THE QUARTERLY REVIEW ON LORD AND LADY
B YRON.
THE Quarterly Review has attacked Mrs. Stowe's story from the side on which we always held confutation—if confutation were possible—to be most probable,—the side of Mrs. Leigh, and has made it absolutely certain that if the letters printed by the reviewer from Lady Byron to Mrs. Leigh are genuine, —which there seems no reason at all beyond their clear contra- diction to Lady Byron's most positive later statements to doubt, —Lady Byron not only did not leave her husband for the cause alleged by Mrs. Stowe, but entertained the warmest affection for Byron's sister at the time she left him, and at least for some months afterwards. Of course, if Lady Byron's evidence be so utterly discredited as these letters of hers to Mrs. Leigh, admit- ting their genuineness, would make it, there would be no sort of justification for trusting any part of it afterwards, except as it might be independently confirmed from other sources. There is no manner of doubt,—the Quarterly reviewer, following Mr. Trench and others, himself admits it,—that the substance of Lady Byron's story to Mrs. Stowe, inaccurately as it has been repeated by that lady, was also told by her to a considerable number of trusted friends, and that she either believed what she said with- out any evidence,—in which case Miss Martineau's estimate of the firmness and strength of her intellect, an estimate formed, moreover, by many other friends, must be utterly mistaken, or that she did not, in which case she must have been guilty of a crime worse than any ever attributed to her husband in the wilful dissemination of so foul a charge. If she believed it, as it is hardly possible to doubt, and believed it to have been the real ground of her separation from her husband,—and this is unquestionably the story told not only to Mrs. Stowe, but to others,—those letters written to Mrs. Leigh before, and during the first weeks of, the separation, amply show her to have been of unsound mind on this subject, at least in later years,—for it is morally impossible that she should have rejoiced in Mrs. Leigh's continued stay with Lord Byron after her own departure, and written to her in terms of the most overflowing affection and respect, if she really believed that lady to be the "partner of his guilt." The impossi- bility of madness would be nothing compared to the impossi- bility of such a useless piece of acting as that, — a piece of acting incredible and impossible even in the insane. Reserving, then, the point which would arise, if there should prove to be any sort of doubt as to the authenticity of these letters to Mrs. Leigh, we do not hesitate to say that Lady Byron's story as to the cause of the separation—for whatever fault may attach to Mrs. Stowe, it is none the less Lady Byron's story substantially, and not Mrs. Stowe's—is altogether broken down by this evidence of her own utterly different way of thinking at the critical moment when her feelings must have been keenest and most warmly ex-
pressed towards the cause of her sufferings. If, then, Lady • Byron's trustees have hesitated hitherto concerning the publica- tion of anything which she has left behind that can vindicate either her intellect, or her character at the expense of her lucidity of intellect, from the aspersions which these self-contradictions on matters of such grave moment to her sister-in-law as well as to her husband, throw upon it, they should hesitate no longer. We, who certainly inclined, under due reserve, to credit her story while all the positive evidence was on her side, and only the most trivial indirect evidence was adduced to rebut it, cannot now doubt for a moment that Mrs. Stowe's narrative has been transformed into an indictment against Lady Byron,—against her soundness of mind at the very least ; that as the matter at present stands, it is rather her reputation than her husband's and sister's which, in re- lation to this tale, is upon its trial. One word in relation to the very trivial matter of our own consistency. Our readers will bear us witness, in spite of the silly and violent revilings of some of our contemporaries, that we have never said more than this, and to this we still adhere—that Lord Byron's character was already too darkly stained to suffer materially from this new charge ; that so far as he was concerned, there was nothing in it the least incredible to a student of his poems and letters, and that, whether it turned out to be true or false, the estimate formed of him by any impartial mind would not be materially different. As to Mrs. Leigh, we had heard before no sort of evidence that would have justified us in forming an opinion in fiat contra- diction to Lady Byron's express statement. On the other hand, we have such evidence now, and of a very complete and tell- ing kind. And we recognize with sincere pain the false stigma which Lady Byron's charge has for a time affixed to her memory. If Lady Byron's trustees can produce nothing to invalidate the authenticity of these letters, a very terrible wrong has been done to Mrs. Leigh. But as far as we ourselves are con- cerned, we formed what was clearly the soundest judgment to be formed on the evidence then before the public,—a hesitating judgment, expressed with great reserve, in favour of the specific assertion repeatedly made by a woman of the highest reputa- tion, both