Chapter XVIII: Part II: What the Poems Reveal (1)

'Intesi, che a cosi fatto tormento
Enno dannati i peccator carnali
Che la ragion sommettono al talento.'
_Inferno_, Canto V., 37-39.

WHAT THE POEMS REVEAL

'Every author in some degree portrays himself in his works, even be it
against his will.'--GOETHE.

Lady Byron has expressed her opinion that almost every incident in Byron's poems was drawn from his personal experience. In a letter to Lady Anne Barnard, written two years after the separation, she says:

'In regard to [Byron's] poetry, egotism is the vital principle of his
imagination, which it is difficult for him to kindle on any subject
with which his own character and interests are not identified; but by
the introduction of fictitious incidents, by change of scene or time,
he has enveloped his poetical disclosures in a system impenetrable
except to a very few.'

Byron himself has told us in 'Don Juan' that his music 'has some mystic diapasons, with much which could not be appreciated in any manner by the _uninitiated_.' In a letter to John Murray (August 23, 1821), he says: 'Almost all "Don Juan" is _real_ life, either my own or from people I knew.'

It is no exaggeration to say that in Byron's poems some of the mysterious incidents in his life are plainly revealed. For example, 'Childe Harold,' 'The Giaour,' 'The Bride of Abydos,' 'The Corsair,' 'Lara,' 'The Dream,' 'Manfred,' 'Don Juan,' and several of the smaller pieces, all disclose episodes connected with his own personal experience. In the so-called 'Fugitive Pieces' we get a glimpse of his school life and friendships; his pursuits during the time that he resided with his mother at Southwell; and his introduction to Cambridge. In the 'Hours of Idleness' we are introduced to Mary Chaworth, after her marriage and the ruin of his hopes.

In the verse 'Remembrance' we realize that the dawn of his life is overcast. We see, from some verses written in 1808, how, three years after that marriage, he was still the victim of a fatal infatuation:

'I deem'd that Time, I deem'd that Pride,
Had quench'd at length my boyish flame;
Nor knew, till seated by thy side,
My heart in all--save hope--the same.'

After lingering for three months in the neighbourhood of the woman whom he so unwisely loved, he finally resolved to break the chain:

'In flight I shall be surely wise,
Escaping from temptation's snare;
I cannot view my Paradise
Without the wish of dwelling there.'

When about to leave England, in vain pursuit of the happiness he had lost, he addresses passionate verses to Mary Chaworth:

'And I must from this land be gone,
Because I cannot love but one.'

He tells her that he has had love passages with another woman, in the vain hope of destroying the love of his life:

'But some unconquerable spell
Forbade my bleeding breast to own
A kindred care for aught but one.'

He wished to say farewell, but dared not trust himself. In the cantos of 'Childe Harold,' written during his absence, he recurs to the subject nearest to his heart. He says that before leaving Newstead--

'Oft-times in his maddest mirthful mood
Strange pangs would flash along Childe Harold's brow,
As if the memory of some _deadly feud_
Or _disappointed passion_ lurked below:
But this none knew, nor haply cared to know.'

He mentions his mother, from whom he dreaded to part, and his sister Augusta, whom he loved, but had not seen for some time. After his return to England in 1811, he wrote the 'Thyrza' poems, and added some stanzas to 'Childe Harold,' wherein he expresses a hope that the separation between himself and Mary Chaworth may not be eternal. He then pours out the sorrows of his heart to Francis Hodgson. We cannot doubt that the 'Lines written beneath a Picture,' composed at Athens in January, 1811,

'Dear object of defeated care!
Though now of Love and thee bereft,'

referred to Mary Chaworth, for he mentions the deathblow of his hope. In the 'Epistle to a Friend,' Byron mentions the effect which a chance meeting with Mary had upon him, causing him to realize that 'Time had not made him love the less.'

The poems that have puzzled the commentator most were those which Byron addressed to 'Thyrza'--a mysterious personage, whose identity has not hitherto been discovered. The present writer proposes to enter fully, and, he hopes, impartially, into the subject, trusting that the conclusions at which he has arrived may ultimately be endorsed by others who have given their serious attention to the question at issue.

In any attempt to unravel the mystery of the 'Thyrza' poems, it will be necessary to consider, not only the circumstances in which they were written, but also those associations of Byron's youth which inspired a love that endured throughout his life.

Byron's attachment to his distant cousin, Mary Anne Chaworth, is well known. We know that his boyish love was not returned, and that the young heiress of Annesley married, in 1805, Mr. John Musters, of Colwick, in the neighbourhood of Nottingham. In order to account for these love-poems, it has been suggested that, subsequent to this marriage, Byron fell in love with some incognita, whose identity has never been established, and who died soon after his return to England in 1811.

We are unable to concur with so simple a solution of the mystery, for the following reasons: It will be remembered that shortly after Mary Chaworth's marriage Byron entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he formed a romantic attachment to a young chorister, named Edleston, whose life he had saved from drowning. Writing to Miss Elizabeth Pigot on June 30, 1807, Byron says:

'I quit Cambridge with very little regret, because our _set_ are
vanished, and my musical _protégé_ (Edleston), before mentioned, has
left the choir, and is stationed in a mercantile house of considerable
eminence in the Metropolis. You may have heard me observe he is,
exactly to an hour, two years younger than myself. I found him grown
considerably, and, as you may suppose, very glad to see his former
_Patron_.[30] He is nearly my height, very _thin_, very fair
complexion, dark eyes, and light locks.

