Lady Byron Vindicated: A History of the Byron Controversy

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

A note to 'The Noctes' of July 1822 informs us of another instance of Lord Byron's triumph over English morals:—

'The mention of this' (Byron's going to Greece) reminds me, by the by, of what the Guiccioli said in her visit to London, where she was so lionised as having been the lady-love of Byron. She was rather fond of speaking on the subject, designating herself by some Venetian pet phrase, which she interpreted as meaning "Love-Wife."'

What was Lady Byron to do in such a world? She retired to the deepest privacy, and devoted herself to works of charity, and the education of her only child,—that brilliant daughter, to whose eager, opening mind the whole course of current literature must bring so many trying questions in regard to the position of her father and mother,—questions that the mother might not answer. That the cruel inconsiderateness of the literary world added thorns to the intricacies of the path trodden by every mother who seeks to guide, restrain, and educate a strong, acute, and precociously intelligent child, must easily be seen.

What remains to be said of Lady Byron's life shall be said in the words of Miss Martineau, published in 'The Atlantic Monthly:'—

'Her life, thenceforth, was one of unremitting bounty to society administered with as much skill and prudence as benevolence. She lived in retirement, changing her abode frequently; partly for the benefit of her child's education and the promotion of her benevolent schemes, and partly from a restlessness which was one of the few signs of injury received from the spoiling of associations with home.

'She felt a satisfaction which her friends rejoiced in when her daughter married Lord King, at present the Earl of Lovelace, in 1835 and when grief upon grief followed, in the appearance of mortal disease in her only child, her quiet patience stood her in good stead as before. She even found strength to appropriate the blessings of the occasion, and took comfort, as did her dying daughter, in the intimate friendship, which grew closer as the time of parting drew nigh.

'Lady Lovelace died in 1852; and, for her few remaining years, Lady Byron was devoted to her grandchildren. But nearer calls never lessened her interest in remoter objects. Her mind was of the large and clear quality which could comprehend remote interests in their true proportions, and achieve each aim as perfectly as if it were the only one. Her agents used to say that it was impossible to mistake her directions; and thus her business was usually well done. There was no room, in her case, for the ordinary doubts, censures, and sneers about the misapplication of bounty.

'Her taste did not lie in the "Charity-Ball" direction; her funds were not lavished in encouraging hypocrisy and improvidence among the idle and worthless; and the quality of her charity was, in fact, as admirable as its quantity. Her chief aim was the extension and improvement of popular education; but there was no kind of misery that she heard of that she did not palliate to the utmost, and no kind of solace that her quick imagination and sympathy could devise that she did not administer.

'In her methods, she united consideration and frankness with singular success. For one instance among a thousand: A lady with whom she had had friendly relations some time before, and who became impoverished in a quiet way by hopeless sickness, preferred poverty with an easy conscience to a competency attended by some uncertainty about the perfect rectitude of the resource. Lady Byron wrote to an intermediate person exactly what she thought of the case. Whether the judgment of the sufferer was right or mistaken was nobody's business but her own: this was the first point. Next, a voluntary poverty could never be pitied by anybody: that was the second. But it was painful to others to think of the mortification to benevolent feelings which attends poverty; and there could be no objection to arresting that pain. Therefore she, Lady Byron, had lodged in a neighbouring bank the sum of one hundred pounds, to be used for benevolent purposes; and, in order to preclude all outside speculation, she had made the money payable to the order of the intermediate person, so that the sufferer's name need not appear at all.