Byron: The Last Phase Part 21

'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 G.o.ds 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 Pa.s.sion 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 recommencais ma carriere, 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

'"... quaeque 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 sc.r.a.pe, 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 Pa.s.sion'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 G.o.dfather 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 compa.s.s 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: