‘A material resurrection seems strange, and even absurd, except for purposes of punishment, and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally wrong.’
It is therefore tolerably certain that, on the day when he expressed a hope that he might meet his lady-love again, the meeting was to have been in this world, and not in that ‘land of souls beyond the sable shore.’ It must also be remembered that the eighth stanza in the second canto of ‘Childe Harold’ was substituted for one in which Byron deliberately stated that he did not look for Life, where life may never be. The revise was written to please Dallas, and does not pretend to be a confession of belief in immortality, but merely an admission that, on a subject where ‘nothing can be known,’ no final decision is possible.
In the summer of 1813 Byron underwent grave vicissitudes, mental, moral, and financial. His letters and journals teem with allusions to some catastrophe. It seemed as though he were threatened with impending ruin. In his depressed state of mind he found relief only, as he tells us, in the composition of poetry. It was at this time that he wrote in swift succession ‘The Giaour,’ ‘The Bride of Abydos,’ and ‘The Corsair.’ It is clear that Byron’s dejection was the result of a hopeless attachment. Mr. Hartley Coleridge assumes that Byron’s innamorata was Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster. But that bright star did not long shine in Byron’s orbit—certainly not after October, 1813—and it is doubtful whether they were ever on terms of close intimacy. Her husband had long been Byron’s friend. Byron had lent him money, and had given him advice, which he seems to have sorely needed. It is difficult to understand why Lady Frances Webster should have been especially regarded as Byron’s Calypso. There is nothing to show that she ever seriously occupied his thoughts. Writing to Moore on September 27, 1813, Byron says:
‘I stayed a week with the Websters, and behaved very well, though the lady of the house is young, religious, and pretty, and the master is my particular friend. I felt no wish for anything but a poodle dog, which they kindly gave me.’
So little does Byron seem to have been attracted by Lady Frances, that he only once more visited the Websters, and then only for a few days, on his way to Newstead, between October 3 and 10, 1813.
On June 3 of that year Byron wrote to Mr. John Hanson, his solicitor, a letter which shows the state of his mind at that time. He tells Hanson that he is about to visit Salt Hill, near Maidenhead, and that he will be absent for one week. He is determined to go abroad. The prospective lawsuit with Mr. Claughton (about the sale of Newstead) is to be dropped, if it cannot be carried on in Byron’s absence. At all hazards, at all losses, he is determined that nothing shall prevent him from leaving the country.
‘If utter ruin were or is before me on the one hand, and wealth at home on the other, I have made my choice, and go I will.’
The pictures, and every movable that could be converted into cash, were, by Byron’s orders, to be sold. ‘All I want is a few thousand pounds, and then, Adieu. You shan’t be troubled with me these ten years, if ever.’ Clearly, there must have been something more than a passing fancy which could have induced Byron to sacrifice his chances of selling Newstead, for the sake of a few thousand pounds of ready-money. It had been his intention to accompany Lord and Lady Oxford on their travels, but this project was abandoned. After three weeks—spent in running backwards and forwards between Salt Hill and London—Byron confided his troubles to Augusta. She was always his rock of refuge in all his deeper troubles. Augusta Leigh thought that absence might mend matters, and tried hard to keep her brother up to his resolve of going abroad; she even volunteered to accompany him. But Lady Melbourne—who must have had a prurient mind—persuaded Byron that the gossips about town would not consider it ‘proper’ for him and his sister to travel alone! As Byron was at that time under the influence of an irresistible infatuation, Lady Melbourne’s warning turned the scale, and the project fell through. Meanwhile the plot thickened. Something—he told Moore—had ruined all his prospects of matrimony. His financial circumstances, he said, were mending; ‘and were not my other prospects blackening, I would take a wife.’
In July he still wishes to get out of England. ‘They had better let me go,’ he says; ‘one can die anywhere.’
On August 22, after another visit to Salt Hill, Byron writes to Moore: