
 
 November 13, 1785. Hon. Caroline Ponsonby (afterwards 
 Lady Caroline Lamb) born ; daughter of Frederick Viscount 
 Duncannon, by his marriage with Lady Henrietta Spencer. 
 
 June 27, 1786. John Cam Hobhouse born. 
 
 January 22, 1788. George Gordon Byron, afterwards sixth 
 Lord Byron, born.^ 
 
 February 26, 1788. The Hon. Douglas James William Kin- 
 naird, afterwards a banker, born ; son of George, seventh Lord 
 Kinnaird, by his marriage with Elizabeth, daughter of Griffin 
 Ransom, banker. 
 
 June 12, 1788. Margaret Mercer Keith Elphinstone, after- 
 wards Comtesse de Flahault, born ; daughter of Captain the Hon. 
 George Keith Elphinstone and Jane, daughter and heiress of 
 William Mercer, of Aldie. 
 
 March 8, 1789. George Anson Byron, afterwards seventh 
 Lord Byron, born ; son of George Anson Byron, by his marriage 
 with Charlotte Henrietta Dallas. 
 
 May, 1790. Caroline Rosalie Adelaide St. Jules (the Honble. 
 Mrs. George Lamb) born at Paris ; adopted daughter of Lady 
 Elizabeth Foster. 
 
 July 8, 1790. Ralph MUbanke, of Seaham, returned mernber 
 for Durham County. 
 
 September I, 1790. Margaret Power, afterwards Countess of 
 Blessington, born ; daughter of Edmund Power, of Curragheen, 
 Waterford. 
 
 Thursday, May 17, 1792, Ascension Day. Anne Isabella 
 Milbanke, afterwards Lady Noel Byron, born ; daughter of Sir 
 Ralph and the Hon. Lady Milbanke. 
 
 September 10, 1792. Viscount Barnard succeeded his father 
 as Earl of Darliiigton. 
 
 March 3, 1794. Jane Elizabeth Scott, daughter of the Rev. 
 James Scott, married to Edward, fifth Earl of Oxford. 
 
 April 27, 1796. Maria Susannah Simpson (daughter of John 
 Simpson of Bradley, Durham, by Lady Anne Lyon his wife) 
 married to Sir Thomas Henry Liddell, afterwards Lord Ravens- 
 worth. {See p. 16.) 
 
 July 9, 1797. Henry Richard, third Lord Holland, married 
 Elizabeth, daughter of Richard VassaU. Her marriage with 
 Sir Godfrey Webster, Bart., had been dissolved in June, 1797. 
 
 August 17, 1797. George William Frederick, Marquis of 
 
 * [For his parents, see Explanation, p. xxix.— Ed.] 
 
 3S8 
 
APPENDIX K 
 
 Carmarthen, Mrs. Leigh's half-brother, married Lady Charlotte 
 Townshend. 
 
 January 8, 1798. Sir Ralph Milbanke, grandfather of Anne 
 Isabella, afterwards Lady Byron, died ; and Ralph Milbanke, 
 M.P., succeeded to the baronetcy and Halnaby. 
 
 April 17, 1798. The Honble. Therese Parker married to the 
 Hon. George ViUiers, son of the first Earl of Clarendon. {See 
 
 P- 57-) 
 
 January 31, 1799. Mrs. Leigh's half-brother, the Marquis of 
 Carmarthen, succeeded his father as Duke of Leeds. 
 
 March 31, 1800. Lord Francis Godolphin Osborne, afterwards 
 Lord Godolphin, married the Hon. Elizabeth Charlotte Eden. 
 
 July 16, 1801. Lady Mary Henrietta Julia Osborne, Mrs. 
 Leigh's half-sister, married to Thomas, Lord Pelham, afterwards 
 second Earl of Chichester. 
 
 June 2, 1804. Colonel Francis Hastings Doyle married to Diana 
 Elizabeth Milner of Nunappleton, who died January 14, 1828. 
 
 February 20, 1805. The Hon. William King born (afterwards 
 Earl of Lovelace). 
 
 June 3, 1805. Lady Caroline Ponsonby, daughter of Frederick, 
 third Earl of Bessborough, married to the Hon. William Lamb, 
 MJ*., afterwards Viscount Melbourne. 
 
