Byron: The Last Phase

‘on all these occasions, one subject – uppermost in the thoughts of both – had been virtually ignored, except that Augusta had had the audacity to name the reports about herself with all the pride of innocence. Intercourse could not continue on that footing, for Augusta probably aimed at a positive guarantee of her innocence, and at committing Lady Byron irretrievably to that.’

This was great presumption on Mrs. Leigh’s part, after all the pains they had taken to make her uncomfortable. Lady Byron, we are told by Lord Lovelace, could no longer bear the false position, and ‘before leaving London she went to the Hon. Mrs. Villiers – a most intimate friend of Augusta’s’ – and deliberately poisoned her mind. That which she told Mrs. Villiers is not stated; but we infer that Lady Byron retailed some of the gossip that had reached her through one of Mrs. Leigh’s servants who had overheard part of a conversation between Augusta and Byron shortly after Medora’s birth. After the child had been taken to St. James’s Palace, Byron often went there. It is likely that Augusta had been overheard jesting with Byron about his child. We cannot be sure of this; but, at any rate, some such expression, if whispered in Lady Byron’s ears, would be sufficient to confirm her erroneous belief.

Mrs. Villiers, we are told, began from this time to be slightly prejudiced against Augusta. She believed her to be absolutely pure, but with lax notions of morality. This sounds like a contradiction in terms, but so it was; and through the wilful misrepresentation of Lady Byron and her coterie, Augusta’s best friend was lured from her allegiance. Mrs. Villiers was also informed of something else by Wilmot-Horton, another friend of Lady Byron’s. The plot thickened, and, without any attempt being made to arrive at the truth, Augusta’s life became almost unbearable. No wonder the poor woman said in her agony: ‘None can know how much I have suffered from this unhappy business, and, indeed, I have never known a moment’s peace, and begin to despair for the future.’

The ‘unhappy business’ was, of course, her unwise adoption of Medora. Through that error of judgment she was doomed to plod her way to the grave, suspected by even her dearest friend, and persecuted by the Byron family. Mrs. Villiers was a good woman and scented treason. She boldly urged Lady Byron to avow to Augusta the information of which she was in possession. But Lady Byron was at first afraid to run the risk. She knew very well the value of servants’ gossip, and feared the open hostility of Augusta if she made common cause with Byron. This much she ingenuously avowed in a letter to Dr. Lushington. But, upon being further pressed, she consented to write to Augusta and announce what she had been told. We have no doubt that the letter was written with great care, after consultation with Colonel Doyle and Lushington, and that the gossip was retailed with every outward consideration for Augusta’s feelings. Whatever was said, and there is no evidence of it in ‘Astarte,’ we are there told that ‘Augusta did not attempt to deny it, and, in fact, admitted everything in subsequent letters to Lady Byron during the summer of 1816.’ Lord Lovelace ingenuously adds: ‘It is unnecessary to produce them here, as their contents are confirmed and made sufficiently clear by the correspondence of 1819, in another chapter.’

It is very strange that Lord Lovelace, who is not thrifty in his selections, should have withheld the only positive proof of Augusta’s confession known to be in existence. His reference to the letters of 1819, which he publishes, is a poor substitute for the letters themselves. The only letter which affords any clue to the mystery is the ‘Dearest Love’ letter, dated May 17, 1819, which we have quoted in a previous chapter. The value of that letter, as evidence against Augusta, we have already shown. When compared with the letter which Byron wrote to his sister on June 3, 1817 – a year after he had parted from her – the conclusion that the incriminating letter is not addressed to Augusta at all, forces itself irresistibly upon the mind. As an example of varying moods, it is worth quoting:

‘For the life of me I can’t make out whether your disorder is a broken heart or ear-ache – or whether it is you that have been ill or the children – or what your melancholy and mysterious apprehensions tend to – or refer to – whether to Caroline Lamb’s novels – Mrs. Clermont’s evidence – Lady Byron’s magnanimity, or any other piece of imposture.’

It is really laughable to suppose that the writer of the above extract could have written to the same lady two years later in the following strain:

‘My dearest love, I have never ceased, nor can cease, to feel for a moment that perfect and boundless attachment which bound and binds me to you – which renders me utterly incapable of real love for any other human being – for what could they be to me after you? My own * * * * we may have been very wrong,’ etc.

