LADY OXFORD--BYRON"S INTENTION OF GOING ABROAD WITH HER
Byron"s separation from Lady Caroline Lamb, though suggested by Lady Melbourne, appears to have been negotiated by Hobhouse at the instance of Lady Bessborough. "Received a note from Lady Bessborough. Went to Byron, who agrees to go out of town," is the entry in his Diary which reveals the part he played. A further entry relating that Lady Caroline found him and Lady Bessborough together, and charged them with looking like conspirators, adds all the confirmation needed. Byron went out of town as he had promised, stayed at Cheltenham, and presently wrote the letter in which he told Lady Caroline that he had ceased to love her. He added insult to injury, as Lady Caroline felt, by writing on notepaper bearing the arms of the Countess of Oxford.
She and Lady Oxford knew each other rather well, and had been friends.
"Lady Oxford and Caroline William Lamb," we read in one of the letters of Harriet Lady Granville, "have been engaged in a correspondence, the subject whether learning Greek purifies or inflames the pa.s.sions." The right answer to the conundrum is, perhaps, that it depends upon the learner--or else that it depends upon the teacher. Lady Oxford"s pa.s.sions, at any rate, were, like Lady Caroline"s, inflammable. She was forty--the romantic age in the view of the philosophers; and she was unhappily married. Byron spoke of her to Medwin as "sacrificed, almost before she was a woman, to one whose mind and body were equally contemptible." A less prejudiced witness, Uvedale Price, wrote to Rogers, at the time of her death: "There could not, in all respects, be a more ill-matched pair than herself and Lord Oxford, or a stronger instance of the cruel sports of Venus or, rather, of Hymen."
Byron was in love with her, or thought so--he was not quite clear which when he poured his confidences on the subject into Medwin"s ear. Lady Caroline"s suspicions, to that extent, were justified. The "autumnal charms"--it is he who calls them so--fascinated him for about eight months. "The autumn of a beauty like hers," he said, "is preferable to the spring in others." He added that he "had great difficulty in breaking with her," and "once was on the point of going abroad with her, and narrowly escaped this folly." How he escaped it--or why he avoided it--he does not say; but perhaps we may find a reason.
Of his intentions, at any rate, there is no room for doubt. We have no need to depend on Medwin"s evidence for the full proof is in Byron"s own letters. It is mixed up with a good deal of extraneous matter, but it is there; and a series of very brief citations will present the romance, such as it was, in outline:
To William Bankes on September 12, 1812: "The only persons I know are the Rawdons and Oxfords, with some later acquaintances of less brilliant descent. But I do not trouble them much."
To Hanson on October 22, 1812: "I am going to Lord Oxford"s, Eywood, Presteigne, Hereford."
Letters are dated from Presteigne on October 31, November 8, and November 16. A letter of November 22 begins, "On my return here (Cheltenham) from Lord Oxford"s." A January letter shows Byron once again at Lord Oxford"s; and then the references to the contemplated foreign tour--letters of which there is no mistaking the significance--begin:
To Hanson on February, 27, 1813: "It is my determination, on account of a malady to which I am subject, and for other weighty reasons, to go abroad again almost immediately. To this you will object; but, as my intention cannot be altered, I have only to request that you will a.s.sist me as far as in your power to make the necessary arrangements."
To Hanson on March 1, 1813: "Your objections I antic.i.p.ated and can only repeat that I cannot act otherwise; so pray hasten some arrangement--for with, or without, I must go."
To Hanson on March 6, 1813: "I must be ready in April at whatever risk--at whatever loss."
To Charles Hanson on March 24, 1813: "Pray tell your father to get the money on Rochdale, or I must sell it directly. I must be ready by the last week in _May_, and am consequently pressed for time. I go first to Cagliari in Sardinia, and then on to the Levant."
To Mrs. Leigh on March 26, 1813: "I am going abroad again in June, but should wish to see you before my departure.... On Sunday, I set off for a fortnight for Eywood, near Presteigne, in Herefordshire--with the _Oxfords_. I see you put on a _demure_ look at the name, which is very becoming and matronly in you; but you won"t be sorry to hear that I am quite out of a more serious sc.r.a.pe with another singular personage, which threatened me last year."
To Hanson on April 15, 1813: "I shall only be able to see you a few days in town, as I shall sail before the 20th of May."
To Hanson on April 17, 1813: "I wish, if possible, the arrangement with h.o.a.re to be made immediately, as I must set off forthwith."
