Chapter XIX: Part II: What the Poems Reveal (2)

'The all-absorbing and unsuccessful (unsatisfied) love for Mary
Chaworth was the agony, without being the death, of an unsated desire
which lived on through life, filled his poetry with the very soul of
tenderness, lent the colouring of its light to even those unworthy
ties which vanity or passion led him afterwards to form, and was the
last aspiration of his fervid spirit, in those stanzas written but a
few months before his death.'

It was, in fact, a love of such unreasonableness and persistence as might be termed, without exaggeration, a madness of the heart.

Although Mary escaped for ever from that baneful infatuation, which in an unguarded moment had destroyed her peace of mind, her separation from Byron was not complete until he married. Not only did they correspond frequently, but they also met occasionally. In the following January (1814) Byron introduced Mary to Augusta Leigh. From that eventful meeting, _when probable contingencies were provided for_, until Mary's death in 1832, these two women, who had suffered so much through Byron, continued in the closest intimacy; and in November, 1819, Augusta stood sponsor for Mary's youngest daughter.

In a poem which must have been written in 1813, an apostrophe 'To Time,' Byron refers to Mary's resolutions.

'In Joy I've sighed to think thy flight
Would soon subside from swift to slow;
Thy cloud could overcast the light,
But could not add a night to Woe;
For then, however drear and dark,
My soul was suited to thy sky;
_One star alone_ shot forth a spark
To prove thee--not Eternity.
_That beam hath sunk._'

It is of course true that matters were not, and could never again be, on the same footing as in July of that year; but Mary Chaworth was constancy itself, in a higher and a nobler sense than Byron attached to it, when he reproached her for broken vows.

'Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.'

During the remainder of Byron's life, Mary took a deep interest in everything that affected him. In 1814, believing that marriage would be his salvation, she used her influence in that direction. We know that she did not approve of the choice which Byron so recklessly made, and she certainly had ample cause to deplore its results. Through her close intimacy with Augusta Leigh--an intimacy which has not hitherto been suspected--she became acquainted with every phase in Byron's subsequent career. She could read 'between the lines,' and solve the mysteries to be found in such poems as 'Lara,' 'Mazeppa,' 'Manfred,' and 'Don Juan.'

We believe that Byron's love for Mary was the main cause of the indifference he felt towards his wife. In order to shield Mary from the possible consequences of a public investigation into conduct prior to his marriage, Byron, in 1816, consented to a separation from his wife.

After Byron had left England Mary broke down under the strain she had borne so bravely, and her mind gave way. When at last, in April, 1817, a reconciliation took place between Mary and her husband, it was apparent to everyone that she had, during those four anxious years, become a changed woman. She never entirely regained either health or spirits. Her mind 'had acquired a tinge of religious melancholy, which never afterwards left it.' Sorrow and disappointment had subdued a naturally buoyant nature, and 'melancholy marked her for its own.' Shortly before her death, in 1832, she destroyed every letter she had received from Byron since those distant fateful years when, as boy and girl, they had wandered on the Hills of Annesley. For eight sad years Mary Chaworth survived the lover of her youth. Shortly before her death, in a letter to one of her daughters, she drew her own character which might fitly form her epitaph: 'Soon led, easily pleased, very hasty, and very relenting, with a heart moulded in a warm and affectionate fashion.'

Such was the woman who, though parted by fate, maintained through sunshine and storm an ascendancy over the heart of Byron which neither time nor absence could impair, and which endured to the end of his earthly existence. We may well believe that those inarticulate words which the dying poet murmured to the bewildered Fletcher--those broken sentences which ended with, 'Tell her everything; you are friends with her'--may have referred, not to Lady Byron, as policy suggested, but to Mary Chaworth, with whom Fletcher had been acquainted since his youth.

We have incontestable proof that, only two months before he died, Byron's thoughts were occupied with one whom he had named 'the starlight of his boyhood.' How deeply Byron thought about Mary Chaworth at the last is proved by the poem which was found among his papers at Missolonghi. In six stanzas the poet revealed the story that he would fain have hidden. A note in his handwriting states that they were addressed 'to no one in particular,' and that they were merely 'a poetical scherzo.' There is, however, no room for doubt that the poem bears a deep significance.

I.

'I watched thee when the foe was at our side,
Ready to strike at him--or thee and me
Were safety hopeless--rather than divide
Aught with one loved, save love and liberty.'

We have here a glimpse of that turbulent scene when Mary's husband, in a fit of jealousy, put an end to their dangerous intimacy.

II.

'I watched thee on the breakers, when the rock
Received our prow, and all was storm and fear,
And bade thee cling to me through every shock;
This arm would be thy bark, or breast thy bier.'

This brings us to that period of suspense and fear, in 1814, which preceded the birth of Medora. In a letter which Byron at that time wrote to Miss Milbanke, we find these words:

'I am at present a little feverish--I mean mentally--and, as usual,
_on the brink of something or other, which will probably crush me at
last, and cut our correspondence short, with everything else_.'

Twelve days later (March 3, 1814), Byron tells Moore that he is 'uncomfortable,' and that he has 'no lack of argument to ponder upon of the most gloomy description.'

'Some day or other,' he writes, 'when we are _veterans_, I may tell
you a tale of present and past times; and it is not from want of
confidence that I do not now.... _All this would be very well if I had
no heart_; but, unluckily, I have found that there is such a thing
still about me, though in no very good repair, and also that it has a
habit of attaching itself to _one_, whether I will or no. _Divide et
impera_, I begin to think, will only do for politics.'

When Moore, who was puzzled, asked Byron to explain himself more clearly, he replied: 'Guess darkly, and you will seldom err.'

Thirty-four days later Medora was born, April 15, 1814.

III.

'I watched thee when the fever glazed thine eyes,
Yielding my couch, and stretched me on the ground,
When overworn with watching, ne'er to rise
From thence if thou an early grave had found.'

Here we see Byron's agony of remorse. Like Herod, he lamented for Mariamne:

'And mine's the guilt, and mine the hell,
This bosom's desolation dooming;
And I have earned those tortures well
Which unconsumed are still consuming!'

In 'Manfred' we find a note of remembrance in the deprecating words:

'Oh! no, no, no!
My injuries came down on those who loved me--
On those whom I best loved: I never quelled
An enemy, save in my just defence--
But my embrace was fatal.'

IV.

'The earthquake came, and rocked the quivering wall,
And men and Nature reeled as if with wine:
Whom did I seek around the tottering hall?
For thee. Whose safety first provide for? Thine.'

We now see Byron, at the supreme crisis of his life, standing in solitude on his hearth, with all his household gods shivered around him. We perceive that not least among his troubles at that time was the ever-haunting fear lest the secret of Medora's birth should be disclosed. His greatest anxiety was for Mary's safety, and this could only be secured by keeping his matrimonial squabbles out of a court of law. It was, in fact, by agreeing to sign the deed of separation that the whole situation was saved. The loyalty of Augusta Leigh on this occasion was never forgotten:

'There was soft Remembrance and sweet Trust
In one fond breast.'

'_That_ love was pure--and, far above disguise,
Had stood the test of mortal enmities
Still undivided, and cemented more
By peril, dreaded most in female eyes,
But this was firm.'

In the fifth stanza we see Byron, eight years later, at Missolonghi, struck down by that attack of epilepsy which preceded his death by only two months:

V.

'And when convulsive throes denied my breath
The faintest utterance to my fading thought,
To thee--to thee--e'en in the gasp of death
My spirit turned, oh! oftener than it ought.'

In the sixth and final stanza, probably the last lines that Byron ever wrote, we find him reiterating, with all a lover's persistency, a belief that Mary could never have loved him, otherwise she would not have left him.

VI.

'Thus much and more; and yet thou lov'st me not,
And never will! Love dwells not in our will.
Nor can I blame thee, though it be my lot
To strongly, wrongly, vainly love thee still.'

The reproaches of lovers are often unjust. Byron either could not, or perhaps _would not_, see that in abandoning him Mary had been actuated by the highest, the purest motives, and that the renunciation must have afforded her deep pain--a sacrifice, not lightly made, for Byron's sake quite as much as for her own. That Byron for a time resented her conduct in this respect is evident from a remark made in a letter to Miss Milbanke, dated November 29, 1813. After saying that he once thought that Mary Chaworth could have made him happy, he added, 'but _subsequent events have proved_ that my expectations might not have been fulfilled had I ever proposed to and received my idol.'[39]

What those 'subsequent events' were may be guessed from reproaches which at this period appear among his poems:

'The wholly false the _heart_ despises,
And spurns deceiver and deceit;
But she who not a thought disguises,
Whose love is as sincere as sweet--
When _she_ can change, who loved so truly,
It _feels_ what mine has _felt_ so newly.'

In the letter written five years after their final separation, Byron again reproaches Mary Chaworth, but this time without a tinge of bitterness:

'My own, we may have been very wrong, but I repent of nothing except
that cursed marriage, and your refusing to continue to love me as you
had loved me. I can neither forget nor _quite forgive_ you for that
precious piece of reformation. But I can never be other than I have
been, and whenever I love anything, it is because it reminds me in
some way or other of yourself.'

'The Giaour' was begun in May and finished in November, 1813. Those parts which relate to Mary Chaworth were added to that poem in July and August:

'She was a form of Life and Light,
That, seen, became a part of sight;
And rose, where'er I turned mine eye,
The Morning-Star of Memory!'

Byron says that, like the bird that sings within the brake, like the swan that swims upon the waters, he can only have one mate. He despises those who sneer at constancy. He does not envy them their fickleness, and regards such heartless men as lower in the scale of creation than the solitary swan.

'Such shame at least was never mine--
Leila! each thought was only thine!
My good, _my guilt_, my weal, my woe,
My hope on high--my all below.
Earth holds no other like to thee,
Or, if it doth, in vain for me:
... Thou wert, thou art,
The cherished madness of my heart!'

'Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven;
A spark of that immortal fire
With angels shared, by Alla given,
To lift from earth our low desire.
I grant _my_ love imperfect, all
That mortals by the name miscall;
Then deem it evil, what thou wilt;
But say, oh say, _hers_ was not Guilt!
And she was lost--and yet I breathed,
But not the breath of human life:
A serpent round my heart was wreathed,
And stung my every thought to strife.'

Who can doubt that the friend 'of earlier days,' whose memory the Giaour wishes to bless before he dies, but whom he dares not bless lest Heaven should 'mark the vain attempt' of guilt praying for the guiltless, was Mary Chaworth. He bids the friar tell that friend

'What thou didst behold:
The withered frame--the ruined mind,
The wreck that Passion leaves behind--
The shrivelled and discoloured leaf,
Seared by the Autumn blast of Grief.'

He wonders whether that friend is still his friend, as in those earlier days, when hearts were blended in that sweet land where bloom his native valley's bowers. To that friend he sends a ring, which was the memorial of a youthful vow:

'Tell him--unheeding as I was,
Through many a busy bitter scene
Of all our golden youth hath been,
In pain, my faltering tongue had tried
To bless his memory--ere I died;
I do not ask him not to blame,
Too gentle he to wound my name;
I do not ask him not to mourn,
Such cold request might sound like scorn.
But bear this ring, his own of old,
And tell him what thou dost behold!'

The motto chosen by Byron for 'The Giaour' is in itself suggestive:

'One fatal remembrance--one sorrow that throws
Its bleak shade alike o'er our Joys and our Woes--
To which Life nothing darker nor brighter can bring,
For which Joy hath no balm--and affliction no sting.'

On October 10, 1813, Byron arrived at Newstead, where he stayed for a month. Mary Chaworth was at Annesley during that time. On his return to town he wrote (November 8) to his sister:

'MY DEAREST AUGUSTA,

'I have only time to say that my long silence has been occasioned by a
thousand things (with which _you_ are not concerned). It is not Lady
Caroline, nor Lady Oxford; _but perhaps you may guess_, and if you do,
do not tell. You do not know what mischief your being with me might
have prevented. You shall hear from me to-morrow; in the meantime
don't be alarmed. I am in _no immediate_ peril.

'Believe me, ever yours,
'B.'

On November 30 Byron wrote to Moore:

'We were once very near neighbours this autumn;[40] and a good and
bad neighbourhood it has proved to me. Suffice it to say that your
French quotation (Si je récommençais ma carrière, je ferais tout ce
que j'ai fait) was confoundedly to the purpose,--though very
_unexpectedly_ pertinent, as you may imagine by what I _said_ before,
and my silence since. However, "Richard's himself again," and, except
all night and some part of the morning, I don't think very much about
the matter. All convulsions end with me in rhyme; and to solace my
midnights I have scribbled another Turkish story ['The Bride of
Abydos'] which you will receive soon after this.... I have written
this, and published it, for the sake of _employment_--to wring my
thoughts from reality, and take refuge in "imaginings," however
"horrible."... This is the work of a week....'

In order the more effectually to dispose of the theory that Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster was the cause of Byron's disquietude, we insert an extract from his journal, dated a fortnight earlier (November 14, 1813):

'Last night I finished "Zuleika" [the name was afterwards changed to
'The Bride of Abydos'], my second Turkish tale. I believe the
composition of it kept me alive--for it was written to drive my
thoughts from the recollection of * * * * "Dear sacred name, rest ever
unrevealed." At least, even here, my hand would tremble to write
it.... I have some idea of expectorating a romance, but what romance
could equal the events

'"... quæque ipse ... vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui"?'

Surely the name that Byron dared not write, even in his own journal, was not that of Lady Frances Webster, whose name appears often in his correspondence. The 'sacred name' was that of one of whom he afterwards wrote, 'Thou art both Mother and May.'

During October, November, and December, 1813, Byron's mind was in a perturbed condition. We gather, from a letter which he wrote to Moore on November 30, that his thoughts were centred on a lady living in Nottinghamshire[41], and that the scrape, which he mentions in his letter to Augusta on November 8, referred to that lady and the dreaded prospects of maternity.

Mr. Coleridge believes that the verses, 'Remember him, whom Passion's power,' were addressed to Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster. There is nothing, so far as the present writer knows, to support that opinion. There is no evidence to show the month in which they were written; and, in view of the statement that the lady in question had lived in comparative retirement, 'Thy soul from long seclusion pure,' and that she had, because of his presumption, banished the poet in 1813, it could not well have been Lady Frances Webster, who in September of that year had asked Byron to be godfather to her child, and in October had invited him to her house. It is noteworthy that Byron expressly forbade Murray to publish those verses with 'The Corsair,' where, it must be owned, they would have been sadly out of place. 'Farewell, if ever fondest prayer,' was decidedly more appropriate to the state of things existing at that time.

The motto chosen for his 'Bride of Abydos' is taken from Burns:

'Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met--or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.'

The poem was written early in November, 1813.

Byron has told us that it was written to divert his mind,[42] 'to wring his thoughts from reality to imagination, from selfish regrets to vivid recollections'; to 'distract his thoughts from the recollection of * * * * "Dear sacred name, rest ever unrevealed,"' and in a letter to John Galt (December 11, 1813) he says that parts of the poem were drawn 'from existence.' He had been staying at Newstead, in close proximity to Annesley, from October 10 to November 8, during which time, as he says, he regretted the absence of his sister Augusta, 'who might have saved him much trouble.' He says, 'All convulsions end with me in rhyme,' and that 'The Bride of Abydos' was 'the work of a week.' In speaking of a 'dear sacred name, rest ever unrevealed,' he says: 'At least even here my hand would tremble to write it'; and on November 30 he writes to Moore: 'Since I last wrote' (October 2), 'much has happened to me.' On November 27 he writes in his journal: 'Mary--dear name--thou art both Mother and May.'[43] At the end of November, after he had returned to town, he writes in his journal:

'* * * * is distant, and will be at * * * *, still more distant, till
the spring. No one else, except Augusta, cares for me.... I am
tremendously in arrears with my letters, except to * * * *, and to her
my thoughts overpower me--my words never compass them.'

On November 14 Byron sends a device for the seals of himself and * * * *; the seal in question is at present in the possession of the Chaworth-Musters family. On December 10, we find from one of Byron's letters that he had thoughts of committing suicide, and was deterred by the idea that 'it would annoy Augusta, and perhaps * * * *.'

Byron seems to have put into the mouth of Zuleika words which conveyed his own thoughts:

'Think'st thou that I could bear to part
With thee, and learn to halve my heart?
Ah! were I severed from thy side,
Where were thy friend--and who my guide?
Years have not seen, Time shall not see,
The hour that tears my soul from thee:
Ev'n Azrael, from his deadly quiver
When flies that shaft, and fly it must,
That parts all else, shall doom for ever
Our hearts to undivided dust!

