Francis Henry Gribble

INCOMPATIBILITY OF TEMPER

A thick accretion of legend has gathered round Byron’s life alike as an engaged and as a married man. Every biographer, whether friendly or hostile, has added fresh anecdotes to the heap. Almost all the stories are coloured by prejudice. Even when they seem to be derived from the same source, they are often mutually contradictory; so that it is, as a rule, a hopeless task to try to distinguish between fact and fiction, or do more than disengage a general impression of discordant temperaments progressing from incompatibility to open war.

Even the period of the engagement is reported not to have been of unclouded happiness. A son of Sir Ralph Milbanke’s Steward at Seaham has furnished recollections to that effect. “While Byron was at Seaham,” says this witness, “he spent most of his time pistol-shooting in the plantation”—a strangely moody occupation for an affianced man; and he adds that, on the wedding morning, when all was prepared for the ceremony, “Byron had to be sought for in the grounds where he was walking in his usual surly mood.” Mrs. Beecher Stowe tells us that Miss Milbanke, observing that her lover did not rejoice sufficiently in his good fortune, offered to release him from his promise—whereupon he “fainted entirely away,” and so convinced her, for the moment, of the sincerity of his affection.

Similar stories, equally well attested and equally unconvincing, cluster round the departure of the married couple for Halnaby where they spent their honeymoon. Lady Byron told Lady Anne Barnard that the carriage had no sooner driven away from the door of the mansion than her husband turned upon her with “a malignant sneer” and derided her for cherishing the “wild hope” of “reforming him,” saying: “Many are the tears you will have to shed ere that plan is accomplished. It is enough for me that you are my wife for me to hate you.” The Steward’s son, giving an alternative version of the story, declares that “insulting words” were spoken before leaving the park—“after which he appeared to sit in moody silence, reading a book for the rest of the journey.” Byron’s own account of the incident, as given to Medwin, was as follows:

“I was surprised at the arrangements for the journey, and somewhat out of humour to find a lady’s maid stuck between me and my bride. It was rather too early to assume the husband; so I was forced to submit, but it was not with a very good grace. Put yourself in a similar situation, and tell me if I had not some reason to be in the sulks.”

These three stories, it is clear, cannot all be true; and none of them can either be proved or disproved, though the last was contradicted by Hobhouse who said that he had inspected the carriage and found no maid in it. Similarly with the stories which follow. According to the Steward’s son, Sir Ralph Milbanke’s tenants assembled to cheer Byron on his arrival at Halnaby—but “of these he took not the slightest notice, but jumped out of the carriage and walked away, leaving his bride to alight by herself.” There is also a story told by another authority, who cannot, however, have been an eye-witness, to the effect that Byron, awaking from his slumbers on his nuptial night, exclaimed, in his surprise at his strange surroundings, that he supposed he was in Hell.

All these stories, of course, are exceedingly shocking, if true; but there are no means of ascertaining whether they are true. Nothing can be positively affirmed except that the beginnings were inauspicious, and must have seemed the more inauspicious to Lady Byron because of that fond belief of hers, that her rejection of Byron in 1812 had caused him two years’ mental agony, now at last to be happily removed by her condescending tenderness. A vast amount of tact—a vast amount of give-and-take—would have been needed to make a success of a marriage concluded under that misapprehension; and Lord and Lady Byron were both of an age at which tact is, as a rule, a virtue only known by name.

Of Byron’s tact we have an example in the famous dialogue: “Do I interrupt you, Byron?”... “Damnably.” Of Lady Byron’s tact we shall discover an instance at the crisis of her married life. In the meantime we must note that they made up their first quarrel—which may very well have been less serious at the time than it appeared to be in retrospect—and, at any rate, kept up appearances sufficiently well to deceive their closest friends. From Halnaby they returned to Seaham, where nothing happened except that Byron discovered his father-in-law to be a bore, addicted to dreary political monologuising over wine and walnuts. They next visited Mrs. Leigh at Six Mile Bottom, and then they proceeded to 13 Piccadilly Terrace—that unluckily numbered house, hired from the Duchess of Devonshire, in which many catastrophes were to occur, and a distress was presently to be levied for non-payment of the rent.

Mrs. Leigh, it will be observed, was pleasantly surprised to observe that the marriage seemed to be turning out well. She had the more reason to be surprised because she shared none of Lady Byron’s illusions as to the part which she had played, for the past two years, in Byron’s emotional and imaginative life. She was in her brother’s confidence, and knew all about Lady Caroline Lamb, all about Lady Oxford, and—more particularly—all about Mary Chaworth. Consequently she had had her apprehensions, which she confided to Byron’s friend Hodgson. A few extracts from her letters to Hodgson will bring this point out, and show us how the marriage looked from her point of view. On February 15, 1815, she wrote:

“It appears to me that Lady Byron sets about making him happy in quite the right way. It is true I judge at a distance, and we generally hope as we wish; but I assure you I don’t conclude hastily on this subject, and will own to you, what I would not scarcely to any other person, that I had many fears and much anxiety founded upon many causes and circumstances of which I cannot write. Thank God! that they do not appear likely to be realised.”

