Byron: The Last Phase

The last verses written by Byron before he left England for ever were addressed to his sister. The deed of separation had been signed, and Augusta Leigh, who had stood at his side in those dark hours when all the world had forsaken him, was about to leave London.

‘When all around grew drear and dark,And Reason half withheld her ray —And Hope but shed a dying sparkWhich more misled my lonely way;When Fortune changed, and Love fled far,And Hatred’s shafts flew thick and fast,Thou wert the solitary starWhich rose, and set not to the last.And when the cloud upon us cameWhich strove to blacken o’er thy ray—Then purer spread its gentle flameAnd dashed the darkness all away.Still may thy Spirit dwell on mine,And teach it what to brave or brook—There’s more in one soft word of thineThan in the world’s defied rebuke.******Then let the ties of baffled loveBe broken– thine will never break;Thy heart can feel.’

These ingenuous words show that Byron’s affection for his sister, and his gratitude for her loyalty, were both deep and sincere. If, as Lord Lovelace asserts, Byron had been her lover, we know enough of his character to be certain that he would never have written these lines. He was not a hypocrite – far from it – and it was foreign to his naturally combative nature to attempt to conciliate public opinion. These lines were written currente calamo, and are only interesting to us on account of the light they cast upon the situation at the time of the separation. Evidently Byron had heard a rumour of the baseless charge that was afterwards openly made. He reminds Augusta that a cloud threatened to darken her existence, but the bright rays of her purity dispelled it. He hopes that even in absence she will guide and direct him as in the past; and he compliments her by saying that one word from her had more influence over him than the whole world’s censure. Although his love-episode with Mary was over, yet so long as Augusta loves him he will still have something to live for, as she alone can feel for him and understand his position.

In speaking of his sister, in the third canto of ‘Childe Harold,’ he says:

‘For there was soft Remembrance, and sweet TrustIn one fond breast, to which his own would melt.’‘And he had learned to love– I know not why,For this in such as him seems strange of mood —The helpless looks of blooming Infancy,Even in its earliest nurture; what subdued,To change like this, a mind so far imbuedWith scorn of man, it little boots to know;But thus it was; and though in solitudeSmall power the nipped affections have to grow,In him this glowed when all beside had ceased to glow.’

If these words bear any significance, Byron must mean that, since the preceding canto of ‘Childe Harold’ was written, he had formed (learned to love) a strong attachment to some child, and, in spite of absence, this affection still glowed. That child may possibly have been Ada, as the opening lines seem to suggest. But this is not quite certain. According to Lord Lovelace, Byron never saw his child after January 3, 1816, when the babe was only twenty-four days old. Byron himself states that it was not granted to him ‘to watch her dawn of little joys, or hold her lightly on his knee, and print on her soft cheek a parent’s kiss.’ All this, he tells us, ‘was in his nature,’ but was denied to him. His sole consolation was the hope that some day Ada would learn to love him. On the other hand, the child mentioned in ‘Childe Harold’ had won his love by means which ‘it little boots to know.’ If Byron had alluded to his daughter Ada, there need have been no ambiguity. Possibly the child here indicated may have been little Medora, then three years old, with whom he had often played, and who was then living with that sister of ‘Soft Remembrance and sweet Trust.’

If that conjecture be correct, this is the only allusion to Medora in Byron’s poetry. But she is indicated in prose. In reference to the death of one of Moore’s children, Byron wrote (February 2, 1818):

‘I know how to feel with you, because I am quite wrapped up in my own children. Besides my little legitimate, I have made unto myself an illegitimate since, to say nothing of one before; and I look forward to one of them as the pillar of my old age, supposing that I ever reach, as I hope I never shall, that desolating period.’

In the one before Moore will have recognized Medora. In spite of the ‘scarlet cloak and double figure,’ Moore had no belief in the story that Byron became a father while at Harrow School!