for clearness and uprightness of mind. If we were to pass an opinion at all, we do not see how we could have been more cautious. At the same time, on the only point on which we spoke with any confidence, we have not changed our mind at all. We thought no worse of Lord Byron after the story was told, than we thought of him before we had heard it. We think no better of him after it has been all but shown to be false, than we thought while we inclined to believe it true. What is certain of Lord Byron is that he was an utter slave of his lusts, and as mean in his lampoons of women whom he had wronged as he was shame- less in wronging them. He makes his wife, —whom he admits having wronged,—the laughing-stock of the world. He speaks of his mistress with coarse and open contempt for being his mistress. He can speak of no subject, however sacred, without his tongue in his cheek. His sincerest and by far his most powerful poem, brimful of genius, which is sincere because it delineates himself, is a libel on the human race. The ghastly power of its effects consists in great measure in laying bare the satyr and the cynic at the heart of everything that seemed like noble or generous feeling. With all our admiration for Byron's genius, which is in some directions unbounded, we never felt the slightest tinge of increased aversion and disgust for him when it seemed likely that this new charge might prove true ; and now that we believe it to be false, we cannot feel the slightest moral interest in the matter so far as it concerns him. For Mrs. Leigh's sake we heartily rejoice that it has been, or at least has almost certainly been, shown to be the foulest of slanders on her reputation.
As regards Lord Byron's literary reputation, we quite agree with the Quarterly Review, that a man of such transcendent genius may be as bad as he may and he yet will be read and ought to be read,—ex- cept by those who cannot read him without feeling the infection of his grossness. The worse a man is, beyond a certain point, the less social injury his character will do, especially if his genius be as great and unrivalled in its line as Byron's. It was always an absurdity to suppose his literary reputation would be much affected by the truth or falsehood of this charge. A fame which had not been eclipsed by the profligacy of nature openly confessed to the world, was not likely to be eclipsed by one further illustration of it, however startling. A. small genius would have been utterly obliterated by Byron's wickedness. Such genius as his could not be overshadowed by any depth of guilt or any stretch of shamelessness. Nor ought it to be. If the Andes or the Himalayas had been a haunt of the most atrocious crime for centuries, it would not be the less right and natural to wish to behold the Andes or the Himalayas. That which is in itself majestic cannot be utterly ruined by any factitious elements of evil.
The probable confutation of Lady Byron's account of the causes of separation,—or of one of her most frequently reiterated accounts, — does not in the least shake the probability that there was some real cause for the separation, of which Lord Byron himself was aware, above and beyond his own unfaithfulness and "incompatibility of temper." For Lord Byron's own assertions in the matter we have just as mach respect, and no more, than we have for Lord Byron's unsupported word in any other case. It is simply impossible to believe that had he really been in earnest in his wish to extract the explicit charges against him, and had he not known that there were some of these which would not bear examination, he could not have succeeded. He knew his wife's advisers. What more easy than to communicate to them in the most positive way his ignorance and innocence of anything worse than sins which he well knew might, in the opinion of the world, be readily condoned, and his determina- tion to extract the further charges against him. Who can sup- pose for a moment that so just a man as Dr. Lushington would have resisted such an appeal ?—or, indeed, that he could have resisted it, if he would ? If Lord Byron had been foiled,—which he would not have been,—in an appeal to the common justice of such a man as Dr. Lushington, he would have owed it to himself to extract the truth by a formal suit in the Ecclesiastical Courts for the restitution of conjugal rights, rather than to have given up the struggle for a frank explanation. In point of fact, we know that he left England and never returned,—never again made any serious attempt to compel his wife to break the silence which he affected to wonder at and deplore. Whatever may be the ex- planation of Lady Byron's extraordinary,—and supposing her in full possession of her reason on this point,—her apparently dis- creditable self-contradictions, it is simply incredible that she did not possess some secret of which Lord Byron was unwilling that the public should hear. We confess we agree with the Quarterly reviewer in thinking that Dr. Lushington has been fully absolved from any promise of secrecy by the breach of secrecy on Lady Byron's part, and that he would do but his duty to her no less than to Lord Byron, by allowing the reasons of the separation as they were confided to him to be compared with the statements recently laid by so many persons before the world.
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