Mrs. Stowe goes on to give minutely Lady Byron's conversation, and concludes by saying:—
Of course I did not listen to this story as one who was investigating its worth. I received it as truth, and the purpose for which it was communicated was not to enable me to prove it to the world, but to ask my opinion whether she should show it to the world before leaving it. The whole consultation was upon the assumption that she had at her command such proofs as could not be questioned. Concerning what they were I did not minutely inquire, only, in answer to a general question, she said that she had letters and documents in proof of her story. Knowing Lady Byron's strength of mind, her clear-headedness, her accurate habits, and her perfect knowledge of the matter, I considered her judgment on this point decisive. I told her that I would take the subject into consideration and give my opinion in a few days. That night, after my sister and myself had retired to our own apartment, I related to her the whole history, and we spent the night in talking it over. I was powerfully impressed with the justice and propriety of an immediate disclosure; while she, on the contrary, represented the fatal consequences that would probably come upon Lady Byron from taking such a step.
Before we parted the next day, I requested Lady Byron to give me some memoranda of such dates and outlines of the general story as would enable me better to keep it in its connection, which she did. On giving me the paper, Lady Byron requested me to return it to her when it had ceased to be of use to me for the purpose intended. Accordingly, a day or two after, I inclosed it to her in a hasty note, as I was then leaving London for Paris, and had not yet had time fully to consider the subject. On reviewing my note I can recall that then the whole history appeared to me like one of those singular cases where unnatural impulses to vice are the result of a taint of constitutional insanity. This has always seemed to me the only way of accounting for instances of utterly motiveless and abnormal wickedness and cruelty. These, my first impressions, were expressed in the hasty note written at the time:
London, November 5, 1856.
Dearest Friend,—I return these. They have held mine eyes waking. How strange! How unaccountable! Have you ever subjected the facts to the judgment of a medical man, learned in nervous pathology? Is it not insanity?
"Great wits to madness nearly are allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide."But my purpose to-night is not to write to you fully what I think of this matter. I am going to write to you from Paris more at leisure.
(The rest of the letter was taken up in the final details of a charity in which Lady Byron had been engaged with me in assisting an unfortunate artist. It concludes thus:)
I write now in all haste, en route for Paris. As to America, all is not lost yet. Farewell. I love you, my dear friend, as never before, with an intense feeling that I cannot easily express. God bless you.
H. B. S.
The next letter is as follows:—
Paris, December 17, 1856.
Dear Lady Byron,—The Kansas Committee have written me a letter desiring me to express to Miss —— their gratitude for the five pounds she sent them. I am not personally acquainted with her, and must return these acknowledgments through you.
I wrote you a day or two since, inclosing the reply of the Kansas Committee to you.
On that subject on which you spoke to me the last time we were together, I have thought often and deeply. I have changed my mind somewhat. Considering the peculiar circumstances of the case, I could wish that the sacred veil of silence, so bravely thrown over the past, should never be withdrawn during the time that you remain with us. I would say then, leave all with some discreet friends, who, after both have passed from earth, shall say what was due to justice. I am led to think this by seeing how low, how unworthy, the judgments of this world are; and I would not that what I so much respect, love, and revere should be placed within reach of its harpy claw, which pollutes what it touches. The day will yet come which will bring to light every hidden thing. "There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known;" and so justice will not fail.
Such, my dear friend, are my thoughts; different from what they were since first I heard that strange, sad history. Meanwhile I love you forever, whether we meet again on earth or not.
Affectionately yours,
H. B. S.
Before her article appeared in print, Mrs. Stowe addressed the following letter to Dr. Holmes in Boston:—
Hartford, June 26, 1869.
Dear Doctor,—I am going to ask help of you, and I feel that confidence in your friendship that leads me to be glad that I have a friend like you to ask advice of. In order that you may understand fully what it is, I must go back some years and tell you about it.
When I went to England the first time, I formed a friendship with Lady Byron which led to a somewhat interesting correspondence. When there the second time, after the publication of "Dred" in 1856, Lady Byron wrote to me that she wished to have some private confidential conversation with me, and invited me to come spend a day with her at her country-seat near London. I went, met her alone, and spent an afternoon with her. The object of the visit she then explained to me. She was in such a state of health that she considered she had very little time to live, and was engaged in those duties and reviews which every thoughtful person finds who is coming deliberately, and with their eyes open, to the boundaries of this mortal life.
Lady Byron, as you must perceive, has all her life lived under a weight of slanders and false imputations laid upon her by her husband. Her own side of the story has been told only to that small circle of confidential friends who needed to know it in order to assist her in meeting the exigencies which it imposed on her. Of course it has thrown the sympathy mostly on his side, since the world generally has more sympathy with impulsive incorrectness than with strict justice.
At that time there was a cheap edition of Byron's works in contemplation, meant to bring them into circulation among the masses, and the pathos arising from the story of his domestic misfortunes was one great means relied on for giving it currency.
Under these circumstances some of Lady Byron's friends had proposed the question to her whether she had not a responsibility to society for the truth; whether she did right to allow these persons to gain influence over the popular mind by a silent consent to an utter falsehood. As her whole life had been passed in the most heroic self-abnegation and self sacrifice, the question was now proposed to her whether one more act of self-denial was not required of her, namely, to declare the truth, no matter at what expense to her own feelings.
For this purpose she told me she wished to recount the whole story to a person in whom she had confidence,—a person of another country, and out of the whole sphere of personal and local feelings which might be supposed to influence those in the country and station in life where the events really happened,—in order that I might judge whether anything more was required of her in relation to this history.
The interview had almost the solemnity of a death-bed confession, and Lady Byron told me the history which I have embodied in an article to appear in the "Atlantic Monthly." I have been induced to prepare it by the run which the Guiccioli book is having, which is from first to last an unsparing attack on Lady Byron's memory by Lord Byron's mistress.
When you have read my article, I want, not your advice as to whether the main facts shall be told, for on this point I am so resolved that I frankly say advice would do me no good. But you might help me, with your delicacy and insight, to make the manner of telling more perfect, and I want to do it as wisely and well as such story can be told.
My post-office address after July 1st will be Westport Point, Bristol Co., Mass., care of Mrs. I. M. Soule. The proof-sheets will be sent you by the publisher.
Very truly yours,
H. B. Stowe.
In reply to the storm of controversy aroused by the publication of this article, Mrs. Stowe made a more extended effort to justify the charges which she had brought against Lord Byron, in a work published in 1869, "Lady Byron Vindicated." Immediately after the publication of this work, she mailed a copy to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, accompanied by the following note:—
Boston, May 19, 1869.
Dear Doctor,— . . . In writing this book, which I now take the liberty of sending to you, I have been in . . . a "critical place." It has been a strange, weird sort of experience, and I have had not a word to say to anybody, though often thinking of you and wishing I could have a little of your help and sympathy in getting out what I saw. I think of you very much, and rejoice to see the hold your works get on England as well as this country, and I would give more for your opinion than that of most folks. How often I have pondered your last letter to me, and sent it to many (friends)! God bless you. Please accept for yourself and your good wife, this copy.
From yours truly,
H. B. Stowe.
Mrs. Stowe also published in 1870, through Sampson Low & Son, of London, a volume for English readers, "The History of the Byron Controversy." These additional volumes, however, do not seem to have satisfied the public as a whole, and perhaps the expediency of the publication of Mrs. Stowe's first article is doubtful, even to her most ardent admirers. The most that can be hoped for, through the mention of the subject in this biography, is the vindication of Mrs. Stowe's purity of motive and nobility of intention in bringing this painful matter into notice.