Lord Byron in 1813--The Lady's Tragedy--Miss Milbanke--Growing
Uneasiness of Lord Byron's Mind--The Friar's Ghost--The Marriage--A
Member of the Drury Lane Committee--Embarrassed Affairs--The
Separation
The year 1813 was perhaps the period of all Lord Byron's life in
which he was seen to most advantage. The fame of Childe Harold was
then in its brightest noon; and in that year he produced The Giaour
and The Bride of Abydos--compositions not only of equal power, but
even tinted with superior beauties. He was himself soothed by the
full enjoyment of his political rank and station; and though his
manners and character had not exactly answered to the stern and
stately imaginations which had been formed of his dispositions and
appearance, still he was acknowledged to be no common man, and his
company in consequence was eagerly courted.
It forms no part of the plan of this work to repeat the gossip and
tattle of private society, but occurrences happened to Lord Byron
which engaged both, and some of them cannot well be passed over
unnoticed. One of these took place during the spring of this year,
and having been a subject of newspaper remark, it may with less
impropriety be mentioned than others which were more indecorously
made the topics of general discussion. The incident alluded to was
an extravagant scene enacted by a lady of high rank, at a rout given
by Lady Heathcote; in which, in revenge, as it was reported, for
having been rejected by Lord Byron, she made a suicidal attempt with
an instrument, which scarcely penetrated, if it could even inflict
any permanent mark on, the skin.
The insane attachment of this eccentric lady to his Lordship was well
known; insane is the only epithet that can be applied to the actions
of a married woman, who, in the disguise of her page, flung herself
to a man, who, as she told a friend of mine, was ashamed to be in
love with her because she was not beautiful--an expression at once
curious and just, evincing a shrewd perception of the springs of his
Lordship's conduct, and the acuteness blended with frenzy and talent
which distinguished herself. Lord Byron unquestionably at that time
cared little for her. In showing me her picture, some two or three
days after the affair, and laughing at the absurdity of it, he
bestowed on her the endearing diminutive of vixen, with a hard-
hearted adjective that I judiciously omit.
The immediate cause of this tragical flourish was never very well
understood; but in the course of the evening she had made several
attempts to fasten on his Lordship, and was shunned: certain it is,
she had not, like Burke in the House of Commons, premeditatedly
brought a dagger in her reticule, on purpose for the scene; but,
seeing herself an object of scorn, she seized the first weapon she
could find--some said a pair of scissors--others, more scandalously,
broken jelly-glass, and attempted an incision of the jugular, to the
consternation of all the dowagers, and the pathetic admiration of
every Miss who witnessed or heard of the rapture.
Lord Byron at the time was in another room, talking with Prince K--,
when Lord P-- came, with a face full of consternation, and told them
what had happened. The cruel poet, instead of being agitated by the
tidings, or standing in the smallest degree in need of a smelling-
bottle, knitted his scowl, and said, with a contemptuous
indifference, "It is only a trick." All things considered, he was
perhaps not uncharitable; and a man of less vanity would have felt
pretty much as his Lordship appeared to do on the occasion. The
whole affair was eminently ridiculous; and what increased the
absurdity was a letter she addressed to a friend of mine on the
subject, and which he thought too good to be reserved only for his
own particular study.
It was in this year that Lord Byron first proposed for Miss Milbanke;
having been urged by several of his friends to marry, that lady was
specially recommended to him for a wife. It has been alleged, that
he deeply resented her rejection of his proposal; and I doubt not, in
the first instance, his vanity may have been a little piqued; but as
he cherished no very animated attachment to her, and moreover, as she
enjoyed no celebrity in public opinion to make the rejection
important, the resentment was not, I am persuaded, either of an
intense or vindictive kind. On the contrary, he has borne testimony
to the respect in which he held her character and accomplishments;
and an incidental remark in his journal, "I shall be in love with her
again, if I don't take care," is proof enough that his anger was not
of a very fierce or long-lived kind.
The account ascribed to him of his introduction to Miss Milbanke, and
the history of their attachment, ought not to be omitted, because it
serves to illustrate, in some degree, the state of his feelings
towards her, and is so probable, that I doubt not it is in the main
correct:--
"The first time of my seeing Miss Milbanke was at Lady ***'s. It was
a fatal day; and I remember, that in going upstairs I stumbled, and
remarked to Moore, who accompanied me, that it was a bad omen. I
ought to have taken the warning. On entering the room, I observed a
young lady more simply dressed than the rest of the assembly sitting
alone upon a sofa. I took her for a female companion, and asked if I
was right in my conjecture. 'She is a great heiress,' said he, in a
whisper, that became lower as he proceeded, 'you had better marry
her, and repair the old place, Newstead.'
"There was something piquant, and what we term pretty, in Miss
Milbanke. Her features were small and feminine, though not regular.
She had the fairest skin imaginable. Her figure was perfect for her
height, and there was a simplicity, a retired modesty about her,
which was very characteristic, and formed a happy contrast to the
cold artificial formality and studied stiffness which is called
fashion. She interested me exceedingly. I became daily more
attached to her, and it ended in my making her a proposal, that was
rejected. Her refusal was couched in terms which could not offend
me. I was, besides, persuaded, that in declining my offer, she was
governed by the influence of her mother; and was the more confirmed
in my opinion, by her reviving our correspondence herself twelve
months after. The tenour of her letter was, that, although she could
not love me, she desired my friendship. Friendship is a dangerous
word for young ladies; it is love full-fledged, and waiting for a
fine day to fly."
But Lord Byron possessed this sort of irrepressible predilections--
was so much the agent of impulses, that he could not keep long in
unison with the world, or in harmony with his friends. Without
malice, or the instigation of any ill spirit, he was continually
provoking malignity and revenge. His verses on the Princess
Charlotte weeping, and his other merciless satire on her father,
begot him no friends, and armed the hatred of his enemies. There
was, indeed, something like ingratitude in the attack on the Regent,
for his Royal Highness had been particularly civil; had intimated a
wish to have him introduced to him; and Byron, fond of the
distinction, spoke of it with a sense of gratification. These
instances, as well as others, of gratuitous spleen, only justified
the misrepresentations which had been insinuated against himself, and
what was humour in his nature, was ascribed to vice in his
principles.
Before the year was at an end, his popularity was evidently beginning
to wane: of this he was conscious himself, and braved the frequent
attacks on his character and genius with an affectation of
indifference, under which those who had at all observed the singular
associations of his recollections and ideas, must have discerned the
symptoms of a strange disease. He was tainted with a Herodian malady
of the mind: his thoughts were often hateful to himself; but there
was an ecstasy in the conception, as if delight could be mingled with
horror. I think, however, he struggled to master the fatality, and
that his resolution to marry was dictated by an honourable desire to
give hostages to society, against the wild wilfulness of his
imagination.
It is a curious and a mystical fact, that at the period to which I am
alluding, and a very short time, only a little month, before he
successfully solicited the hand of Miss Milbanke, being at Newstead,
he fancied that he saw the ghost of the monk which is supposed to
haunt the abbey, and to make its ominous appearance when misfortune
or death impends over the master of the mansion.--The story of the
apparition in the sixteenth canto of Don Juan is derived from this
family legend, and Norman Abbey, in the thirteenth of the same poem,
is a rich and elaborate description of Newstead.
After his proposal to Miss Milbanke had been accepted, a considerable
time, nearly three months, elapsed before the marriage was completed,
in consequence of the embarrassed condition in which, when the
necessary settlements were to be made, he found his affairs. This
state of things, with the previous unhappy controversy with himself,
and anger at the world, was ill-calculated to gladden his nuptials:
but, besides these real evils, his mind was awed with gloomy
presentiments, a shadow of some advancing misfortune darkened his
spirit, and the ceremony was performed with sacrificial feelings, and
those dark and chilling circumstances, which he has so touchingly
described in The Dream:--
I saw him stand
Before an altar with a gentle bride;
Her face was fair, but was not that which made
The starlight of his boyhood:--as he stood
Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came
The self-same aspect, and the quivering shock
That in the antique oratory shook
His bosom in its solitude; and then--
As in that hour--a moment o'er his face
The tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced--and then it faded as it came,
And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke
The faltering vows, but heard not his own words,
And all things reeled around him: he could see
Not that which was, nor that which should have been--
But the old mansion and the accustom'd hall,
And the remembered chambers, and the place,
The day, the hour, the sunshine and the shade,
All things pertaining to that place and hour.
And her, who was his destiny, came back,
And thrust themselves between him and the light.
This is very affectingly described; and his prose description bears
testimony to its correctness. "It had been predicted by Mrs Williams
that twenty-seven was to be a dangerous age for me. The fortune-
telling witch was right; it was destined to prove so. I shall never
forget the 2nd of January, 1815, Lady Byron was the only unconcerned
person present; Lady Noel, her mother, cried; I trembled like a leaf,
made the wrong responses, and after the ceremony called her Miss
Milbanke.
"There is a singular history attached to the ring. The very day the
match was concluded a ring of my mother's, that had been lost, was
dug up by the gardener at Newstead. I thought it was sent on purpose
for the wedding; but my mother's marriage had not been a fortunate
one, and this ring was doomed to be the seal of an unhappier union
still.
"After the ordeal was over, we set off for a country-scat of Sir
Ralph's (Lady B.'s father), and I was surprised at the arrangements
for the journey, and somewhat out of humour, to find the lady's maid
stuck between me and my bride. It was rather too early to assume the
husband; so I was forced to submit, but it was not with a very good
grace. I have been accused of saying, on getting into the carriage,
that I had married Lady Byron out of spite, and because she had
refused me twice. Though I was for a moment vexed at her prudery, or
whatever you may choose to call it, if I had made so uncavalier, not
to say brutal, a speech, I am convinced Lady Byron would instantly
have left the carriage to me and the maid. She had spirit enough to
have done so, and would properly have resented the affront. Our
honeymoon was not all sunshine; it had its clouds.
