The Love Affairs of Lord Byron Part 11

"Mem. I must get a toy to-morrow for Eliza, and send the device for the seals of myself and ----."

Here, at any rate, we get one clear case in which the asterisks in the Journal not only appear to indicate Mary Chaworth, but cannot possibly indicate anybody else. It does not follow, of course, that we are ent.i.tled to insert her name wherever we encounter asterisks--for Byron and his editors have, from time to time, had various reasons for thus concealing various names; but the cases in which the asterisks do refer to her are, when once this clue is provided, tolerably easy to distinguish. Furnished with the clue, we can at once unravel the skein of events and construct a consistent picture of these critical months in Byron's career; and we may begin with the picture which he drew of himself to Medwin:

"I was at this time," he says, "a mere Bond Street lounger--a great man at lobbies, coffee and gambling houses: my afternoons were pa.s.sed in visits, luncheons, lounging, and boxing--not to mention drinking."

This is true, and yet, at the same time, it is not true. The picture is, at once, confirmed by the Letters and the Journal and contradicted by them. It is a picture in which, so to say, all the lights are glaring, and all the shadows are left out. The truest thing in it is the after-thought, added a few sentences lower down; "Don't suppose, however, that I took any pleasure in all these excesses." In that moody claim we get, of course, the reflection, or recollection, of the Byronic pose; and at this period, if not at all periods, there was grim reality behind the pose, and Byron fully justifies the description of him as the most sincere man who ever struck an att.i.tude.

It would be easy to depict him, whether from his letters or from contemporary memoirs, as the dissipated darling of society. The year 1813 was the year in which he and Madame de Stael were the rival lions of the season, roaring against each other, not entirely without jealousy. The list of his social engagements, if one troubled to draw it out, would have a very formidable appearance. It would show him going everywhere, meeting everybody, doing everything. We should see him at the great houses, such as Lady Melbourne's, Lady Holland's, Lady Jersey's. We should discover him at the opera and the theatre, now in their boxes, now in his own, and at men's dinners, with Sheridan, and Rogers, "Conversation Sharp," and other brilliant talkers. We should also find him patronising "the fancy," and losing his money at hazard, and drinking several bottles of claret at a sitting--retiring to bed in a sublime state of exaltation, and rising from it with a shocking headache.

That, however, would only be one half the picture. Many contemporary observers remarked that Byron pa.s.sed through the haunts of pleasure with a scowl, and that his face wore a frown whenever his features were in repose. One would infer from that, not that Byron, while really enjoying himself, posed, for the sake of effect, as a man who was secretly eating his heart out, but rather that some secret trouble was actually gnawing at his heart while he made the gestures of a man of pleasure; and the Letters and the Journal--more particularly the Journal--give us many glimpses at this darker side of his life. If he often accepted the invitations which continued to be showered on him, he also frequently declined them, locking himself up alone in his chambers to read, and write, and think things out--persuading himself, after some months had lapsed, that he had really been very little into society, and that it was a matter of indifference to him whether he went into it again or not.

And this, it will be observed, is a new note which only begins to be sounded in his intimate writings towards the end of the summer of 1813, after he has allowed Lady Oxford to go abroad alone. There is nothing like it in the days of his dalliance with her. Still less is there anything like it in the writings of the days of his dalliance with Lady Caroline Lamb. Those episodes and adventures, it is quite clear, only touched the surface of his nature. He first pursued them, and then ceased to pursue them, with laughter on his lips, and self-satisfaction--one might even say jollity--in his heart. There was not even anything in them to cradle him into song. The interval between the "Thyrza" poems and the pa.s.sionate allegorical tales of which "The Giaour" was the first--an interval of some eighteen months--was poetically uneventful. A period of feverish activity succeeded; and it coincided with a renewal of relations with Mary Chaworth.

Mary Chaworth had lived unhappily with the handsome squire whom she had, so naturally, preferred to the fat boy from Harrow. He had been, as these red-faced, full-blooded Philistines are so apt to be, at once jealous, unfaithful, and brutal, wanting to "have it both ways,"--to push rivals brusquely out of his path, and to pursue his own coa.r.s.e pleasures where he chose. He had forbidden his wife to see Byron. He had insisted upon her absence from Annesley at the time of Byron's return from Greece; and he had found her, whether willingly or unwillingly, compliant. But he had also, by his own conduct, caused scandals which had set the tongues of the neighbours wagging; and, in doing that, he had presumed too far. There had been a separation by mutual consent; and it was after the separation that the meeting with Byron took place.

There was little about him now to remind Mary of the fat boy whom she had laughed at. The Turkish baths, the Epsom salts, and the regimen of biscuits and soda-water had done their work. He came to her as a man of ethereal beauty, fascinating manners, and undisputed genius; and he left other women--women of higher rank, greater importance, and more widely acknowledged charm--in order to come to her. Nor did he come with the triumphant air of a man who was resolved to dazzle her in order to avenge a slight. He came, as it were, because he could not help himself--because he felt cords drawing him--because this was his destiny and he must fulfil it, though he forfeited the whole world in doing so.