'My opinion of his mind you already know; I hope I shall never have
occasion to change it.'

On July 5, 1807, Byron again wrote to Miss Pigot:

'At this moment I write with a bottle of claret in my _head_ and
_tears_ in my _eyes_; for I have just parted with my "Cornelian,"[31]
who spent the evening with me. As it was our last interview, I
postponed my engagement to devote the hours of the _Sabbath_ to
friendship: Edleston and I have separated for the present, and my mind
is a chaos of hope and sorrow.... I rejoice to hear you are interested
in my _protégé_; he has been my _almost constant_ associate since
October, 1805, when I entered Trinity College. His _voice_ first
attracted my attention, his _countenance_ fixed it, and his _manner_
attached me to him for ever. He departs for a mercantile house in Town
in October, and we shall probably not meet till the expiration of my
minority, when I shall leave to his decision, either entering as a
_partner_ through my interest, or residing with me altogether. Of
course he would, in his present frame of mind, prefer the latter, but
he may alter his opinion previous to that period; however, he shall
have his choice. I certainly love him more than any human being, and
neither time nor distance have had the least effect on my (in general)
changeable disposition. In short, we shall put Lady E. Butler and Miss
Ponsonby (the "Ladies of Llangollen," as they were called) to the
blush, Pylades and Orestes out of countenance, and want nothing but a
catastrophe like Nisus and Euryalus, to give Jonathan and David the
"go by." He certainly is perhaps more attached to me than even I am in
return. During the whole of my residence at Cambridge we met every
day, summer and winter, without passing one tiresome moment, and
separated each time with increasing reluctance. I hope you will one
day see us together. He is the only being I esteem, though I _like_
many.'

This letter shows the depth of the boyish affection that had sprung up between two lads with little experience of life. The attachment on both sides was sincere, but not more so than many similar boy friendships, which, alas! fade away under the chilling influences of time and circumstance. In this case the 'Cornelian Heart' that had sparkled with the tears of Edleston, and which, in the fervour of his feelings, Byron had suspended round his neck, was, not long afterwards, transferred to Miss Elizabeth Pigot.

A vague notion seems to prevail that the inspiration of these 'Thyrza' poems is in some way connected with Edleston. This idea seems to have arisen from Byron's allusion to a pledge of affection given in better days:

'Thou bitter pledge! thou mournful token!'

We cannot accept this theory, being of opinion, not lightly formed, that the 'bitter pledge' referred to had a far deeper and a more lasting significance than ever could have belonged to 'the Cornelian heart that was broken.'

In later years, it will be remembered, Byron told Medwin that, shortly after his arrival at Cambridge, he fell into habits of dissipation, in order to drown the remembrance of a hopeless passion for Mary Chaworth. That Mary Chaworth held his affections at that time is beyond question. She also had given Byron 'a token,' which was still in his possession when the 'Thyrza' poems were written; whereas Edleston's gift had passed to other hands. The following anecdote, related by the Countess Guiccioli, may be accepted on Byron's authority:

'One day (while Byron and Musters were bathing in the Trent--a river
that runs through the grounds of Colwick) Mr. Musters perceived a ring
among Lord Byron's clothes, left on the bank. To see and take
possession of it was the affair of a moment. Musters had recognized it
as having belonged to Miss Chaworth. Lord Byron claimed it, but
Musters would not restore the ring. High words were exchanged. On
returning to the house, Musters jumped on a horse, and galloped off
to ask an explanation from Miss Chaworth, who, being forced to confess
that Lord Byron wore the ring with her consent, felt obliged to make
amends to Musters, by promising to declare immediately her engagement
with him.'

It is therefore probable that the 'dear simple gift,' of the first draft, was the ring which Mary Chaworth had given to her boy lover in 1804, and that the words we have quoted had no connection whatever with young Edleston.

Assuming that the 'Thyrza' poems were addressed to a woman--and there is abundant proof of this--it is remarkable that, neither in the whole course of his correspondence with his friends, nor from any source whatever, can any traces be found of any other serious attachment which would account for the poems in question. Between the date of the marriage, in 1805, and the autumn of 1808, Byron and Mary Chaworth had not met. It will be remembered that in the autumn--only eight months before he left England with Hobhouse--Byron met Mary Chaworth at dinner in her own home. The effect of that meeting, which he has himself described, shows the depth of his feelings, and precludes the idea that he could at that time have been deeply interested in anyone else. After that meeting Byron remained three months in the neighbourhood of Annesley; and it may be inferred that an intimacy sprang up between them, which was broken off somewhat abruptly by Mary's husband. There are traces of this in 'Lara.'

At the end of November, 1808, Byron writes from Newstead to his sister:

'I am living here alone, which suits my inclination better than
society of any kind.... I am a very unlucky fellow, for I think I had
naturally not a bad heart; but it has been so bent, twisted, and
trampled on, that it has now become as hard as a Highlander's
heelpiece.'

A fortnight later he writes to Hanson, his agent, and talks of either marrying for money or blowing his brains out. It was then that he wrote those verses addressed to Mary Chaworth:

'When man, expell'd from Eden's bowers,
A moment linger'd near the gate,
Each scene recall'd the vanish'd hours,
And bade him curse his future fate.

'In flight I shall be surely wise,
Escaping from temptation's snare;
I cannot view my Paradise
Without the wish of dwelling there.'

On January 25, 1809, Byron returned to London. It is hard to believe that during those three months Byron did not often meet the lady of his love. It is more than probable that the old friendship between them had been renewed, since there is evidence to prove that, after Byron had taken his seat in the House of Lords on March 13, 1809, he confided his Parliamentary robes to Mary Chaworth's safe-keeping, a circumstance which suggests a certain amount of neighbourly friendship.

In May, Byron again visited Newstead, where he entertained Matthews and some of his college friends. That _sérénade indiscrète_,

''Tis done--and shivering in the gale,'

which was addressed to Mary Chaworth from Falmouth on, or about, June 22, shows the state of his feelings towards her; but she does not seem to have given him any encouragement, and there was no correspondence between them during Byron's absence from England. Between July 2, 1809, and July 15, 1811, Byron's thoughts were fully occupied in other directions. His distractions, which may be traced in his writings, were, however, not sufficient to crush out the remembrance of that fatal infatuation. When, in 1811, he returned to England, it was without pleasure, and without the faintest hope of any renewal of an intimacy which Mary Chaworth had broken off for both their sakes. He was in no hurry to visit Newstead, where his mother anxiously awaited him, and dawdled about town, under various pretexts, until the first week in August, when he heard of his mother's serious illness. Before Byron reached Newstead his mother had died. He seems to have heard of her illness one day, and of her death on the day following. Although there had long been a certain estrangement between them, all was now forgotten, and Byron felt his mother's death acutely.

It was at this time that he wrote to his friend Scrope Davies:

'Some curse hangs over me and mine. My mother lies a corpse in this
house; one of my best friends (Charles Skinner Matthews) is drowned in
a ditch. What can I say, or think, or do? I received a letter from him
the day before yesterday.... Come to me, Scrope; I am almost
desolate--left almost alone in the world.'

In that gloomy frame of mind, in the solitude of a ruin--for Newstead at that time was but little better than a ruin--Byron, on August 12, drew up some directions for his will, in which he desired to be buried in the garden at Newstead, by the side of his favourite dog Boatswain.

On the same day he wrote to Dallas, who was superintending the printing of the first and second cantos of 'Childe Harold':

'Peace be with the dead! Regret cannot wake them. With a sigh to the
departed, let us resume the dull business of life, in the certainty
that we also shall have our repose. Besides her who gave me being, I
have lost more than one who made that being tolerable. Matthews, a man
of the first talents, and also not the worst of my narrow circle, has
perished miserably in the muddy waves of the Cam, always fatal to
genius; my poor schoolfellow, Wingfield, at Coimbra--within a month;
and whilst I had heard from _all three_, but not seen _one_.... But
let this pass; we shall all one day pass along with the rest. The
world is too full of such things, and our very sorrow is selfish.... I
am already too familiar with the dead. It is strange that I look on
the skulls which stand beside me (I have always had _four_ in my
study) without emotion, but I cannot strip the features of those I
have known of their fleshy covering, even in idea, without a hideous
sensation; but the worms are less ceremonious. Surely, the Romans did
well when they burned the dead.'

The writer of this letter was in his twenty-fourth year!

Ten days later Byron writes to Hodgson:

'Indeed the blows followed each other so rapidly that I am yet stupid
from the shock; and though I do eat, and drink, and talk, and even
laugh at times, yet I can hardly persuade myself that I am awake, did
not every morning convince me mournfully to the contrary. I shall now
waive the subject, the dead are at rest, and none but the dead can be
so.... I am solitary, and I never felt solitude irksome before.'

At about the same date, in a letter to Dallas, Byron writes:

'At three-and-twenty I am left alone, and what more can we be at
seventy? It is true I am young enough to begin again, but with whom
can I retrace the laughing part of my life? It is odd how few of my
friends have died a quiet death--I mean, in their beds!

'I cannot settle to anything, and my days pass, with the exception of
bodily exercise to some extent, with uniform indolence and idle
insipidity.'

The verses, 'Oh! banish care,' etc., were written at this time.

In the following lines we see that his grief at the losses he had sustained was deepened by the haunting memory of Mary Chaworth:

'I've seen my bride another's bride--
Have seen her seated by his side--
Have seen the infant which she bore
Wear the sweet smile the mother wore,
When she and I in youth have smiled
As fond and faultless as her child;
Have seen her eyes, in cold disdain,
Ask if I felt no secret pain.
And I have acted well my part,
And made my cheek belie my heart,
Returned the freezing glance she gave,
Yet felt the while _that_ woman's slave;
Have kissed, as if without design,
The babe which ought to have been mine,
And showed, alas! in each caress
Time had not made me love the less.'

Moore, who knew more of the inner workings of Byron's mind in later years than anyone else, has told us that the poems addressed to 'Thyrza' were merely 'the abstract spirit of many griefs,' and that the pseudonym was given to an 'object of affection' to whom he poured out the sorrows of his heart.

'All these recollections,' says Moore, 'of the young and dead now came
to mingle themselves in his mind with the image of her who, _though
living_, was for him as much lost as they, and diffused that general
feeling of sadness and fondness through his soul, which found a vent
in these poems. No friendship, however warm, could have inspired
sorrow so passionate; as no love, however pure, could have kept
passion so chastened.

'It was the blending of the two affections in his memory and
imagination that thus gave birth to an ideal object combining the best
features of both, and drew from him these saddest and tenderest of
love-poems, in which we find all the depth and intensity of real
feeling, touched over with such a light as no reality ever wore.'