"I was not so young when my father died, but that I perfectly
remember him, and had a very early horror of matrimony from the sight
of domestic broils: this feeling came over me very strongly at my
wedding. Something whispered me that I was sealing my own death-
warrant. I am a great believer in presentiments: Socrates's demon
was not a fiction; Monk Lewis had his monitor, and Napoleon many
warnings. At the last moment I would have retreated, could I have
done so; I called to mind a friend of mine, who had married a young,
beautiful, and rich girl, and yet was miserable; he had strongly
urged me against putting my neck in the same yoke."
For some time after the marriage things went on in the usual
matrimonial routine, until he was chosen into the managing committee
of Drury Lane; an office in which, had he possessed the slightest
degree of talent for business, he might have done much good. It was
justly expected that the illiterate presumption which had so long
deterred poetical genius from approaching the stage, would have
shrunk abashed from before him; but he either felt not the importance
of the duty he had been called to perform, or, what is more probable,
yielding to the allurements of the moment, forgot that duty, in the
amusement which he derived from the talents and peculiarities of the
players. No situation could be more unfit for a man of his
temperament, than one which exposed him to form intimacies with
persons whose profession, almost necessarily, leads them to
undervalue the domestic virtues.
It is said, that the course of life into which he was drawn after he
joined the managing committee of Drury Lane was not in unison with
the methodical habits of Lady Byron. But independently of outdoor
causes of connubial discontent and incompatibility of temper, their
domestic affairs were falling into confusion.
"My income at this period," says Lord Byron, "was small, and somewhat
bespoken. We had a house in town, gave dinner-parties, had separate
carriages, and launched into every sort of extravagance. This could
not last long; my wife's ten thousand pounds soon melted away. I was
beset by duns, and at length an execution was levied, and the
bailiffs put in possession of the very beds we had to sleep on. This
was no very agreeable state of affairs, no very pleasant scene for
Lady Byron to witness; and it was agreed she should pay her father a
visit till the storm had blown over, and some arrangement had been
made with my creditors." From this visit her Ladyship never
returned; a separation took place; but too much has been said to the
world respecting it, and I have no taste for the subject. Whatever
was the immediate cause, the event itself was not of so rare a kind
as to deserve that the attention of the public should be indelicately
courted to it.
Beyond all question, however, Lord Byron's notions of connubial
obligations were rather philosophical. "There are," said he to
Captain Parry, "so many undefinable and nameless, and not to be
named, causes of dislike, aversion, and disgust in the matrimonial
state, that it is always impossible for the public, or the friends of
the parties, to judge between man and wife. Theirs is a relation
about which nobody but themselves can form a correct idea, or have
any right to speak. As long as neither party commits gross injustice
towards the other; as long as neither the woman nor the man is guilty
of any offence which is injurious to the community; as long as the
husband provides for his offspring, and secures the public against
the dangers arising from their neglected education, or from the
charge of supporting them; by what right does it censure him for
ceasing to dwell under the same roof with a woman, who is to him,
because he knows her, while others do not, an object of loathing?
Can anything be more monstrous, than for the public voice to compel
individuals who dislike each other to continue their cohabitation?
This is at least the effect of its interfering with a relationship,
of which it has no possible means of judging. It does not indeed
drag a man to a woman's bed by physical force, but it does exert a
moral force continually and effectively to accomplish the same
purpose. Nobody can escape this force, but those who are too high or
those who are too low for public opinion to reach; or those
hypocrites who are, before others, the loudest in their approbation
of the empty and unmeaning forms of society, that they may securely
indulge all their propensities in secret."
In the course of the conversation, in which he is represented to have
stated these opinions, he added what I have pleasure in quoting,
because the sentiments are generous in respect to his wife, and
strikingly characteristic of himself:--
"Lady Byron has a liberal mind, particularly as to religious
opinions: and I wish when I married her that I had possessed the
same command over myself that I now do. Had I possessed a little
more wisdom and more forbearance, we might have been happy. I
wished, when I was just married to have remained in the country,
particularly till my pecuniary embarrassments were over. I knew the
society of London; I knew the characters of many who are called
ladies, with whom Lady Byron would necessarily have to associate, and
I dreaded her contact with them. But I have too much of my mother
about me to be dictated to; I like freedom from constraint; I hate
artificial regulations: my conduct has always been dictated by my
own feelings, and Lady Byron was quite the creature of rules. She
was not permitted either to ride, or run, or walk, but as the
physician prescribed. She was not suffered to go out when I wished
to go: and then the old house was a mere ghost-house, I dreamed of
ghosts and thought of them waking. It was an existence I could not
support." Here Lord Byron broke off abruptly, saying, "I hate to
speak of my family affairs, though I have been compelled to talk
nonsense concerning them to some of my butterfly visitors, glad on
any terms to get rid of their importunities. I long to be again on
the mountains. I am fond of solitude, and should never talk
nonsense, if I always found plain men to talk to."