BYRON'S DEPARTURE FOR THE CONTINENT--HIS ACQUAINTANCE WITH JANE CLAIRMONT
Macaulay has described, in that picturesque style of his, how, just as
Byron "woke up one morning and found himself famous," so the British
public woke up one morning and found itself virtuous, with the result that
Byron was hooted and hounded out of England. The picture, like all
Macaulay's pictures, was overdrawn and over-coloured. The life of the
country, and even of the capital, went on pretty much as usual in spite of
Byron's dissensions with his wife; and Byron himself kept up appearances
fairly well, going to the theatre, entertaining Leigh Hunt, Kinnaird, and
other friends at dinner, and corresponding with Murray about the
publication of his poems. But, nevertheless, many circumstances combined
to make him feel uncomfortable.
Invitations ceased to be showered upon him; and "gross charges" continued
to be whispered in spite of Lady Byron's disavowal. The grounds of the
separation not being known, every one was free to conjecture his own
solution of the mystery. There seemed little doubt, at any rate, that
Byron had forsaken his lawful wife's society for that of the nymphs of
Drury Lane; and it was quite certain that he had failed to pay the
Duchess of Devonshire her rent. The only possible reply to these
allegations was that they were no part of the business of the people who
made such a fuss about them. The fuss being made, the most reasonable
course was to go abroad until the hubbub ceased.
It was no case, as Byron's enemies have said, of running away to avoid an
investigation into his conduct--investigation had been challenged, and all
the grave charges had been withdrawn. They had, indeed, by a breach of
faith, been secretly kept alive; but they had not reappeared in such shape
and circumstances that action could be taken on them; and Byron could not
be expected to formulate them himself, merely for the purpose of denying
them. His threat, a little later, to appeal to the Courts for an
injunction to restrain Lady Byron from taking his daughter out of England
as he had heard that she proposed to do, amply showed that he had no fear
of any shameful disclosures; but he had Mrs. Leigh's reputation as well as
his own to think of; and it was better for her sake as well as his that he
should desist from bandying words with her calumniators. Moreover it was
not only his calumniators who were making things unpleasant for him. His
creditors were also joining in the hue and cry and multiplying his motives
for retiring; so he resolved to go, attended by three servants and the
Italian physician, Polidori.
Rogers paid him a farewell visit on April 22; and Mr. and Mrs. Kinnaird
called the same evening, bringing, as Hobhouse tells us, "a cake and two
bottles of champagne." On the following morning the party were up at six
and off at half-past nine for Dover; Hobhouse riding with Polidori in
Scrope Davies' carriage, and Byron, with Scrope Davies, in his own new
travelling coach, modelled on that of Napoleon, containing a bed, a
library, and a dinner-service, specially built for him at a cost of £500.
A crowd gathered to watch the departure--a crowd which Hobhouse feared
might prove dangerous, but which, in fact, was only inquisitive. The
bailiffs arrived ten minutes afterwards and "seized everything," with
expressions of regret that they had not been in time to seize the coach as
well. Even cage-birds and a squirrel were taken away by them.
This news having been brought by Fletcher, the valet, who followed the
party, the coach was hustled on board the packet to be safe--a most wise
precaution seeing that there was a day's delay before it started; and
Hobhouse continues:
"April 25. Up at eight, breakfasted; all on board except the company.
The captain said he could not wait, and Byron would not get up a
moment sooner. Even the serenity of Scrope was disturbed.... The
bustle kept Byron in spirits, but he looked affected when the packet
glided off.... The dear fellow pulled off his cap and waved it to me.
I gazed until I could not distinguish him any longer. God bless him
for a gallant spirit and a kind one!"
And then:
"Went to London.... Told there was a row expected at the theatre,
Douglas K. having received fifteen anonymous letters stating that Mrs.
Mardyn would be hissed on Byron's account."
This gives us, of course, the point of view of the populace--or perhaps
one should say of the middle classes. They, it is evident, knew nothing of
any specially gross or unspeakable charges against Byron, but were
satisfied to turn the hose of virtuous indignation on him because, instead
of managing Drury Lane in the sole interest of dramatic art, he had
availed himself of opportunities and yielded to temptations. And so no
doubt he had, though not exactly in such circumstances as the populace
supposed or in connection with the particular lady whose guilt the
populace had hastily assumed.
