The Journal is only a fragment, kept only for five months. It is a record rather of emotions than of events—the chronicle of the emotions of a man who feels the need of talking to himself of matters of which he cannot easily talk to others, but who, even in speaking to himself, speaks in riddles. It begins soon after the “mischief” of which Augusta has been told has happened, and while he is entangled in the “scrape” mentioned to Moore. The talk on the first page is of travel—“provided I neither marry myself, nor unmarry any one else in the interval”; and there immediately follows a reference to the writing of “The Bride of Abydos”:
“I believe the composition of it kept me alive—for it was written to drive my thoughts from the recollection of—
“Dear sacred name, rest ever unreveal’d.”
“At least, even here, my hand would tremble to write it.”
“The Bride,” he insists, was written for himself, and not with any view to publication. “I am sure, had it not been for Murray, that would never have been published, though the circumstances which are the groundwork make it ... heigho!” “It was written,” he adds, “in four days to distract my thoughts from * * *”; and then we perceive that he is in correspondence with the lady thus enigmatically designated. He is expecting a letter from her which does not arrive. What, he asks himself, is the meaning of that?
“Not a word from * * * Have they set out from * * *? or has my last precious epistle fallen into the lion’s jaws? If so—and this silence looks suspicious—I must clap on my ‘musty morion’ and ‘hold out my iron.’ I am out of practice—but I won’t begin again at Manton’s now. Besides, I would not return his shot. I was once a famous wafer-splitter; but then the bullies of society made it necessary. Ever since I began to feel that I had a bad cause to support, I have left off the exercise.”
The probability of a challenge from an injured husband is evidently contemplated here. No challenge came, the injured man remaining in ignorance of his injury; but peace of mind nevertheless remained unattainable. No connected narrative, indeed, can be pieced together. It is hardly ever possible to declare that such and such a thing happened on such and such a day. There is only the general impression that things are happening, and that, whether they happen or do not happen, a tragedy is always in progress. We come presently to a curiously significant note on the raison d’être of Byron’s practice of fasting:
“I should not so much mind a little accession of flesh—my bones can well bear it. But the worst is, the devil always came with it,—till I starved him out,—and I will not be the slave of any appetite. If I do err, it shall be my heart, at least, that heralds the way.”
But a man does not write like that unless his heart has heralded the way, and he is following it. Byron’s trouble was not that he had failed to follow the road which his heart pointed, but that he had followed it into an impasse. He had reached a point at which the only way out was the way on; but he could not follow it alone, and his companion would not follow it with him. She had gone a little way with him, and then taken fright at his and her own temerity.
It is a question whether we should pity her for her lack of courage or praise her for remembering her principles after she had yielded to temptation; but we should need more knowledge of the facts than we have in order to answer it with confidence. Exceptional people may do exceptional things with impunity—it is sometimes for lack of the nerve to do them that they make shipwreck of their lives; but though Byron was an exceptional man, we have no proof that Mary Chaworth was an exceptional woman. She had neither the romantic audacity of George Sand, nor that audacity of the superior person which upheld George Eliot in her bold misappropriation of another woman’s name. Probably, if she had had it, Byron would have classed her with the “blues,” and either have tired of her at once or turned away from her very quickly. She had, no doubt, exceptional charm, but no exceptional strength of character. She was just a weak woman launched into a situation to which the old rules did not apply, but afraid to break them, ashamed of having broken them, obstinate in her refusal to go on breaking them.