Her case was hard. She was not one of the women who readily do desperate things in scorn of consequence. The traditions of her cla.s.s, the claims of her family--the precepts, also, one imagines, of her religion--had too strong a hold on her for that. These very hesitations, no doubt,--so different from the "on coming" ways of Lady Caroline, and Lady Oxford's "terrible love," as Balzac phrases it, "of the woman of forty"--were a part of her charm for Byron. But she was very unhappy, and Byron was offering her a little happiness; and it was very, very difficult for her to refuse the gift. So the history of the matter seems, in a sentence or two, to have been this: that she was slow to yield, but yielded; that she had no sooner yielded than she repented; that her repentance left Byron a desperate, heart-broken man, profoundly cynical about women--so cynical about them that he could speak even of her, while he still loved her, to Medwin, as "like the rest of her s.e.x, far from angelic"--ready to marry out of pique, or from any other motive equally unworthy.

The details must remain obscure. They pa.s.sed in the secret orchard; and Byron was not, like Victor Hugo, a man who treated his secret orchard as a park to be thrown open to excursionists. He knew that there was a time to keep silence as well as a time to speak; and though there were some episodes in his life of which he spoke too much, of this particular episode he only spoke to Moore and Mrs. Leigh, whom he could trust. Yet, given the clues, the story constructs itself; and we must either believe the story which arises out of those clues, or else believe that the most pa.s.sionate poems which Byron ever wrote were the outcome of a spiritual crisis about nothing in particular. And that, of course, is absurd.

We find him, at the beginning of the crisis, pondering two escapes from it--the escape by way of marriage, and the escape by way of foreign travel. He talks, in the middle of July, of proposing to Lady Adelaide Forbes; he talks, at the end of August, of proposing to anyone who is likely to accept him; but in neither instance does he talk like a man who really means what he says. This is the July announcement:

"My circ.u.mstances are mending, and were not my other prospects blackening, I would take a wife, and that should be the woman had I a chance.... The Stael last night said that I had no feeling, was totally _in_sensible to _la belle pa.s.sion_, and _had_ been all my life. I am very glad to hear it, but did not know it before."

Then in August he writes:

"After all, we must end in marriage; and I can conceive nothing more delightful than such a state in the country, reading the county newspaper, &c., and kissing one's wife's maid. Seriously, I would incorporate with any woman of decent demeanour to-morrow--that is, I would a month ago, but at present----."

The word "seriously" there is evidently a _facon de parler_. The writer's mood may be serious, but his intentions evidently are not. It may be doubted whether the thoughts of travel were any more serious, though they lasted longer. In letter after letter we find Byron making inquiries about a pa.s.sage in a ship of war bound for the Levant. When such a pa.s.sage is offered to him, however, he declines it on the ground that he is unable to obtain accommodation for as many servants as he desires to take with him; and that explanation inevitably strikes one as a pretext rather than a reason--the pretext of a man who, while he knows that it would be better to go, is looking for an excuse to stay.

Projects of travel with his sister and with various friends fell through at about the same time, for reasons which are nowhere stated, but can very easily be guessed. We cannot read the letters, dark though the allusions are, without being conscious of a thickening plot. It thickens very perceptibly when we discover Byron at Newstead at a time when Mary Chaworth, forsaken by her husband, is at Annesley. There is nearly a month's gap in the published letters at this point; but conjecture can easily fill the gap in the light of the letter from Byron to Mrs. Leigh, already quoted, which is dated November 8:

"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 near me might have prevented. You shall hear from me to-morrow; in the meantime, don't be alarmed. I am in _no immediate_ peril."

One is further helped to understand by a letter to Moore written, after a longer silence than usual, on November 30:

"Since I last wrote to you, much has occurred, good, bad, and indifferent,--not to make me forget you, but to prevent me of reminding you of one who, nevertheless, has often thought of you....

"Your French quotation was very 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."

The French quotation referred to is Fontenelle's: "Si je recommencais ma carriere je ferais tout ce que j'ai fait." The inference from the allusion to it, and from the two letters given, is quite clear. Something has happened--at Newstead or in the neighbourhood, as the dates demonstrate--something which Byron cannot bring himself to regret, even though he feels that it is going to make trouble for him. Hints at the possibility of a duel which follow in later letters make it not less clear that the trouble--or a part of it--may come from the indignation of an angry husband. "I shall not return his fire," Byron writes--an indication, we may take it, that a sense of guilt, and some remorse, is mingled with his pa.s.sion.

That is what we gather, and cannot help gathering, from the letters, in spite of their vagueness and intentional obscurity. We will take up the thread of the story from them again in a moment. In the meanwhile we will turn to the Journal and see how Byron presents the story to himself.

CHAPTER XV

RENEWAL AND INTERRUPTION OF RELATIONS WITH MARY CHAWORTH

The Journal is only a fragment, kept only for five months. It is a record rather of emotions than of events--the chronicle of the emotions of a man who feels the need of talking to himself of matters of which he cannot easily talk to others, but who, even in speaking to himself, speaks in riddles. It begins soon after the "mischief" of which Augusta has been told has happened, and while he is entangled in the "sc.r.a.pe" mentioned to Moore. The talk on the first page is of travel--"provided I neither marry myself, nor unmarry any one else in the interval"; and there immediately follows a reference to the writing of "The Bride of Abydos":

"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 unreveal'd._"

"At least, even here, my hand would tremble to write it."

"The Bride," he insists, was written for himself, and not with any view to publication. "I am sure, had it not been for Murray, _that_ would never have been published, though the circ.u.mstances which are the groundwork make it ... heigho!" "It was written," he adds, "in four days to distract my thoughts from * * *"; and then we perceive that he is in correspondence with the lady thus enigmatically designated. He is expecting a letter from her which does not arrive. What, he asks himself, is the meaning of that?

"Not a word from * * * Have they set out from * * *? or has my last precious epistle fallen into the lion's jaws? If so--and this silence looks suspicious--I must clap on my 'musty morion' and 'hold out my iron.' I am out of practice--but I won't begin again at Manton's now.

Besides, I would not return his shot. I was once a famous wafer-splitter; but then the bullies of society made it necessary.

Ever since I began to feel that I had a bad cause to support, I have left off the exercise."

The probability of a challenge from an injured husband is evidently contemplated here. No challenge came, the injured man remaining in ignorance of his injury; but peace of mind nevertheless remained unattainable. No connected narrative, indeed, can be pieced together. It is hardly ever possible to declare that such and such a thing happened on such and such a day. There is only the general impression that things are happening, and that, whether they happen or do not happen, a tragedy is always in progress. We come presently to a curiously significant note on the _raison d'etre_ of Byron's practice of fasting:

"I should not so much mind a little accession of flesh--my bones can well bear it. But the worst is, the devil always came with it,--till I starved him out,--and I will _not_ be the slave of _any_ appet.i.te. If I do err, it shall be my heart, at least, that heralds the way."

But a man does not write like that unless his heart has heralded the way, and he is following it. Byron's trouble was not that he had failed to follow the road which his heart pointed, but that he had followed it into an _impa.s.se_. He had reached a point at which the only way out was the way on; but he could not follow it alone, and his companion would not follow it with him. She had gone a little way with him, and then taken fright at his and her own temerity.

It is a question whether we should pity her for her lack of courage or praise her for remembering her principles after she had yielded to temptation; but we should need more knowledge of the facts than we have in order to answer it with confidence. Exceptional people may do exceptional things with impunity--it is sometimes for lack of the nerve to do them that they make shipwreck of their lives; but though Byron was an exceptional man, we have no proof that Mary Chaworth was an exceptional woman. She had neither the romantic audacity of George Sand, nor that audacity of the superior person which upheld George Eliot in her bold misappropriation of another woman's name. Probably, if she had had it, Byron would have cla.s.sed her with the "blues," and either have tired of her at once or turned away from her very quickly. She had, no doubt, exceptional charm, but no exceptional strength of character. She was just a weak woman launched into a situation to which the old rules did not apply, but afraid to break them, ashamed of having broken them, obstinate in her refusal to go on breaking them.

Catastrophe, in those circ.u.mstances, was inevitable. The bold course might have led to it--for a weak woman, brought up in the fear of her neighbours, can only take a bold course at grave risks. The weak course--since the love of the heart and not merely the pa.s.sion of the senses was at stake--was bound to lead to it, and did. The only question was whether the victims of the catastrophe would suffer in silence or would cry aloud; and the answer to that question, given the characters of the victims, could easily be predicted. Mary Chaworth would be silent, would make believe to the best of her ability, would wear a mask, and pose, and persuade the world that she was behaving naturally. Byron, disdaining to pretend, proclaiming the truth about his own heart even while respecting Mary's secret--proclaiming it quite naturally though rather noisily--would appear to the world to be posing.

He did so; but before we observe him doing so, we may turn back to the Journal, and study a few more of its enigmatic pa.s.sages with the help of the clues at our disposal:

"I awoke from a dream! well! and have not others dreamed? but she did not overtake me.... Ugh! how my blood chilled,--and I could not wake--and--heigho!... I do not like this dream,--I hate its 'foregone conclusions.'"

"No letters to-day;--so much the better,--there are no answers. I must not dream again;--it spoils even reality. I will go out of doors and see what the fog will do for me."

"Ward talks of going to Holland, and we have partly discussed an _ensemble_ expedition.... And why not? ---- is distant, and will be at ----, still more distant, till spring. No one else except Augusta cares for me; no ties--no trammels."

"No dreams last night of the dead, nor the living; so--I am 'firm as the marble, founded on the rock,' till the next earthquake....

"... 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 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.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Mary Chaworth._]

"---- has received the portrait safe; and, in answer the only remark she makes upon it is, 'indeed it is like'--and again 'indeed it is like.' With her the likeness 'covered a mult.i.tude of sins,' for I happen to know this portrait was not a flatterer, but dark and stern,--even black as the mood in which my mind was scorching last July when I sat for it."

"I am _ennuye_ beyond my usual tense of that yawning verb, which I am always conjugating; and I don't find that society much mends the matter. I am too lazy to shoot myself--and it would annoy Augusta, and perhaps ----."