“Whether the offence has been solely on my side, or reciprocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect upon any but two things—viz. that you are the mother of my child, and that we shall never meet again. I think if you also consider the two corresponding points with reference to myself, it will be better for all three.”
The letter, for whatever reason, was never sent; but it has, nevertheless, its value as a document illustrative of Byron’s ultimate attitude towards the great blunder of his life. There is no renewal of love, and no desire for the renewal of intimate relations; but, on the other hand, there is no more angry talk about shattered household gods. Instead, there is a new spirit of toleration. Byron recognises, at last, that Lady Byron has a perfect right to be the sort of woman that she is—that she may even be a woman of some merit, though on him her very virtues jar. So he takes the tone of a man who parleys politely under a flag of truce; and then turns and goes his way, a little disappointed perhaps, but on the whole indifferent. He had thought it worth while to send Lady Byron messages about the pleasure which he found in the company of the Venetian harlots; but he sent her none about the charms of Madame Guiccioli. He had travelled too far from her for that, and got too completely out of touch with her, and acquired too many new interests which she did not share.
It should be added, however, that in many of his new interests Madame Guiccioli herself hardly shared. She was a charming woman—almost exactly the woman to suit him—pretty and plump and intelligent, and yet ready to acquiesce in his habit of regarding her sex from the standpoint of an Oriental Satrap. It gratified him to relapse into her society when strenuous activities had tired him; for he found her restful as well as amiable. But her affection was no substitute for those strenuous activities; and his need for her love seems to have diminished as the desire to assert and prove himself by doing something strenuous and striking grew upon him. An eloquent fact is that, having suspended the writing of “Don Juan” at her request, he presently resumed it—and that though her objection to “Don Juan” was that it stripped the sentiment from love; which indicates that, though he still loved her in his fashion, he loved no more than he chose to, and certainly not enough to let his love stand between him and any serious enterprise.
There are biographers, indeed, who doubt whether he would have been willing to marry Madame Guiccioli if unexpected circumstances had enabled him to do so; but, according to Lady Blessington, the irregularity of their relations was a cause of great distress to him:
“I am bound by the indissoluble ties of marriage to one who will not live with me, and live with one to whom I cannot give a legal right to be my companion, and who, wanting that right, is placed in a position humiliating to her and most painful to me. Were the Countess Guiccioli and I married, we should, I am sure, be cited as an example of conjugal happiness, and the domestic and retired life we lead would entitle us to respect. But our union, wanting the legal and religious part of the ceremony of marriage, draws on us both censure and blame. She is formed to make a good wife to any man to whom she attaches herself. She is fond of retirement, is of a most affectionate disposition, and noble-minded and disinterested to the highest degree. Judge then how mortifying it must be to me to be the cause of placing her in a false position. All this is not thought of when people are blinded by passion, but when passion is replaced by better feelings—those of affection, friendship, and confidence—when, in short, the liaison has all of marriage but its forms, then it is that we wish to give it the respectability of wedlock.”
Such is the report, confirming the view that the ardour of Byron’s passion had by this time burnt itself out, and exhibiting him in the novel light of a lover tired of love-making but desirous of domestication. The desire does, at times, overtake even the most disorderly; and it is credible enough that Byron had come to entertain it. He had entertained it once before, on the eve of his marriage; and it is the kind of desire that recurs even after the first experiments have proved unsatisfactory. So it was with Byron, the wife, and not the estate of matrimony, being held responsible for the failure; only the desire was not, in his case, the ruling passion. That passion was to do something, and to be seen doing it, the second condition being as essential as the first, in defence of the victims of the Holy Alliance or any other tyranny.
It was a passion destined very soon to be gratified, the end coming in a dismal swamp, but in a blaze of glory. We will tell the story—or as much of it as needs to be told—in a moment; but we must first attend Byron a little longer on the trivial round—riding out to the inn, and shooting at a mark, and riding home again—in order that we may note how certain deaths and other incidents aided and threw light upon the further development of his character.