The next day one of his friends found these beautiful verses on his desk; and, judging of Lady Byron's heart and that of the public according to his own, he imprudently gave them to the world. Thus we can no more doubt Lord Byron's sincerity in writing them than we can accuse him of publishing them. But what may cause astonishment is that they could possibly have been ill-interpreted, as they were; and, above all, that this touching "Farewell"—which made Madame de Staël say she would gladly have been unhappy, like Lady Byron, to draw it forth—that it should not have had power to rescue her heart from its apathy, and bring her to the feet of her husband, or at least into his arms. Let us add, in conclusion, that the most atrocious part of this affair, and doubtless the most wounding for him, was precisely Lady Byron's conduct; and in this conduct the worst was her cruel silence!
She has been called, after his words, the moral Clytemnestra[148] of her husband. Such a surname is severe; but the repugnance we feel to condemning a woman can not prevent our listening to the voice of justice, which tells us that the comparison is still in favor of the guilty one of antiquity. For she, driven to crime by fierce passion overpowering reason, at least only deprived her husband of physical life, and in committing the deed exposed herself to all its consequences; while Lady Byron left her husband at the very moment that she saw him struggling amid a thousand shoals, in the stormy sea of embarrassments created by his marriage, and precisely when he more than ever required a friendly, tender, and indulgent hand to save him from the tempests of life. Besides, she shut herself up in silence a thousand times more cruel than Clytemnestra's poniard, that only killed the body; whereas Lady Byron's silence was destined to kill the soul, and such a soul! leaving the door open to calumny, and making it to be supposed that her silence was magnanimity destined to cover over frightful wrongs, perhaps even depravity. In vain did he, feeling his conscience at ease, implore some inquiry and examination. She refused, and the only favor she granted was to send him, one fine day, two persons to see whether he were not mad. Happily Lord Byron only discovered at a later period the purport of this strange visit.
In vain did Lord Byron's friend, the companion of all his travels, throw himself at Lady Byron's feet, imploring her to give over this fatal silence. The only reply she deigned was, that she had thought him mad!
And why, then, had she believed him mad? Because she, a methodical inflexible woman, with that unbendingness which a profound moralist calls the worship rendered to pride by a feelingless soul;—because she could not understand the possibility of tastes and habits different to those of ordinary routine, or of her own starched life! Not to be hungry when she was—not to sleep at night, but to write while she was sleeping, and to sleep when she was up—in short, to gratify the requirements of material and intellectual life at hours different to hers:—all that was not merely annoying for her, but it must be madness! or if not, it betokened depravity that she could neither submit to nor tolerate without perilling her own morality!
Such was the grand secret of the cruel silence which exposed Lord Byron to the most malignant interpretations—to all the calumny and revenge of his enemies.
She was perhaps the only woman in the world so strangely organized—the only one, perhaps, capable of not feeling happy and proud at belonging to a man superior to the rest of humanity! and fatally was it decreed that this woman alone of her species should be Lord Byron's wife!
Before closing this chapter it remains for us to examine if it be true, as several of his biographers have pretended, that he wished to be reunited to his wife. We must here declare that Lord Byron's intention, in the last years of his life, was, on the contrary, not to see Lady Byron again. This is what he wrote from Ravenna, to Moore, in June, 1820:—
"I have received a Parisian letter from W. W——, which I prefer answering through you, as that worthy says he is an occasional visitor of yours. In November last he wrote to me a well-meaning letter, stating for some reasons of his own, his belief that a reunion might be effected between Lady Byron and myself.
"To this I answered as usual; and he sent me a second letter, repeating his notions, which letter I have never answered, having had a thousand other things to think of. He now writes as if he believed that he had offended me by touching on the topic; and I wish you to assure him that I am not at all so, but on the contrary, obliged by his good-nature. At the same time acquaint him the thing is impossible. You know this as well as I, and there let it end."
A year later, at Pisa, he again said to M——"that he never would have been reunited to Lady Byron; that the time for such a possibility was passed, and he had made quite sufficient advances."