* * * * *

What other can she seek to see
Than thee, companion of her bower,
The partner of her infancy?
These cherished thoughts with life begun,
Say, why must I no more avow?'

Selim suggests that Zuleika should brave the world and fly with him:

'But be the Star that guides the wanderer, Thou!
Thou, my Zuleika, share and bless my bark;
The Dove of peace and promise to mine ark!
Or, since that hope denied in worlds of strife,
Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life!
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!

* * * * *

Not blind to Fate, I see, where'er I rove,
Unnumbered perils,--but one only love!
Yet well my toils shall that fond breast repay,
Though Fortune frown, or falser friends betray.'

Zuleika, we are told, was the 'last of Giaffir's race.'[44] Selim tells her that 'life is hazard at the best,' and there is much to fear:

'Yes, fear! the doubt, the dread of losing thee.
That dread shall vanish with the favouring gale;
Which Love to-night has promised to my sail.
No danger daunts the pair his smile hath blest,
Their steps still roving, but their hearts at rest.
With thee all toils are sweet, each clime hath charms;
Earth--Sea alike--our world within our arms!'

'The Corsair' was written between December 18, 1813, and January 11, 1814. While it was passing through the press, Byron was at Newstead. He gives a little of his own spirit to Conrad, and all Mary's virtues to Medora--a name which was afterwards given to his child. Conrad

'Knew himself a villain--but he deemed
The rest no better than the thing he seemed;
And scorned the best as hypocrites who hid
Those deeds the bolder spirit plainly did.
Lone, wild, and strange, he stood alike exempt
From all affection and from all contempt.
None are all evil--quickening round his heart,
One softer feeling would not yet depart.
Yet 'gainst that passion vainly still he strove,
And even in him it asks the name of Love!
Yes, it was Love--unchangeable--unchanged,
Felt but for one from whom he never ranged.
Yes--it was Love--if thoughts of tenderness,
Tried in temptation, strengthened by distress,
Unmoved by absence, firm in every clime,
And yet--oh! more than all! untired by Time.
If there be Love in mortals--this was Love!
He was a villain--aye, reproaches shower
On him--but not the Passion, nor its power,
Which only proved--all other virtues gone--
Not Guilt itself could quench this _earliest_ one!'

The following verses are full of meaning for the initiated:

I.

'Deep in my soul that tender secret dwells,
Lonely and lost to light for evermore,
Save when to thine my heart responsive swells,
Then trembles into silence as before.

II.

'There, in its centre, a sepulchral lamp
Burns the slow flame, eternal--but unseen;
Which not the darkness of Despair can damp,
Though vain its ray as it had never been.

III.

'Remember me--oh! pass not thou my grave
Without one thought whose relics there recline:
The only pang my bosom dare not brave
Must be to find forgetfulness in thine.

IV.

'My fondest--faintest--latest accents hear--
Grief for the dead not Virtue can reprove;
Then give me all I ever asked--a tear,
The first--last--sole reward of so much love!'

Conrad and Medora part, to meet no more in life

'But she is nothing--wherefore is he here?...
By the first glance on that still, marble brow--
It was enough--she died--what recked it how?
_The love of youth, the hope of better years_,
The source of softest wishes, tenderest fears,
The only living thing he could not hate,
Was reft at once--_and he deserved his fate_,
But did not feel it less.'

The blow he feared the most had fallen at last. The only woman whom he loved had withdrawn her society from him, and his heart,

'Formed for softness--warped to wrong,
Betrayed too early, and beguiled too long,'

was petrified at last!

'Yet tempests wear, and lightning cleaves the rock;
If such his heart, so shattered it the shock.
There grew one flower beneath its rugged brow,
Though dark the shade--it sheltered--saved till now.
The thunder came--that bolt hath blasted both,
The Granite's firmness, and the Lily's growth:
The gentle plant hath left no leaf to tell
Its tale, but shrunk and withered where it fell;
And of its cold protector, blacken round
But shivered fragments on the barren ground!'

In moments of deep emotion, even the most reticent of men may sometimes reveal themselves. 'The Giaour,' 'The Bride of Abydos,' and 'The Corsair,' formed a trilogy, through which the tragedy of Byron's life swept like a musical theme. Those poems acted like a recording instrument which, by registering his transient moods, was destined ultimately to betray a secret which he had been at so much pains to hide. In 'The Giaour' we see remorse for a crime, which he was at first willing to expiate in sorrow and repentance. In 'The Bride of Abydos' we find him, in an access of madness and passion, proposing to share the fate of his victim, if she will but consent to fly with him. Happily for both, Mary would never have consented to an act of social suicide. In 'The Corsair' we behold his dreams dispelled by the death of his Love and the hope of better years.

'He asked no question--all were answered now!'

With the dramatic fate of Medora the curtain falls, and the poet, in whom

'I suoi pensieri in lui dormir non ponno,'

crosses the threshold of a new life. He reappears later on the scene of all his woes, a broken, friendless stranger, in the person of Lara--that last phase, in which the poet discloses his identity with characteristic insouciance, brings the tragedy abruptly to a close.[45]

On January 6, 1814, Byron wrote a remarkable letter to Moore, at that time in Nottinghamshire:

'... I have a confidence for you--a perplexing one to me, and just at
present in a state of abeyance in itself.... [Here probably follows
the disclosure.] However, we shall see. In the meantime you may amuse
yourself with my suspense, and put all the justices of peace in
requisition, in case I come into your county [Nottinghamshire] with
hackbut bent.[46] Seriously, whether I am to hear from her or him, it
is a pause, which I can fill up with as few thoughts of my own as I
can borrow from other people. Anything is better than stagnation; and
now, in the interregnum of my autumn and a strange summer adventure,
which I don't like to think of.... Of course you will keep my secret,
and don't even talk in your sleep of it. Happen what may, your
dedication is ensured, being already written; and I shall copy it out
fair to-night, in case business or amusement--_Amant alterna
Camoenæ_.'