To John Murray on April 21, 1813: "Send in my account to Bennet Street, as I wish to settle it before sailing."
To Hanson on June 3, 1813; "I am as determined as I have been for the last six months.... Everything is ordered and ready now. Do not trifle with me, for I am in very solid serious earnest.... I have made my choice, and go I will."
To Hodgson on June 8, 1813: "I shall manage to see you somewhere before I sail, which will be next month."
To John Murray on June 12, 1813: "Recollect that my lacquey returns in the Evening, and that I set out for Portsmouth to-morrow."
To William Gifford on June 18, 1813: "As I do not sail quite so soon as Murray may have led you to expect (not till July), I trust I may have some chance of taking you by the hand before my departure."
To Mrs. Leigh, in the same month: "If you knew _whom_ I had put off besides my journey, you would think me grown strangely fraternal."
To Moore on July 8, 1813: "The Oxfords have sailed almost a fortnight, and my sister is in town, which is a great comfort."
That is the skeleton of the romance. Such clothes as it is felt to need the imagination must provide. Byron"s position seems to have been perilously near that of a "tame cat," though he might have preferred to call himself, then, as on a later occasion, a _cavaliere servente_. His excuse is that he was only twenty-five, and that a fascinating woman of forty can be very fascinating indeed, and very clever at getting her own way. Her attempt to annex Byron, though she was fifteen years his senior, may be viewed as her gambler"s throw for happiness. She threw and lost--but she lost quietly. She resembled Lady Caroline in being romantic, but she differed from her in not being "obstreperous." There was no scandal for society to take note of, and the welkin never rang with her complaints, though she did walk about Rome displaying Byron"s portrait at her girdle.
Nor did it ring with Byron"s, who, indeed, had nothing to complain of. The few allusions to the affair which Hobhouse contributes throw very little light upon it. He notes, in one place, that Lady Oxford was "most uncommon in her talk and licentious." He adds, on another page, the memorandum: "Got a picture of Lady Oxford from Mrs. Mee. Lord B."s money for it." That is all; and there are no hints to be derived from "occasional" verses.
However much Lady Oxford may have pleased Byron, she did not inspire him.
The period of his intimacy with her was, from the literary point of view, a singularly barren period; and the allusions cited from the letters--they are all the allusions that can be cited--are chiefly instructive because of the difference between their tone and the tone of certain other letters written very soon afterwards.
There is no suggestion in them of deep sentiment. What they do suggest is--first, a young man desperately determined to go through with a desperate adventure, and very much afraid of being warned of the consequences of his folly--then a young man who, having a haunting doubt of his own sincerity, shouts to keep up his courage--finally a young man who is grateful to the circ.u.mstances, whatever they may have been, which have deflected him from a rash course, and saved him from himself. One turns a few pages, and finds Byron writing in a very different strain:
"I have said nothing of the brilliant s.e.x; but the fact is, I am at this moment in a far more serious, and entirely new, sc.r.a.pe, than any of the last twelve months, and that is saying a good deal. It is unlucky we can neither live with nor without these women."
"I would incorporate with any woman of decent demeanour to-morrow--that is, I would a month ago, but at present...."
"Some day or other, when we are _veterans_, I may tell you a tale of present and past times; and it is not from want of confidence that I do not tell you now.... All this would be very well if I had no heart; but, unluckily, I have found that there is such a thing still about me, though in no very good repair, and also that it has a habit of attaching itself to _one_, whether I will or no."
These pa.s.sages are from letters to Moore. A few days before writing the last of them Byron had written to Miss Milbanke, whom he was shortly to marry:
"I am at present a little feverish--I mean mentally--and, as usual, on the brink of something or other, which will probably crush me at last, and cut our correspondence short, with everything else."
No names are mentioned here; but certain inferences not only can, but inevitably must, be drawn. At some time towards the end of the summer of 1813, there was a crisis of Byron"s life. It did not come to a head until after Lady Oxford"s departure, and Lady Oxford had nothing whatever to do with it. The latter point not only follows from the sudden disappearance of Lady Oxford from Byron"s sphere of interest, but is specifically made in a letter (dated November 8, 1813) from Byron to his sister:
"MY DEAREST AUGUSTA,
"I have only time to say that my long silence has been occasioned by a thousand things (with which _you_ are not concerned). It is not Lady Caroline, nor Lady Oxford; _but perhaps you may guess_, and if you do, do not tell. You do not know what mischief your being with me might have prevented. You shall hear from me to-morrow: in the meantime don"t be alarmed. I am in _no immediate_ peril."
