Byron: The Last Phase Part 19

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 ma.n.u.scripts 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 doc.u.ments 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 ident.i.ty. Moore makes it clear that the one pa.s.sion of Byron's life was Mary Chaworth. He tells us that there were many fleeting love-episodes, but only one pa.s.sion strong enough to have inspired the poems in question. If Byron's heart, during the two years that he pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sume 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 ma.n.u.script 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 ... quaeris 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 sh.o.r.e.'

It must also be remembered that the eighth stanza in the second canto of 'Childe Harold' was subst.i.tuted 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 a.s.sumes that Byron's _innamorata_ was Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster. But that bright star did not long shine in Byron's...o...b..t--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 pa.s.sing 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 s.e.x; but the fact is, I am at this moment in a far more serious, and entirely new, sc.r.a.pe, 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 eclat_," 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-ideal_ 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 s.e.x, 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 pa.s.s. 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 s.e.x, 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 compa.s.s 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,