MEDOEA LEIGH. 
 
MEDOEA LEIGH; 
 
 % IJistorn aub an ^utobiojrapbir. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 CHAKLES MACKAY. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION, AND A COMMENTARY ON THE 
 
 CHARGES BROUGHT AGAINST LORD BYRON 
 
 BY MRS. BEECHER STOWE. 
 
 "EX FUMO DARE LUCEM," 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 RICHAED BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, 
 
 18G9. 
 

 PEEFACE. 
 
 The Editor of the following pages tliinks 
 it necessary, in order to prevent miscon- 
 ception, that he should explain in what 
 manner, and for what reasons, he undertook 
 to bring before the world the sad story of 
 Medora Leigh, and to make his comments 
 and observations upon it. A month or six 
 weeks after the accusations brought against 
 the memory of the illustrious poet by ^Irs. 
 Beecher Stowe — on the alleged authority 
 and information of Lady Byron — he re- 
 ceived a note from an acquaintance of his 
 boyliood — a friend of thirty years' stand- 
 ing — requesting him to call upon liim at his 
 office on a matter of literary interest. He 
 waited upon that gentleman as requested, and 
 
 4-12^.96 
 
b PREFACE. 
 
 received from his hands the autobiography 
 of Medora Leigh, daughter of the Hon. 
 Augusta Leigh, Lord Byron's sister. His 
 advice as to the pubHcation of that narra- 
 tive, and the documents that accompanied 
 it, was soUcited. The MSS. had lain un- 
 divulged and unheeded among his papers 
 for twenty- six years, where they would 
 possibly have remained in obscurity for ever 
 - — or been committed to the flames — had it 
 not been for Mrs. Beecher Stowe's attack on 
 Lord Byron's memory. The Editor's first 
 impression, after a hasty perusal of the story, 
 was that Medora Leigh might be an impostor. 
 An attentive study of the autobiography and 
 the accompanying documents removed that 
 impression, and convinced him that, what- 
 ever and whoever else she might be, Medora 
 Leigh was the undoubted daughter of Lord 
 Byron's sister. His next impression was that, 
 under all the circumstances, the suppression 
 of the whole story — if it could be effected — 
 was desirable. This course he at once re- 
 commended. The custodian of the papers — 
 the gentleman into whose hands they had 
 
PREFACE. i 
 
 come at the time when lie zealously but in- 
 effectually endeavoured to bring about a re- 
 conciliation between Miss Lei£:h and her 
 aunt, Lady Byron — objected to the de- 
 struction of the MSS., feeling convinced that 
 the truth was the truth, and that its pro- 
 mulgation could do no harm, except to the 
 guilty, whomsoever they might be. The 
 Editor several times went over all the docu- 
 ments, and carefully compared the statements 
 contained in them with those made by Mrs. 
 Beecher Stowe, and with all the contributions 
 to the perplexing story of Lord and Lady 
 B3rron's separation in 1816, which have gone 
 the round of the newspapers and periodicals 
 for the last three months. He came at last 
 to the conclusion, that they disproved aU 
 Mrs. Stowe's allegations relative to the year 
 of the separation ; and fixed the date of the 
 first time when the charge w^as brought 
 against Mrs. Leigh to the year 1831, seven 
 years after Lord Byron's death ; and of the 
 charge against Lord Byron himself to the 
 year 1840. He was also of opinion that he 
 had discovered something like a clue to the 
 
8 
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 authors of the scandal and to their motives. 
 The result of his deliberations on the subject 
 was the present Volume, where the reader 
 will find an examination of the two stories 
 of Mrs» Stowe and of Miss Leigh ; together 
 with the reasons for his belief that the charge 
 against Lord Byron's memory is not only 
 unproved and unprovable, but untrue, and 
 the result of a conspiracy in which Lady 
 Byron had no part, but of which she was 
 the dupe and the victim. 
 
 December, 1869. 
 
PART I. 
 
 INTEODUCTORT. 
 
 THE STORY OF LORD AND LADY BYRON, AS 
 RELATED BY MRS. STOWE. 
 
 Wliate'er my sins might be, thou wert not sent 
 
 To be the Nemesis who should requite — 
 Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument. 
 
 Mercy is for the merciful ! — if thou 
 
 Hast been of such, 'twill be accorded now. 
 
 Thy nights are banish'd from the realms of sleep ! — 
 Yes ! they may flatter thee, but thou shalt feel 
 A hollow agony which will not heal, 
 
 For thou art pillow'd on a curse too deep ; 
 
 Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap 
 The bitter harvest in a woe as real ! 
 
 I have had many foes, but none like thee. 
 
 Lord Byron. On heanng that 
 Lady Byron was ill. 
 
MEDORA LEIGH 
 
 PAET I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Seldom has a man been more cordially 
 praised or more bitterly blamed than Lord 
 Byron. During his brilliant and stormy, 
 but too brief career, his name was continually 
 in the mouths of men. His fame was not 
 confined to his own country, but extended 
 over two hemispheres, as that of the greatest, 
 most powerful, most original poet of his 
 age. His admirers and his detractors were 
 equally busy with the virtues and the failings 
 of his character. The young, the sensitive, 
 the hopeful, the romantic of both sexes, 
 ranged themselves enthusiastically upon his 
 side, and gave themselves up unrestrainedly 
 
X2.. ^ ' . . '' ' MEJDORA LEIGH. 
 
 to the delirious 'fascination of his poetry ; 
 while the old, the staid, the prosaic, and the 
 cynical, though carried away by the current 
 of public opinion so far as to admit the 
 splendour of his genius, declared that he 
 turned it to evil account, and that the fire 
 which burned and sparkled in his writings 
 was not the healthful caloric of Heaven, but 
 the baneful and sulphurous flame from the 
 "other place." His fate was similar to that 
 of his illastrious predecessor, Lord Bacon. 
 He was held to be among the greatest of men 
 by his genius, and among the meanest by 
 his vices. It cannot be said that either 
 the admiration or the opposition which his 
 writings excited was unnatural. Their 
 beauties were palpable, and shot with elec- 
 trical force into hearts ready to receive and 
 be stirred by them. On the other hand, he 
 shocked so many prejudices, meddled with so 
 many sacred subjects, in a manner that jarred 
 upon the ears, and set upon edge the teeth of 
 old-world orthodoxy, both in faith and in poli- 
 tics, and unfurled so boldly the revolutionary 
 flag in an age that, although ripening, was 
 
 1 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 13 
 
 not quite ripe enoiig'li for revolutionary 
 action, that, even if his private character had 
 heen white as tlie untrodden snow upon the 
 summits of the Himakiyas, and he liad been 
 that " faultless monster " who was spoken 
 of by a great poet of a previous age as one 
 whom the world never saw, Calumny would, 
 nevertheless, have fixed her dirty claws upon 
 him, and invented crimes with which to be- 
 spatter his reputation. The people of this 
 more tolerant age can scarcely understand 
 the enmities which he excited, any more 
 than they can share the extraordinary en- 
 thusiasm evoked by his poems when they 
 first appeared. In Byron's age poetry was 
 written for mm and women ; in ours, if not 
 written for schoolgirls, it falls unheeded 
 from the press. Nevertheless, his poetic 
 fame has come down to us unsullied from 
 our fathers, and his works remain to us — 
 the imperishable records of a mighty^ if a 
 wayward, genius. At his early death — 
 scarcely in middle manhood — when the 
 efi*ervescent exuberance of his youthful in- 
 tellect and imagination was just beginning 
 
14 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 to mellow into "drink divine," his place 
 was permanently fixed in our national Wal- 
 halla. There he stands, and will continue to 
 stand as long as our language endures, second 
 only to Shakespeare and Milton, and far 
 above the Chancers, the Spensers, the Dry- 
 dens, and the Popes— far also above all his 
 contemporaries, Sir Walter Scott alone ex- 
 cepted. 
 
