Lady Byron Vindicated. Гарриет Бичер-Стоу

where the ancients paid their worship long,

       Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss,

       And round Orestes bid them howl and hiss

       For that unnatural retribution—just

       Had it but come from hands less near—in this

       Thy former realm I call thee from the dust.

       Dost thou not hear, my heart? awake thou shalt and must!

       It is not that I may not have incurred

       For my ancestral faults and mine, the wound

       Wherewith I bleed withal, and had it been conferred

       With a just weapon it had flowed unbound,

       But now my blood shall not sink in the ground.

      * * * *

      ‘But in this page a record will I seek;

       Not in the air shall these my words disperse,

       Though I be ashes—a far hour shall wreak

       The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,

       And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse.

       That curse shall be forgiveness. Have I not—

       Hear me, my Mother Earth! behold it, Heaven—

       Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?

       Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?

       Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,

       Hopes sapped, name blighted, life’s life lied away,

       And only not to desperation driven,

       Because not altogether of such clay

       As rots into the soul of those whom I survey?

      ----------

      ‘From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy,

       Have I not seen what human things could do—

       From the loud roar of foaming calumny,

       To the small whispers of the paltry few,

       And subtler venom of the reptile crew,

       The Janus glance of whose significant eye,

       Learning to lie with silence, would seem true,

       And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,

       Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy?’ {31}

      The reader will please notice that the lines in italics are almost, word for word, a repetition of the lines in italics in the former poem on his wife, where he speaks of a significant eye that has learned to lie in silence, and were evidently meant to apply to Lady Byron and her small circle of confidential friends.

      Before this, in the Third Canto of ‘Childe Harold,’ he had claimed the sympathy of the world, as a loving father, deprived by a severe fate of the solace and society of his only child:—

      ‘My daughter—with this name my song began—

       My daughter—with this name my song shall end—

       I see thee not and hear thee not, but none

       Can be so wrapped in thee; thou art the friend

       To whom the shadows of far years extend.

      * * * *

      ‘To aid thy mind’s developments, to watch

       The dawn of little joys, to sit and see

       Almost thy very growth, to view thee catch

       Knowledge of objects—wonders yet to thee—

       And print on thy soft cheek a parent’s kiss;—

       This it should seem was not reserved for me.

       Yet this was in my nature—as it is,

       I know not what there is, yet something like to this.

      ----------

      ‘Yet though dull hate as duty should be taught,

       I know that thou wilt love me; though my name

       Should be shut out from thee as spell still fraught

       With desolation and a broken claim,

       Though the grave close between us—‘t were the same

       I know that thou wilt love me, though to drain

       My blood from out thy being were an aim

       And an attainment—all will be in vain.’

      To all these charges against her, sent all over the world in verses as eloquent as the English language is capable of, the wife replied nothing.

      ‘Assailed by slander and the tongue of strife,

       Her only answer was—a blameless life.’

      She had a few friends, a very few, with whom she sought solace and sympathy. One letter from her, written at this time, preserved by accident, is the only authentic record of how the matter stood with her.

      We regret to say that the publication of this document was not brought forth to clear Lady Byron’s name from her husband’s slanders, but to shield him from the worst accusation against him, by showing that this crime was not included in the few private confidential revelations that friendship wrung from the young wife at this period.

      Lady Anne Barnard, authoress of ‘Auld Robin Grey,’ a friend whose age and experience made her a proper confidante, sent for the broken-hearted, perplexed wife, and offered her a woman’s sympathy.

      To her Lady Byron wrote many letters, under seal of confidence, and Lady Anne says: ‘I will give you a few paragraphs transcribed from one of Lady Byron’s own letters to me. It is sorrowful to think that in a very little time this young and amiable creature, wise, patient, and feeling, will have her character mistaken by every one who reads Byron’s works. To rescue her from this I preserved her letters, and when she afterwards expressed a fear that anything of her writing should ever fall into hands to injure him (I suppose she meant by publication), I safely assured her that it never should. But here this letter shall be placed, a sacred record in her favour, unknown to herself.

      ‘I am a very incompetent judge of the impression which the last Canto of “Childe Harold” may produce on the minds of indifferent readers.

      ‘It contains the usual trace of a conscience restlessly awake, though his object has been too long to aggravate its burden, as if it could thus be oppressed into eternal stupor. I will hope, as you do, that it survives for his ultimate good.

      ‘It was the acuteness of his remorse, impenitent in its character, which so long seemed to demand from my compassion to spare every semblance of reproach, every look of grief, which might have said to his conscience, “You have made me wretched.”

      ‘I am decidedly of opinion that he is responsible. He has wished to be thought partially deranged, or on the brink of it, to perplex observers and prevent them from tracing effects to their real causes through all the intricacies of his conduct. I was, as I told you, at one time the dupe of his acted insanity, and clung to the former delusions in regard to the motives that concerned me personally, till the whole system was laid bare.

      ‘He is the absolute monarch of words, and uses them, as Bonaparte did lives, for conquest, without more regard to their intrinsic value, considering them only as ciphers, which must derive all their import from the situation in which he places them, and the ends to which he adapts them, with such consummate skill.

      ‘Why, then, you will say, does he not employ them to give a better colour to his own character? Because he is too good an actor to over-act, or to assume a moral garb, which it would be easy to strip off.

      ‘In regard to his poetry, egotism is the vital principle of his imagination, which it is difficult for him to kindle on any subject with which