The world can easily see, in Moore’s Biography, what, after this, was the course of Lord Byron’s life; how he went from shame to shame, and dishonour to dishonour, and used the fortune which his wife brought him in the manner described in those private letters which his biographer was left to print. Moore, indeed, says Byron had made the resolution not to touch his lady’s fortune; but adds, that it required more self-command than he possessed to carry out so honourable a purpose.
Lady Byron made but one condition with him. She had him in her power; and she exacted that the unhappy partner of his sins should not follow him out of England, and that the ruinous intrigue should be given up. Her inflexibility on this point kept up that enmity which was constantly expressing itself in some publication or other, and which drew her and her private relations with him before the public.
The story of what Lady Byron did with the portion of her fortune which was reserved to her is a record of noble and skilfully administered charities. Pitiful and wise and strong, there was no form of human suffering or sorrow that did not find with her refuge and help. She gave not only systematically, but also impulsively.
Miss Martineau claims for her the honour of having first invented practical schools, in which the children of the poor were turned into agriculturists, artizans, seamstresses, and good wives for poor men. While she managed with admirable skill and economy permanent institutions of this sort, she was always ready to relieve suffering in any form. The fugitive slaves William and Ellen Crafts, escaping to England, were fostered by her protecting care.
In many cases where there was distress or anxiety from poverty among those too self-respecting to make their sufferings known, the delicate hand of Lady Byron ministered to the want with a consideration which spared the most refined feelings.
As a mother, her course was embarrassed by peculiar trials. The daughter inherited from the father not only brilliant talents, but a restlessness and morbid sensibility which might be too surely traced to the storms and agitations of the period in which she was born. It was necessary to bring her up in ignorance of the true history of her mother’s life; and the consequence was that she could not fully understand that mother.
During her early girlhood, her career was a source of more anxiety than of comfort. She married a man of fashion, ran a brilliant course as a gay woman of fashion, and died early of a lingering and painful disease.
In the silence and shaded retirement of the sick-room, the daughter came wholly back to her mother’s arms and heart; and it was on that mother’s bosom that she leaned as she went down into the dark valley. It was that mother who placed her weak and dying hand in that of her Almighty Saviour.
To the children left by her daughter, she ministered with the faithfulness of a guardian angel; and it is owing to her influence that those who yet remain are among the best and noblest of mankind.
The person whose relations with Byron had been so disastrous, also, in the latter years of her life, felt Lady Byron’s loving and ennobling influences, and, in her last sickness and dying hours, looked to her for consolation and help.