Byron here refers to 'The Corsair,' which he dedicated to Thomas Moore. In order to understand this letter, it may be inferred that one of the letters he had written to his lady-love had remained so long unanswered that Byron feared it might have fallen into her husband's hands. Writing to Moore on the following day, Byron says:

'My last epistle would probably put you in a fidget. But the devil,
who _ought_ to be civil on such occasions, proved so, and took my
letter to the right place.... Is it not odd? the very fate I said she
had escaped from * * * * she has now undergone from the worthy * * *
*.'

An undated letter from Mary Chaworth, preserved among the Byron letters in Mr. Murray's possession, seems to belong to this period:

'Your kind letter, my dear friend, relieved me much, and came
yesterday, when I was by no means well, and was a most agreeable
remedy, for I fancied a thousand things.... I shall set great value by
your _seal_, and, if you come down to Newstead before we leave
Annesley, see no reason why you should not call on us and bring
it....[47] I have lately suffered from a pain in my side, which has
alarmed me; but I will not, in return for your charming epistle, fill
mine with complaints.... I am surprised you have not seen Mr.
Chaworth, as I hear of him going about a good deal. We [herself and
Miss Radford] are now visiting very near Nottingham, but return to
Annesley to-morrow, I _trust_, where I have left all my little dears
except the eldest, whom _you_ saw, and who is with me. We are very
anxious to see you, and yet know not how we shall feel on the
occasion--_formal_, I dare say, at the _first_; but our meeting must
be confined to our trio, and then I think we shall be more at our
ease. _Do write_ me, and make a _sacrifice_ to _friendship_, which I
shall consider your visit. You _may_ always address your letters to
Annesley perfectly safe.

'Your sincere friend,
'MARY ----'

On or about January 7, 1814, Byron writes to his sister Augusta in reference to Mary Chaworth:

'I shall write to-morrow, but did _not_ go to Lady M.'s [Melbourne]
twelfth cake banquet. M. [Mary] has written again--_all
friendship_--and really very simple and pathetic--_bad
usage_--_paleness_--_ill-health_--old _friendship_--_once_--_good
motive_--virtue--and so forth.'

Five days later Byron again writes to Augusta Leigh:

'On Sunday or Monday next, with leave of your lord and president, you
will be _well_ and ready to accompany me to Newstead, which you
_should_ see, and I will endeavour to render as comfortable as I can,
for both our sakes.... Claughton is, I believe, inclined to settle....
More news from Mrs. [Chaworth], _all friendship_; you shall see her.'

Medora was born on or about April 15, 1814. 'Lara' was written between May 4 and 14. The opening lines, which would have set every tongue wagging, were withheld from publication until January, 1887. They were written in London early in May, and were addressed to the mother of Medora:

'When thou art gone--the loved, the lost--the one
Whose smile hath gladdened, though perchance undone--
_Whose name too dearly cherished to impart_
Dies on the lip, but trembles in the heart;
Whose sudden mention can almost convulse,
And lightens through the ungovernable pulse--
Till the heart leaps so keenly to the word
We fear that throb can hardly beat unheard--[48]
Then sinks at once beneath that sickly chill
That follows when we find her absent still.
When thou art gone--too far again to bless--
Oh! God--how slowly comes Forgetfulness!
Let none complain how faithless and how brief
The brain's remembrance, or the bosom's grief,
Or ere they thus forbid us to forget
Let Mercy strip the memory of regret;
Yet--selfish still--we would not be forgot,
What lip dare say--"My Love--remember not"?
Oh! best--and dearest! Thou whose thrilling name
My heart adores too deeply to proclaim--
My memory, almost ceasing to repine,
Would mount to Hope if once secure of thine.
Meantime the tale I weave must mournful be--
As absence to the heart that lives on thee!'

Lord Lovelace has told us that 'nothing is too stupid for belief.' We are disposed to agree with him, especially as he produces these lines in support of his accusation against Augusta Leigh. The absurdity of supposing that they were addressed to Byron's sister appears to us to be so evident that it seems unnecessary to waste words in disputation. There is abundant proof that during this period Mrs. Leigh and Byron were in constant correspondence, and that he visited her almost daily during her simulated confinement and convalescence. When Murray sent her some books to while away the time, Byron wrote (April 9) on her behalf to thank him. And finally, as Augusta Leigh had no intention whatever of leaving London, she could in no sense have been 'the lost one' whose prospective departure filled Byron with despair. The poet and his sister--whom he was accustomed to address as 'Goose'[49]--were then, and always, on most familiar terms. The 'mention of her name' (which was often on his lips) would certainly not have convulsed him, nor have caused his heart to beat so loudly that he feared lest others should hear it! The woman to whom those lines were addressed was Mary Chaworth, whose condition induced him, on April 18, to begin a fragment entitled 'Magdalen'--she of whom he wrote on May 4:

'I speak not--I trace not--I breathe not thy name--
There is Love in the sound--there is Guilt in the fame.'

Lord Lovelace, in his impetuosity, and with very imperfect knowledge of Byron's life-story, ties every doubtful scrap of his grandfather's poetry into his bundle of proofs against Augusta Leigh, without perceiving any discrepancy in the nature of his evidence. A moment's reflection might have convinced him that the lines we have quoted could not, by any possibility, have applied to one whom he subsequently addressed as:

'My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine;

* * * * *

Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun,
I had been better than I now can be;
The passions which have torn me would have slept;
_I_ had not suffered, and _thou_ hadst not wept.'

