“GROSS CHARGES” DISAVOWED BY LADY BYRON—SEPARATION AGREED TO

How far Byron was candid with his friends it is, of course, impossible to say. We know neither what he told them nor what he left untold. All that is on record is their opinion, reproduced by Hobhouse, that “the whole charge against him would amount merely to such offences as are more often committed than complained of, and, however they might be regretted as subversive of matrimonial felicity, would not render him amenable to the laws of any court, whether of justice or of equity.”

That was either at the end of February or the beginning of March. Early in the latter month Byron and his friends opened further negotiations. Byron once more asked his wife to see him, and she replied: “I regret the necessity of declining an interview under existing circumstances.” Then Lady Melbourne urged her to return to her husband, but only elicited an expression of wonder “that Lord Byron had not more regard for his reputation than to think of coming before the public.” Then Lord Holland, who had already offered his services as a negotiator, submitted to Byron the proposed terms of a deed of separation; but Byron rejected the terms, describing the proposal as “a kind of appeal to the supposed mercenary feelings of the person to whom it was made.”

There next followed interviews between Lady Byron and Mrs. Leigh, and between Lady Byron and Captain Byron. To these intermediaries Lady Byron represented that “something had passed which she had as yet told to no one, and which nothing but the absolute necessity of justifying herself in Court should wring from her.” Whereto Byron replied that “it was absolutely false that he had been guilty of any enormity—that nothing could or would be proved by anybody against him, and that he was prepared for anything that could be said in any Court.” He allowed Hobhouse to offer on his behalf “any guarantees short of separation”; but he made it quite clear that he was not frightened, and would not yield to threats.

Upon that Lady Byron changed her tone. Her next letter did not so much claim a separation as beg for one. “After your repeated assertions,” she wrote, “that, when convinced my conduct has not been influenced by others, you should not oppose my wishes, I am yet disposed to hope these assertions will be realised.” There, at last, was an appeal to which it was possible for Byron to respond—on terms; not on Lady Byron’s terms, of course—but on his own. He had begun the negotiations by declining to “implore as a suppliant the return of a reluctant wife.” Nothing had happened in the course of the negotiations to persuade him that he would live more happily with Lady Byron than without her. Indeed, it was now more evident than ever that to separate was the only way of making the best of a bad job.

Lady Byron.

At the same time it was equally evident that he must stand out for terms. Mud had been thrown; and while there had been no specific charges, there had been dark hints of monstrous crimes. It was necessary, therefore, to insist that Lady Byron should give “a positive disavowal of all the grosser charges” which had been suggested without being positively preferred; and Hobhouse proceeded to continue the negotiations on those lines.

There were, in fact, two “gross” charges to be faced. One of these concerned Mrs. Leigh, and the other did not. On the nature of the latter charge it is quite superfluous to speculate. Whatever it may have been, no evidence was offered in support of it at the time, and no evidence bearing on it has since been brought to light. It was not maintained; it was not revived; it has been forgotten. The rules of controversy not only warrant us in passing it over, but bid us do so. The Byron mystery, wherever it may be, is not there. Though all the “gross” charges had, at the moment, to be dealt with collectively, the only charge which mattered was the charge in which Mrs. Leigh was involved.

Lady Byron, when challenged with the charges, at first equivocated. She was quite willing, she said, to declare that the rumours indicated “had not emanated from her or from her family.” That, naturally, was not good enough for Byron and his friends. What they required was that Lady Byron should state “not only that the rumours did not originate with her or her family, but that the charges which they involved made no part of her charges against Lord Byron.” A statement to that effect was drawn up for her to sign, and she signed it. The signed statement, witnessed by Byron’s cousin, Wilmot Horton, was shown to Hobhouse, and was left in Wilmot Horton’s hands until the settlement should be completed. The Byron mystery, such as it is, or was, only exists—or existed—because Byron and Wilmot Horton fell out, and the latter, withdrawing from the negotiations, mislaid or lost the document.

That Lady Byron did sign the document, however, and that its contents were as stated, no doubt whatever can be entertained. Hobhouse’s subsequent evidence on the subject is supported by the correspondence which passed at the time. He referred to the document, with full particularity, in a letter which he wrote Lady Byron, and which has been published; and Lady Byron, in her answer, did not deny either that she had signed, or that she was bound by its contents. The trouble arose because, after having signed it, she behaved as if she had not done so, and, by her conduct, gave the lie to her pledged word that “neither of the specified charges would have formed part of her allegations if she had come into Court.”

This trouble, however, was not immediate. Lady Byron did not begin to talk till some time afterwards: and at first she only talked to people who had sense enough to keep her secret, if not to rate it at its true value. Not until some years after her death did a foolish woman in whom she had confided publish her story to the world in a book filled from cover to cover with gross and even ludicrous inaccuracies. When that happened, the old scandal which the book revived was mistaken for a new scandal freshly brought to light; and there was a great outcry about “shocking revelations” and much angry beating of the air by violent controversialists on both sides. All that it is necessary to say on that branch of the subject shall be said in a moment. What we have to note now is that Byron did not, and could not, foresee that that particular battle would rage over his reputation.

He admitted to his friends, and he had previously admitted to Lady Byron, that “he had been guilty of infidelity with one female.” He was under the impression that she had given him “a plenary pardon”; but the offence nevertheless gave her a moral—if not also a legal—right to her separation, if she insisted on it. Of the “gross” charges he only knew that they had never been formally pressed, and that they had been formally repudiated. So far as they were concerned, therefore, his honour was perfectly clear; and there remained no reason why he should not append his signature to the proposed deed of separation, as soon as its exact terms were agreed upon. The details still awaiting adjustment were mainly of the financial order. They were adjusted, and then Byron signed.

It may be that he signed the more readily because the rumours had been tracked to another source, and disavowed there also. Lady Caroline Lamb has often been accused of putting them in circulation. She heard, at the time, that she had been so accused, and wrote to Byron to repudiate the charge. “They tell me,” she wrote, “that you have accused me of having spread injurious reports against you. Had you the heart to say this? I do not greatly believe it.” Very possibly the receipt of that letter strengthened Byron’s resolution to sign. At all events he did sign, and then a storm burst about his head:

The former of these passages is from Medwin’s “Conversations”; the latter is written by Byron’s own hand. There is very little to be added to the picture which they draw. Byron discovered that, for a man of his notoriety, there was no such thing as private life. His business was assumed to be everybody’s business. In his case, just as in the Dreyfus case, at a later date, all the world took a side, and those who knew least of the rights of the case were the most vehement in their indignation.Broadly speaking one may say that his friends were for him but his acquaintances were against him, and the mob took the part of his acquaintances. Hobhouse, Hodgson, Moore, Rogers, Leigh Hunt, and Scrope Davies never faltered in their allegiance. On the other hand, many social leaders cut him; the journalists showered abuse on him as spitefully as if they felt that they had “failed in literature” through his fault; the religious seized the opportunity to punish him for what they considered the immoral tone of his writings; the pit and gallery at Drury Lane classed him with the villain of the melodrama who presumes to lay his hand upon a woman otherwise than in the way of kindness. It was a combination as irresistible as it was unforeseen, and he had to yield to it.

Lady Jersey, as he told Medwin, did her best for him. He and Mrs. Leigh were both present at a reception specially given in his honour—a demonstration that one social leader at least attached no importance and gave no credence to the scandals which besmeared his name. Miss Mercer, afterwards Madame de Flahault and, in her own right, Lady Keith, made a point of greeting him with frank cordiality as if nothing had happened. Probably the specific scandal which Lady Byron had been compelled to disavow was never taken very seriously outside Lady Byron’s immediate circle. Certainly it was not the scandal which aroused the indignation of the multitude. For them, the causa teterrima belli was Mrs. Mardyn, the actress, whom Byron hardly knew by sight; and the gravamen of their charge against him was that he had treated a woman badly.

That was enough for them; and their indignation was too much for him. Now that the deed of separation had been signed, it was too late for him to fight. The “grosser charges” against him were charges of which he could not prove publication—charges which had been withdrawn. Sneers and innuendoes did not, any more than hoots and hisses, furnish him with any definite allegation on which he could join issue. The whispered charge involving his sister was not one which he could formally contradict unless it were formally preferred. Qui s’excuse s’accuse would have been quoted against him if he had done so; and Mrs. Leigh’s good name as well as his own would have been at the mercy of the mud-slingers. All things considered, it seemed that the best course open to him was to travel, and let the hostile rumours die away, instead of keeping them alive by argument.

He went, and they died away and were forgotten. We will follow him to the continent presently, and see how nearly persecution drove him to degradation, and how, under the influence of the blow which threatened to crush him, his genius took fresh flights, more hardy than of old, and more sublime. But first we must turn back, and face the scandal in the form in which Mrs. Beecher Stowe and Lord Lovelace have successively given it two fresh leases of life, and see whether it is not possible to blow it into the air so effectively that no admirer of Byron’s genius need ever feel uneasy about it again.