 It is true that long after his untimely 
 death the breath of slander continued to 
 sully his name. Much dirt had been flung 
 at him, and some of it had stuck ; but the 
 imputations against him were gradually 
 growing less and less distinct. His name 
 was less and less in the path of the world's 
 memory and the world's passions, till it 
 seemed as if nothing were wanting but the 
 beneficent touch of Time to remove the last 
 speck, real or imaginary, that dimmed the 
 brightness of his glory. The world has 
 Ions: since ceased to hear of the errors, the 
 follies, and the vices of Shakespeare, if he had 
 any — which is certainly as probable as it is 
 possible- There are no stories, Heaven be 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 15 
 
 praised ! about Mrs. Shakespeare, or the 
 second-best bed, which her lord left her 
 by will, out of which to manufacture lies 
 for tlie gratification of the evil-minded 
 and the poor of soul, who love to believe 
 that the greatest of men would probably 
 rank among the smallest, if Mrs. Grundy 
 only knew all about them. Milton's fame is 
 not attacked on account of any of the Mis- 
 tresses Milton ; and even the amours of 
 Eobert Burns among the fair serving-lasses of 
 Dumfries and Ayrshire have ceased to afford 
 pabulum for the voracious maw of the 
 Slander that loves to feed upon the pecca- 
 dilloes no less than upon the graver offences 
 of the intellectually great. And there was a 
 hope that the illustrious Byron might be left 
 in his grave, alone in his glory, with none to 
 rake up the ashes of his fiery youth — to pry 
 into his faults with microscopic eye, and hold 
 up his memory to public shame. 
 
 Unluckily, however, this was not to be. 
 There came to England, in 1852-3, an Ame- 
 rican, one whom the Americans themselves 
 call a Yankee — an ultra- Yankee — Mrs. 
 
IQ MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 Harriet Beecher Stowe, who had rendered 
 her name familiar to all the EngUsh-speak- 
 ing people of the world by a sensational 
 novel, semi-political, semi-reUgious, entitled 
 "Uncle Tom's Cabin," of which the objects 
 appeared to be the apotheosis of the negro 
 (or, as her comitrymen call him, the "nig- 
 ger") and the defamation of the slave- 
 owners of the Southern States of the Ame- 
 rican Union, for holding the blacks m 
 bondage. It is true that the abolition of 
 slavery involved, in the course of time, the 
 possible abolition of the negro. But this was 
 nothing to a professional philanthropist. The 
 work excited an extraordinary sensation both 
 in America and in Great Britain. Iji^mfima 
 itsjrossji^aggerations, no less than itgjpasi- 
 tive falsehoods, exasperated the whole white 
 population of the South, greatly offended 
 the Conservative or Democratic party of the 
 North and was received with shouts of joy 
 and welcome only by the small but earnest 
 and grim party of Puritans and ultra- 
 Eepublicans of New England, who had 
 made up their minds that slavery should 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 17 
 
 be abolished, per fas ant nefas, and who were 
 prepared, as they asserted then, and for 
 years previously and subsequently, to break 
 up the Union, rather than submit to the 
 monstrous evil of being participators in a 
 Government that recognised slavery — the 
 " sum of all villanies " — as legal in any por- 
 tion, however small, of its vast domain. In 
 Great Britain, where a negro is rarely seen, 
 and where the antipathy of race, as it exists 
 in America against both the red and the 
 black man, is unknown for w^ant of objects 
 of contact, the quasi-novel was widely read 
 by classes who never read ordinary romances, 
 and look upon them as idle and worthless, if 
 not as profane and mischievous productions. 
 It was a novelty, and hit the taste of the 
 moment, though it has now sunk into an 
 oblivion from w^iich it is not likely ever 
 again to be extricated. Lady Byron was 
 an earnest and sincere believer in the guilt 
 and wrong of slavery — was what the Ameri- 
 cans call a nigger-worshipper ; and when 
 William and Ellen Crafts, two fugitive slaves 
 from the Southern States, sought and found 
 