It must be admitted that Byron, through indiscreet confidences and reckless mystifications, was partly the cause of the suspicions which afterwards fell upon his sister. Lady Byron has left it on record that Byron early in 1814--before the birth of Medora--told Lady Caroline Lamb that a woman he passionately loved was with child by him, and that if a daughter was born it should be called Medora.[50] At about the same time 'he advanced, at Holland House, the most extraordinary theories about the relations of brother and sister, which originated the reports about Mrs. Leigh.'

That, after ninety years, such nonsense should be regarded as evidence against a woman so well known in the society of her day as was Mrs. Leigh, justifies our concurrence with Lord Lovelace's opinion that 'nothing is too stupid for belief.'

It appears that one day Lady Byron was talking to her husband about 'Lara,' which seemed to her to be 'like the darkness in which one fears to behold spectres.' This bait was evidently too tempting for Byron to resist. He replied: '"Lara"--there's more in _that_ than in any of them.' As he spoke he shuddered, and turned his eyes to the ground.

Before we examine that poem to see how much it may contain of illuminating matter, we will touch upon a remark Byron made to his wife, which Lord Lovelace quotes without perceiving its depth and meaning. We will quote 'Astarte':

'He told Lady Byron that if she had married him when he first
proposed, he should not have written any of the poems which followed
[the first and second Cantos] "Childe Harold."'

This is perfectly true. Byron proposed to Miss Milbanke in 1812. If she had married him then, he would not have renewed his intimacy with Mary Chaworth in June, 1813. There would have been no heart-hunger, no misery, no remorse, and, in short, no inspiration for 'The Giaour,' 'The Bride,' 'The Corsair,' and 'Lara.' Miss Milbanke's refusal of his offer of marriage in 1812 rankled long in Byron's mind, and provoked those ungenerous reproaches which have been, with more or less exaggeration, reported by persons in Lady Byron's confidence. The mischief was done between the date of Miss Milbanke's refusal and her acceptance of his offer, which occurred after the fury of his passion for Mary Chaworth had burnt itself out. No blame attaches to Lady Byron for this misfortune. When Byron first proposed, her affections were elsewhere engaged; she could not, therefore, dispose of her heart to him. When she at last accepted him, it was too late for happiness.

In a letter which Byron wrote to Miss Milbanke previous to his marriage,[51] he unconsciously prophesied the worst:

'The truth is that could I have foreseen that your life was to be
linked to mine--had I even possessed a distinct hope, however
distant--I would have been a different and better being. As it is, I
have sometimes doubts, even if I should not disappoint the future, nor
act hereafter unworthily of you, whether the past ought not to make
you still regret me--even that portion of it with which you are not
unacquainted. I did not believe such a woman existed--at least for
me--_and I sometimes fear I ought to wish that she had not_.'

When Byron said that he had doubts whether the past would not eventually reflect injuriously upon his future wife, he referred, not to Augusta Leigh, but to his fatal intercourse with Mary Chaworth. The following sentences taken from Mrs. Leigh's letters to Francis Hodgson, who knew the truth, prove that the mystery only incidentally affected Augusta. The letters were written February, 1816.

'From what passed [between Captain Byron and Mrs. Clermont] _now_, if
_they_ choose it, it must come into court! God alone knows the
consequences.'

'It strikes me that, if their pecuniary proposals are favourable,
Byron will be too happy to escape the exposure. _He must_ be anxious.
It is impossible he should not in some degree.'

These are the expressions, not of a person connected with a tragedy, but rather of one who was a spectator of it. Every impartial person must see that. When, on another occasion, Byron told his wife that he wished he had gone abroad--as he had intended--in June, 1813, he undoubtedly implied that the fatal intimacy with Mary Chaworth would have been avoided. This seems so clear to us that we are surprised that Byron's statement on the subject of his poems should have made no impression on the mind of Lord Lovelace, and should have elicited nothing from him in 'Astarte,' except the _banale_ suggestion that Byron's literary activity _must have been accidental_!

Lara, like Conrad, is a portion of Byron himself, and the poem opens with his return to Newstead after some bitter experiences, at which he darkly hints:

'Short was the course his restlessness had run,
But long enough to leave him half undone.'

He tells us that 'Another chief consoled his destined bride.' 'One is absent that most might decorate that gloomy pile.'

'Why slept he not when others were at rest?
Why heard no music, and received no guest?
All was not well, they deemed--but where the wrong?
Some knew perchance.'

In stanzas 17, 18, and 19, Byron draws a picture of himself, so like that his sister remarked upon it in a letter to Hodgson. After telling us that 'his heart was not by nature hard,' he says that

'His blood in temperate seeming now would flow:
Ah! happier if it ne'er with guilt had glowed,
But ever in that icy smoothness flowed!'

The poet tells us that after Lara's death he was mourned by one whose quiet grief endured for long.

'Vain was all question asked her of the past,
And vain e'en menace--silent to the last.'

'Why did she love him? Curious fool!--be still--
Is human love the growth of human will?
To her he might be gentleness; the stern
Have deeper thoughts than your dull eyes discern,
And when they love, your smilers guess not how
Beats the strong heart, though less the lips avow.
They were not common links, that formed the chain
That bound to Lara Kaled's heart and brain;
But that wild tale she brooked not to unfold,
_And sealed is now each lip that could have told_.

