3. Dr. Lushington, the lawyer consulted, had advised Lady Noel that, while the circumstances laid before him “were such as justified a separation,” they were “not such as to render such a measure indispensable,” and that he “deemed a reconciliation practicable.”
4. Lady Byron had persisted, for reasons which she did not yet state, either to her family or to her legal advisers, in her refusal to return. Hence Sir Ralph Noel’s ultimatum.
These facts, which gave Lady Byron’s conduct a certain superficial coherence, were gradually elicited. For the moment, however, the only fact which Hobhouse had before him was the ultimatum and Lady Byron’s endorsement of it. Of Lady Byron’s reasons he knew nothing; and he had no grounds for suspecting any other motives than the word “tantrums” would cover. He proceeded, as did all Byron’s supporters, on the assumption that the word “tantrums” did, in fact, cover them; and a fusillade of letters ensued. One cannot quote them all, but their contents can easily be summed up. From Byron’s side there issued appeals for reconciliation, for explanations, for specific charges, for personal interviews; from Lady Byron’s side there came refusals either to give reasons or to parley, and reiterated statements that her mind was unalterably made up.
“I must decline your visit and all discussion,” was what Lady Byron wrote to Hobhouse on February 7; and on the same day she wrote to Byron himself: “I have finally determined on the measure of a separation.... Every expression of feeling, sincerely as it might be made, would be misplaced.” The letter apparently crossed one from Byron to Sir Ralph Noel, in which he said that his house was still open to Lady Byron, that he must not debase himself to “implore as a suppliant the restoration of a reluctant wife,” but that it was her duty to return, and that he knew of no reason why she should not do so. On the following day Byron addressed a further appeal to Lady Byron herself: “Will you see me—when and where you please—in whose presence you please?” and, almost as he was writing, he received another communication from Sir Ralph Noel, threatening legal proceedings “until a final separation is effected.”
February 13 brought the letter in which Lady Byron stated that she had excused Byron’s conduct in the belief that he was mad, but that she could not excuse it now that she had received assurance of his sanity. She added: “I have consistently fulfilled my duty as your wife; it was too dear to be resigned till it was hopeless. Now my resolution cannot be changed.” Byron rejoined on February 15: “I have invited your return; it has been refused. I have requested to know with what I am charged; it is refused.”
He had, in fact, made, and was still to make, attempts, through several channels, to pin Lady Byron and her supporters to a specific allegation. Hodgson had been appealed to by Mrs. Leigh to come and help. He came, and, on the strength of the information supplied to him, wrote to Lady Byron. Two of her letters and one of his are published in his life by his son, the Reverend James T. Hodgson. Hers may be analysed as a very thinly veiled threat to bring mysterious and abominable charges unless she got her way. There is an air about the letters of conscious virtue and of consideration for the feelings of others, but the threat is unmistakably contained in them. “He does know—too well—what he affects to inquire,” is one sentence; and another is: “The circumstances, which are of too convincing a nature, shall not be generally known whilst Lord B. allows me to spare him.”
Hanson, the lawyer had, in the meantime, been sent to call on Sir Ralph Noel. He had asked for explanations, and been refused any. He had also met Lushington who had, by this time, been definitely retained by Lady Byron, and addressed some inquiries to him. “Oh, we are not going to let you into the forte of our case,” had been Dr. Lushington’s reply.
It was, no doubt, a reply in strict conformity with his instructions. Lushington, as we know from a published letter from him to Lady Byron, was, at this date, personally in favour of an attempt at reconciliation. On the other hand, as is equally clear from the letters quoted in preceding paragraphs, Lady Byron had announced her intention of going into Court unless she could get her separation without doing so. Whether she had, at this date, any case—any case, that is to say, which a lawyer could take into Court with any confidence of winning it—may be questioned. The weaker her case, of course, the less likely her counsel would be to reveal the nakedness of the land prematurely by talking about it. Professional etiquette and zeal for the interests intrusted to him account quite adequately for his reticence; and there is no other influence to be drawn from it.
A little later, at an uncertain date towards the end of February, Lushington, as his letter to Lady Byron sets forth, received a visit from Lady Byron, had “additional information” imparted to him, changed his mind, and said that, if a reconciliation were still contemplated, or should thereafter be proposed, he, at any rate, should decline to render any help in bringing it about. The original “Byron mystery” was: What was the nature of that “additional information” which so suddenly altered Lushington’s attitude towards the case? That mystery has, as we shall see in a moment, been solved by Lord Lovelace. The questions left unsolved relate, not to the nature of the information but to its accuracy. Byron, Hobhouse, and Hodgson, however, were unable to dispute its accuracy because they were left uninformed as to its nature, and could only guess the charges to be met.
The awkwardness of the situation is obvious. On the one hand, Byron could not be expected to desire, for his own sake, the society of a wife who wrote him such letters as he was now receiving from Lady Byron—to separate from her would, at any rate, be the least uncomfortable of the courses open to him. On the other hand, he could not afford to let it be said that he had consented to a separation under the threat of gross, but unspecified, accusations. The charges might be specified afterwards, whether by Lady Byron herself or by the irresponsible voice of gossip, and he would be held to have pleaded guilty to them.