‘The Dream,’ which was written in July, 1816, is perhaps more widely known than any of Byron’s poems. Its theme is the remembrance of a hopeless passion, which neither Time nor Reason could extinguish. Similar notes of lamentation permeate most of his poems, but in ‘The Dream’ Byron, for the first time, takes the world into his confidence, and tells his tale of woe with such distinctness that we realize its truth, its passion, and its calamity. The publication of that poem was an indiscretion which must have been very disconcerting to his sister. Fortunately, it had no disastrous consequences. It apparently awakened no suspicions, and its sole effect was to incense Mary Chaworth’s husband, who, in order to stop all prattle, caused the ‘peculiar diadem of trees’ to be cut down. In Byron’s early poems we see how deeply Mary Chaworth’s marriage affected him; but this was known only to a small circle of Southwell friends. In ‘The Dream’ we realize that she was in fact a portion of his life, and that his own marriage had not in the least affected his feelings towards her. He had tried hard to forget her, but in vain; she was his destiny. Whether Byron, when he wrote this poem, had any idea of publishing it to the world is not known. It may possibly have been written to relieve his overburdened mind, and would not have seen the light but for Lady Byron’s treatment of Mrs. Leigh on the memorable occasion when she extracted, under promise of secrecy, the so-called ‘Confession,’ to which we shall allude presently. In any case, Byron became aware of what had happened in September, 1816. In some lines addressed to his wife, he tells her that she bought others’ grief at any price, adding:

‘The means were worthy, and the end is won;I would not do by thee as thou hast done.’

Possibly, Byron may have thought that the publication of this poem would act as a barb, and would wound Lady Byron’s stubborn pride. Its appearance in the circumstances was certainly contra bonos mores, but we must remember that ‘men in rage often strike those who wish them best.’ Whatever may have been Byron’s intention, ‘The Dream’ affords a proof that Mary Chaworth was never long absent from his thoughts. At this time, when he felt a deep remorse for his conduct towards Mary Chaworth, he asks himself:

‘What is this Death? a quiet of the heart?The whole of that of which we are a part?For Life is but a vision – what I seeOf all which lives alone is Life to me,And being so – the absent are the deadWho haunt us from tranquillity, and spreadA dreary shroud around us, and investWith sad remembrancers our hours of rest.The absent are the dead – for they are cold,And ne’er can be what once we did behold;And they are changed, and cheerless, – or if yetThe unforgotten do not all forget,Since thus divided– equal must it beIf the deep barrier be of earth, or sea;It may be both– but one day end it mustIn the dark union of insensate dust.’

It was at this time also that Byron wrote his ‘Stanzas to Augusta,’ which show his complete confidence in her loyalty:

‘Though human, thou didst not deceive me,Though woman, thou didst not forsake,Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,Though tempted, thou never couldst shake;Though trusted, thou didst not betray me,Though parted, it was not to fly,Though watchful, ’twas not to defame me,Nor, mute, that the world might belie.’

Byron’s remorse also found expression in ‘Manfred,’ where contrition is but slightly veiled by words of mysterious import, breathed in an atmosphere of mountains, magic, and ghost-lore. People in society, whose ears had been poisoned by insinuations against Mrs. Leigh, and who knew nothing of Byron’s intercourse with Mary Chaworth, came to the conclusion that ‘Manfred’ revealed a criminal attachment between Byron and his sister. Byron was aware of this, and, conscious of his innocence, held his head in proud defiance, and laughed his enemies to scorn. He did not deign to defend himself; and the public – forgetful of the maxim that where there is a sense of guilt there is a jealousy of drawing attention to it – believed the worst. When a critique of ‘Manfred,’ giving an account of the supposed origin of the story, was sent to Byron, he wrote to Murray:

‘The conjecturer is out, and knows nothing of the matter. I had a better origin than he can devise or divine for the soul of him.’

That was the simple truth. The cruel allegation against Mrs. Leigh seemed to be beneath contempt. As Sir Egerton Brydges pointed out at the time, Byron, being of a strong temperament, did not reply to the injuries heaped upon him by whining complaints and cowardly protestations of innocence; he became desperate, and broke out into indignation, sarcasm, and exposure of his opponents, in a manner so severe as to seem inexcusably cruel to those who did not realize the provocation. It was ‘war to the knife,’ and Byron had the best of it.

We propose to examine ‘Manfred’ closely, to see whether Astarte in any degree resembles the description which Lord Lovelace has given of Augusta Leigh.

Manfred tells us that his slumbers are ‘a continuance of enduring thought,’ since that ‘all-nameless hour’ when he committed the crime for which he suffers. He asks ‘Forgetfulness of that which is within him – a crime which he cannot utter.’ When told by the Seven Spirits that he cannot have self-oblivion, Manfred asks if Death would give it to him; and receives the sad reply that, being immortal, the spirit after death cannot forget the past.