Moore here expresses himself guardedly. He was one of the very few who knew the whole story of Mary Chaworth's associations with Byron. He could not, of course, betray his full knowledge; but he has made it sufficiently clear that Byron, in writing the 'Thyrza' group of poems, was merely strewing the flowers of poetry on the grave of his love for Mary Chaworth.

The first of these poems was written on the day on which he heard of the death of Edleston. In a letter to Dallas he says:

'I have been again shocked by a _death_, and have lost one very dear
to me in happier times. I have become callous, nor have I a tear left
for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to
the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the
greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left
a lonely tree before I am withered. Other men can always take refuge
in their families; I have no resource but my own reflections, and they
present no prospect here or hereafter, except the selfish satisfaction
of surviving my betters. I am indeed very wretched, and you will
excuse my saying so, as you know I am not apt to cant of
sensibility.'[32]

Shortly after this letter was written Byron visited Cambridge, where, among the many memories which that place awakened, a remembrance of the young chorister and their ardent friendship was most vivid. Byron recollected the Cornelian that Edleston gave him as a token of friendship, and, now that the giver had passed away for ever, he regretted that he had parted with it. The following letter to Mrs. Pigot explains itself:

'CAMBRIDGE,
'_October 28, 1811_.

'DEAR MADAM,

'I am about to write to you on a silly subject, and yet I cannot well
do otherwise. You may remember a _cornelian_ which some years ago I
consigned to Miss Pigot--indeed I _gave_ to her--and now I am going to
make the most selfish and rude of requests. The person who gave it to
me, when I was very young, is _dead_, and though a long time has
elapsed since we met, as it was the only memorial I possessed of that
person (in whom I was very much interested), it has acquired a value
by this event I could have wished it never to have borne in my eyes.
If, therefore, Miss Pigot should have preserved it, I must, under
these circumstances, beg her to excuse my requesting it to be
transmitted to me at No. 8, St. James' Street, London, and I will
replace it by something she may remember me by equally well. As she
was always so kind as to feel interested in the fate of him that
formed the subject of our conversation, you may tell her that the
giver of that cornelian died in May last of a consumption at the age
of twenty-one, making the sixth, within four months, of friends and
relatives that I have lost between May and the end of August.

'Believe me, dear madam,
'Yours very sincerely,
'BYRON.'

The cornelian when found, was returned to Byron, but apparently in a broken condition.

'Ill-fated Heart! and can it be,
That thou shouldst thus be rent in twain?'

It was through the depressing influence of solitude that the idea entered Byron's mind to depict his (possibly eternal) separation from Mary Chaworth in terms synonymous with death. With a deep feeling of desolation he recalled every incident of his boyish love. We have seen how the image of his lost Mary, now the wife of his rival, deepened the gloom caused by the sudden death of his mother, and of some of his college friends. It was to Mary, whom he dared not name, that he cried in his agony:

'By many a shore and many a sea
Divided, yet beloved in vain;
The Past, the Future fled to thee,
To bid us meet--no, ne'er again!'

Her absence from Annesley, where he had hoped to find her on his return home, was a great disappointment to him.

'Thou too art gone, thou loved and lovely one!
Whom Youth and Youth's affections bound to me;
Who did for me what none beside have done,
Nor shrank from one albeit unworthy thee.
What is my Being! thou hast ceased to be!
Nor staid to welcome here thy wanderer home,
Who mourns o'er hours which we no more shall see--
Would they had never been, or were to come!
Would he had ne'er returned to find fresh cause to roam!

'Oh I ever loving, lovely, and beloved!
How selfish Sorrow ponders on the past,
And clings to thoughts now better far removed!
But Time shall tear thy shadow from me last.
All thou couldst have of mine, stern Death! thou hast;
The Parent, Friend, and now the more than Friend:
Ne'er yet for one thine arrows flew so fast,
And grief with grief continuing still to blend,
Hath snatch'd the little joy that Life hath yet to lend.

* * * * *

'What is the worst of woes that wait on Age?
What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?
To view each loved one blotted from Life's page,
And be alone on earth, as I am now.
Before the Chastener humbly let me bow,
O'er Hearts divided and o'er Hopes destroyed:
Roll on, vain days! full reckless may ye flow,
Since Time hath reft whate'er my soul enjoyed,
And with the ills of Eld mine earlier years alloyed.'

These stanzas were attached to the second canto of 'Childe Harold,' after that poem was in the press. Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge, who so ably edited the latest edition of the poetry of Byron, states that they were sent to Dallas on the same day that Byron composed the poem 'To Thyrza.' This is significant, as also his attempt to mystify Dallas by telling him that he had again (October 11, 1811) been shocked by a death. This was true enough, for he had on that day heard of the death of Edleston; but it was _not_ true that the stanzas we have quoted had any connection with that event. Mr. Coleridge in a note says:

'In connection with this subject, it may be noted that the lines 6 and
7 of Stanza XCV.,

'"Nor staid to welcome here thy wanderer home,
Who mourns o'er hours which we no more shall see,"

do not bear out Byron's contention to Dallas (Letters, October 14 and
31, 1811) that in these three _in memoriam_ stanzas (IX., XCV., XCVI.)
he is bewailing an event which took place _after_ he returned to
Newstead.[33] The "more than friend" had "ceased to be" before the
"wanderer" returned. It is evident that Byron did not take Dallas into
his confidence.'

Assuredly he did not. The 'more than friend' was not _dead_; she had merely absented herself, and did not stay to welcome the 'wanderer' on his return from his travels. She was, however, _dead to him_ in a sense far deeper than mere absence at such a time.

