Byron: The Last Phase Part 23

'Your sincere friend, 'MARY ----'

On or about January 7, 1814, Byron writes to his sister Augusta in reference to Mary Chaworth:

'I shall write to-morrow, but did _not_ go to Lady M.'s [Melbourne]

twelfth cake banquet. M. [Mary] has written again--_all friends.h.i.+p_--and really very simple and pathetic--_bad usage_--_paleness_--_ill-health_--old _friends.h.i.+p_--_once_--_good motive_--virtue--and so forth.'

Five days later Byron again writes to Augusta Leigh:

'On Sunday or Monday next, with leave of your lord and president, you will be _well_ and ready to accompany me to Newstead, which you _should_ see, and I will endeavour to render as comfortable as I can, for both our sakes.... Claughton is, I believe, inclined to settle....

More news from Mrs. [Chaworth], _all friends.h.i.+p_; you shall see her.'

Medora was born on or about April 15, 1814. 'Lara' was written between May 4 and 14. The opening lines, which would have set every tongue wagging, were withheld from publication until January, 1887. They were written in London early in May, and were addressed to the mother of Medora:

'When thou art gone--the loved, the lost--the one Whose smile hath gladdened, though perchance undone-- _Whose name too dearly cherished to impart_ Dies on the lip, but trembles in the heart; Whose sudden mention can almost convulse, And lightens through the ungovernable pulse-- Till the heart leaps so keenly to the word We fear that throb can hardly beat unheard--[48]

Then sinks at once beneath that sickly chill That follows when we find her absent still.

When thou art gone--too far again to bless-- Oh! G.o.d--how slowly comes Forgetfulness!

Let none complain how faithless and how brief The brain's remembrance, or the bosom's grief, Or ere they thus forbid us to forget Let Mercy strip the memory of regret; Yet--selfish still--we would not be forgot, What lip dare say--"My Love--remember not"?

Oh! best--and dearest! Thou whose thrilling name My heart adores too deeply to proclaim-- My memory, almost ceasing to repine, Would mount to Hope if once secure of thine.

Meantime the tale I weave must mournful be-- As absence to the heart that lives on thee!'

Lord Lovelace has told us that 'nothing is too stupid for belief.' We are disposed to agree with him, especially as he produces these lines in support of his accusation against Augusta Leigh. The absurdity of supposing that they were addressed to Byron's sister appears to us to be so evident that it seems unnecessary to waste words in disputation. There is abundant proof that during this period Mrs. Leigh and Byron were in constant correspondence, and that he visited her almost daily during her simulated confinement and convalescence. When Murray sent her some books to while away the time, Byron wrote (April 9) on her behalf to thank him.

And finally, as Augusta Leigh had no intention whatever of leaving London, she could in no sense have been 'the lost one' whose prospective departure filled Byron with despair. The poet and his sister--whom he was accustomed to address as 'Goose'[49]--were then, and always, on most familiar terms.

The 'mention of her name' (which was often on his lips) would certainly not have convulsed him, nor have caused his heart to beat so loudly that he feared lest others should hear it! The woman to whom those lines were addressed was Mary Chaworth, whose condition induced him, on April 18, to begin a fragment ent.i.tled 'Magdalen'--she of whom he wrote on May 4:

'I speak not--I trace not--I breathe not thy name-- There is Love in the sound--there is Guilt in the fame.'

Lord Lovelace, in his impetuosity, and with very imperfect knowledge of Byron's life-story, ties every doubtful sc.r.a.p of his grandfather's poetry into his bundle of proofs against Augusta Leigh, without perceiving any discrepancy in the nature of his evidence. A moment's reflection might have convinced him that the lines we have quoted could not, by any possibility, have applied to one whom he subsequently addressed as:

'My sister! my sweet sister! if a name Dearer and purer were, it should be thine;

Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun, I had been better than I now can be; The pa.s.sions which have torn me would have slept; _I_ had not suffered, and _thou_ hadst not wept.'

It must be admitted that Byron, through indiscreet confidences and reckless mystifications, was partly the cause of the suspicions which afterwards fell upon his sister. Lady Byron has left it on record that Byron early in 1814--before the birth of Medora--told Lady Caroline Lamb that a woman he pa.s.sionately loved was with child by him, and that if a daughter was born it should be called Medora.[50] At about the same time 'he advanced, at Holland House, the most extraordinary theories about the relations of brother and sister, which originated the reports about Mrs.

Leigh.'

That, after ninety years, such nonsense should be regarded as evidence against a woman so well known in the society of her day as was Mrs. Leigh, justifies our concurrence with Lord Lovelace's opinion that 'nothing is too stupid for belief.'

It appears that one day Lady Byron was talking to her husband about 'Lara,' which seemed to her to be 'like the darkness in which one fears to behold spectres.' This bait was evidently too tempting for Byron to resist. He replied: '"Lara"--there's more in _that_ than in any of them.'

As he spoke he shuddered, and turned his eyes to the ground.

Before we examine that poem to see how much it may contain of illuminating matter, we will touch upon a remark Byron made to his wife, which Lord Lovelace quotes without perceiving its depth and meaning. We will quote 'Astarte':

'He told Lady Byron that if she had married him when he first proposed, he should not have written any of the poems which followed [the first and second Cantos] "Childe Harold."'

This is perfectly true. Byron proposed to Miss Milbanke in 1812. If she had married him then, he would not have renewed his intimacy with Mary Chaworth in June, 1813. There would have been no heart-hunger, no misery, no remorse, and, in short, no inspiration for 'The Giaour,' 'The Bride,'

'The Corsair,' and 'Lara.' Miss Milbanke's refusal of his offer of marriage in 1812 rankled long in Byron's mind, and provoked those ungenerous reproaches which have been, with more or less exaggeration, reported by persons in Lady Byron's confidence. The mischief was done between the date of Miss Milbanke's refusal and her acceptance of his offer, which occurred after the fury of his pa.s.sion for Mary Chaworth had burnt itself out. No blame attaches to Lady Byron for this misfortune.

When Byron first proposed, her affections were elsewhere engaged; she could not, therefore, dispose of her heart to him. When she at last accepted him, it was too late for happiness.

In a letter which Byron wrote to Miss Milbanke previous to his marriage,[51] he unconsciously prophesied the worst:

'The truth is that could I have foreseen that your life was to be linked to mine--had I even possessed a distinct hope, however distant--I would have been a different and better being. As it is, I have sometimes doubts, even if I should not disappoint the future, nor act hereafter unworthily of you, whether the past ought not to make you still regret me--even that portion of it with which you are not unacquainted. I did not believe such a woman existed--at least for me--_and I sometimes fear I ought to wish that she had not_.'

When Byron said that he had doubts whether the past would not eventually reflect injuriously upon his future wife, he referred, not to Augusta Leigh, but to his fatal intercourse with Mary Chaworth. The following sentences taken from Mrs. Leigh's letters to Francis Hodgson, who knew the truth, prove that the mystery only incidentally affected Augusta. The letters were written February, 1816.

'From what pa.s.sed [between Captain Byron and Mrs. Clermont] _now_, if _they_ choose it, it must come into court! G.o.d alone knows the consequences.'

'It strikes me that, if their pecuniary proposals are favourable, Byron will be too happy to escape the exposure. _He must_ be anxious.

It is impossible he should not in some degree.'

These are the expressions, not of a person connected with a tragedy, but rather of one who was a spectator of it. Every impartial person must see that. When, on another occasion, Byron told his wife that he wished he had gone abroad--as he had intended--in June, 1813, he undoubtedly implied that the fatal intimacy with Mary Chaworth would have been avoided. This seems so clear to us that we are surprised that Byron's statement on the subject of his poems should have made no impression on the mind of Lord Lovelace, and should have elicited nothing from him in 'Astarte,' except the _ba.n.a.le_ suggestion that Byron's literary activity _must have been accidental_!

Lara, like Conrad, is a portion of Byron himself, and the poem opens with his return to Newstead after some bitter experiences, at which he darkly hints:

'Short was the course his restlessness had run, But long enough to leave him half undone.'

He tells us that 'Another chief consoled his destined bride.' 'One is absent that most might decorate that gloomy pile.'

'Why slept he not when others were at rest?

Why heard no music, and received no guest?

All was not well, they deemed--but where the wrong?

Some knew perchance.'

In stanzas 17, 18, and 19, Byron draws a picture of himself, so like that his sister remarked upon it in a letter to Hodgson. After telling us that 'his heart was not by nature hard,' he says that

'His blood in temperate seeming now would flow: Ah! happier if it ne'er with guilt had glowed, But ever in that icy smoothness flowed!'

The poet tells us that after Lara's death he was mourned by one whose quiet grief endured for long.

'Vain was all question asked her of the past, And vain e'en menace--silent to the last.'

'Why did she love him? Curious fool!--be still-- Is human love the growth of human will?

To her he might be gentleness; the stern Have deeper thoughts than your dull eyes discern, And when they love, your smilers guess not how Beats the strong heart, though less the lips avow.

They were not common links, that formed the chain That bound to Lara Kaled's heart and brain; But that wild tale she brooked not to unfold, _And sealed is now each lip that could have told_.

'The tempest of his heart in scorn had gazed On that the feebler Elements hath raised.

The Rapture of his Heart had looked on high, And asked if greater dwelt beyond the sky: Chained to excess, the slave of each extreme, How woke he from the wildness of that dream!

Alas! he told not--_but he did awake To curse the withered heart that would not break_.'

On September 8, 1814, four months after Byron had finished 'Lara,' while he was at Newstead with his sister and her children--the little Medora among them--he wrote his fragment 'Harmodia.' The rough draft was given after his marriage to Lady Byron, who had no idea to what it could possibly refer. When the scandal about Augusta was at its height, this fragment was impounded among other incriminating doc.u.ments, and eventually saw the light in 'Astarte.' Lord Lovelace was firmly convinced that it was addressed to Augusta Leigh!

Between September 7 and 15 Byron and Mary Chaworth were considering the desirability of marriage for Byron, and letters were pa.s.sing between the distracted poet and two young ladies--Miss Milbanke and another--with that object in view. Although Byron was still in love with Mary Chaworth, he had come to understand that her determination to break the dangerous intimacy was irrevocable, so he resolved to follow her advice and marry.

The tone of his letter to Moore, written on September 15, shows that he was not very keen about wedlock. He was making plans for a journey to Italy in the event of his proposal being rejected.

It is possible that, in a conversation between Mary and himself, the former may have spoken of the risks they had incurred in the past, and of her resolve never to transgress again. To which Byron replied: