With a person of such mental and moral habits as to truth, the inquiry always must be, Where does mystification end, and truth begin?
If a man is careless about his father's reputation for sanity, and reports him a crazy suicide; if he gaily accuses his publisher and good friend of double-dealing, shuffling, and dishonesty; if he tells stories about Mrs. Clermont,[45] to which his sister offers a public refutation,—is it to be supposed that he will always tell the truth about his wife, when the world is pressing him hard, and every instinct of self-defence is on the alert?
And then the ingenuity that could write and publish false documents about himself, that they might re-appear in London papers,—to what other accounts might it not be turned? Might it not create documents, invent statements, about his wife as well as himself?
The document so ostentatiously given to M. G. Lewis 'for circulation among friends in England' was a specimen of what the Noctes Club would call 'bamming.'
If Byron wanted a legal investigation, why did he not take it in the first place, instead of signing the separation? If he wanted to cancel it, as he said in this document, why did he not go to London, and enter a suit for the restitution of conjugal rights, or a suit in chancery to get possession of his daughter? That this was in his mind, passages in Medwin's 'Conversations' show. He told Lady Blessington also that he might claim his daughter in chancery at any time.
Why did he not do it? Either of these two steps would have brought on that public investigation he so longed for. Can it be possible that all the friends who passed this private document from hand to hand never suspected that they were being 'bammed' by it?
But it has been universally assumed, that, though Byron was thus remarkably given to mystification, yet all his statements in regard to this story are to be accepted, simply because he makes them. Why must we accept them, any more than his statements as to Murray or his own father?
So we constantly find Lord Byron's incidental statements coming in collision with those of others: for example, in his account of his marriage, he tells Medwin that Lady Byron's maid was put between his bride and himself, on the same seat, in the wedding-journey. The lady's maid herself, Mrs. Mimms, says she was sent before them to Halnaby, and was there to receive them when they alighted.
He said of Lady Byron's mother, 'She always detested me, and had not the decency to conceal it in her own house. Dining with her one day, I broke a tooth, and was in great pain; which I could not help showing. "It will do you good," said Lady Noel; "I am glad of it!"'