'The absent are the dead--for they are cold,
And ne'er can be what once we did behold.'[34]

Mary Chaworth's presence would have consoled him at a time when he felt alone in the world. He feared that she was lost to him for ever. He knew her too well to suppose that she could ever be more to him than a friend; and yet it was just that female sympathy and friendship for which he so ardently yearned. In his unreasonableness, he was both hurt and disappointed that this companion of his earlier days should have kept away from her home at that particular time, and of course misconstrued the cause. With the feeling that this parting must be eternal, he wished that they could have met once more.

'Could this have been--a word, a look,
That softly said, "We part in peace,"
Had taught my bosom how to brook,
With fainter sighs, thy soul's release.'

In the bitterness of his desolation he recalled the days when they were at Newstead together--probably stolen interviews, which find no place in history--when

'many a day
In these, to me, deserted towers,
Ere called but for a time away,
Affection's mingling tears were ours?
Ours, too, the glance none saw beside;
The smile none else might understand;
The whispered thought: the walks aside;
The pressure of the thrilling hand;
The kiss so guiltless and relined,
That Love each warmer wish forbore;
Those eyes proclaimed so pure a mind,
Ev'n Passion blushed to plead for more.
The tone that taught me to rejoice,
When prone, unlike thee, to repine;
_The song, celestial from thy voice,
But sweet to me from none but thine_;
The pledge we wore--_I_ wear it still,
But where is thine? Ah! where art thou?
Oft have I borne the weight of ill,
But never bent beneath till now!'

Six days after these lines were written Byron left Newstead. Writing to Hodgson from his lodgings in St. James's Street, he enclosed some stanzas which he had written a day or two before, 'on hearing a song of former days.' The lady, whose singing now so deeply impressed Byron, was the Hon. Mrs. George Lamb, whom he had met at Melbourne House.

In this, the second of the 'Thyrza' poems, the allusions to Mary Chaworth are even more marked. Byron says the songs of Mrs. George Lamb 'speak to him of brighter days,' and that he hopes to hear those strains no more:

'For now, alas!
I must not think, I may not gaze,
On what I _am_--on what I _was_.

The voice that made those sounds more sweet
Is hush'd, and all their charms are fled.

* * * * *

'On my ear
The well-remembered echoes thrill;
I hear a voice I would not hear,
A voice that now might well be still.

* * * * *

'Sweet Thyrza! waking as in sleep,
Thou art but now a lovely dream;
_A Star_ that trembled o'er the deep,
Then turned from earth its tender beam.
But he who through Life's dreary way
Must pass, when Heaven is veiled in wrath,
Will long lament the vanished ray
That scattered gladness o'er his path.'

In Byron's imagination Mary Chaworth was always hovering over him like a star. She was the 'starlight of his boyhood,' the 'star of his destiny,' and three years later the poet, in his unpublished fragment 'Harmodia,' speaks of Mary as his

'melancholy star
Whose tearful beam shoots trembling from afar.'

The third and last of the 'Thyrza' poems must have been written at about the same time as the other two. It appeared with 'Childe Harold' in 1812. Byron, weary of the gloom of solitude, and tortured by 'pangs that rent his heart in twain,' now determined to break away and seek inspiration for that mental energy which formed part of his nature. Man, he says, was not made to live alone.

'I'll be that light unmeaning thing
That smiles with all, and weeps with none.
It was not thus in days more dear,
It never would have been, _but thou
Hast fled, and left me lonely here_.'

Byron's thoughts went back to the days when he was sailing over the bright waters of the blue Ægean, in the _Salsette_ frigate, commanded by 'good old Bathurst'[35]--those halcyon days when he was weaving his visions into stanzas for 'Childe Harold.'

'On many a lone and lovely night
It soothed to gaze upon the sky;
For then I deemed the heavenly light
Shone sweetly on thy pensive eye:
And oft I thought at Cynthia's noon,
When sailing o'er the Ægean wave,
"Now Thyrza gazes on that moon"--
Alas! it gleamed upon her grave!

'When stretched on Fever's sleepless bed,
And sickness shrunk my throbbing veins,
"'Tis comfort still," I faintly said,
"That Thyrza cannot know my pains."
Like freedom to the timeworn slave--
A boon 'tis idle then to give--
Relenting Nature vainly gave
My life, when Thyrza ceased to live!

'My Thyrza's pledge in better days,
_When Love and Life alike were new_!
How different now thou meet'st my gaze!
How tinged by time with Sorrow's hue!
The heart that gave itself with thee
Is silent--ah, were mine as still!
Though cold as e'en the dead can be,
It feels, it sickens with the chill.'

Byron here suggests that the pledge in question was given with the giver's heart. Lovers are apt to interpret such gifts as 'love-tokens,' without suspicion that they may possibly have been due to a feeling far less flattering to their hopes.

'Thou bitter pledge! thou mournful token!
Though painful, welcome to my breast!
Still, still, preserve that love unbroken,
Or break the heart to which thou'rt pressed.
Time tempers Love, but not removes,
More hallowed when its Hope is fled.'

These three pieces comprise the so-called 'Thyrza' poems, and, in the absence of proof to the contrary, we may reasonably suppose that their subject was Mary Chaworth. This is the more likely because the original manuscripts were the property of Byron's sister, to whom they were probably given by Mary Chaworth, when, in later years, she destroyed or parted with all the letters and documents which she had received from Byron since the days of their childhood.