* * * * *

'The tempest of his heart in scorn had gazed
On that the feebler Elements hath raised.
The Rapture of his Heart had looked on high,
And asked if greater dwelt beyond the sky:
Chained to excess, the slave of each extreme,
How woke he from the wildness of that dream!
Alas! he told not--_but he did awake
To curse the withered heart that would not break_.'

On September 8, 1814, four months after Byron had finished 'Lara,' while he was at Newstead with his sister and her children--the little Medora among them--he wrote his fragment 'Harmodia.' The rough draft was given after his marriage to Lady Byron, who had no idea to what it could possibly refer. When the scandal about Augusta was at its height, this fragment was impounded among other incriminating documents, and eventually saw the light in 'Astarte.' Lord Lovelace was firmly convinced that it was addressed to Augusta Leigh!

Between September 7 and 15 Byron and Mary Chaworth were considering the desirability of marriage for Byron, and letters were passing between the distracted poet and two young ladies--Miss Milbanke and another--with that object in view. Although Byron was still in love with Mary Chaworth, he had come to understand that her determination to break the dangerous intimacy was irrevocable, so he resolved to follow her advice and marry. The tone of his letter to Moore, written on September 15, shows that he was not very keen about wedlock. He was making plans for a journey to Italy in the event of his proposal being rejected.

It is possible that, in a conversation between Mary and himself, the former may have spoken of the risks they had incurred in the past, and of her resolve never to transgress again. To which Byron replied:

HARMODIA.

'The things that were--and what and whence are they?
Those clouds and rainbows of thy yesterday?
Their path has vanish'd from th' eternal sky,
And now its hues are of a different dye.
Thus speeds from day to day, and Pole to Pole,
The change of parts, the sameness of the whole;
And all we snatch, amidst the breathing strife,
But gives to Memory what it takes from Life:
Despoils a substance to adorn a shade--
And that frail shadow lengthens but to fade.
Sun of the sleepless! Melancholy Star!
Whose tearful beam shoots trembling from afar--
_That chang'st_ the darkness thou canst not dispel--
How like art thou to Joy, remembered well!
Such is the past--the light of other days
That shines, but warms not with its powerless rays--
A moonbeam _Sorrow_ watcheth to behold,
Distinct, but distant--clear, but _death-like_ cold.

'Oh! as full thought comes rushing o'er the Mind
Of all we saw before--to leave behind--
Of all!--but words, what are they? Can they give
A trace of truth to thoughts while yet they live?
No--Passion--Feeling speak not--or in vain--
The tear for Grief--the Groan must speak for Pain--
Joy hath its smile--and Love its blush and sigh--
Despair her silence--Hate her lip and eye--
These their interpreters, where deeply lurk--
The Soul's despoilers warring as they work--
The strife once o'er--then words may find their way,
Yet how enfeebled from the forced delay!

'But who could paint the progress of the wreck--
Himself still clinging to the dangerous deck?
Safe on the shore the artist first must stand,
And then the pencil trembles in his hand.'

When, four years later, Byron was writing the first canto of 'Don Juan,' with feelings chastened by suffering and time, he recurred to that period--never effaced from his memory--the time when he wrote:

'When thou art gone--the loved--the lost--the one
Whose smile hath gladdened--though, perchance, undone!'

Time could not change the feelings of his youth, nor keep his thoughts for long from the object of his early love.

'They tell me 'tis decided you depart:
'Tis wise--'tis well, but not the less a pain;
I have no further claim on your young heart,
Mine is the victim, and would be again:
To love too much has been the only art
I used.'

'I loved, I love you, for this love have lost
State, station, Heaven, Mankind's, my own esteem,
And yet can not regret what it hath cost,
_So dear is still the memory of that dream_;
Yet, if I name my guilt, 'tis not to boast,
None can deem harshlier of me than I deem.'

'All is o'er
For me on earth, except some years to hide
My shame and sorrow deep in my heart's core:
These I could bear, but cannot cast aside
The passion which still rages as before--
And so farewell--forgive me, love me--No,
That word is idle now--but let it go.'

* * * * *

'My heart is feminine, nor can forget--
To all, except one image, madly blind;
So shakes the needle, and so stands the pole,
As vibrates my fond heart to my fixed soul.'

It was early in 1814 that Byron also wrote his farewell verses to Mary Chaworth, which appeared in the second edition of 'The Corsair':

I.

'Farewell! if ever fondest prayer
For other's weal availed on high,
Mine will not all be lost in air,
But waft thy name beyond the sky.
'Twere vain to speak--to weep--to sigh:
Oh! more than tears of blood can tell,
_When wrung from Guilt's expiring eye_,
Are in that word--Farewell! Farewell!

II.

'These lips are mute, these eyes are dry;
But in my breast, and in my brain,
Awake the pangs that pass not by,
_The thought that ne'er shall sleep again_.
My soul nor deigns nor dares complain,
Though Grief and Passion there rebel:
I only know we loved in vain--
I only feel--Farewell! Farewell!'

Even in the 'Hebrew Melodies,' which were probably begun in the autumn of 1814, and finished after Byron's marriage in January, 1815, there are traces of that deathless remorse and love, whose expression could not be altogether repressed. We select some examples at random. In the poem 'Oh, snatched away in Beauty's bloom,' the poet had added two verses which were subsequently suppressed:

'Nor need I write to tell the tale,
My pen were doubly weak.
Oh! what can idle words avail,
Unless my heart could speak?

'By day or night, in weal or woe,
That heart, no longer free,
Must bear the love it cannot show,
And silent turn for thee.'

In 'Herod's Lament for Mariamne' we find:

'She's gone, who shared my diadem;
She sunk, with her my joys entombing;
I swept that flower from Judah's stem,
Whose leaves for me alone were blooming;
And mine's the guilt, and mine the Hell,
This bosom's desolation dooming;
And I have earned those tortures well,
Which unconsumed are still consuming!'