 c 
 
18 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 refuge in London, tliey were " fostered," 
 ssijs Mrs. Stowe, " under Lady Byron's 
 patronising care." An intimacy sprang up 
 between the two ladies on the anti-slaVery 
 and negro question — the chief, though by no 
 means the only, sympathetic bond between 
 them. They were both literary ; both what 
 used to be called " blues " ; both professional 
 philanthropists ; both strong-minded women ; 
 both celebrated, though in very different 
 ways ; and of tastes, and modes of looking at 
 men and things, and at the world in general, 
 that seem to have been remarkably con- 
 genial. The intimacy thus formed soon ex- 
 panded into an ardent friendship, such as 
 commonly occurs only among gushing young 
 ladies at school, or among older ladies who 
 think that they have suffered long at the 
 hands of the other sex, or who look down 
 upon that sex with philosophic contempt 
 from the lofty pedestal of moral virtue to 
 which they imagine that they have clam- 
 bered. When Mrs. Stowe returned to her 
 own country, after a brief visit, full of 
 " Sunny Memories," which afterwards found 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 19 
 
 fame and profit in a book, a correspondence 
 was kept up between tlie friends. On 
 the second visit of the American authoress 
 to London the intimacy was renewed, and 
 she learned more and more to love the cele- 
 brated and philanthropic lady, the sorrows 
 of whose early wedded life and widowhood 
 had long* been the theme of the world's 
 wonder or pity for more than a quarter of a 
 century. Mrs. Stowe was a hero-worshipper, 
 as fiu- as related to Lady Byron, and saw in 
 her the incarnation of all that was gentle, 
 beautiful, amiable, and divine in woman. 
 She thus describes her as she appeared to 
 her eyes in 1856 -.* 
 
 "Lady Byron, though slight and almost 
 infantine in her bodily presence, had the 
 soul not only of an angelic icoman, hut of a 
 strong reasoning man. Among all with 
 whom the writer's experience brought her 
 into connection in England, tliere was none 
 who impressed her so strongly as Lady 
 
 * " The True Story of Lady Byron's Married Life." 
 {Macmillan's Magazine^ September, 1809). 
 
20 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 Byron. There was an almost supernatural 
 power of moral divination, a grasp of the 
 very highest and most comprehensive things, 
 that made her lightest opinion singularly 
 
 impressive. 
 
 " Never has more divine strength of faith 
 and love existed in woman (than in Lady 
 Byron). Out of the depths of her own 
 loving and merciful nature she gained such 
 views of the Divine love and mercy, as made 
 all hopes possible. . . . She ne^'er 
 doubted her husband's salvation. There 
 was no soul of whose future she despaired. 
 Such was her boundless faith in the re- 
 deeming power of Love. . . , To talk 
 with her seemed to the writer the nearest pos- 
 sible approach to talk with one of the spirits 
 of the just made perfect. 
 
 " She was gentle, artless, approachable as 
 a little child; with ready outflowing sym- 
 pathy for the cares, and sorrows, and interests 
 of all who approached her ; with a naive and 
 gentle playfulness, that adorned without 
 hiding the breadth and strength of her 
 mind ; and, above all, with a clear divmmg 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 21 
 
 moral discrimination, never mistaking wrong 
 for right in the slightest shade, yet with a 
 mercifulness that made allowance for every 
 weakness, and pitied every sin. 
 
 *' Tlierewas so much of Christ in her, that to 
 haxie seen her seemed to have been drawn near to 
 Heaven ! She was one of those few friends 
 from whom absence cannot divide — whose 
 mere presence in this world seems always a 
 help to every generous thought, a strength 
 to every good purpose, a comfort in every 
 sorrow. 
 
