Francis Henry Gribble

REVIVAL OF THE BYRON SCANDAL BY MRS. BEECHER STOWE AND THE LATE LORD LOVELACE

The Byron scandal slowly fell asleep, and was allowed to slumber for about half a century. Even the publication of Moore’s Life did not awaken it. People took sides, indeed, as they always do, some throwing the blame on the husband, and others on the wife; but the view that, whoever was to blame, the causes of the separation were “too simple to be easily found out” prevailed.

Forces, however, making for the revival of the scandal were nevertheless at work. Byron smarted under social ostracism and resented it. Though Lady Byron had never made any formal charge to which he could reply, but had, on the contrary, formally retracted all “gross” charges, he continued to be embittered by suggestions of mysterious iniquities, and his anger found expression alike in his letters and in his poems. To a certain extent he defended himself by taking the offensive. He caused notes on his case to be privately distributed. He wrote “at” Lady Byron, in the Fourth Canto of “Childe Harold,” in “Don Juan,” and elsewhere. A good deal of his correspondence, printed by Moore, expressed his opinion of her in terms very far from flattering.

Under these combined influences public opinion veered round—the more readily because Byron was held to have made ample atonement for his faults, whatever they might have been, by sacrificing his life in the cause of Greek independence. Lady Byron was now thought, not indeed to have erred in any technical sense, but to have made an undue fuss about very little, and to have been most unwomanly in her frigid consciousness of rectitude. The world, in short, was more certain now that she had been “heartless” than that she had been “always in the right.”

Naturally, her temptation to “answer back” was strong. She could not very well answer back by preferring any monstrous indictment in public. That course was not only to be avoided in her daughter’s interest, but might also have involved her in an action for defamation of character on the part of Mrs. Leigh—an action which she could not have met with any adequate defence. Of that risk, indeed, she had been warned by her friend Colonel Doyle, in a letter printed in “Astarte” to which it will presently be necessary to return—a letter in which she had been urgently recommended to “act as if a time might possibly arise when it might be necessary for you to justify yourself.” But if she could not answer back in public, at least she could answer back in private.

She did so. That is to say, she talked—mostly to sympathetic women who were more or less discreet, but also, in her later years to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who did not so much as know what discretion was. The story of which Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe had already received hints from the women whose discretion was comparative was ultimately told to her, whose indiscretion was absolute, by Lady Byron herself. She remained as discreet as the rest—that is to say, more or less discreet—during Lady Byron’s life, and for some time afterwards. But when the Countess Guiccioli wrote a book about Byron in which Lady Byron was disparaged, she could restrain herself no longer. In support of Lady Byron’s story she had no evidence except Lady Byron’s word. She did not know—and she did not trouble to inquire—what evidence against it might exist. She did not pause to ask herself whether her own recollection might not be at fault concerning a story which she had heard thirteen years before. It was enough for her, apparently, that Lady Byron was a religious woman, and that Byron, on his own showing, had lived “a man’s life.” That sufficed, in her view, wherever there was a conflict of statements, to demonstrate that Byron was a liar, and that Lady Byron spoke the truth. So she plunged into the fray, and, with a great flourish of trumpets, published Lady Byron’s story in “Macmillan’s Magazine.” When the “Quarterly Review” had, in so far as it is ever possible to prove a negative, disproved the story, she repeated it with embellishments in a book entitled: “Lady Byron Vindicated: A History of the Byron Controversy from its Beginning in 1816 to the Present Time.”

The essence of Mrs. Stowe’s story is contained in this report of Lady Byron’s conversation:

“There was something awful to me in the intensity of repressed emotion which she showed as she proceeded. The great fact upon which all turned was stated in words that were unmistakable:

“‘He was guilty of incest with his sister.’”

There is the charge. Turning over the pages in quest of the evidence in support of it, we find this:

No more than that. This ex parte interpretation of a foolish conjugal quarrel of forty years before, admittedly untested by any demand for particulars, was absolutely the sole piece of testimony which Mrs. Stowe adduced when she set out to blast Byron’s reputation. The rest of the book consists of pious and sentimental out-pourings, vulgar abuse of Byron, and equally vulgar eulogy of his wife; the two passages cited being the only passages material to the issue. There was nothing in writing for her to quote—no case which a respectable lawyer would have taken into Court—no case that would not have been laughed out of Court within five minutes if it had ever got so far.