While admitting that Byron's avowed object was to portray the remorse of Herod, we suspect that the haunting image of one so dear to him--one who had suffered through guilt which he so frequently deplored in verse--must have been in the poet's mind when these lines were written.

On January 17, 1814, Byron went to Newstead with Augusta Leigh, and stayed there one month.

'A busy month and pleasant, at least three weeks of it.... "The
Corsair" has been conceived, written, published, etc., since I took up
this journal. They tell me it has great success; it was written _con
amore_, and much from _existence_.'

On the following day Byron wrote to his friend Wedderburn Webster:

'I am on my way to the country on rather a melancholy expedition. A
very old and early connexion [Mary Chaworth], or rather friend of
mine, has desired to see me; and, as now we can never be more than
friends, I have no objection. She is certainly unhappy and, I fear,
ill; and the length and circumstances attending our acquaintance
render her request and my visit neither singular nor improper.'

This strange apology for what might have been considered a very natural act of neighbourly friendship, inevitably reminds us of a French proverb, _Qui s'excuse s'accuse_. It is worthy of note that, after Byron had been ten days at Newstead with his sister, he wrote to his lawyer--who must have been surprised at the irrelevant information--to say that Augusta Leigh was 'in the family way.' The significance of this communication has hitherto passed unnoticed. We gather from Byron's letters that he was much depressed by Mary Chaworth's state of health, involving all the risks of discovery.

'My rhyming propensity is quite gone,' he writes, 'and I feel much as
I did at Patras on recovering from my fever--weak, but in health, and
only afraid of a relapse.'

Soon after his return to London Byron wrote to Moore: 'Seriously, I am in what the learned call a dilemma, and the vulgar, a scrape....'

Moore took care, with his asterisks, that we should not know the nature of that scrape, which certainly had nothing to do with his 'Lines to a Lady Weeping' which appeared in the first edition of 'The Corsair.' If the reader has any doubts on this point, let him refer to Byron's letters to Murray, notably to that one in which the angry poet protests against the suppression of those lines in the second edition of 'The Corsair':

'You have played the devil by that injudicious _suppression_, which
you did totally without my consent.... Now, I _do not_, and _will_ not
be supposed to shrink, although myself and everything belonging to me
were to perish with my memory.'

Moore's asterisks veiled the record of a deeper scrape, as Byron's letter to him, written three weeks later, plainly show.

On April 10, 1814, Byron wrote in his journal:

'I do not know that I am happiest when alone; but this I am sure of,
that I am never long in the society even of _her_ I love (God knows
too well, and the Devil probably too), without a yearning for the
company of my lamp, and my utterly confused and tumbled-over library.'

The latter portion of the journal at this period is much mutilated. There is a gap between April 10 and 19, when, four days after the birth of Medora, he writes in deep dejection:

'There is ice at both poles, north and south--all extremes are the
same--misery belongs to the highest and the lowest, only.... I will
keep no further journal ... and, to prevent me from returning, like a
dog, to the vomit of memory, I tear out the remaining leaves of this
volume.... "O! fool! I shall go mad."'

It was at this time that Byron wrote the following lines, in which he tells Mary Chaworth that all danger of the discovery of their secret is over:

'There is no more for _me_ to hope,
_There is no more for thee to fear_;
And, if I give my sorrow scope,
That sorrow _thou_ shalt never hear.
Why did I hold thy love so dear?
Why shed for such a heart one tear?
Let deep and dreary silence be
My only memory of thee!
When all are fled who flatter now,
Save thoughts which will not flatter then;
And thou recall'st the broken vow
To him who must not love again--
_Each hour of now forgotten years_
Thou, then, shalt number with thy tears;
And every drop of grief shall be
A vain remembrancer of me!'

On May 4, 1814, Byron sent to Moore the following verses. We quote from Lady Byron's manuscript:

'I speak not--I trace not--I breathe not thy name--
There is love in the sound--there is Guilt in the fame--
But the tear which now burns on my cheek may impart
The deep thoughts that dwell in that silence of heart.

'Too brief for our passion--too long for our peace--
Was that hour--can its hope--can its memory cease?
We repent--we abjure--we will break from our chain:
We must part--we must fly to--unite it again!

'Oh! thine be the gladness--and mine be the Guilt!
Forgive me--adored one--forsake if thou wilt--
But the heart which is thine shall expire undebased,
And Man shall not break it whatever _thou_ mayst.

'Oh! proud to the mighty--but humble to thee
This soul in its bitterest moment shall be,
And our days glide as swift--and our moments more sweet
With thee at my side--than the world at my feet.

'One tear of thy sorrow--one smile of thy love--
Shall turn me or fix--shall reward or reprove--
And the heartless may wonder at all I resign:
Thy lip shall reply--not to them--but to mine.'

These verses were not published until Byron had been five years in his grave. They tell the story plainly, and the manuscript in Mr. Murray's possession speaks plainer still. Before Byron gave the manuscript to his wife, he erased the following lines:

'We have loved--and oh! still, my adored one, we love!'

'Oh! the moment is past when that passion might cease.'

'But I cannot repent what we ne'er can recall.'

After Medora's birth Byron became more and more dejected, and on April 29 he wrote a remarkable letter to Murray, enclosing a draft to redeem the copyrights of his poems, and releasing Murray from his engagement to pay £1,000, agreed on for 'The Giaour' and 'The Bride of Abydos.' Byron was evidently afraid that Mr. Chaworth Musters would discover the truth, and that a duel and disgrace would be the inevitable consequence.