Those are the most significant of the letters, though there are others.
Even if they stood alone, one would feel sure that there was a story behind them; but they do not stand alone. We have the poems to set beside them, and we have also the journal which Byron kept from November 14, 1813 till April 19, 1814. Letters, poems, and journal, read in conjunction, furnish a clue which it is impossible to mistrust. The distinction of having first so read them with sufficient care to find the clue belongs to Mr. Richard Edgc.u.mbe.
Possibly Mr. Edgc.u.mbe has proved just a little too much--that question will have to be faced when we come to it; but our immediate task must be to track the story along the lines which he has indicated, and see how all the mysteries connected with Byron can be solved, and all the emotional inconsistencies of his life unified, by the recollection that, of all the many pa.s.sions of his life, there was only one which really mattered to him.
Many women were welcome to love him if they liked--he was a man very ready to let himself be loved; but only one woman had the power to make him suffer--and that woman was Mary Chaworth. The motto "Cherchez la femme"
may, in short, in his case, be particularised. Whenever his conduct and his utterances seem, on the face of it, inexplicable, we have to look for Mary Chaworth and see her re-a.s.serting a power which has been allowed to lapse; and we will turn to look for her now.
CHAPTER XIV
AN EMOTIONAL CRISIS--THOUGHTS OF MARRIAGE, OF FOREIGN TRAVEL, AND OF MARY CHAWORTH
The poems written during the dark period of Byron"s life which we have now to consider are "The Giaour," "The Bride of Abydos," "The Corsair," and "Lara." Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge, in his introduction to "The Bride of Abydos," attributed the gloom to the fact that Byron "had been staying at Aston Hall, Rotherham, with his friend James Wedderburn Webster, and had fallen in love with his friend"s wife, Lady Frances." It will be time enough to treat that suggestion seriously when more evidence is offered in support of it. The one important reference to Lady Frances in the Letters certainly does not bear it out:
"I stayed a week with the Websters, and behaved very well, though the lady of the house is young, religious, and pretty, and the master is my particular friend. I felt no wish for anything but a poodle dog, which they kindly gave me."
That is all; and it is not in tune with those allusions, veiled by asterisks, to a consuming and destroying pa.s.sion, with which the Journal is thickly sprinkled. On the other hand the open references to Mary Chaworth scattered throughout Byron"s autobiographical utterances are perfectly in tune with these enigmatical invocations of an Unknown Lady.
Even if it could not be shown that she and Byron met during this period of mental anguish, we should still be tempted to conjecture that she and the Unknown Lady were one; and, as a matter of fact, we know that they did meet, and also know enough of the terms on which they met to be able to clear up the situation beyond much possibility of doubt. The key to it, indeed, is the letter written by Byron to Mary Chaworth five years after their final separation:
"My own, we may have been very wrong, but I repent of nothing except that cursed marriage, and your refusing to continue to love me as you had loved me. I can neither forget nor _quite forgive_ you for that precious piece of reformation. But I can never be other than I have been, and whenever I love anything, it is because it reminds me in some way or other of yourself."
That letter by itself proves practically the whole case. It does not matter whether it is his own marriage or Mary Chaworth"s that Byron speaks of as "cursed"--the epithet may well have seemed to him equally applicable to either union. The essential point is that Byron could not conceivably have written in this tone to Mary Chaworth in 1818 if he had had no relations, or only formal relations, with her since 1809. The mere fact--the only openly acknowledged fact--that she had jilted him when he was a schoolboy would certainly not have warranted him in reproaching her with "refusing to continue to love" at a date thirteen years subsequent to his rejection. The letter obviously, and undeniably, implies an intimacy of later date in which his pa.s.sion was reciprocated.
Later acquaintance, indeed, apart from intimacy, can easily be demonstrated, in spite of the suppressions of the biographers. "I remember meeting her," Byron himself said to Medwin, "after my return from Greece"; and the statement is confirmed, as Medwin"s statements generally need to be, from other sources. It appears from Byron"s own letters that Mary Chaworth, or some member of her family, took charge of his robes after one of his attendances at the House of Lords; and a letter from Mary Chaworth to Byron, in the possession of Mr. Murray, is printed by Mr. Edgc.u.mbe. It speaks of a seal which Byron was having made for her. The seal is still in existence, and is in the possession of the Musters family. The approximate date of its presentation is fixed by an entry in Byron"s journal: