On August 4, 1815: “Lord Byron tells me he and she have begun a little snubbing on money matters. ‘Marry not,’ says he.”
On August 8, 1815: “Dined with Byron, &c. All grumbled at life.”
On November 25, 1815: “Called on Byron. In that quarter things do not go well. Strong advice against marriage. Talking of going abroad.”
There is nothing specific there; and when we set out to look for something specific, we only run up against gossip of doubtful authenticity. “Do I interrupt you?”... “Damnably,” may be assumed to be authentic since Byron himself has admitted the repartee. It was rude and reprehensible, though it was probably provoked. The charges which young Harness, now in Holy Orders, heard preferred by some of Lady Byron’s friends are rightly described by him as “nonsensical”; but we may as well have them before us in order to judge of the propriety of the epithet:
“The poor lady had never had a comfortable meal since their marriage. Her husband had no fixed hour for breakfast, and was always too late for dinner.
“At his express desire she had invited two elderly ladies to meet them in her opera-box. Nothing could be more courteous than his manner to them while they remained; but no sooner had they gone than he began to annoy his wife by venting his ill-humour, in a strain of bitterest satire, against the dress and manners of her friends.”
“Poor Lady Byron was afraid of her life. Her husband slept with loaded pistols by his bed-side, and a dagger under his pillow.”
“Nonsensical” is decidedly the word for these allegations. The incidents, even if true, could only be symptoms, not causes, of the disagreement. Harness, perceiving that, seeks the true explanation of the estrangement in the disposition of Lady Byron, whom he had known as a girl. She “gave one the idea of being self-willed and self-opinionated.” She “carried no cheerfulness along with her.” The majority of her acquaintances “looked upon her as a reserved and frigid sort of being whom one would rather cross the room to avoid than be brought into conversation with unnecessarily.” A common acquaintance remarked to Harness: “If Lady Byron has a heart, it is deeper seated and harder to get at than anybody else’s heart whom I have ever known.”
Et cetera. So far as we can judge Lady Byron by the letters in which she subsequently announced, without formulating, her grievances, the verdict seems a just one. She might be pictured, in the words of the author of “Ionica” as one who
“Smiles at all that’s coarse and rash,
Yet wins the trophies of the fight,
Unscathed in honour’s wreck and crash,
Heartless, yet always in the right.”