The tribunal of public opinion did, in fact, laugh the case out of Court at the time. It was “snowed under,” partly by laughter, and partly by indignation and the British feeling in favour of fair play; and it remained so buried for nearly forty years. Biographers could afford to scout it as “monstrous” without troubling to confute it. Sir Leslie Stephen, in the “Dictionary of National Biography,” treated it as an hallucination to which Lady Byron had fallen a victim through brooding over her grievances in solitude.

One would be glad if one could still take that tone towards it; but Lord Lovelace has made it impossible to do so. Mrs. Stowe, as a mischief-making meddler, interfering with matters which did not concern her, and about which she was obviously very ill informed, had not even a prim facie title to be taken seriously. The case of Lord Lovelace was different. He was Byron’s grandson and the custodian of Lady Byron’s strong-box. He affected not merely to assert but to argue. He produced from the strong-box documents which he was pleased to call proofs. A good many people, not having seen them, probably still believe that they are proofs. They cannot be waived on one side like Mrs. Stowe’s unsupported allegations, but must be dealt with; and the whole question of the charge which they are alleged to substantiate must, of course, be dealt with simultaneously.

And first, as the documents laid before us are miscellaneous, we must distinguish between those of them which count and those which do not count. Some of the contents of the strong-box, it seems, are merely “statements” in Lady Byron’s handwriting. These are only referred to by Lord Lovelace, but not printed. Not having been produced, they cannot be criticised; but there are, nevertheless, two comments which it is legitimate to make. In the first place, an ex parte statement, though admissible in evidence for what it may be worth, is not the same thing as proof. In the second place, if the statements had been of a nature to strengthen the case which Lord Lovelace was trying to make out, instead of merely embellishing it, they would not have been held back. Their absence from the dossier need not, therefore, embarrass us; and we need, in fact, be the less embarrassed by it because it was already perfectly well known that Lady Byron was in the habit of writing out statements, and had shown them to impartial persons who had taken the measure of their value. That fact is set forth in the Rev. Frederick Arnold’s Life of Robertson of Brighton, who, as is well known, was, for a considerable time, Lady Byron’s religious adviser.

That comment on the “statements,” significant in itself, is doubly significant when taken in conjunction with Lord Lovelace’s suppression of them; and we may fairly consider the case without further reference to them, and without an apprehension that a surprise will be sprung from that source to upset the conclusions at which we arrive. Lord Lovelace did not rest his case on them, but on quite other documents, which we will proceed to examine after first saying the few words which need to be said in order to clear the air.One point, indeed, Lord Lovelace has made successfully. He has proved that the gross and mysterious charge which Lady Byron preferred (or rather hinted at while refusing to prefer it) at the time of the separation was, in fact, identical with the charge formulated in Mrs. Stowe’s book. A contemporary memorandum to that effect, in Lushington’s handwriting, signed by Lady Byron, and witnessed by Lushington, Wilmot Horton, and Colonel Doyle, is printed in “Astarte.” To that extent the so-called Byron mystery is now solved, once and for all. The statement set forth in that memorandum, and afterwards repeated to Mrs. Stowe, was the statement on the strength of which Lushington declared, as has already been mentioned, that he could not be a party to any attempt to effect a reconciliation.

So far so good. The probability of these facts could have been inferred from Hobhouse’s narrative; their certainty is now established. We now know of what Byron was accused—behind his back; we also know of what Mrs. Leigh was accused—behind her back. But—and the “but” is most important—the memorandum contains this remarkable sentence:

Which is to say that Lady Byron, on her own showing, and that of her legal advisers, was acting not on evidence but on “suspicion.” In this document there is not even so much evidence as was set before Mrs. Stowe, or any suggestion that any evidence worthy of the name exists. The quest for proof must be pursued elsewhere.

But where?

Lord Lovelace has not shown us. The document in which it is expressly set forth that none of the statements contained in it are of the nature of proofs is the only contemporary document which he cites; for the scrap of a letter which he quotes from Mrs. George Lamb only proves, if indeed it proves anything, that Mrs. Lamb had heard what Lady Byron said. Further on in his book, indeed, Lord Lovelace represents that Mrs. Leigh subsequently, under pressure, confessed her guilt to Lady Byron; but concerning that representation two things shall be demonstrated in the next chapter.

In the first place Mrs. Leigh did not confess—the alleged confession having no bearing whatsoever on the matter which we are now considering. In the second place the inherent probabilities of the case and the circumstantial evidence which illuminates it are such that, even if Mrs. Leigh had confessed, it would be impossible to believe her on her oath.