Eventually the Seventh Spirit – typifying, possibly, a Magdalen – appears before Manfred, in the shape of a beautiful woman.

‘Manfred. Oh God! if it be thus, and thouArt not a madness and a mockery,I yet might be most happy.’

When the figure vanishes, Manfred falls senseless. In the second act, Manfred, in reply to the chamois-hunter, who offers him a cup of wine, says:

‘Away, away! there’s blood upon the brim!Will it then never – never sink in the earth?’Tis blood – my blood! the pure warm streamWhich ran in the veins of my fathers, and in oursWhen we were in our youth, and had one heart,And loved each other as we should not love,And this was shed: but still it rises up.Colouring the clouds that shut me out from Heaven.’

One may well wonder what all this has to do with Augusta. The blood that ran in Byron’s veins also ran in the veins of Mary Chaworth, and that blood, shed by Byron’s kinsman, had caused a feud, which was not broken until Byron came upon the scene, and fell hopelessly in love with ‘the last of a time-honoured race.’ Byron from his boyhood always believed that there was a blood-curse upon him.

When, two years later, he wrote ‘The Duel’ (December, 1818), he again alludes to the subject:

‘I loved thee – I will not say how,Since things like these are best forgot:Perhaps thou mayst imagine nowWho loved thee and who loved thee not.And thou wert wedded to another,And I at last another wedded:I am a father, thou a mother,To strangers vowed, with strangers bedded.***** *‘Many a bar, and many a feud,Though never told, well understood,Rolled like a river wide between —And then there was the curse of blood,Which even my Heart’s can not remove.***** *‘I’ve seen the sword that slew him; he,The slain, stood in a like degreeTo thee, as he, the Slayer stood(Oh, had it been but other blood!)In Kin and Chieftainship to me.Thus came the Heritage to thee.’

Clearly, then, the Spirit, which appeared to Manfred in the form of a beautiful female figure, was Mary Chaworth; the crime for which he suffered was his conduct towards her; and the blood, which his fancy beheld on the cup’s brim, was the blood of William Chaworth, which his predecessor, Lord Byron, had shed. When asked by the chamois-hunter whether he had wreaked revenge upon his enemies, Manfred replies:

‘No, no, no!My injuries came down on those who loved me —On those whom I best loved: I never quelledAn enemy, save in my just defence —But my embrace was fatal.’

In speaking of the ‘core of his heart’s grief,’ Manfred says:

‘Yet there was One —She was like me in lineaments – her eyes —Her hair – her features – all, to the very toneEven of her voice, they said were like to mine;But softened all, and tempered into beauty:She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings,52The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mindTo comprehend the Universe: nor theseAlone, but with them gentler powers than mine,Pity, and smiles, and tears – which I had not;And tenderness – but that I had for her;Humility – and that I never had.Her faults were mine – her virtues were her own —I loved her, and destroyed her!Not with my hand, but heart, which broke her heart;It gazed on mine, and withered.’

In order to appreciate the absurdity of connecting this description with Augusta, we will quote her noble accuser, Lord Lovelace:

‘The character of Augusta is seen in her letters and actions. She was a woman of that great family which is vague about facts, unconscious of duties, impulsive in conduct. The course of her life could not be otherwise explained, by those who had looked into it with close intimacy, than by a kind of moral idiotcy from birth. She was of a sanguine and buoyant disposition, childishly fond and playful, ready to laugh at anything, loving to talk nonsense.’

In fact,

‘She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings,The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mindTo comprehend the Universe.’

Lord Lovelace further tells us that Augusta Leigh ‘had a refined species of comic talent’; that she was ‘strangely insensible to the nature and magnitude of the offence in question [incest] even as an imputation;’ and that ‘there was apparently an absence of all deep feeling in her mind, of everything on which a strong impression could be made.’ We are also told that ‘Byron, after his marriage, generally spoke of Augusta as “a fool,” with equal contempt of her understanding and principles.’

In short, Byron’s description of the woman, whom he had ‘destroyed,’ resembles Augusta Leigh about as much as a mountain resembles a haystack. How closely Manfred’s description resembles Mary Chaworth will be seen presently. Augusta Leigh had told Byron that, in consequence of his conduct, Mary Chaworth was out of her mind.