On March 18, 1815: “Byron is looking remarkably well, and of Lady B. I hardly know how to write, for I have a sad trick of being struck dumb when I am most happy and pleased. The expectations I had formed could not be exceeded, but at least they are fully answered.

“I think I never saw or heard of a more perfect being in mortal mould than she appears to be, and scarcely dared flatter myself such a one would fall to the lot of my dear B. He seems quite sensible of her value.”

On March 31, 1815: “Byron and Lady B. left me on Tuesday for London.... The more I see of her the more I love and esteem her, and feel how grateful I am, and ought to be, for the blessing of such a wife for my dear, darling Byron.”

On September 4, 1815: “My brother has just left me, having been here since last Wednesday, when he arrived very unexpectedly. I never saw him so well, and he is in the best spirits.”

This is evidence not extorted by questions but spontaneously volunteered. If it proves nothing else, at least it proves that appearances were kept up, and that Augusta was deceived. But appearances, none the less, gave a false impression; and there were other friends, more keen sighted than Augusta, who saw through them. Hobhouse, in particular, did so. He too had had his anxieties, and had been watching; and the notes in his Diary—some of them contemporaneous with, but others subsequent to, Augusta’s letters—are not unlike the rumblings of a coming thunderstorm.

On March 25, 1815: “I went to bed out of spirits from indeterminate but chiefly low apprehensions about Byron.”

On April 1, 1815: “He advises me ‘not to marry,’ though he has the best of wives.”

On April 2, 1815: “Lady Oxford walks about Naples with Byron’s picture on her girdle in front.”On July 31, 1815: “Byron is not more happy than before marriage. D. Kinnaird is also melancholy. This is the state of man.”

On August 4, 1815: “Lord Byron tells me he and she have begun a little snubbing on money matters. ‘Marry not,’ says he.”

On August 8, 1815: “Dined with Byron, &c. All grumbled at life.”

On November 25, 1815: “Called on Byron. In that quarter things do not go well. Strong advice against marriage. Talking of going abroad.”

There is nothing specific there; and when we set out to look for something specific, we only run up against gossip of doubtful authenticity. “Do I interrupt you?”... “Damnably,” may be assumed to be authentic since Byron himself has admitted the repartee. It was rude and reprehensible, though it was probably provoked. The charges which young Harness, now in Holy Orders, heard preferred by some of Lady Byron’s friends are rightly described by him as “nonsensical”; but we may as well have them before us in order to judge of the propriety of the epithet:

“The poor lady had never had a comfortable meal since their marriage. Her husband had no fixed hour for breakfast, and was always too late for dinner.“At his express desire she had invited two elderly ladies to meet them in her opera-box. Nothing could be more courteous than his manner to them while they remained; but no sooner had they gone than he began to annoy his wife by venting his ill-humour, in a strain of bitterest satire, against the dress and manners of her friends.”

“Poor Lady Byron was afraid of her life. Her husband slept with loaded pistols by his bed-side, and a dagger under his pillow.”

“Nonsensical” is decidedly the word for these allegations. The incidents, even if true, could only be symptoms, not causes, of the disagreement. Harness, perceiving that, seeks the true explanation of the estrangement in the disposition of Lady Byron, whom he had known as a girl. She “gave one the idea of being self-willed and self-opinionated.” She “carried no cheerfulness along with her.” The majority of her acquaintances “looked upon her as a reserved and frigid sort of being whom one would rather cross the room to avoid than be brought into conversation with unnecessarily.” A common acquaintance remarked to Harness: “If Lady Byron has a heart, it is deeper seated and harder to get at than anybody else’s heart whom I have ever known.”

Et cetera. So far as we can judge Lady Byron by the letters in which she subsequently announced, without formulating, her grievances, the verdict seems a just one. She might be pictured, in the words of the author of “Ionica” as one who

“Smiles at all that’s coarse and rash,
Yet wins the trophies of the fight,
Unscathed in honour’s wreck and crash,
Heartless, yet always in the right.”

Or rather one begins so to picture her—and is even justified in so picturing her at the beginning—though presently, when one sees how unfairly she fought in the great fight which ensued, one changes one’s mind about her, withdraws such sympathy as one has allowed to go out to her, and thinks of her husband when one comes to the final couplet of the poem:

“And I, dear passionate Teucer, dare
Go through the homeless world with you.”

Yet Lady Byron had her grievances, and though they were quite different from those which Harness has reported, they were not light ones. Two grievances in particular must have been very trying to the temper of a young bride who had been an only and spoiled child. In the first place, and almost at once, there was trouble about money. In the second place, and very soon, there was trouble about “the women of the theatre.”

Byron, at the time of his marriage, was heavily in debt. His one idea of economy had always been to obtain credit instead of paying cash; and such cash as he had the handling of quickly slipped through his fingers. He never denied himself a luxury, and seldom refused a request for a loan. He had helped Augusta; he had helped Hodgson; he had helped Coleridge. Now he found his expenses increased out of all proportion to the increase of his income; while his creditors, assuming that his wife had a fortune, proceeded to press for the settlement of their accounts. Hence that “snubbing on money matters” to which we have seen Hobhouse referring; and the word “snubbing” may well have been a euphemism for more severe remonstrance when executions began to be levied. There were no fewer than ten executions in the house in the course of a few months; and one can understand that the experience was unfavourable to the temper of a young wife coming from a well-ordered home in which precise middle-class notions on such subjects had prevailed.

The simultaneous trouble about women, of course, made matters worse. Whether there was trouble about Mary Chaworth or not is uncertain; but, at any rate, Lady Byron met her and appears to have felt the pangs of jealousy. “Such a wicked looking cat I never saw. Somebody else looked quite virtuous by the side of her,” was her commentary to Augusta; and, if she spoke of Mary Chaworth as a cat, we need not suppose her to have been any more complimentary in her references to those actresses whose acquaintance she knew her husband to be making.

He had become, at this time, together with Lord Essex, George Lamb, Douglas Kinnaird, and Peter Moore, a member of the Sub-Committee of Management of Drury Lane Theatre. It does not appear that the Sub-Committee did a great deal except waste the time of the actual managers; but it is not to be supposed that they were altogether neglectful of the amenities of their position. They had “influence”; and upon the men who have “influence” actresses never fail to smile. Some actresses smiled upon Byron for that reason, and others smiled upon him for his own sake. Some of them, it may be, drew the line at smiling; but others, as certainly, did more than smile. Miss Jane Clairmont, in particular—but we shall come to Miss Jane Clairmont presently.

How much Lady Byron knew, at the time, about these matters is doubtful. She must have known a good deal, for actresses sometimes called at the house; and any defects in her knowledge may be presumed to have been eked out by conjecture. Knowledge, conjecture, and gossip, operating in concert, cannot have failed to make her feel uncomfortable. In this respect, as in others, things were not falling out as she had expected. The fondly cherished belief that her love was the one thing needful to Byron’s happiness, and that he had moped for two years because she had withheld it from him, was receiving every day a ruder shock.

The shocks were the more violent because Byron, in the midst of his pecuniary embarrassments and theatrical philanderings, was attacked by a disorder of the liver. No man is at his best when his liver is sluggish; and Byron probably was at his worst—gloomy, contentious, and prone to uncontrollable outbursts of passion. So there were scenes—the sort of scenes that one would expect: Lady Byron, on the one hand, coldly and reasonably reproachful—“always in the right,” and most careful not to lose her temper; Byron, on the other hand, talking to provoke her, boasting of abandoned wickedness, falling into fits of rage, much as his own mother had been wont to do when she rattled the fire-irons—throwing his watch on the ground and smashing it to pieces with the poker.

Very likely he was angry with Lady Byron because he did not love her—irritated beyond measure at every fresh revelation that she could never be to him what Mary Chaworth might have been. The beginning of unhappiness in marriage must often come like that. It is not unnatural, though it is unreasonable, and not to be combated by reason. Lady Byron, unhappily, had no other weapon than reason with which to combat it; and it is quite likely that her very reasonableness made the trouble worse. It did, at any rate, pass from bad to worse—and then from worse to worst—during the critical days of her confinement, at the end of 1815.

Those were the circumstances which paved the way for open war and the demand for judicial separation. Or, at all events, those were some of the circumstances; for the story is long, and intricate, and involved, and darkened with the clouds of controversy. Byron’s version of it, it is needless to say, is quite different from Lady Byron’s. According to him the causes of the separation were “too simple to be easily found out.” According to her, they included an enormity of which he dared not speak; and the clash of these conflicting allegations constitutes what has been called “the Byron mystery.”

Perhaps it is not possible to solve the whole of that mystery even now. New evidence, however, has lately been adduced, on the one hand in Hobhouse’s Diary and Narrative, and on the other hand from Lady Byron’s correspondence, printed by the late Earl of Lovelace in “Astarte.” By sifting it, we may at least contrive to come nearer to the truth—to put, as it were, a ring fence round the mystery—to distinguish the assertions which have been proved from the assertions which have been disproved, and to reduce within narrow limits the fragment of the mystery which, until more conclusive documents are produced, must still remain mysterious.

The late Earl of Lovelace, as is well-known, attempted to acquit his grandmother of a charge of evil-speaking by convicting his grandfather of a charge of unnatural vice. It will be necessary to consider whether he has succeeded or failed in the attempt. The latter charge, but for his revival of it, might have been waived aside as equally calumnious and incredible. As it is, a biographer cannot discharge his task without taking up the challenge. It shall be taken up with every possible avoidance of unpleasant detail, but taken up it must be; and the most convenient way to approach the subject will be first to tell the story as it is presented by Hobhouse who represented Byron throughout the negotiations.