The popular indictment, indeed, included at least three glaring errors of
fact. In the first place the partner of Byron's latest passion (if passion
be the word) was not Mrs. Mardyn, but Miss Jane Clairmont. In the second
place his relations with Miss Clairmont had nothing whatever to do with
his separation from Lady Byron, because he did not make Miss Clairmont's
acquaintance until after Lady Byron had left him. In the third place it
was not Byron who pursued Miss Clairmont with his attentions, but Miss
Clairmont who threw herself at Byron's head.
Jane Clairmont was, as is well known, sister by affinity to Mary Godwin
who was then living with Shelley and was afterwards married to him. She
had accompanied Shelley and Mary on their first trip to Switzerland in
1814, and had subsequently stayed with them in various lodgings. In the
impending summer she was to go to Switzerland with them again, and Byron
was to meet her there, whether accidentally or on purpose. In the early
biographies, indeed, the meeting figures as accidental; but the later
biographers knew better, and the complete story can be pieced together
from a bundle of letters included in the Murray MSS., and the statement
which Miss Clairmont herself made in her old age to Mr. William Graham,
who travelled all the way to Florence to see her, and, after her death,
reported her conversations in the _Nineteenth Century_.
"When I was a very young girl," Miss Clairmont told Mr. Graham, "Byron was
the rage." She spoke of the "troubling morbid obsession" which he
exercised "over the youth of England of both sexes," and insisted that the
girls in particular "made simple idiots of themselves about him"; and then
she went on to describe how one girl did so:
"In the days when Byron was manager of Drury Lane Theatre I bethought
myself that I would go on to the stage. Our means were very narrow,
and it was necessary for me to do something, and this seemed to suit
me better than anything else; in any case it was the only form of
occupation congenial to my girlish love of glitter and excitement....
I called, then, on Byron in his capacity of manager, and he promised
to do what he could to help me as regards the stage. The result you
know. I am too old now to play with any mock repentance. I was young,
and vain, and poor. He was famous beyond all precedent.... His beauty
was as haunting as his fame, and he was all-powerful in the direction
in which my ambition turned. It seems to me almost needless to say
that the attentions of a man like this, with all London at his feet,
very quickly completely turned the head of a girl in my position; and
when you recollect that I was brought up to consider marriage not only
as a useless but as an absolutely sinful custom, that only bigotry
made necessary, you will scarcely wonder at the results, which you
know."
That is the story as Miss Clairmont remembered it, or as she wished
posterity to believe it. She also seems to have been fully persuaded in
her own mind that Shelley had recommended her to apply to Byron, and that
it was about her that Byron and Lady Byron fell out; but the letters
published by Mr. Murray show all this to be a tissue of absurd
inexactitudes. What actually happened was that Miss Clairmont wrote to
Byron under the pseudonym of "E Trefusis," beginning "An utter stranger
takes the liberty of addressing you," and proceeding to say: "It may seem
a strange assertion, but it is not the less true that I place my
happiness in your hands."
There is no reference there, it will be remarked, to any desire on Miss
Clairmont's part to adopt the theatrical profession. The few references to
such a desire which do occur later in the correspondence are of such a
nature as to show that Miss Clairmont did not entertain it seriously,
consisting mainly of objections to Byron's proposal that she should
discuss the matter with Mr. Kinnaird instead of him. Miss Clairmont, in
short, made it abundantly clear that she was in love, not with the
theatre, but with Byron; and the more evasive Byron showed himself, the
more ardently and impulsively did she advance. We gather from her letters,
indeed, that most of those letters were left unanswered, that Byron very
frequently was "not at home" to her, and that, when she was at last
admitted, she did not find him alone.
Most women would have been discouraged by such a series of repulses; but
Miss Clairmont was not. In response to a communication in which Byron had
begged her to "write short," she wrote: "I do not expect you to love me; I
am not worthy of your love." But she begged him, if he could not love, at
least to let himself be loved--to suffer her to demonstrate that she, on
her part, could "love gently and with affection"; and thus she paved the
way to a practical proposal:
"Have you, then," (she asked) "any objection to the following plan? On
Thursday Evening we may go out of town together by some stage of mail
about the distance of ten or twelve miles. There we shall be free and
unknown; we can return early the following morning. I have arranged
everything here so that the slightest suspicion may not be excited.
