‘On acquainting him with the state of the case, and with Lord Byron’s desire that I should leave London, Dr. Baillie thought my absence might be advisable as an experiment, assuming the fact of mental derangement; for Dr. Baillie, not having had access to Lord Byron, could not pronounce an opinion on that point. He enjoined, that, in correspondence with Lord Byron, I should avoid all but light and soothing topics. Under these impressions, I left London, determined to follow the advice given me by Dr. Baillie. Whatever might have been the nature of Lord Byron’s treatment of me from the time of my marriage, yet, supposing him to have been in a state of mental alienation, it was not for me, nor for any person of common humanity, to manifest at that moment a sense of injury.’
It appears, then, that the domestic situation in Byron’s house at the time of his wife’s expulsion was one so grave as to call for family counsel; for Lady Byron, generally accurate, speaks in the plural number. ‘His nearest relatives’ certainly includes Mrs. Leigh. ‘His family’ includes more. That some of Lord Byron’s own relatives were cognisant of facts at this time, and that they took Lady Byron’s side, is shown by one of his own chance admissions. In vol. vi. p.394, in a letter on Bowles, he says, speaking of this time, ‘All my relations, save one, fell from me like leaves from a tree in autumn.’ And in Medwin’s Conversations he says, ‘Even my cousin George Byron, who had been brought up with me, and whom I loved as a brother, took my wife’s part.’ The conduct must have been marked in the extreme that led to this result.
We cannot help stopping here to say that Lady Byron’s situation at this time has been discussed in our days with a want of ordinary human feeling that is surprising. Let any father and mother, reading this, look on their own daughter, and try to make the case their own.
After a few short months of married life,—months full of patient endurance of the strangest and most unaccountable treatment,—she comes to them, expelled from her husband’s house, an object of hatred and aversion to him, and having to settle for herself the awful question, whether he is a dangerous madman or a determined villain.
Such was this young wife’s situation.
With a heart at times wrung with compassion for her husband as a helpless maniac, and fearful that all may end in suicide, yet compelled to leave him, she writes on the road the much-quoted letter, beginning ‘Dear Duck.’ This is an exaggerated and unnatural letter, it is true, but of precisely the character that might be expected from an inexperienced young wife when dealing with a husband supposed to be insane.
The next day, she addressed to Augusta this letter:—
‘MY DEAREST A.,—It is my great comfort that you are still in Piccadilly.’
And again, on the 23rd:—
‘DEAREST A.,—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.’