Byron: The Last Phase

by Richard Edgcumbe

Byron tells his wife that if she really knew the truth, if every inmost thought of his breast were bared before her, she would not have forsaken him.

That is true. Lady Byron might, in time, have forgiven everything if the doctors had been able to declare that her husband was not wholly accountable for his actions. But when they pronounced him to be of sound mind, and, as will be seen presently, she subsequently convinced herself that he had committed, and might even then be committing adultery with his sister under her own roof, she resolved never again to place herself in his power. If, in the early stages of disagreement, without betraying Mary Chaworth, it could have been avowed that Mrs. Leigh was not the mother of Medora, Lady Byron might not have seen in her husband’s strange conduct towards herself ‘signs of a deep remorse.’ She would certainly have been far more patient under suffering, and the separation might have been avoided. But this avowal was impracticable. Augusta had committed herself too far for that, and the idle gossip of her servants subsequently convinced Lady Byron that Byron was the father of Augusta’s child. It is clear that neither Augusta nor Byron made any attempts to remove those suspicions; in fact, they acted in a manner most certain to confirm them. Whether the secret, which they had pledged themselves to keep, could long have been withheld from Lady Byron, if matters had been patched up, is doubtful. Meanwhile, as everything depended on premat nox alta, they dared not risk even a partial avowal of the truth.

The separation was inevitable, and in this case it was eternal. It is hard to believe that there had ever been any real love on either side. Under these circumstances we feel sure that any attempts at reconciliation would have ended disastrously for both. Byron’s love for Mary Chaworth was strong as death. Many waters could not have quenched it, ‘neither could the floods drown it.’

The last verses written by Byron before he left England for ever were addressed to his sister. The deed of separation had been signed, and Augusta Leigh, who had stood at his side in those dark hours when all the world had forsaken him, was about to leave London.

‘When all around grew drear and dark,
And Reason half withheld her ray—
And Hope but shed a dying spark
Which more misled my lonely way;
When Fortune changed, and Love fled far,
And Hatred’s shafts flew thick and fast,
Thou wert the solitary star
Which rose, and set not to the last.
And when the cloud upon us came
Which strove to blacken o’er thy ray—
Then purer spread its gentle flame
And dashed the darkness all away.
Still may thy Spirit dwell on mine,
And teach it what to brave or brook—
There’s more in one soft word of thine
Than in the world’s defied rebuke.
******
Then let the ties of baffled love
Be broken—thine will never break;
Thy heart can feel.’

These ingenuous words show that Byron’s affection for his sister, and his gratitude for her loyalty, were both deep and sincere. If, as Lord Lovelace asserts, Byron had been her lover, we know enough of his character to be certain that he would never have written these lines. He was not a hypocrite—far from it—and it was foreign to his naturally combative nature to attempt to conciliate public opinion. These lines were written currente calamo, and are only interesting to us on account of the light they cast upon the situation at the time of the separation. Evidently Byron had heard a rumour of the baseless charge that was afterwards openly made. He reminds Augusta that a cloud threatened to darken her existence, but the bright rays of her purity dispelled it. He hopes that even in absence she will guide and direct him as in the past; and he compliments her by saying that one word from her had more influence over him than the whole world’s censure. Although his love-episode with Mary was over, yet so long as Augusta loves him he will still have something to live for, as she alone can feel for him and understand his position.

In speaking of his sister, in the third canto of ‘Childe Harold,’ he says:

‘For there was soft Remembrance, and sweet Trust
In one fond breast, to which his own would melt.’
‘And he had learned to love—I know not why,
For this in such as him seems strange of mood—
The helpless looks of blooming Infancy,
Even in its earliest nurture; what subdued,
To change like this, a mind so far imbued
With scorn of man, it little boots to know;
But thus it was; and though in solitude
Small power the nipped affections have to grow,
In him this glowed when all beside had ceased to glow.’

If these words bear any significance, Byron must mean that, since the preceding canto of ‘Childe Harold’ was written, he had formed (learned to love) a strong attachment to some child, and, in spite of absence, this affection still glowed. That child may possibly have been Ada, as the opening lines seem to suggest. But this is not quite certain. According to Lord Lovelace, Byron never saw his child after January 3, 1816, when the babe was only twenty-four days old. Byron himself states that it was not granted to him ‘to watch her dawn of little joys, or hold her lightly on his knee, and print on her soft cheek a parent’s kiss.’ All this, he tells us, ‘was in his nature,’ but was denied to him. His sole consolation was the hope that some day Ada would learn to love him. On the other hand, the child mentioned in ‘Childe Harold’ had won his love by means which ‘it little boots to know.’ If Byron had alluded to his daughter Ada, there need have been no ambiguity. Possibly the child here indicated may have been little Medora, then three years old, with whom he had often played, and who was then living with that sister of ‘Soft Remembrance and sweet Trust.’

If that conjecture be correct, this is the only allusion to Medora in Byron’s poetry. But she is indicated in prose. In reference to the death of one of Moore’s children, Byron wrote (February 2, 1818):