Such a secret as he hints at—and indeed almost affirms—would have been very difficult to keep; and it is hard to believe that Mrs. Leigh’s sense of duty to her husband, with whom she was on the best of terms, would have allowed her to be a party to the alleged conspiracy. Those are a few of the most obvious objections; and they must be given the greater weight because Byron’s bitter cries and altered attitude towards life are more easily explicable without Mr. Edgcumbe’s hypothesis than with it. Loving the real mother so passionately, and having such a faithful friend in the supposed mother, he would assuredly not have been content to live out his life in exile without ever making an attempt to see his daughter, and without constant and particular inquiries after her. So why strain credulity so far when, without straining it, everything can be made plain and clear?
There was a renewal of intimacy, and then a suspension of intimacy; a fear of a public scandal which proved to be groundless; a risk of a duel which was, after all, avoided. That is all that is certain; but that suffices to explain the references to “scrapes” and “mischief” and the rest of it; and that also, on the assumption that Byron was passionately sincere, explains the depth and disgusted vehemence of his emotions. He had dreamed of Mary Chaworth before as the one woman in the world with whom he could live out the whole of his life in a continuous ecstasy of intense emotion; but he had from time to time awakened from his dream. Now the dream had become a reality—and the reality had not lasted. She had been too high principled—or too much afraid. He had not been strong enough to give her courage—or to shake her principles. And therefore....
Therefore he wrote poem after poem, all on the same theme, all in the same key—poems of farewell, of everlasting sorrow and despair, and of that sense of guilt, not defiant as yet, of which Mr. Edgcumbe makes so much, but which are perhaps best read as the reflection of Mary Chaworth’s own horror—the horror of a mind perilously near insanity—at the thing which she had done, but was resolved to do no more. He wrote this, for instance:
“There is no more for me to hope,
There is no more for thee to fear;
And, if I give my sorrow scope,
That sorrow thou shalt never hear.
Why did I hold thy love so dear?
Why shed for such a heart one tear?
Let deep and dreary silence be
My only memory of thee!”
He wrote the well-known lines, beginning:
“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.”
He wrote, again, these lines, which are taken from “Lara”:
“The tempest of his heart in scorn had gazed
On that the feebler Elements had raised.
The Rapture of his Heart had looked on high,
And asked if greater dwell beyond the sky:
Chained to excess, the slave of each extreme,
How woke he from the wildness of that dream!
Alas! he told not—but he did awake
To curse the withered heart that would not break.”
And then, once more:
“These lips are mute, these eyes are dry;
But in my breast and in my brain,
Awake the pangs that pass not by,
The thought that ne’er shall sleep again.
My soul nor deigns nor dares complain,
Though Grief and Passion there rebel:
I only know we loved in vain—
I only feel—Farewell! Farewell!”