 September i, 1806. Robert John Wilmot married to Anne 
 Horton of Catton. 
 
 August 17, 1807. The Hon. Augusta Mary Byron married 
 to her first cousin, George Leigh, Lieutenant-Colonel of loth 
 Dragoons, and son of General Charles Leigh, by his marriage 
 with Frances Byron, daughter of the Admiral. 
 
 May 17, 1809. Caroline Rosalie Adelaide St. Jules married 
 to the Hon. George Lamb (who died January 2, 1834), brother of 
 the above mentioned William Lamb and son of Lady Melbourne, 
 also referred to. 
 
 - October 19, 1809. Mrs. Lamb's guardian. Lady Elizabeth 
 Foster, was married to William, fifth Duke of Devonshire. 
 
 December 24, 1809. Lady Harriet Elizabeth Cavendish, 
 second daughter of William, fifth Duke of Devonshire, was 
 married to Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, afterwards Viscount 
 and Earl Granville. 
 
 March 25, 1812. Waltzing party at Melbourne House, given 
 in the morning by Lady Caroline Lamb, at which were present, 
 amongst others, Sidney Smith, Lord Byron, Lady Jersey, Lord 
 and Lady Kinnaird, Miss Mercer Elphinstone, Mrs. Lamb, Lord 
 Palmerston, Miss Milbanke. 
 
 September 29, 1812. Parliament was dissolved, and Sir Ralph 
 
 3S9 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 Milbanke, Bart., M.P., retired after twenty-two years of silent 
 and neglected whiggery, and the loss of all his property over 
 elections. 
 
 July 27, 1813 (his forty-seventh birthday). The Earl of 
 Darlington was married to Elizabeth Russell. (He had been a 
 widower for seven years.) 
 
 March 28, 18 14. Lord Byron moved to the Albany. 
 
 April 15, 1814. Birth of Elizabeth Medora Leigh. 
 
 December 24, 18 14. Byron and Hobhouse left London. 
 Byron went to Mrs. Leigh at Six Mile Bottom, Hobhouse to 
 Cambridge. 
 
 December 30, 1814. Byron and Hobhouse arrived together at 
 Seaham. 
 
 December 31, 18 14. The settlements were signed. 
 
 Monday, January 2, 1815. Lord Byron was married to Anne 
 Isabella MUbanke at 1 1 o'clock in the drawing-room at Seaham. 
 At 12 they left for Halnaby. 
 
 January 21, 1 8 15. Lord and Lady Byron went from Halnaby 
 to Seaham. 
 
 February 25, 18 15. Colonel Leigh left Six Mile Bottom for his 
 round of visits to Lord Darlington, etc. 
 
 March 9, 181 5. Lord and Lady Byron left Seaham. 
 
 March 12, 1815. Lord and Lady Byron arrived at Six MUe 
 Bottom, Colonel Leigh being absent all that time. 
 
 Easter Tuesday, March 28, 18 15. Lord and Lady Byron left 
 Six Mile Bottom, and settled at 13, Piccadilly Terrace, in the 
 house belonging to Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire. 
 
 Early in April, 1815. Mrs. Leigh came to 13, Piccadilly 
 Terrace, on a visit lasting over ten weeks. 
 
 April 17, 1815. Lady Byron's uncle. Viscount Wentworth, 
 died in London, and was buried at Kirkby on the 28th. 
 
 May 20, 1815. Sir Ralph Milbanke obtained a licence from 
 the Prince Regent to take the name and arms of Noel. 
 
 By the end of June, 1815. Mrs. Leigh had left 13, Piccadilly 
 Terrace, and returned to Six MUe Bottom. 
 
 July 29, 18 15. Lord Byron signed his will in Mrs. Leigh's 
 favour. 
 
 August II, 1815. Viscount Melbourne created Lord Melbourne 
 in the peerage of the United Kingdom. 
 
 August 12, 1815. Lord Granville Leveson-Gower created 
 Viscount Granville. 
 
 August 30, 1815. Lord Byron went to Six Mile Bottom. 
 
 September 4, 1815. Lord Byron returned to 13, Piccadilly 
 Terrace. 
 
 360 
 
APPENDIX K 
 
 November 15, 1815. Mrs. Leigh came to 13, Piccadilly Terrace. 
 
 December 10, 1815. Birth of Augusta Ada Byron. 
 
 January 15, 1816. Lady Byron and Ada left 13, Piccadilly 
 Terrace. 
 
 January 16, 1816. They arrived at Kirkby. 
 
 February 2, 1816. Separation formally proposed to Lord 
 Byron. 
 
 February 22, 18 16. Lady Byron arrived in London and had 
 her first interview with Dr. Lushington at Mivart's Hotel. 
 
 March 16, 1816. Mrs. Leigh moved to her rooms in St. James's 
 Palace from 13, Piccadilly Terrace, after a stay of four months. 
 
 March 17, 1816. Lord Byron gave his written assent to the 
 principle of a separation by agreement. 
 
 March 18, 1816. Captain George Anson Byron (afterwards 
 seventh Lord Byron) married to Elizabeth Mary Pole of Radborne. 
 
 April 8, 1 8 16. Countess of Jersey's party. Present Lord 
 Byron, Mrs. Leigh, Hobhouse, Flahault, B. Constant with his 
 wife, Mrs. G. Lamb, Miss Mercer Elphinstone, Brougham, etc. 
 
 Easter Sunday, April 14, 1816. Mrs. Leigh went to 13, Picca- 
 dilly Terrace, to take leave of Lord Byron before going to Six 
 Mile Bottom. 
 
 Sunday, April 21, 1816. Lord Byron signed the deed of 
 separation at 3.30 p.m. — witnesses, John Cam Hobhouse and 
 John Hanson. 
 
 April 22, 1816. Lady Byron signed the deed of separation. 
 
 April 23, 18 16. Lord Byron, Hobhouse and Scrope Davies 
 went to Dover. 
 
 April 25, 1816. Lord Byron embarked soon after nine for 
 Ostend. 
 
 November i, 1816. Augusta Ada Byron christened ; sponsors, 
 Captain George Byron, the Honble. Lady Noel and Viscountess 
 Tamworth. 
 
 Sunday, January 12, 1817. Alba or Clara Allegra Biron born. 
 
 June or July, 18 17. The Hon. Margaret Mercer Elphinstone 
 married to the Comte de Flahault (p. 50). 
 
 July 14, 18 17. Death of Madame de Stael. 
 
 February 16, 1818. Margaret Power, widow of M. St. Leger 
 Farmer of Poplar Hall, Kildare, married to Charles John Gardiner, 
 Earl of Blessington. 
 
 Monday, April 6, 1818. Death of Elizabeth, Viscountess 
 Melbourne, at Melbourne House, Whitehall. The funeral was on 
 the 14th. 
 
 April I, 1819. Henry Brougham was married to Mary Anne 
 Eden, widow of John Spalding. 
 
 361 
 
ASTARTE 
 
 July 20, 1 8 19. Henry Allen Bathurst born, afterwards registrar 
 of the Admiralty Court and trustee for Lady Byron's private 
 papers. 
 
 September 16, 1820. Lord Frederick Bentinck was married 
 to Mary, daughter of William, first Earl of Lonsdale. 
 
 July 18, 1 82 1. Sir Thomas Liddell created Lord Ravensworth. 
 
 August 8, 1821. Stephen Lushington, D.C.L., married to 
 Sarah Grace Carr, daughter of Thomas WiUiam Carr of FrognaU, 
 Hampstead, and Esholt Heugh, Northumberland. She died 
 September 20, 1837. 
 
 January 28, 1822. The Hon. Lady Noel (formerly Milbanke — 
 born Judith Noel) died at Kirkby ; and Lord and Lady Byron 
 assumed the additional name of Noel. 
 
 April 19, 1822'. AUegra Biron died. 
 
 May 8, 1823. Robert John Wilmot assumed by Royal License 
 the additional name of Horton. 
 
 Easter Monday, April 19, 1824. Lord Byron died at 
 Missolonghi. 
 
 May 14, 1824. News of Lord Byron's death reached London. 
 
 May 17, 1824. Lord Byron's memoirs destroyed. 
 
 Novernber 20, 1824. Countess of Oxford died. 
 
 March 19, 1825. Sir Ralph Noel, Bart, (formerly Milbanke), 
 died at Hampstead, aged 78, and was buried at Kirkby, March 27. 
 
 January 25, 1828. Lady Caroline Lamb died six months 
 before her husband, the Hon. William Lamb, became Viscount 
 Melbourne. 
 
 February 11, 1828. Major-General Lord Frederick Bentinck, 
 C.B., died. 
 
 February 18, 1828. Sir Francis Hastings Doyle created a 
 baronet. 
 
 July 28, 1828. John Cam Hobhouse married to Lady Juliana 
 Thomasina Hay. 
 
 March 12, 1830. The Hon. Douglas Kinnaird, banker, died. 
 
 November 22, 1830. Henry Brougham was made Lord 
 Brougham and Vaux, and Lord Chancellor. 
 
 August 15, 183 1. Sir Benjamin Hobhouse, Bart., died, and 
 was succeeded by Sir John Cam Hobhouse, Bart. 
 
 1832. Robert John Wilmot Horton went as Governor to Ceylon. 
 
 January 15, 1833. The Earl of Darlington was created Duke 
 of Cleveland. 
 
 1834. Robert John Wilmot Horton succeeded to baronetcy. 
 
 July 8, 1835. The Hon. Augusta Ada Byron married to 
 William, eighth Lord King, afterwards Earl of Lovelace. 
 
 June 30, 1838. Lord King created Earl of Lovelace. 
 
 362 
 
APPENDIX K 
 
 July lo, 1838. George William Frederick, sixth Duke of Leeds 
 and Mrs. Leigh's half-brother, died. 
 
 November 6, 1839. Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, Bart., died. 
 
 October 22, 1840. Lord Holland died. 
 
 May 31, 1 841. The Right Hon. Sir Robert Wilmot Horton, 
 Bart., G.C.B., died. 
 
 January 29, 1842. The Duke of Cleveland died. 
 
 November 17, 1845. Elizabeth Vassall, Lady Holland, died. 
 
 November 22, 1845. Lady Ravensworth died. 
 
 June 4, 1849. Margaret, Countess of Blessington, died. 
 
 September 3, 1849 (on or about). Elizabeth Medora Leigh died 
 in France (having been married there some three or four years). 
 
 February 15, 1850. Mrs. Leigh's half-brother Francis, Lord 
 Godolphin, died. 
 
 April, 1850. Mary Anne Clermont died. 
 
 May 3, 1850. Colonel George Leigh died. 
 
 February 26, 185 1. The Right Hon. Sir John Cam Hobhouse 
 created Lord Broughton de Giffard. 
 
 July, 185 1. Selina Doyle, sister of the first Sir Francis Doyle, 
 died. 
 
 Sunday, October 12, 185 1. The Hon. Mrs. Leigh (Augusta 
 Mary Byron) died a little after 3 in the morning (p. 32). 
 
 November 27, 1852. Augusta Ada, Countess of Lovelace, died. 
 
 January 12, 1856. The Hon. Mrs. George VUliers («^V Therese 
 Parker) died. 
 
 May 16, i860. Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron, died. 
 
 January 31, 1861. Elizabeth Russell, dowager Duchess of 
 Cleveland, died, aged 84. 
 
 August 31, 1862. The Hon. Mrs. George Lamb (Caroline 
 Rosalie Adelaide St. Jules) died. 
 
 October 21, 1862. Mrs. Leigh's surviving half-sister, the 
 Dowager Countess of Chichester, died. 
 
 November 25, 1862. Harriet, Countess GranvUle, died. 
 
 November 11, 1867. Margaret, Lady Keith and Comtesse de 
 Flahault, died. 
 
 March i, 1868. Admiral Lord Byron died. 
 
 May 7, 1868. Lord Brougham died at Cannes. 
 
 June 3, 1869. John Cam Hobhouse, Lord Broughton de 
 Giffard, died. 
 
 February 4, 1871. Lady Wilmot Horton died. 
 
 January 19, 1873. The Right Hon. Stephen Lushington, 
 D.C.L., died at Ockham Park. 
 
 December, 1893. William, Earl of Lovelace, died. 
 Henry Allen Bathurst died. 
 
 363 
 
THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, 
 LTD. LONDON & TONBEIDGE.