 ^'^ She lived so nearly on the confines of the 
 spiritual icorld that she seemed^ while living, 
 already to see into it, 
 
 " We " (Mrs. Stowe) *' have already spoken 
 of that singular sense of the reality of the 
 spiritual world, which seemed to encompass 
 Lady Byron during the last part of her life, 
 and which made her words and actions seem 
 more like those of a blessed being, detached 
 from earth, than of an ordinary mortal ! All 
 her modes of looking at things, all her 
 motives of action, all her involuntary exhibi- 
 tions of emotion, were so high above any 
 
22 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 common level, and so entirely regulated by 
 the most unworldly causes, that it would 
 seem difficult to make the ordinary world 
 understand exactly how they seemed to 
 lie before her mind. What impressed the 
 writer more strongly than anything else was 
 Lady Byron's perfect conviction that her 
 husband was now a redeemed spirit; that he 
 looked back with pain, shame, and regret on 
 all that was unworthy in his past life ; and 
 that, if he could speak or could act in the 
 case, he would desire to 23revent the circula- 
 tion of further base falsehoods, and of 
 seductive poetry, which had been made the 
 vehicle of morbid and unworthy passions. 
 
 " AVhile speaking on this subject" (the re- 
 demption of Lord Byron's soul) " her pale 
 ethereal face became luminous with a hea- 
 venly radiance. There was something so 
 sublime in her belief of the victory of Love 
 over Evil, that Faith with her seemed to 
 have become Sight. 
 
 *'Lady Byron was the most remarkable 
 woman that England has produced in this 
 century." 
 
IXTRODUCTORY. 23 
 
 Such was Lady BNron, in 1850, to the 
 eye and lancy of the authoress of " Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin." To ^Irs. Stowe, her f riend 
 was not only. a_iiegro]:)hilistj, a spiritualist, 
 and a universalist , but the most angejic and 
 most perf ect^f wonien and of human l^ei pgs^ 
 The natures of the seraphim who know 
 most, and of the cherubim wlio love most, 
 were, in Mrs. Stowe's imagination, blended 
 together in the sweet human nature of her 
 friend. V\^e need not pause to weigh the 
 powers of Mrs. Stowe as a limner of character. 
 No doubt Lady Byron shone, in her mind, 
 with all the supernal glow of colour with 
 which she depicted her excellences — a fact 
 which may leave the good faith of the limner 
 undisputed, without compelling the less en- 
 thusiastic or bewildered onlooker to resrard 
 the portrait as faithful. Alltlie world agreed, 
 in Ji^Ay J]yv{)n\'^ lifetime — even her un- 
 happy husband never disputed the fact — 
 that she was a good wnmnn. She was never 
 accused of an}^ crime, of any vice, even of 
 any great or particular failing. The worst 
 that was ever said of her was that she was 
 
24 MEIORA LEIGH. 
 
 cold-a nd nn i jyrriDathetjjL ;, and tliat, had she 
 been less cold and more sympathetic, her 
 erring husband might have been converted 
 into as good a husband as he was a poet. 
 This verdict has never been reversed — never 
 was sousrht to be reversed — until Mrs. Stowe 
 thrust, (we must think without the slightest 
 authority or justification) the story of Ti^ dj 
 
 P> yrrm'g \vPf | rWMjf p b^^'T.rP fhp wr.rlrl^ an fl 
 
 c liallenged its belie f in a stor v jhat, even if 
 ^ were trn^^ r>^igh t npypr to havp bpp-n toj d; 
 and that, if false, would prove the narrator 
 (if Lady Byron told it as INIrs. Stowe tells itj 
 to be either the victim of an extraordinary 
 hallucination, or of a conspiracy of others to 
 deceive her. If neither of these, she was the 
 autho r__of_fchp ^j^nrj hf^r^f]f Whether true 
 or false, the story was diyulg£d_-iinii£LC£ssaFily- 
 by Mrs. Stowe, and for a reason that was 
 and could be no justification. Lady Bvron 
 was, in the vear 1S5G — if we are to credit 
 Mrs. Stowe — brought to believe, in some 
 mysterious manner, that although she had 
 kept silence no less than for fort}' years on the 
 subject of her separation from her husband, 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 \ 
 
