It is of course true that matters were not, and could never again be, on the same footing as in July of that year; but Mary Chaworth was constancy itself, in a higher and a nobler sense than Byron attached to it, when he reproached her for broken vows.
‘Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.’
During the remainder of Byron’s life, Mary took a deep interest in everything that affected him. In 1814, believing that marriage would be his salvation, she used her influence in that direction. We know that she did not approve of the choice which Byron so recklessly made, and she certainly had ample cause to deplore its results. Through her close intimacy with Augusta Leigh—an intimacy which has not hitherto been suspected—she became acquainted with every phase in Byron’s subsequent career. She could read ‘between the lines,’ and solve the mysteries to be found in such poems as ‘Lara,’ ‘Mazeppa,’ ‘Manfred,’ and ‘Don Juan.’
We believe that Byron’s love for Mary was the main cause of the indifference he felt towards his wife. In order to shield Mary from the possible consequences of a public investigation into conduct prior to his marriage, Byron, in 1816, consented to a separation from his wife.
After Byron had left England Mary broke down under the strain she had borne so bravely, and her mind gave way. When at last, in April, 1817, a reconciliation took place between Mary and her husband, it was apparent to everyone that she had, during those four anxious years, become a changed woman. She never entirely regained either health or spirits. Her mind ‘had acquired a tinge of religious melancholy, which never afterwards left it.’ Sorrow and disappointment had subdued a naturally buoyant nature, and ‘melancholy marked her for its own.’ Shortly before her death, in 1832, she destroyed every letter she had received from Byron since those distant fateful years when, as boy and girl, they had wandered on the Hills of Annesley. For eight sad years Mary Chaworth survived the lover of her youth. Shortly before her death, in a letter to one of her daughters, she drew her own character which might fitly form her epitaph: ‘Soon led, easily pleased, very hasty, and very relenting, with a heart moulded in a warm and affectionate fashion.’
Such was the woman who, though parted by fate, maintained through sunshine and storm an ascendancy over the heart of Byron which neither time nor absence could impair, and which endured to the end of his earthly existence. We may well believe that those inarticulate words which the dying poet murmured to the bewildered Fletcher—those broken sentences which ended with, ‘Tell her everything; you are friends with her’—may have referred, not to Lady Byron, as policy suggested, but to Mary Chaworth, with whom Fletcher had been acquainted since his youth.
We have incontestable proof that, only two months before he died, Byron’s thoughts were occupied with one whom he had named ‘the starlight of his boyhood.’ How deeply Byron thought about Mary Chaworth at the last is proved by the poem which was found among his papers at Missolonghi. In six stanzas the poet revealed the story that he would fain have hidden. A note in his handwriting states that they were addressed ‘to no one in particular,’ and that they were merely ‘a poetical scherzo.’ There is, however, no room for doubt that the poem bears a deep significance.
I.
‘I watched thee when the foe was at our side,
Ready to strike at him—or thee and me
Were safety hopeless—rather than divide
Aught with one loved, save love and liberty.’
We have here a glimpse of that turbulent scene when Mary’s husband, in a fit of jealousy, put an end to their dangerous intimacy.
II.
‘I watched thee on the breakers, when the rock
Received our prow, and all was storm and fear,
And bade thee cling to me through every shock;
This arm would be thy bark, or breast thy bier.’