Byron did not give up the hope of winning Mary Chaworth's love until her marriage in 1805. Two months later he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, and from that time, until his departure with Hobhouse on his first foreign tour, those who were in constant intercourse with him never mentioned any other object of adoration who might fit in with the Thyrza of the poems. If such a person had really existed, Byron would certainly, either in conversation or in writing, have disclosed her identity. Moore makes it clear that the one passion of Byron's life was Mary Chaworth. He tells us that there were many fleeting love-episodes, but only one passion strong enough to have inspired the poems in question. If Byron's heart, during the two years that he passed abroad, had been overflowing with love for some incognita, it was not in his nature to have kept silence. From his well-known effusiveness, reticence under such circumstances is inconceivable.

Finally, as there were no poems, no letters, and no allusion to any such person in the _first_ draft of 'Childe Harold,' we may confidently assume that the poet, in the loneliness of his heart, appealed to the only woman whom he ever really loved, and that the legendary Thyrza was a myth.

It will be remembered that the ninth stanza in the second canto of 'Childe Harold' was interpolated long after the manuscript had been given to Dallas. It was forwarded for that purpose, three days after the date of the poem 'To Thyrza,' and essentially belongs to that period of desolation which inspired those poems:

'There, Thou! _whose Love and Life, together fled,
Have left me here to love and live in vain_--
Twined with my heart, and can I deem thee dead,
When busy Memory flashes on my brain?
Well--_I will dream that we may meet again_,
And woo the vision to my vacant breast:
If aught of young Remembrance then remain,
Be as it may Futurity's behest,
_Or seeing thee no more, to sink to sullen rest_.'[36]

It is difficult to believe that this stanza was inspired by a memory of the dead. Are we not told that 'Love and Life _together_ fled'--in other words, when Mary withdrew her love, she was dead to him?

He tells her that in abandoning him she has left him to love and live in vain. And yet he will not give up the hope of meeting her again some day; this is now his sole consolation. Memory of the past (possibly those meetings which took place by stealth, shortly before his departure from England in 1809) feeds the hope that now sustains him. But he will leave everything to chance, and if fate decides that they shall be parted for ever, then will he sink to sullen apathy.

We may remind the reader that at this period (1811) Byron had no belief in any existence after death.

'I will have nothing to do with your immortality,' he writes to
Hodgson in September; 'we are miserable enough in this life, without
the absurdity of speculating upon another. If men are to live, why die
at all? and if they die, why disturb the sweet and sound sleep that
"knows no waking"?

'"Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque Mors nihil ... quæris quo jaceas post
obitum loco? Quo _non_ Nata jacent."'

Even when, in later years, Byron somewhat modified the views of his youth, he expressed an opinion that

'A material resurrection seems strange, and even absurd, except for
purposes of punishment, and all punishment which is to _revenge_
rather than _correct_ must be _morally wrong_.'

It is therefore tolerably certain that, on the day when he expressed a hope that he might meet his lady-love again, the meeting was to have been in _this_ world, and not in that 'land of souls beyond the sable shore.' It must also be remembered that the eighth stanza in the second canto of 'Childe Harold' was substituted for one in which Byron deliberately stated that he did not look for Life, where life may never be. The revise was written to please Dallas, and does not pretend to be a confession of belief in immortality, but merely an admission that, on a subject where 'nothing can be known,' no final decision is possible.

In the summer of 1813 Byron underwent grave vicissitudes, mental, moral, and financial. His letters and journals teem with allusions to some catastrophe. It seemed as though he were threatened with impending ruin. In his depressed state of mind he found relief only, as he tells us, in the composition of poetry. It was at this time that he wrote in swift succession 'The Giaour,' 'The Bride of Abydos,' and 'The Corsair.' It is clear that Byron's dejection was the result of a hopeless attachment. Mr. Hartley Coleridge assumes that Byron's _innamorata_ was Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster. But that bright star did not long shine in Byron's orbit--certainly not after October, 1813--and it is doubtful whether they were ever on terms of close intimacy. Her husband had long been Byron's friend. Byron had lent him money, and had given him advice, which he seems to have sorely needed. It is difficult to understand why Lady Frances Webster should have been especially regarded as Byron's Calypso. There is nothing to show that she ever seriously occupied his thoughts. Writing to Moore on September 27, 1813, Byron says:

'I stayed a week with the Websters, and behaved very well, though the
lady of the house is young, religious, and pretty, and the master is
my particular friend. I felt no wish for anything but a poodle dog,
which they kindly gave me.'

So little does Byron seem to have been attracted by Lady Frances, that he only once more visited the Websters, and then only for a few days, on his way to Newstead, between October 3 and 10, 1813.

On June 3 of that year Byron wrote to Mr. John Hanson, his solicitor, a letter which shows the state of his mind at that time. He tells Hanson that he is about to visit Salt Hill, near Maidenhead, and that he will be absent for one week. He is determined to go abroad. The prospective lawsuit with Mr. Claughton (about the sale of Newstead) is to be dropped, if it cannot be carried on in Byron's absence. At all hazards, at all losses, he is determined that nothing shall prevent him from leaving the country.

'If utter ruin _were_ or _is_ before me on the one hand, and wealth at home on the other, I have made my choice, and go I will.'

The pictures, and every movable that could be converted into cash, were, by Byron's orders, to be sold. 'All I want is a few thousand pounds, and then, Adieu. You shan't be troubled with me these ten years, if ever.' Clearly, there must have been something more than a passing fancy which could have induced Byron to sacrifice his chances of selling Newstead, for the sake of a few thousand pounds of ready-money. It _had been_ his intention to accompany Lord and Lady Oxford on their travels, but this project was abandoned. After three weeks--spent in running backwards and forwards between Salt Hill and London--Byron confided his troubles to Augusta. She was always his rock of refuge in all his deeper troubles. Augusta Leigh thought that absence might mend matters, and tried hard to keep her brother up to his resolve of going abroad; she even volunteered to accompany him. But Lady Melbourne--who must have had a prurient mind--persuaded Byron that the gossips about town would not consider it 'proper' for him and his sister to travel alone! As Byron was at that time under the influence of an irresistible infatuation, Lady Melbourne's warning turned the scale, and the project fell through. Meanwhile the plot thickened. Something--he told Moore--had ruined all his prospects of matrimony. His financial circumstances, he said, were mending; 'and were not my other prospects blackening, I would take a wife.'

In July he still wishes to get out of England. 'They had better let me go,' he says; 'one can die anywhere.'

On August 22, after another visit to Salt Hill, Byron writes to Moore:

'I have said nothing of the brilliant sex; but the fact is, I am at
this moment in a far more serious, and entirely new, scrape, than any
of the last twelve months, and that is saying a good deal. It is
unlucky we can neither live with nor without these women.'

A week later he wrote again to Moore:

'I would incorporate with any woman of decent demeanour
to-morrow--that is, I would a month ago, but at present....'

Moore suggested that Byron's case was similar to that of the youth apostrophized by Horace in his twenty-seventh ode, and invited his confidence:

'Come, whisper it--the tender truth--
To safe and friendly ears!
What! Her? O miserable youth!
Oh! doomed to grief and tears!
In what a whirlpool are you tost,
Your rudder broke, your pilot lost!'

Recent research has convinced the present writer that the incident which affected Byron so profoundly at this time--about eighteen months before his marriage--indirectly brought about the separation between Lord and Lady Byron in 1816. A careful student of Byron's character could not fail to notice, among all the contradictions and inconsistencies of his life, one point upon which he was resolute--namely, a consistent reticence on the subject of the intimacy which sprang up between himself and Mary Chaworth in the summer of 1813. The strongest impulse of his life--even to the last--was a steadfast, unwavering, hopeless attachment to that lady. Throughout his turbulent youth, in his early as in his later days, the same theme floats through the chords of his melodious verse, a deathless love and a deep remorse. Even at the last, when the shadow of Death was creeping slowly over the flats at Missolonghi, the same wild, despairing note found involuntary expression, and the last words that Byron ever wrote tell the sad story with a distinctness which might well open the eyes even of the blind.

When he first met his fate, he was a schoolboy of sixteen--precocious, pugnacious, probably a prig, and by no means handsome. He must have appeared to Mary much as we see him in his portrait by Sanders. Mary was two years older, and already in love with a fox-hunting squire of good family. 'Love dwells not in our will,' and a nature like Byron's, once under its spell, was sure to feel its force acutely. There was romance, too, in the situation; and the poetic temperament--always precocious--responded to an impulse on the gossamer chance of achieving the impossible. Mary was probably half amused and half flattered by the adoration of a boy of whose destiny she divined nothing.

There is no reason to suppose that there was any meeting between Byron and Mary Chaworth after the spring of 1809, until the summer of 1813. Their separation seemed destined to be final. Although Byron, in after-years, wished it to be believed that they had not met since 1808, it is certain that a meeting took place in the summer of 1813. Although Byron took, as we shall see presently, great pains to conceal that fact from the public, he did not attempt to deceive either Moore, Hobhouse, or Hodgson. In his letter to Monsieur Coulmann, written in July, 1823, we have the version which Byron wished the public to believe.

'I had not seen her [Mary Chaworth] for many years. When an occasion
offered, I was upon the point, with her consent, of paying her a
visit, when my sister, who has always had more influence over me than
anyone else, persuaded me not to do it. "For," said she, "if you go,
you will fall in love again, and then there will be a scene; one step
will lead to another, _et cela fera un éclat_," etc. I was guided by
these reasons, and shortly after I married.... Mrs. Chaworth some time
after, being separated from her husband, became insane; but she has
since recovered her reason, and is, I believe, reconciled to her
husband.'

At about the same time Byron told Medwin that, _after_ Mary's separation from her husband, she proposed an interview with him--a suggestion which Byron, by the advice of Mrs. Leigh, declined. He also said to Medwin:

'She [Mary Chaworth] was the _beau-idéal_ of all that my youthful
fancy could paint of beautiful; and I have taken all my fables about
the celestial nature of women from the perfection my imagination
created in her--I say _created_, for I found her, _like the rest of
her sex, anything but angelic_.'

It is difficult to see how Byron could have arrived at so unflattering an estimate of a woman whom he had only _once_ seen since her marriage--at a dinner-party, when, as he has told us, he was overcome by shyness and a feeling of awkwardness! But let that pass. Byron wished the world to believe (1) that Mary Chaworth, after the separation from her husband in 1813, proposed a meeting with Byron; (2) that he declined to meet her; (3) that, after his unfortunate marriage, Mary became insane; and (4) that he found her, 'like the rest of her sex, anything but angelic.'

