By means of the only publication ever made or authorized by Lady Byron on the subject of her domestic life, her vindication of her parents, contained in the Appendix of Moore's "Life" of the poet, we know, that, during her confinement, Lord Byron's nearest relatives were alarmed by tokens of eccentricity so marked, that they informed her, as soon as she was recovered, that they believed him insane. His confidential servant bore the same testimony; and she naturally believed it, when she resumed her place in the household, and saw how he was going on. On the sixth of January, the day after he wrote the "Heigho!" to Moore, he desired his wife, in writing, to go to her parents on the first day that it was possible for her to travel. Her physicians would not let her go earlier than the fifteenth; and on that day she went. She never saw her husband again.
She had, in agreement with his family, consulted Dr. Baillie on her husband's behalf; and he, supposing the insanity to be real, advised, before seeing Lord Byron, that she should obey his wish about absenting herself, as an experiment,—and that, in the interval, she should converse only on light and cheerful topics. She observed these directions, and, in the spirit of them, wrote two letters, on the journey, which bore no marks of the trouble which existed between them. These letters were afterwards used, even circulated, to create a belief that Lady Byron had been suddenly persuaded to desert her husband, though he at least was well aware that the fact was not so. It soon appeared that he was not insane. Such was the decision of physicians, relatives, and presently of Lady Byron herself. While there was any room for supposing disease to be the cause of his conduct, she and her parents were anxious to use all tenderness with him, and devote themselves to his welfare; but when it became necessary to consider him sane, his wife declared that she could not return to him.
It is not necessary to dwell on the imputations Lord Byron spread abroad at the time, and his biographer afterwards, against the parents of his wife, and everybody belonging to them who could be supposed to have the slightest influence over Lady Byron's views or feelings. Those allegations were publicly shown by her to be false, nearly thirty years ago. I refer to them now solely because they were the occasion of the only public disclosure Lady Byron ever voluntarily made on any part of the subject of her married life. It is needless to exhibit how different in this respect was the conduct of her husband and his friends.
It became known by that statement, after some years, that, when Lady Noel went to London, to see what could and ought to be done, she obtained good legal opinions on the case, so far as she knew it. Those opinions declared Lady Byron fully justified in refusing to rejoin her husband. The parents, however, never knew the whole; and it was on yet more substantial grounds that Lady Byron formed her resolution. The facts were submitted, as the world has since known, as an A.B. case, to Dr. Lushington and Sir Samuel Romilly; and those able lawyers and good men peremptorily decided, that the wife, whoever she might be, must never see her husband again. When they learned whose case it was, they not only gave their full sanction to her refusal to return, but declared that they would never countenance in any way a change in that resolution. Dr. Lushington's statement to this effect appears in the Appendix to Moore's "Life," as a part of Lady Byron's vindication of her parents.
It was very hard on her to be compelled to speak at all. For six years she had kept silence utterly, bearing all imputations without reply. But when it was brought to her notice that her parents were charged with the gravest offences by her husband's biographer, after the death of both, and when no other near relative was in existence, she had no choice. She must exonerate them. The testimony was, as she said, "extorted" from her. The respect which had been felt for her during the first years of silence was not impaired by this disclosure; but it was by one which occurred a few years later. A statement on her domestic affairs was published, in her name, in a magazine of large circulation.[A] It did not really explain anything, while it seemed to break through a dignified reserve which had won a high degree of general esteem. It was believed that feminine weakness had prevailed at last; and her reputation suffered accordingly with many who had till then regarded her with favor and even reverence.
[Footnote A: New Monthly Magazine, 1836.]
This was the climax of the hardship of her case. She had no concern whatever with this act of publication. It was one of poor Campbell's disastrous pranks. He could not conceive how he could have done such a thing, and was desperately sorry; but there was little good in that. The mischief was done which could never be thoroughly repaired. She once more suffered in silence; for she was not weak enough to complain of irremediable evils. Nine years afterwards she wrote to a friend, who had been no less unjustifiably betrayed,—"I am grieved for you, as regards the actual position; but it will come right. I was myself made to appear responsible for a publication by Campbell, most unfairly, some years ago; so that, if I had not imagination enough to enter into your case, experience would have taught me to do so."
Those who are old enough to remember the year 1816 will easily recall the fluctuations of opinion which took place as to the merits of the husband and the wife, whose separation was as interesting to ten thousand households as any family event of their own. Then, and for a few years after, was Lady Byron the world's talk,—innocently, most reluctantly, and unavoidably.
At first, while her influence left its impression on his mind, Lord Byron did her some sort of justice,—fitful and partial, but very precious to her then, no doubt,—and almost as precious now to the friends who understood her. It was not till he was convinced that she would never return, not till he began to quail under the world's ill opinion, and especially, not till he felt secure that he might rely on his wife's fidelity and mercy, her silence and magnanimity, that he changed his tone to one of aspersion and contempt, and his mode of attack to that of charming, amusing, or inflaming the public with verses against her and her friends. We have his own testimony to her domestic merits in the interval between the parting and his lapse into a state of malignant feeling. In March, 1816, within two months after her leaving him, Byron wrote thus to Moore:—
"I must set you right in one point, however. The fault was not—no, nor even the misfortune—in my 'choice' (unless in choosing at all); for I do not believe—and I must say it, in the very dregs of all this bitter business—that there ever was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder, or a more amiable and agreeable being than Lady B. I never had, nor can have, any reproach to make her, while with me. Where there is blame, it belongs to myself; and, if I cannot redeem, I must bear it."