Manfred says that if he had never lived, that which he loved had still been living:

‘… Had I never loved,That which I love would still be beautiful,Happy, and giving happiness. What is she?What is she now? A sufferer for my sins—A thing I dare not think upon– or nothing.’

When Nemesis asks Manfred whom he would ‘uncharnel,’ he replies:

‘One without a tomb —Call up Astarte.’

The name, of course, suggests a star. As we have seen, Byron often employed that metaphor in allusion to Mary Chaworth.

When the phantom of Astarte rises, Manfred exclaims:

‘Can this be death? there’s bloom upon her cheek;But now I see it is no living hue,But a strange hectic.’

He is afraid to look upon her; he cannot speak to her, and implores Nemesis to intercede:

‘Bid her speak —Forgive me, or condemn me.’

Nemesis tells him that she has no authority over Astarte:

‘She is not of our order, but belongsTo the other powers.’53

The fine appeal of Manfred cannot have been addressed by Byron to his sister:

‘Hear me, hear me —Astarte! my belovéd! speak to me:I have so much endured – so much endure —Look on me! the grave hath not changed thee moreThan I am changed for thee. Thou lovedst meToo much, as I loved thee: we were not madeTo torture thus each other – though it wereThe deadliest sin to love as we have loved.Say that thou loath’st me not – that I do bearThis punishment for both – that thou wilt beOne of the blesséd – and that I shall die.*******‘I cannot rest.I know not what I ask, nor what I seek:I feel but what thou art, and what I am;And I would hear yet once before I perishThe voice which was my music54– speak to me!*******Speak to me! I have wandered o’er the earth,And never found thy likeness.’

When Manfred implores Astarte to forgive him, she is silent. It is not a matter for forgiveness. He entreats her to speak to him, so that he may once more hear that sweet voice, even though it be for the last time. The silence is broken by the word ‘Farewell!’ Manfred, whose doom is sealed, cries in agony:

‘What I have done is done; I bear withinA torture which could nothing gain (from others).The Mind, which is immortal, makes itselfRequital for its good or evil thoughts, —Is its own origin of ill and end —And its own place and time:I was my own destroyer, and will beMy own hereafter…The hand of Death is on me…All things swim around me, and the EarthHeaves, as it were, beneath me. Fare thee well!’

So far as we know, there is nothing in the whole length of this poem to suggest anything abnormal; and it is hard to understand what resemblance Byron’s contemporaries could have discovered between the Astarte of ‘Manfred’ and Augusta Leigh! Enough has been quoted to show that Byron was not thinking of his sister when he wrote ‘Manfred,’ but of her whose life he had blasted, and whose ‘sacred name’ he trembled to reveal.

In April, 1817, Byron was informed by Mrs. Leigh that Mary Chaworth and her husband had made up their differences. The ‘Lament of Tasso’ was written in that month, and Byron’s thoughts were occupied, as usual, with the theme of all his misery.

‘That thou wert beautiful, and I not blind,Hath been the sin that shuts me from mankind;But let them go, or torture as they will,My heart can multiply thine image still;Successful Love may sate itself away;The wretched are the faithful; ’tis their fateTo have all feeling, save the one, decay,And every passion into one dilate,As rapid rivers into Ocean pour;But ours is fathomless, and hath no shore.’

In ‘Mazeppa’ Byron tells how he met ‘Theresa’ in that month of June, and how ‘through his brain the thought did pass that there was something in her air which would not doom him to despair.’ This incident is again referred to in ‘Don Juan.’ The Count Palatine is, probably, intended as a sketch of Mary’s husband.

‘The Duel,’ which was written in December, 1818, is addressed to Mary Chaworth:

‘I loved thee – I will not say how,Since things like these are best forgot.’

Byron alludes to ‘the curse of blood,’ with, ‘many a bar and many a feud,’ which ‘rolled like a wide river between them’:

‘Alas! how many things have beenSince we were friends; for I aloneFeel more for thee than can be shown.’

In the so-called ‘Stanzas to the Po,’ we find the same prolonged note of suffering. Writing to Murray (May 8, 1820), Byron says:

‘I sent a copy of verses to Mr. Kinnaird (they were written last year on crossing the Po) which must not be published. Pray recollect this, as they were mere verses of society, and written from private feelings and passions.’