But Lord Lovelace found no difficulty in believing that the letter in question sealed the fate of Augusta Leigh. In the face of such a document, Lord Lovelace thought that a direct confession in Augusta’s handwriting would be superfluous, and Sir Leslie Stephen had warned him against superfluity!

Colonel Doyle, an intimate friend of Lady Byron, seems to have been the only man on her side of the question – not even excepting Lushington – who showed anything approaching to common sense. He perceived that Lady Byron, by avowing the grounds of her suspicions to Mrs. Leigh, had placed herself in an awkward position. He foresaw that this avowal would turn Mrs. Leigh into an enemy, who must sooner or later avenge the insults heaped upon her. On July 9, 1816, Colonel Doyle wrote to Lady Byron:

‘Your feelings I perfectly understand; I will even whisper to you I approve. But you must remember that your position is very extraordinary, and though, when we have sufficiently deliberated and decided, we should pursue our course without embarrassing ourselves with the consequences; yet we should not neglect the means of fully justifying ourselves if the necessity be ever imposed upon us.’

We have quoted enough to show that, five months after the separation was formally proposed to Lord Byron, they had not sufficient evidence to bring into a court of law. Under those depressing circumstances Lady Byron was urged to induce Augusta to ‘confess’; the conspirators would have been grateful even for an admission of guilt as prior to Lord Byron’s marriage!

Colonel Doyle, as a man of honour, did not wish Lady Byron to rely upon ‘confessions’ made under the seal of secrecy. They had, apparently, been duped on a previous occasion; and, in case Mrs. Leigh were to bring an action against Lady Byron for defamation of character, it would not be advisable to rely, for her defence, upon letters which were strictly private and confidential. As to Augusta’s ‘admissions,’ made orally and without witnesses, they were absolutely valueless – especially as the conditions under which they were made could not in honour be broken.

Augusta through all this worry fell into a state of deep dejection. She had been accused of a crime which (though innocent) she had tacitly admitted. Her friends were beginning to look coldly upon her, and consequently her position became tenfold more difficult and ‘extraordinary’ than that of her accuser. Perhaps she came to realize the truth of Dryden’s lines:

‘Smooth the descent and easy is the way;But to return, and view the cheerful skies,In this the task and mighty labour lies.’

Equivocation is a dangerous game.

Lord Lovelace tells us that all the papers concerning the marriage of Lord and Lady Byron have been carefully preserved. ‘They are a complete record of all the causes of separation, and contain full information on every part of the subject.’

We can only say that it is a pity Lord Lovelace should have withheld those which were most likely to prove his case – for example, the letters which Mrs. Leigh wrote to Lady Byron in the summer of 1816. The public have a right to demand from an accuser the grounds of his accusation. Lord Lovelace gives us none. He bids us listen to what he deigns to tell us, and to ask for nothing more. That his case is built upon Lady Byron’s surmises, and upon no more solid foundation, is shown by the following illuminating extract from ‘Astarte’:

‘When a woman is placed as Lady Byron was, her mind works involuntarily, almost unconsciously, and conclusions force their way into it. She has not meant to think so and so, and she has thought it; the dreadful idea is repelled then, and to the last, with the whole force of her will, but when once conceived it cannot be banished. The distinctive features of a true hypothesis, when once in the mind, are a precise conformity to facts already known, and an adaptability to fresh developments, which allow us not to throw it aside at pleasure. Lady Byron’s agony of doubt could only end in the still greater agony of certainty; but this was no result of ingenuity or inquiry, as she sought not for information.’

If Lady Byron did not seek for information when she plied Augusta with questions, and encouraged her friends to do the same, she must have derived pleasure from torturing her supposed rival. But that is absurd.

‘Women,’ says Lord Lovelace, ‘are said to excel in piecing together scattered insignificant fragments of conversations and circumstances, and fitting them all into their right places amongst what they know already, and thus reconstruct a whole that is very close to the complete truth. But Lady Byron’s whole effort was to resist the light, or rather the darkness, that would flow into her mind.’