Pray do so with your people."
Even to that appeal Byron seems to have turned a deaf ear. One infers as
much from the fact that other appeals followed it: "Do not delay our
meeting after Saturday--I cannot endure the suspense," &c. After that,
however, and apparently quite soon after it, followed the capitulation;
and for the sequel we will turn again to Mr. Graham's report of Miss
Clairmont's confessions:
"He was making his final arrangements for leaving England, when I told
him of the project the Shelleys and I had formed of the journey to
Geneva. He at once suggested that we should all meet at Geneva, and
delightedly fell in with my proposal to accompany me one day when I
had arranged to visit the Shelleys at Marlow,[10] where they were then
stopping, and arrange matters. We started early one morning, and we
arrived at Marlow about the mid-day dinner-hour.... Byron refreshed
himself with a huge mug of beer.... A few minutes afterwards in came
Shelley and Mary. It was such a merry party that we made at lunch in
the inn parlour: Byron, despite his misfortunes, was in the spirits
of a boy at leaving England, and Shelley was overjoyed at meeting his
idolised poet, who had actually come all the way from London to see
him."
Such are the facts, so far as they are ascertainable, concerning the
origin of this curious _liaison_. It is a story which begins, and goes on
for some time, though it does not conclude, like the story of Joseph and
Potiphar's wife; and Miss Clairmont recalls how exultantly she proclaimed
her triumph. "Percy! Mary! What do you think? The great Lord Byron loves
me!" she exclaimed, bursting in upon her friends; and she adds that
Shelley regarded the attachment as right and natural and proper, and a
proof that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
He may have done so, for he was a dreamer, cradled in illusions,
unfettered by codes, always ready to look upon life as a fairy-tale that
was turning out to be true. Whether he did so or not, it seems at any rate
pretty clear that he was in Miss Clairmont's confidence, knew for what
reason Byron wished to meet him at Geneva, and acquiesced in the proposal.
But it is equally certain that he was not in Byron's confidence, and had
no suspicion of the spirit in which Byron had entered into the intrigue.
For Byron was not in love with Miss Clairmont, and never had been in love
with her, and never would be. In so far as he loved at all, he still loved
Mary Chaworth, to whom his heart always returned at every crisis of
unhappiness. There was no question of any renewal of the old passionate
relations; but she consented to see him once more before he left England.
"When we two parted in silence and tears" seems to belong to this moment
of his life--the moment at which Miss Clairmont first persuaded herself,
and then persuaded Shelley, that she was enthroned for ever in the
author's heart. That, still, was his one real sentimental hold on life.
Nothing else mattered; and the coquetries and audacities of this child of
seventeen mattered less than most things.
But a man must live; a man must divert himself. Most especially must a man
do so when, as Byron expressed it, his household gods lay shivered around
him--when his home was broken up and his child was taken away--when
rumours as intangible as abominable were afloat to his dishonour--when the
society of which he had been the bright particular star was turning its
back on him. Even the love, or what passed for such, of a stage-struck
girl of seventeen, could be welcome in such a case, and it would not be
difficult to give something which could pass for love in return for it.
That was what happened--and that was all that happened. Miss Clairmont
told Mr. Graham, in so many words, that she never loved Byron, but was
only "dazzled" by him. It is written in Byron's letters--from which there
shall be quotations in due course--and it is amply demonstrated by his
conduct, that he never loved Miss Clairmont, but only accepted favours
which she pressed upon him, and suffered her to help him to live at a
time when life was difficult.
The credit of having done that for him, however, should be freely given to
her. The appointment which she made with him at Geneva touched his flight
from England with romance. His reception by the generality of English
residents on the Continent was very, very doubtful. It would have been
painful to him to travel across Europe, defying opinion in solitude; but
he and Shelley and Mary Godwin and Jane Clairmont could defy it in company
and laugh; and it was with this confident assurance in his mind that, as
Hobhouse writes, "the dear fellow pulled off his cap and waved it" when
the Ostend packet glided out of Dover harbour.