The motto chosen by Byron for ‘The Giaour’ is in itself suggestive:
‘One fatal remembrance—one sorrow that throws
Its bleak shade alike o’er our Joys and our Woes—
To which Life nothing darker nor brighter can bring,
For which Joy hath no balm—and affliction no sting.’
On October 10, 1813, Byron arrived at Newstead, where he stayed for a month. Mary Chaworth was at Annesley during that time. On his return to town he wrote (November 8) to his sister:
‘My dearest Augusta,
‘I have only time to say that my long silence has been occasioned by a thousand things (with which you are not concerned). It is not Lady Caroline, nor Lady Oxford; but perhaps you may guess, and if you do, do not tell. You do not know what mischief your being with me might have prevented. You shall hear from me to-morrow; in the meantime don’t be alarmed. I am in no immediate peril.
‘Believe me, ever yours,
‘B.’
On November 30 Byron wrote to Moore:
‘We were once very near neighbours this autumn;[40] and a good and bad neighbourhood it has proved to me. Suffice it to say that your French quotation (Si je récommençais ma carrière, je ferais tout ce que j’ai fait) was confoundedly to the purpose,—though very unexpectedly pertinent, as you may imagine by what I said before, and my silence since. However, “Richard’s himself again,” and, except all night and some part of the morning, I don’t think very much about the matter. All convulsions end with me in rhyme; and to solace my midnights I have scribbled another Turkish story [‘The Bride of Abydos’] which you will receive soon after this.... I have written this, and published it, for the sake of employment—to wring my thoughts from reality, and take refuge in “imaginings,” however “horrible.”... This is the work of a week....’
In order the more effectually to dispose of the theory that Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster was the cause of Byron’s disquietude, we insert an extract from his journal, dated a fortnight earlier (November 14, 1813):
‘Last night I finished “Zuleika” [the name was afterwards changed to ‘The Bride of Abydos’], my second Turkish tale. I believe the composition of it kept me alive—for it was written to drive my thoughts from the recollection of * * * * “Dear sacred name, rest ever unrevealed.” At least, even here, my hand would tremble to write it.... I have some idea of expectorating a romance, but what romance could equal the events