CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY OF EVENTS.
I have now fulfilled as conscientiously as possible the requests of those who feel that they have a right to know exactly what was said in this interview.
It has been my object, in doing this, to place myself just where I should stand were I giving evidence under oath before a legal tribunal. In my first published account, there were given some smaller details of the story, of no particular value to the main purpose of it, which I received not from Lady Byron, but from her confidential friend. One of these was the account of her seeing Lord Byron's favourite spaniel lying at his door, and the other was the scene of the parting.
The first was communicated to me before I ever saw Lady Byron, and under these circumstances:—I was invited to meet her, and had expressed my desire to do so, because Lord Byron had been all my life an object of great interest to me. I inquired what sort of a person Lady Byron was. My friend spoke of her with enthusiasm. I then said, 'but of course she never loved Lord Byron, or she would not have left him.' The lady answered, 'I can show you with what feelings she left him by relating this story;' and then followed the anecdote.
Subsequently, she also related to me the other story of the parting-scene between Lord and Lady Byron. In regard to these two incidents, my recollection is clear.
It will be observed by the reader that Lady Byron's conversation with me was simply for consultation on one point, and that point whether she herself should publish the story before her death. It was not, therefore, a complete history of all the events in their order, but specimens of a few incidents and facts. Her object was, not to prove her story to me, nor to put me in possession of it with a view to my proving it, but simply and briefly to show me what it was, that I might judge as to the probable results of its publication at that time.
It therefore comprised primarily these points:—
1. An exact statement, in so many words, of the crime.
2. A statement of the manner in which it was first forced on her attention by Lord Byron's words and actions, including: his admissions and defences of it.
3. The admission of a period when she had ascribed his whole conduct to insanity.