First as to the inherent probabilities:
The accusation, as elaborated by Lord Lovelace, is, it must be observed, that Byron had yielded to an unnatural passion for his sister at a period anterior to his marriage—the period covered by the Journal from which we have quoted, and by those mysteriously morbid and gloomy poems of which “The Bride of Abydos” and “Lara” are the most remarkable. This passion, according to Lord Lovelace, was the cause of the spiritual “crisis” through which poems and Journal alike prove him to have passed. When Byron writes that “The Bride” was “written to drive my thoughts from the recollection of * * *,” Lord Lovelace interprets him to mean that it was written to drive his thoughts from the recollection of Mrs. Leigh. Hers, he invites us to believe, was the “dear sacred name” which was to “rest ever unrevealed.”
That theory is not only nonsense, but arrant nonsense—obviously so to readers who are familiar with Byron’s letters, and demonstrably so to those who are not. All that can be said in favour of the view is that some of the passages in some of the poems are so obscure that they can be tortured into accord with the most preposterous hypothesis. On the other hand, while there is no direct evidence on the subject at all, there is conclusive circumstantial evidence which effectually disposes of Lord Lovelace’s calumnious assertion—evidence, happily, so simple that one almost can sum it up in a sentence.
Throughout the whole of the “crisis” in question Byron was in correspondence with Mrs. Leigh; and a great deal of the correspondence has been published. The letters are letters in which Byron takes his sister into his confidence. We find him writing to her, first about his “affairs” with Lady Caroline Lamb and Lady Oxford, and then about his desolating passion for another lady whom we have seen reason to identify with Mary Chaworth. Nor does it matter, for the purposes of the present argument, whether that identification is correct or not. The solid fact, in any case, remains that, at the very time when Lord Lovelace represents Byron as engaged in an intrigue with Augusta Leigh, he was, in fact, writing to her to apologise for his “long silence,” and attributing that silence to trouble in connection with another lady: “It is not Lady Caroline, nor Lady Oxford; but perhaps you may guess, and, if you do, do not tell.”
There are other letters to the same effect, but that letter should suffice. No sane man will believe Byron to have been devoured by a guilty passion for the woman to whom he confided secrets of that sort; and, if there were any disposition to entertain the belief were still harboured, it could hardly fail to be expelled by an examination of the letters which passed between Lady Byron and Mrs. Leigh, and between Mrs. Leigh and Francis Hodgson.
Mrs. Leigh had been with Lady Byron during her confinement. There had been no quarrel between them, and no suspicion or suggestion of a quarrel. When Lady Byron left Piccadilly Terrace for Kirkby Mallory, Mrs. Leigh continued, with her knowledge, and without any hint of an objection, to stay in her brother’s house. Even when Lady Byron communicated her decision not to return to her husband, she expressed neither surprise at Mrs. Leigh’s remaining there, nor desire for her departure. On the contrary, at the very time when she was insisting upon separation, and hinting at charges too awful to be preferred unless the particulars were dragged from her, she was corresponding with Mrs. Leigh, not merely on terms of ordinary politeness, but on terms of confidential intimacy and cordial affection—addressing her as “My dearest A.,” “My dearest Sis,” “My dearest Gus,” &c., &c.
A long series of these letters is printed in Mr. Murray’s latest edition of Byron’s Works. Readers who desire full particulars must be referred to them. A few sentences only need be given here, as an indication of their tone:
“If all the world had told me you were doing me an injury, I ought not to have believed it. My chief feeling, therefore, in relation to you and myself must be that I have wronged you, and that you have never wronged me!”
“I know you feel for me as I do for you—and perhaps I am better understood than I think. You have been ever since I knew you my best comforter, and will so remain, unless you grow tired of the office, which may well be.”
“The present sufferings of all may yet be repaid in blessings. Don’t despair absolutely, dearest; and leave me but enough of your interest to afford you any consolation by partaking that sorrow which I am most unhappy to cause you thus unintentionally.... Heaven knows you have considered me more than one in a thousand would have done.”