In view of the secrecy which Byron consistently observed, respecting his later intimacy with Mary Chaworth, the publication of these verses would have been highly indiscreet. They were written in June, 1819, after Mary had for some time been reconciled to her husband. She was then living with him at Colwick Hall, near Nottingham.

Ostensibly these stanzas form an apostrophe to the River Po, and the ‘lady of the land’ was, of course, the Guiccioli. Medwin, to whom Byron gave the poem, believed that the river apostrophized by the poet was the River Po, whose ‘deep and ample stream’ was ‘the mirror of his heart.’ But it seems perfectly clear that, if this poem referred only to the Countess Guiccioli, there could have been no objection to its publication in England. The reading public in those days knew nothing of Byron’s liaisons abroad, and his mystic allusion to foreign rivers and foreign ladies would have left the British public cold.

A scrutiny of these perplexing stanzas suggests that they were adapted, from a fragment written in early life, to meet the conditions of 1819. Evidently Mary Chaworth was once more ‘the ocean to the river of his thoughts,’ and the stream indicated in the opening stanza was not the Po, but the River Trent, which flows close to the ancient walls of Colwick, where ‘the lady of his love’ was then residing. To assist the reader, we insert the poem, having merely transposed three stanzas to make its purport clearer

I‘River, that rollest by the ancient walls,Where dwells the Lady of my love, when sheWalks by the brink, and there perchance recallsA faint and fleeting memory of me:II‘She will look on thee – I have looked on thee,Full of that thought: and from that moment ne’erThy waters could I dream of, name, or seeWithout the inseparable sigh for her!III‘But that which keepeth us apart is notDistance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth,But the distraction of a various lot,As various the climates of our birth.IV‘What if thy deep and ample stream should beA mirror of my heart, where she may readThe thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!V‘What do I say – a mirror of my heart?Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong?Such as my feelings were and are, thou art;And such as thou art were my passions long.VI‘Time may have somewhat tamed them – not for ever;Thou overflowest thy banks, and not for ayeThy bosom overboils, congenial river!Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away:VII‘But left long wrecks behind, and now again,Borne on our old unchanged career, we move:Thou tendest wildly onwards to the main,And I, – to loving one I should not love.VIII‘My blood is all meridian; were it not,I had not left my clime, nor should I be,In spite of tortures, ne’er to be forgot,A slave again to Love – at least of thee.IX‘The current I behold will sweep beneathHer native walls,55 and murmur at her feet;Her eyes will look on thee, when she shall breatheThe twilight air, unharmed by summer’s heat.X‘Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream.Yes, they will meet the wave I gaze on now:Mine cannot witness, even in a dream,That happy wave repass me in its flow!XI‘The wave that bears my tears returns no more:Will she return by whom that wave shall sweep?Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore,I near thy source, she by the dark-blue deep.56XII‘A stranger loves the Lady of the land,Born far beyond the mountains, but his bloodIs all meridian, as if never fannedBy the bleak wind that chills the polar flood.XIII‘’Tis vain to struggle – let me perish young —Live as I lived, and love as I have loved;To dust if I return, from dust I sprung,And then, at least, my heart can ne’er be moved.’

In the first stanza, Byron says that when his lady-love walks by the river’s brink ‘she may perchance recall a faint and fleeting memory’ of him. Those words, which might have been applicable to Mary Chaworth, whom he had not seen for at least three years, could not possibly refer to a woman from whom he had been parted but two short months, and with whom he had since been in constant correspondence. Only a few days before these verses were written, Countess Guiccioli had told him by letter that she had prepared all her relatives and friends to expect him at Ravenna. There must surely have been something more than ‘a faint and fleeting’ memory of Byron in the mind of the ardent Guiccioli. In the second stanza, Byron, in allusion to the river he had in his thoughts, says:

‘She will look on thee —I have looked on thee, full of that thought: and from that moment ne’er thy waters could I dream of, name, or see, without the inseparable sigh for her.’

Now, while there was nothing whatever to connect the River Po with tender recollections, there was Byron’s association in childhood with the River Trent, a memory inseparable from his boyish love for Mary Chaworth.

‘But in his native stream, the Guadalquivir,Juan to lave his youthful limbs was wont;And having learnt to swim in that sweet riverHad often turned the art to some account.’

In the fourth stanza we perceive that the poet, while thinking of the Trent, ‘betrays his thoughts’ to the Po, a river as wild and as swift as his native stream.