Only twice, be it observed; and on one of the two occasions, one of Madame de Staël’s guests, Mrs. Hervey the novelist—a mature woman novelist of sixty-five virtuous summers—fainted, according to one account, and “nearly fainted,” according to another, at the sudden appearance of the Man of Sin, though, when she came to, she was ashamed of herself, and conversed with him. Probably he called again; and not all the Coppet house-party shared Mrs. Hervey’s consternation at his visits. Lady Westmorland did not for one, but commented on his “sweetness and sadness, melancholy and depression,” adding: “If he was all that he tries to seem now he would really be very fascinating.” On the other hand, however, Madame de Staël’s son-in-law, the Duc de Broglie, summed him up unkindly and almost scornfully, declaring him “a boastful pretender in the matter of vice,” protesting that “his talk was heavy and tiresome,” and that “he did not manœuvre his lame legs with the same ease and nonchalance as M. de Talleyrand,” and concluding:
“Madame de Staël, who helped all her friends to make the best of themselves, did what she could to make him cut a dignified figure without success; and when the first moment of curiosity had passed, his society ceased to attract, and no one was glad to see him.”
Which clearly indicates, in spite of the offensive priggishness of the witness, that the tide of hostile opinion was, indeed, flowing too strongly for even Madame de Staël to stem it.
She did her best, however; for she was no prude, but a woman with a great heart, who had herself sought happiness in marriage, and failed to find it there, and had openly done things for which, if she had been an Englishwoman, Mrs. Grundy, instead of lionising, would have turned and rent her. She went further, and proposed to write to Lady Byron and try to arrange terms of peace; and Byron thanked her, and let her do so.
Not, of course, that he had the least desire to return to Lady Byron’s society. He was presently to thunder at her as his “moral Clytemnestra”; and Cordy Jeaffreson’s suggestion that his irrepressible rhetoric was “only the superficial ferment covering the depths of his affection for her,” and that “the woman at whom he railed so insanely was the woman who shared with his child the last tender emotions of his unruly heart” is as absurd a suggestion as ever a biographer put forth. Hobhouse has told us that Byron never was in love with Lady Byron; and, after what we have seen of Lady Byron’s conduct and correspondence, it is hard to believe that any man would have been in love with her after living with her for a twelvemonth. Moreover, we know from “The Dream” where Byron’s heart was at this time, as always, and we know from his own, as well as from Miss Clairmont’s confessions, with how little regard for Lady Byron’s feelings he was just then diverting himself in the Genevan suburbs; and we may fairly conclude that what he desired was not to return to her, but merely to be set right with the world by a nominal reconciliation, which would still leave him free to live apart from her.
He did not get what he wanted, and Lady Byron was quite within her rights in withholding it. He had allowed himself to be manœuvred into a false position, and had no claim upon her to help him to manœuvre himself out of it; while she, on her part, was much too high principled to strain a point in favour of a returning prodigal—especially if, as is probable, information had reached her as to his proceedings in his exile. So she rejected his overtures in that cold, judicial, high-minded way of hers; and Byron did not repeat them, but made it clear that he had meant nothing by them, seeing that—
His reason is in “The Dream” which he wrote in July 1816. It was another of his bursts of candour, telling the world (and Lady Byron) yet again how he loved Mary Chaworth, and always had loved her, and always would, and how, even on his wedding day, the memory of her had come between him and his bride:
“A change came o’er the spirit of my dream.
The Wanderer was returned—I saw him stand
Before an Altar—with a gentle bride;
Her face was fair, but was not that which made
The Starlight of his boyhood:—as he stood
Even at the altar, o’er his brow there came
The self-same aspect, and the quivering shock
That in the antique Oratory shook
His bosom in its solitude: and then—
As in that hour—a moment o’er his face
The tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced,—and then it faded as it came,
And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke
The fitting vows, but heard not his own words,
And all things reeled around him; he could see
Not that which was, nor that which should have been—
But the old mansion and the accustomed hall,
And the remembered chambers, and the place,
The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade,
All things pertaining to that place and hour
And her who was his destiny, came back
And thrust themselves between him and the light.”
That was his Parthian shaft; and Cordy Jeaffreson’s view of “The Dream” as “a lovely and elaborate falsehood, written to persuade all mankind that he never loved the woman whose heart he was yearning to recover” is much too preposterous to be admitted. Mary Chaworth’s husband knew that it was no figment. He recognised the reference to a certain “peculiar diadem of trees” on his estate, and gave orders that those trees should be cut down. Lady Byron had no such remedy open to her; but she knew what was meant and wrapped herself up in her virtue; while Byron, on his part, turned to the diversions which were to help him to live in the face of the world’s contumely.
Alike for him and for Shelley and the two ladies who attended him there was a good deal of that contumely as long as they remained in the Hotel d’Angleterre; and it may almost be said that they invited it by making themselves conspicuous. In Shelley’s relations with Miss Godwin and Miss Clairmont there was at least the appearance of promiscuity—an appearance on which it did not take gossip long to base positive asseveration.[11] Byron, already an object of curiosity on account of his supposed misdeeds, had made himself conspicuous by his coach, and his retinue, and his manner of travelling en seigneur. So that the other boarders stared when he arrived, and stared still more when they saw him fraternising with his brother poet and the ladies, not only wondering what the eccentric party would be up to next, but keeping close watch on their comings and goings, following them to the lake-side when they went out boating, awaiting them on the lake-side when they landed on their return, lining up to inspect them as often as carriages were brought to the door to take them for a drive.