Lady Byron Vindicated: A History of the Byron Controversy

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

In a note is added,—

'If an imaginary fear, and even an unreasonable jealousy, may be her excuse (just as one excuses a monomania), can one equally forgive her silence? Such a silence is morally what are physically the poisons which kill at once, and defy all remedies; thus insuring the culprit's safety. This silence it is which will ever be her crime; for by it she poisoned the life of her husband.'

The book has several chapters devoted to Lord Byron's peculiar virtues; and under the one devoted to magnanimity and heroism, his forgiving disposition receives special attention. The climax of all is stated to be that he forgave Lady Byron. All the world knew that, since he had declared this fact in a very noisy and impassioned manner in the fourth canto of 'Childe Harold,' together with a statement of the wrongs which he forgave; but the Guiccioli thinks his virtue, at this period, has not been enough appreciated. In her view, it rose to the sublime. She says of Lady Byron,—

'An absolute moral monstrosity, an anomaly in the history of types of female hideousness, had succeeded in showing itself in the light of magnanimity. But false as was this high quality in Lady Byron, so did it shine out in him true and admirable. The position in which Lady Byron had placed him, and where she continued to keep him by her harshness, silence, and strange refusals, was one of those which cause such suffering, that the highest degree of self-control seldom suffices to quiet the promptings of human weakness, and to cause persons of even slight sensibility to preserve moderation. Yet, with his sensibility and the knowledge of his worth, how did he act? what did he say? I will not speak of his "farewell;" of the care he took to shield her from blame by throwing it on others, by taking much too large a share to himself.'

With like vivacity and earnestness does the narrator now proceed to make an incarnate angel of her subject by the simple process of denying everything that he himself ever confessed,—everything that has ever been confessed in regard to him by his best friends. He has been in the world as an angel unawares from his cradle. His guardian did not properly appreciate him, and is consequently mentioned as that wicked Lord Carlisle. Thomas Moore is never to be sufficiently condemned for the facts told in his biography. Byron's own frank and lawless admissions of evil are set down to a peculiar inability he had for speaking the truth about himself,—sometimes about his near relations; all which does not in the least discourage the authoress from giving a separate chapter on 'Lord Byron's Love of Truth.'

In the matter of his relations with women, she complacently repeats (what sounds rather oddly as coming from her) Lord Byron's own assurance, that he never seduced a woman; and also the equally convincing statement, that he had told her (the Guiccioli) that his married fidelity to his wife was perfect. She discusses Moore's account of the mistress in boy's clothes who used to share Byron's apartments in college, and ride with him to races, and whom he presented to ladies as his brother.

She has her own view of this matter. The disguised boy was a lady of rank and fashion, who sought Lord Byron's chambers, as, we are informed, noble ladies everywhere, both in Italy and England, were constantly in the habit of doing; throwing themselves at his feet, and imploring permission to become his handmaids.

In the authoress's own words, 'Feminine overtures still continued to be made to Lord Byron; but the fumes of incense never hid from his sight his IDEAL.' We are told that in the case of these poor ladies, generally 'disenchantment took place on his side without a corresponding result on the other: THENCE many heart-breakings.' Nevertheless, we are informed that there followed the indiscretions of these ladies 'none of those proceedings that the world readily forgives, but which his feelings as a man of honour would have condemned.'

As to drunkenness, and all that, we are informed he was an anchorite. Pages are given to an account of the biscuits and soda-water that on this and that occasion were found to be the sole means of sustenance to this ethereal creature.