It is quite possible, of course, that Byron may have _at first_ refused to meet the only woman on earth whom he sincerely loved, and more than likely that Mrs. Leigh did her utmost to dissuade him from so rash a proceeding. But it is on record that Byron incautiously admitted to Medwin that he _did_ meet Mary Chaworth _after his return from Greece_.[37] It will be remembered that he returned from Greece in 1811. Their intimacy had long before been broken off by Mr. John Musters; and, as we have seen, Mary, faithful to a promise which she had made to her husband, kept away from Annesley during the period (1811) when the 'Thyrza' poems were written. It is doubtful whether they would ever again have met if her husband had shown any consideration for her feelings. But he showed her none. When, nearly forty years ago, the present writer visited Annesley, there were several people living who remembered both Mary Chaworth and her husband. These people stated that their married life, so full of grief and bitterness, was a constant source of comment both at Annesley and Newstead. The trouble was attributed to the harsh and capricious conduct, and the well-known infidelities, of one to whose kindness and affection Mary had a sacred claim. She seems to have been left for long periods at Annesley with only one companion, Miss Anne Radford, who had been brought up with her from childhood. This state of things eventually broke down, and when, in the early part of 1813, Mary could stand the strain no longer, a separation took place by mutual consent.

In the summer of that year Byron and this unhappy woman were thrown together by the merest accident, and, unfortunately for both, renewed their dangerous friendship.

Byron's friend and biographer, Thomas Moore, took great pains to suppress every allusion to Mary Chaworth in Byron's memoranda and letters. He faithfully kept the secret. There is nothing in Byron's letters or journals, as revised by Moore, to show that they ever met after 1808, and yet they undoubtedly did meet in 1813, _after_ Mary's estrangement from her husband. That they were in constant correspondence in November of that year may be gathered from Byron's journal, where Mary's name is veiled by asterisks.

On November 24 he writes:

'I am tremendously in arrear with my letters, except to * * * *, and
to her my thoughts overpower me: my words never compass them.'

'I have been pondering,' he writes on the 26th, 'on the miseries of
separation, that--oh! how seldom we see those we love! Yet we live
ages in moments _when met_.'

Then follows, on the 27th, a clue:

'I believe, with Clym o' the Clow, or Robin Hood,

'"By our Mary (dear name!) thou art both Mother and May,
I think it never was a man's lot to die before his day."'

It is attested, by all those who were acquainted with Mary Chaworth, that she always bore an exemplary character. It was well known that her marriage was an unhappy one, and that she had been for some time deserted by her husband. In June, 1813, when she fell under the fatal spell of Byron, then the most fascinating man in society,[38] she was living in deep dejection, parted from her lawful protector, with whom she had a serious disagreement. He had neglected her, and she well knew that she had a rival in his affections at that time.

It was in these distressing circumstances that Byron, with the world at his feet, came to worship her in great humility. As he looked back upon the past, he realized that this neglected woman had always been the light of his life, the lodestar of his destiny. And now that he beheld his 'Morning Star of Annesley' shedding ineffectual rays upon the dead embers of a lost love, the old feeling returned to him with resistless force.

'We met--we gazed--I saw, and sighed;
She did not speak, and yet replied;
There are ten thousand tones and signs
We hear and see, but none defines--
Involuntary sparks of thought,
Which strike from out the heart o'erwrought,
And form a strange intelligence,
Alike mysterious and intense,
Which link the burning chain that binds,
Without their will, young hearts and minds.
I saw, and sighed--in silence wept,
And still reluctant distance kept,
Until I was made known to her,
And we might then and there confer
Without suspicion--then, even then,
I longed, and was resolved to speak;
But on my lips they died again,
The accents tremulous and weak,
Until one hour...

* * * * *

'I would have given
My life but to have called her mine
In the full view of Earth and Heaven;
For I did oft and long repine
That we could only meet by stealth.'

In the remorseful words of Manfred,

'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.'

Without attempting to excuse Byron's conduct--indeed, that were useless--it must be remembered that he was only twenty-five years of age, and Mary was very unhappy. After all hope of meeting her again had been abandoned, the force of destiny, so to speak, had unexpectedly restored his lost Thyrza--the _Theresa_ of 'Mazeppa.'

'I loved her then, I love her still;
And such as I am, love indeed
In fierce extremes--in good and ill--
But still we love...
Haunted to our very age
With the vain shadow of the past.'

Byron's punishment was in this world. The remorse which followed endured throughout the remaining portion of his life. It wrecked what might have proved a happy marriage, and drove him, from stone to stone, along life's causeway, to that 'Sea Sodom' where, for many months, he tried to destroy the memory of his crime by reckless profligacy.

Mary Chaworth no sooner realized her awful danger--the madness of an impulse which not even love could excuse--than she recoiled from the precipice which yawned before her. She had been momentarily blinded by the irresistible fascination of one who, after all, really and truly loved her. But she was a good woman in spite of this one episode, and to the last hour of her existence she never swerved from that narrow path which led to an honoured grave.

Although it was too late for happiness, too late to evade the consequences of her weakness, there was still time for repentance. The secret was kept inviolate by the very few to whom it was confided, and the present writer deeply regrets that circumstances have compelled him to break the seal.

If 'Astarte' had not been written, there would have been no need to lift the veil. Lord Lovelace has besmirched the good name of Mrs. Leigh, and it is but an act of simple justice to defend her.

When Mary Chaworth escaped from Byron's fatal influence, he reproached her for leaving him, and tried to shake her resolution with heart-rending appeals. Happily for both, they fell upon deaf ears.

'Astarte! my beloved! speak to me;
Say that thou loath'st me not--that I do bear
This punishment for both.'

The depth and sincerity of Byron's love for Mary Chaworth cannot be questioned. Moore, who knew him well, says: