"Bon jour, Monsieur!"
* * * * *
About half an hour after this, I had occasion to traverse one of the corridors of Barnan's Hotel, when I saw a group of gentlemen, most of whom sported "Atlantic Cable Charms" on their watchchains, gathered about a person who had secured their rapt attention to some story he was narrating.
"Eh, bien, Messieurs!" I heard him say, in a peculiar naïve broken English, "it would be yet seven days before I could get ze news,—and—I wait. Oui! calm_lie_, composed_lie_, with insouciance beyond guess, I wait"—
"I wonder," said I to myself, as I passed on, "I wonder if M. César
Prévost's account of his remarkable invention of the First Atlantic
Telegraph have not some subtile connection with his desire to find as
speedy and remunerative a sale as possible for his pretty baskets!"
LADY BYRON.
It is seldom that a woman becomes the world's talk but by some great merit or fault of her own, or some rare qualification so bestowed by Nature as to be incapable of being hidden. Great genius, rare beauty, a fitness for noble enterprise, the venturous madness of passion, account for ninety-nine cases in the hundred of a woman becoming the subject of general conversation and interest. Lady Byron's was the hundredth case. There was a time when it is probable that she was spoken of every day in every house in England where the family could read; and for years the general anxiety to hear anything that could be told of her was almost as striking in Continental society and in the United States as in her own country. Yet she had neither genius, nor conspicuous beauty, nor "a mission," nor any quality of egotism which could induce her to brave the observation of the world for any personal aim. She had good abilities, well cultivated for the time when she was young; she was rather pretty, and her countenance was engaging from its expression of mingled thoughtfulness and brightness; she was as lady-like as became her birth and training; and her strength of character was so tempered with modesty and good taste that she was about the last woman that could have been supposed likely to become celebrated in any way, or, yet more, to be passionately disputed about and censured, in regard to her temper and manners: yet such was her lot. No breath of suspicion ever dimmed her good repute, in the ordinary sense of the expression: but to this day she is misapprehended, wherever her husband's genius is adored; and she is charged with precisely the faults which it was most impossible for her to commit. For the original notoriety she was not answerable; but for the protracted misapprehension of her character she was. She early decided that it was not necessary or desirable to call the world into council on her domestic affairs; her husband's doing it was no reason why she should; and for nearly forty years she preserved a silence, neither haughty nor sullen, but merely natural, on matters in which women usually consider silence appropriate. She never inquired what effect this silence had on public opinion in regard to her, nor countenanced the idea that public opinion bore any relation whatever to her private affairs and domestic conduct. Such independence and such reticence naturally quicken the interest and curiosity of survivors; and they also stimulate those who knew her as she was to explain her characteristics to as many as wish to understand them, after disputing about them for the lifetime of a whole generation.
Anne Isabella Noel Milbanke (that was her maiden name) was an only child. Her father, Sir Ralph Milbanke, was the sixth baronet of that name. Her mother was a Noel, daughter of Viscount and Baron Wentworth, and remotely descended from royalty,—that is, from the youngest son of Edward I. After the death of Lady Milbanke's father and brother, the Barony of Wentworth was in abeyance between the daughter of Lady Milbanke and the son of her sister till 1856, when, by the death of that cousin, Lord Scarsdale, Lady Byron became possessed of the inheritance and title. During her childhood and youth, however, her parents were not wealthy; and it was understood that Miss Milbanke would have no fortune till the death of her parents, though her expectations were great. Though this want of immediate fortune did not prove true, the report of it was probably advantageous to the young girl, who was sought for other things than her fortune. When Lord Byron thought of proposing, the friend who had brought him to the point of submitting to marriage objected to Miss Milbanke on two grounds,—that she had no fortune, and that she was a learned lady. The gentleman was as wrong in his facts as mischievous in his advice to the poet to many. Miss Milbanke had fortune, and she was not a learned lady. Such men as the two who held a consultation on the points, whether a man entangled in intrigues and overwhelmed with debts should release himself by involving a trusting girl in his difficulties, and whether the girl should be Miss Milbanke or another, were not likely to distinguish between the cultivated ability of a sensible girl and the pedantry of a blue-stocking; and hence, because Miss Milbanke was neither ignorant nor silly, she was called a learned lady by Lord Byron's associates. He bore testimony, in due time, to her agreeable qualities as a companion,—her brightness, her genial nature, her quiet good sense; and we heard no more of her "learning" and "mathematics," till it suited her enemies to get up a theory of incompatibility of temper between her and her husband. The fact was, she was well-educated, as education was then, and had the acquirements which are common in every house among the educated classes of English society.
She was born in 1792, and passed her early years chiefly on her father's estates of Halnaby, near Darlington, Yorkshire, and Seaham, in Durham. She retained a happy recollection of her childhood and youth, if one may judge by her attachment to the old homes, when she had lost the power of attaching herself, in later life, to any permanent home. When an offer of service was made to her, some years since, by a person residing on the Northumberland coast, the service she asked was that a pebble might be sent her from the beach at Seaham, to be made into a brooch, and worn for love of the old place.
Her father, as a Yorkshire baronet, spent his money freely. A good deal of it went in election-expenses, and the hospitality of the house was great. It was too orderly and sober and old-fashioned for Lord Byron's taste, and he quizzed it accordingly; but he admitted the kindliness of it, and the amiability which made guests glad to go there and sorry to come away. His special records of Miss Milbanke's good-humor, spirit, and pleasantness indicate the source of subsequent misrepresentations of her. Till he saw it, he could not conceive that order and dutifulness could coexist with liveliness and great charms of mind and manners; and when the fact was out of sight, he went back to his old notion, that affectionate parents and dutiful daughters must be dull, prudish, and tiresome.