In her effort to resist the light, Lady Byron seems to have admirably succeeded. But, in spite of her grandson’s statement, that she employed any great effort to resist the darkness that flowed into her mind we entirely disbelieve. We are rather inclined to think that, in her search for evidence to convict Mrs. Leigh, she would have been very grateful for a farthing rushlight.

We now leave ‘Astarte’ to the judgment of posterity, for whom, in a peculiarly cruel sense, it was originally intended. If in a court of law counsel for the prosecution were to declaim loudly and frequently about evidence which he does not – perhaps dares not – produce, his harangues would make an unfavourable impression on a British jury. We have no wish to speak ill of the dead, but, in justice to Mrs. Leigh, we feel bound to say that the author of ‘Astarte,’ with all his talk about evidence against Byron and Augusta Leigh, has not produced a scrap of evidence which would have any weight with an impartial jury of their countrymen.

But we will not end upon a jarring note. Let us remember that Lord Lovelace, as Ada’s son, felt an affectionate regard for the memory of Lady Byron. It was his misfortune to imbibe a false tradition, and, while groping his way through the darkness, his sole guide was a packet of collected papers by which his grandmother hoped to justify her conduct in leaving her husband. If Lady Byron had deigned to read Byron’s ‘Memoirs,’ she might have been spared those painful delusions by which her mind was obsessed in later years. That she had ample grounds, in Byron’s extraordinary conduct during the brief period of their intercourse, to separate herself from him is not disputed; but her premises were wrong, and her vain attempt to justify herself by unsupported accusations against Mrs. Leigh has failed.

Her daughter Ada, the mother of Lord Lovelace, had learnt enough of the family history to come to the conclusion (which she decidedly expressed to Mr. Fonblanque) that the sole cause of the separation was incompatibility. There let it rest. The Byron of the last phase was a very different man from the poet of ‘The Dream.’

On the day that Byron was buried at Hucknall-Torkard the great Goethe, in allusion to a letter which Byron, on the eve of his departure for Greece, had written to him, says:

‘What emotions of joy and hope did not that paper once excite! But now it has become, by the premature death of its noble writer, an inestimable relic and a source of unspeakable regret; for it aggravates, to a peculiar degree in me, the mourning and melancholy that pervade the moral and poetic world. In me, who looked forward (after the success of his great efforts) to the prospect of being blessed with the sight of this master-spirit of the age, this friend so fortunately acquired; and of having to welcome on his return the most humane of conquerors.

‘But I am consoled by the conviction that his country will at once awake, and shake off, like a troubled dream, the partialities, the prejudices, the injuries, and the calumnies, with which he has been assailed; and that these will subside and sink into oblivion; and that she will at length acknowledge that his frailties, whether the effect of temperament, or the defect of the times in which he lived (against which even the best of mortals wrestle painfully), were only momentary, fleeting, and transitory; whilst the imperishable greatness to which he has raised her, now and for ever remains, and will remain, illimitable in its glory and incalculable in its consequences. Certain it is that a nation, who may well pride herself on so many great sons, will place Byron, all radiant as he is, by the side of those who have done most honour to her name.’

With these just words it is fitting to draw our subject to a close. The poetic fame of Byron has passed through several phases, and will probably pass through another before his exact position in the poetical hierarchy is determined. But the world’s interest in the man who cheerfully gave his life to the cause of Greek Independence has not declined. Eighty-five years have passed, and Time has gradually fulfilled the prophecy which inspiration wrung from the anguish of his heart:

‘But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,And my frame perish even in conquering pain;But there is that within me which shall tireTorture and Time, and breathe when I expire;Something unearthly, which they deem not of,Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre,Shall on their softened spirits sink, and moveIn hearts all rocky now the late remorse of Love.’

APPENDIX

DR. BRUNO’S REPLY TO FLETCHER’S STATEMENT

The following remarks appeared in the Westminster Review, and gave great annoyance to Dr. Millingen, who thought that he had been accused of having caused the death of Byron by putting off, during four successive days, the operation of bleeding:

Mr. Fletcher has omitted to state that on the second day of Lord Byron’s illness his physician, Dr. Bruno, seeing the sudorific medicines had no effect, proposed blood-letting, and that his lordship refused to allow it, and caused Mr. Millingen to be sent for in order to consult with his physician, and see if the rheumatic fever could not be cured without the loss of blood.

Mr. Millingen approved of the medicines previously prescribed by Dr. Bruno, and was not opposed to the opinion that bleeding was necessary; but he said to his lordship that it might be deferred till the next day. He held this language for three successive days, while the other physician (Dr. Bruno) every day threatened Lord Byron that he would die by his obstinacy in not allowing himself to be bled. His lordship always answered: ‘You wish to get the reputation of curing my disease, that is why you tell me it is so serious; but I will not permit you to bleed me.’

After the first consultation with Mr. Millingen, the domestic Fletcher asked Dr. Bruno how his lordship’s complaint was going on. The physician replied that, if he would allow the bleeding, he would be cured in a few days. But the surgeon Mr. Millingen, assured Lord Byron from day to day that it could wait till to-morrow; and thus four days slipped away, during which the disease, for want of blood-letting, grew much worse. At length Mr. Millingen, seeing that the prognostications which Dr. Bruno had made respecting Lord Byron’s malady were more and more confirmed, urged the necessity of bleeding, and of no longer delaying it a moment. This caused Lord Byron, disgusted at finding that he could not be cured without loss of blood, to say that it seemed to him that the doctors did not understand his malady. He then had a man sent to Zante to fetch Dr. Thomas. Mr. Fletcher having mentioned this to Dr. Bruno, the latter observed that, if his lordship would consent to lose as much blood as was necessary, he would answer for his cure; but that if he delayed any longer, or did not entirely follow his advice, Dr. Thomas would not arrive in time: in fact, when Dr. Thomas was ready to set out from Zante, Lord Byron was dead.

The pistols and stiletto were removed from his lordship’s bed – not by Fletcher, but by the servant Tita, who was the only person that constantly waited on Lord Byron in his illness, and who had been advised to take this precaution by Dr. Bruno, the latter having perceived that my lord had moments of delirium.

Two days before the death a consultation was held with three other doctors, who appeared to think that his lordship’s disease was changing from inflammatory diathesis to languid, and they ordered china,78 opium, and ammonia.

Dr. Bruno opposed this with the greatest warmth, and pointed out to them that the symptoms were those, not of an alteration in the disease, but of a fever flying to the brain, which was violently attacked by it; and that the wine, the china, and the stimulants, would kill Lord Byron more speedily than the complaint itself could; while, on the other hand, by copious bleedings and the medicines that had been taken before he might yet be saved. The other physicians, however, were of a different opinion; and it was then that Dr. Bruno declared to his colleagues that he would have no further responsibility for the loss of Lord Byron, which he pronounced inevitable if the china were given him. In effect, after my lord had taken the tincture, with some grains of carbonate of ammonia, he was seized by convulsions. Soon afterwards they gave him a cup of very strong decoction of china, with some drops of laudanum. He instantly fell into a deep lethargic sleep, from which he never rose.

The opening of the body discovered the brain in a state of the highest inflammation; and all the six physicians who were present at that opening were convinced that my lord would have been saved by the bleeding, which his physician, Dr. Bruno, had advised from the beginning with the most pressing urgency and the greatest firmness.

F. B.

DR. MILLINGEN’S ACCOUNT

Mr. Finlay and myself called upon him in the evening, when we found him lying on a sofa, complaining of a slight fever and of pains in the articulations. He was at first more gay than usual; but on a sudden he became pensive, and, after remaining some few minutes in silence, he said that during the whole day he had reflected a great deal on a prediction which had been made to him, when a boy, by a famed fortune-teller in Scotland. His mother, who firmly believed in cheiromancy and astrology, had sent for this person, and desired him to inform her what would be the future destiny of her son. Having examined attentively the palm of his hand, the man looked at him for a while steadfastly, and then with a solemn voice exclaimed: ‘Beware of your thirty-seventh year, my young lord – beware!’

