Lady Byron Vindicated: A History of the Byron Controversy

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Lady Byron had seen the 'Blackwood' coming forward, on the first appearance of 'Don Juan,' to rebuke the cowardly lampoon in words eloquent with all the unperverted vigour of an honest Englishman. Under the power of the great conspirator, she had seen that 'Blackwood' become the very eager recipient and chief reporter of the stories against her, and the blind admirer of her adversary.

All this time, she lost sympathy daily by being silent. The world will embrace those who court it; it will patronise those who seek its favour; it will make parties for those who seek to make parties: but for the often accused who do not speak, who make no confidants and no parties, the world soon loses sympathy.

When at last she spoke, Christopher North says 'she astonished the world.' Calm, clear, courageous, exact as to time, date, and circumstance, was that first testimony, backed by the equally clear testimony of Dr. Lushington.

It showed that her secret had been kept even from her parents. In words precise, firm, and fearless, she says, 'If these statements on which Dr. Lushington and Sir Samuel Romilly formed their opinion were false, the responsibility and the odium should rest with me only.' Christopher North did not pretend to disbelieve this statement. He breathed not a doubt of Lady Byron's word. He spoke of the crime indicated, as one which might have been foul as the grave's corruption, unforgivable as the sin against the Holy Ghost. He rebuked the wife for bearing this testimony, even to save the memory of her dead father and mother, and, in the same breath, declared that she ought now to go farther, and speak fully the one awful word, and then—'a mitigated sentence, or eternal silence!'

But Lady Byron took no counsel with the world, nor with the literary men of her age. One knight, with some small remnant of England's old chivalry, set lance in rest for her: she saw him beaten back unhorsed, rolled in the dust, and ingloriously vanquished, and perceived that henceforth nothing but injury could come to any one who attempted to speak for her.

She turned from the judgments of man and the fond and natural hopes of human nature, to lose herself in sacred ministries to the downcast and suffering. What nobler record for woman could there be than that which Miss Martineau has given?

Particularly to be noted in Lady Byron was her peculiar interest in reclaiming fallen women. Among her letters to Mrs. Prof. Follen, of Cambridge, was one addressed to a society of ladies who had undertaken this difficult work. It was full of heavenly wisdom and of a large and tolerant charity. Fénelon truly says, it is only perfection that can tolerate imperfection; and the very purity of Lady Byron's nature made her most forbearing and most tender towards the weak and the guilty. This letter, with all the rest of Lady Byron's, was returned to the hands of her executors after her death. Its publication would greatly assist the world in understanding the peculiarities of its writer's character.

Lady Byron passed to a higher life in 1860.[25] After her death, I looked for the publication of her Memoir and Letters as the event that should give her the same opportunity of being known and judged by her life and writings that had been so freely accorded to Lord Byron.