“She said that one night, in her presence, he treated his sister with a liberty which both shocked and astonished her. Seeing her amazement and alarm he came up to her, and said, in a sneering tone, ‘I suppose you perceive you are not wanted here. Go to your own room, and leave us alone. We can amuse ourselves better without you.’
“She said, ‘I went to my room trembling. I went down on my knees and prayed to my heavenly Father to have mercy on them. I thought: What shall I do?’
“I remember, after this, a pause in the conversation, during which she seemed struggling with thoughts and emotions; and, for my part, I was unable to utter a word or ask a question.”
No more than that. This ex parte interpretation of a foolish conjugal quarrel of forty years before, admittedly untested by any demand for particulars, was absolutely the sole piece of testimony which Mrs. Stowe adduced when she set out to blast Byron’s reputation. The rest of the book consists of pious and sentimental out-pourings, vulgar abuse of Byron, and equally vulgar eulogy of his wife; the two passages cited being the only passages material to the issue. There was nothing in writing for her to quote—no case which a respectable lawyer would have taken into Court—no case that would not have been laughed out of Court within five minutes if it had ever got so far.
The tribunal of public opinion did, in fact, laugh the case out of Court at the time. It was “snowed under,” partly by laughter, and partly by indignation and the British feeling in favour of fair play; and it remained so buried for nearly forty years. Biographers could afford to scout it as “monstrous” without troubling to confute it. Sir Leslie Stephen, in the “Dictionary of National Biography,” treated it as an hallucination to which Lady Byron had fallen a victim through brooding over her grievances in solitude.
One would be glad if one could still take that tone towards it; but Lord Lovelace has made it impossible to do so. Mrs. Stowe, as a mischief-making meddler, interfering with matters which did not concern her, and about which she was obviously very ill informed, had not even a primâ facie title to be taken seriously. The case of Lord Lovelace was different. He was Byron’s grandson and the custodian of Lady Byron’s strong-box. He affected not merely to assert but to argue. He produced from the strong-box documents which he was pleased to call proofs. A good many people, not having seen them, probably still believe that they are proofs. They cannot be waived on one side like Mrs. Stowe’s unsupported allegations, but must be dealt with; and the whole question of the charge which they are alleged to substantiate must, of course, be dealt with simultaneously.
And first, as the documents laid before us are miscellaneous, we must distinguish between those of them which count and those which do not count. Some of the contents of the strong-box, it seems, are merely “statements” in Lady Byron’s handwriting. These are only referred to by Lord Lovelace, but not printed. Not having been produced, they cannot be criticised; but there are, nevertheless, two comments which it is legitimate to make. In the first place, an ex parte statement, though admissible in evidence for what it may be worth, is not the same thing as proof. In the second place, if the statements had been of a nature to strengthen the case which Lord Lovelace was trying to make out, instead of merely embellishing it, they would not have been held back. Their absence from the dossier need not, therefore, embarrass us; and we need, in fact, be the less embarrassed by it because it was already perfectly well known that Lady Byron was in the habit of writing out statements, and had shown them to impartial persons who had taken the measure of their value. That fact is set forth in the Rev. Frederick Arnold’s Life of Robertson of Brighton, who, as is well known, was, for a considerable time, Lady Byron’s religious adviser.
“A remarkable incident,” writes Mr. Arnold, “may be mentioned in illustration of the relations with Lord Byron. Lady Byron had accumulated a great mass of documentary evidence, papers and letters, which were supposed to constitute a case completely exculpatory of herself and condemnatory of Byron. She placed all this printed matter in the hands of a well-known individual, who was then resident at Brighton, and afterwards removed into the country. This gentleman went carefully through the papers, and was utterly astonished at the utter want of criminatory matter against Byron. He was not indifferent to the éclat or emolument of editing such memoirs. But he felt that this was a brief which he was unable to hold, and accordingly returned all the papers to Lady Byron.”
That comment on the “statements,” significant in itself, is doubly significant when taken in conjunction with Lord Lovelace’s suppression of them; and we may fairly consider the case without further reference to them, and without an apprehension that a surprise will be sprung from that source to upset the conclusions at which we arrive. Lord Lovelace did not rest his case on them, but on quite other documents, which we will proceed to examine after first saying the few words which need to be said in order to clear the air.
One point, indeed, Lord Lovelace has made successfully. He has proved that the gross and mysterious charge which Lady Byron preferred (or rather hinted at while refusing to prefer it) at the time of the separation was, in fact, identical with the charge formulated in Mrs. Stowe’s book. A contemporary memorandum to that effect, in Lushington’s handwriting, signed by Lady Byron, and witnessed by Lushington, Wilmot Horton, and Colonel Doyle, is printed in “Astarte.” To that extent the so-called Byron mystery is now solved, once and for all. The statement set forth in that memorandum, and afterwards repeated to Mrs. Stowe, was the statement on the strength of which Lushington declared, as has already been mentioned, that he could not be a party to any attempt to effect a reconciliation.