He had entered on his thirty-seventh year on the 22nd of January; and it was evident, from the emotion with which he related this circumstance, that the caution of the palmist had produced a deep impression on his mind, which in many respects was so superstitious that we thought proper to accuse him of superstition. ‘To say the truth,’ answered his lordship, ‘I find it equally difficult to know what to believe in this world and what not to believe. There are as many plausible reasons for inducing me to die a bigot as there have been to make me hitherto live a freethinker. You will, I know, ridicule my belief in lucky and unlucky days; but no consideration can now induce me to undertake anything either on a Friday or a Sunday. I am positive it would terminate unfortunately. Every one of my misfortunes – and God knows I have had my share – have happened to me on one of those days.’

Considering myself on this occasion, not a medical man, but a visitor, and being questioned neither by his physician nor himself, I did not even feel Lord Byron’s pulse. I was informed next morning that during the night he had taken diaphoretic infusions, and that he felt himself better. The next day Dr. Bruno administered a purgative, and kept up its effects by a solution of cream of tartar, which the Italians call ‘imperial lemonade.’ In the evening the fever augmented, and as on the 14th, although the pains in the articulations had diminished, the feverish symptoms were equally strong, Dr. Bruno strongly recommended him to be blooded; but as the patient entertained a deep-rooted prejudice against bleeding, his physician could obtain no influence whatever over him, and his lordship obstinately persevered in refusing to submit to the operation.

On the 15th, towards noon, Fletcher called upon me and informed me that his master desired to see me, in order to consult with Dr. Bruno on the state of his health. Dr. Bruno informed me that his patient laboured under a rheumatic fever – that, as at first the symptoms had been of a mild character, he had trusted chiefly to sudorifics; but during the last two days the fever had so much increased that he had repeatedly proposed bleeding, but that he could not overcome his lordship’s antipathy to that mode of treatment. Convinced, by an examination of the patient, that bleeding was absolutely necessary, I endeavoured, as mildly and as gently as possible, to persuade him; but, in spite of all my caution, his temper was so morbidly irritable that he refused in a manner excessively peevish. He observed that, of all his prejudices, the strongest was against phlebotomy. ‘Besides,’ said his lordship, ‘does not Dr. Reid observe in his Essays that less slaughter has been effected by the warrior’s lance than by the physician’s lancet? It is, in fact, a minute instrument of mighty mischief.’ On my observing that this remark related to the treatment of nervous disorders, not of inflammatory ones, he angrily replied: ‘Who is nervous, if I am not? Do not these words, besides, apply to my case? Drawing blood from a nervous patient is like loosening the chords of a musical instrument, the tones of which are already defective for want of sufficient tension. Before I became ill, you know yourself how weak and irritable I had become. Bleeding, by increasing this state, will inevitably kill me. Do with me whatever else you please, but bleed me you shall not. I have had several inflammatory fevers during my life, and at an age when I was much more robust and plethoric than I am now; yet I got through them without bleeding. This time also I will take my chance.’

After much reasoning and entreaty, however, I at length succeeded in obtaining a promise that, should his fever increase at night, he would allow Bruno to bleed him. Happy to inform the doctor of this partial victory, I left the room, and, with a view of lowering the impetus of the circulatory system, and determining to the skin, I recommended the administration of an ounce of a solution of half a grain of tartarized antimony and two drachms of nitre in twelve ounces of water.

Early the next morning I called on the patient, who told me that, having passed a better night than he had expected, he had not requested Dr. Bruno to bleed him. Chagrined at this, I laid aside all consideration for his feelings, and solemnly assured him how deeply I lamented to see him trifle with his life in this manner. I told him that his pertinacious refusal to be bled had caused a precious opportunity to be lost; that a few hours of hope yet remained; but that, unless he would submit immediately to be bled, neither Dr. Bruno nor myself could answer for the consequences. He might not care for life, it was true; but who could assure him, unless he changed his resolution, the disease might not operate such disorganization in his cerebral and nervous system as entirely to deprive him of his reason? I had now touched the sensible chord, for, partly annoyed by our unceasing importunities, and partly convinced, casting at us both the fiercest glance of vexation, he threw out his arm, and said in the most angry tone: ‘Come; you are, I see, a d – d set of butchers. Take away as much blood as you will, but have done with it.’