IN'TRODUCTORY. lo 
 
 and of the ' crime " which he had committed 
 against her, against man, and against God 
 (such it was represented to be, whatever was 
 its specific name), that the time had come 
 when it was necessary to tell the whole 
 truth — not for the sake of truth, if ^Irs. 
 Stowe is to be believed, but with the object 
 of stopping the sale, or at all events of 
 diminishing the popularity, of Lord Byron s 
 poems, many cheap editions of which, in 
 consequence of the expiry of Mr. Murray's 
 copyright and other causes, were issuing 
 from the press ! This paltry, this mean, 
 unworthy justification, cannot be accepted as 
 sufficient for the publication of so hideous a 
 story. Would any sane person attempt to 
 prevent the pubHcation of the Psalms of 
 David — wrung from the agony of a contrite 
 and remorseful heart — because David com- 
 mitted an awful crime when he sent Uriah, 
 the man whose wife he coveted and seduced, 
 to perish in the front of the battle, well 
 knowing, and intending, that he would there 
 be killed ? Or, coming down to a later 
 period, would any reasonable being endeavour 
 
26 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 to stop tlie circulation of " Tarn o' Shanter," 
 "The Cotter's Saturday Night," and "A 
 Man's a Man for a that," because the in- 
 continence of Eobert Burns was a scandal 
 to his neighbourhood during his lifetime ? 
 The "angelic" Lady Byron, aggrieved by 
 the popularity of her husband's poems — 
 especially by the cheap editions — was, if 
 Mrs. Stowe did not misunderstand and has 
 not misrepresented her, moved to tell, for the 
 first time in her life, the great and fearful 
 secret which she had carried about with her 
 for forty years. The circumstances under 
 which Mrs. Stowe was selected, out of all 
 the persons in the wide world, to be her 
 confidante, are better told in Mrs. Stowe's 
 own words than they would be in any resume 
 by another pen.* They are as follow : — 
 
 " On the occasion of a second visit to Eng- 
 land, in 1856, the writer received a note from 
 Lady Byron, indicating that she wished to 
 have some private confidential conversation 
 
 * "The True Story of Lady Byron's Married Life." 
 (MacmillarCs Magazine^ September, lbG9). 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 27 
 
 upon important subjects, and inviting her for 
 that purpose to spend a day with her at her 
 country-seat near London. 
 
 " The writer went and spent a day with 
 Lady B\'ron alone, and the object of the visit 
 was explained to her. Lady Byron was in 
 such a state of health, that her physicians 
 had warned her that she had very little time 
 to hve. She was engaged in those duties and 
 reviews which every thoughtful person finds 
 necessary, who is coming deliberately and 
 with open eyes to the boundaries of another 
 
 life. 
 
 ***** 
 
 " As Lady Byron's whole life had been 
 passed in the most heroic self-abnegation and 
 self-sacrifice, the question was now proposed 
 to her, whether one more act of self-denial 
 was not required of her, before leaving this 
 world — namely, to declare the absolute truth, 
 no matter at what expense to her own feel- 
 ings? 
 
 " For this purpose it was her desire to 
 recount tlie whole history to a person of 
 another country, and entirely out of the whole 
 
28 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 sphere of personal and local feelings^ which 
 might be supposed to influence those in the 
 country and station in life where the events 
 really happened, in order that she might be 
 helped by such a person's views in making up • 
 an opinion as to her own duty. 
 
 " The interview had almost the solemnity 
 of a deathbed avowal. Lady Byron recounted 
 the history which has been embodied in this 
 article, and gave to the writer a paper con- 
 taining a brief memorandum of the whole, 
 with the dates affixed;" 
 
 The various charges which the ethereal 
 lady — so gentle — so placid — so near akin to 
 the angels in heaven — speaking, as Mrs. 
 Stowe says, " with almost the solemnity of a 
 deathbed avowal," brought against her hus- 
 band, who had been two-and-thirty years in 
 his grave, amounted, as we gather from the 
 rambling, confused, and very anachronistical 
 statement of Mrs. Stowe, to no less than 
 nine, which we shall disinter seriatim from 
 the mass of verbiage in which they occur : — 
 
 First, On oiferino: marriaofe to Miss 
 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 29 
 
 Milbanke (afterwards Lady Byron) for the 
 first time, and being refused by lier, with 
 many expressions of friendship and interest, 
 Lord Byron took the refusal so much to 
 heart, that during the two years ensuing he 
 carried his affections elsewhere — bestowed 
 them upon a married woman — that woman 
 his own sister ! " From the height," says 
 Mrs. Stowe, " which might have made him 
 the happy husband of a noble w^oraan " had 
 Miss Milbanke accepted him (Mrs. Stowe 
 .iiust mean this, though she does not say so) 
 — *'he fell into the depths of a secret adul- 
 terous intrigue with a blood-relation, so near 
 in consanguinity that discovery must have 
 been utter ruin and expulsion from civilised 
 society. From henceforth his damning 
 guilty secret became the ruling force in 
 his life, holding him with a morbid fascina- 
 tion, yet filling him with remorse and an- 
 guish, and insane dread of detection." 
 
 After two years of this kind of life, as 
 Mrs. Stowe informs us, his friends, seeing 
 him unhappy, and not knowing the cause, 
 pressed upon him to marry. lie took the 
 
30 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 advice, again proposed to Miss Milbanke, 
 and was this time accepted. The question 
 arises : How did Lady Byron know this fact 
 — if fact it were ? Who told her ? It could 
 not be either of the two parties to the un- 
 holy intrigue, which was so little suspected 
 at the time by the party most intimately 
 concerned, the husband of the incriminated 
 lady, that he lived happily with her for 
 many years, until his death, and had four 
 children by lier — in addition to the three 
 which he possessed at the time — which, if it 
 were two years before Lord Byron's mar- 
 riage, must have been in 18LS and 1814. 
 
 Lady Byron certainly did not know any- 
 thing of this dreadful story at the time, or 
 she would scarcely have married Lord Byron. 
 On this point Mrs. Stowe — speaking, as 
 alleged, at Lady Byron's dictation, and 
 with her authority — is sufiiciently clear : 
 " When he " (Lord Byron, after being 
 accepted as the young lady's future hus- 
 band) " went to visit Miss Milbanke's 
 parents, she was struck with his manner 
 and appearance. She saw him moody and 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 31 
 
 gloomy, evidently wrestling with dark and 
 desperate thoughts, and anything but what 
 a happy and accepted lover should be. She 
 sought an interview with him alone, and told 
 him she had observed that he was not happy 
 in the engagement; and incujnanimousli/ SiMed, 
 that if, on review, he found he had been mis- 
 taken in the nature of his feelings, she would 
 immediately release him, and they should 
 remain only as friends. Overcome with the 
 conflict of his feelings. Lord Byron fainted 
 away ! Miss Milbanke was convinced that 
 Ms heart must really be deeply involved in 
 an attachment with reference to which he 
 showed such strength of emotion; and she 
 spoke no more of the dissolution of the en- 
 gagement." 
 
 It follows indubitably from this statement, 
 if a true one, which it very likely is, that 
 before her marriage the future Lady Byron 
 neither knew nor suspected the incestuous 
 and adulterous connection specified by Mrs. 
 Stowe. 
 
 Second. A charge of brutality is brouglit 
 against Lord Byron : of brutaUty at a time 
 
32 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 when a man with the most ordinary feelings 
 of manhood — even of a boor and a clod- 
 hopper, much more of a gentleman and 
 scholar — would have been particularly gentle 
 to a lady whom he had a few minutes before 
 accepted at the altar as his bride. "The 
 moment," says Mrs. Stowe, " the carriage- 
 doors were shut upon the bridegroom and 
 bride, the paroxysm of remorse and despair 
 — unrelenting remorse and angry despair — 
 broke forth upon her gentle head. ' You 
 might have spared me this. Madam ; you had 
 all in your own power when I offered to 
 you first. Then you might have made me 
 what you pleased. Nov: you will find that 
 you have married a devil I' " If Lady Byron 
 told Mrs. Stowe this, and believed it, she 
 must have had a marvellous conceit of the 
 mischief she had done in first rejecting the 
 man whom she afterwards accepted, and a 
 correspondingly high appreciation of her own 
 great powers and merits. But the whole story 
 partakes too strongly of the skill of the ro- 
 mancist and of the sensation-monger, and 
 shows too much of the art apparent in " Uncle 
 
 \ 
 
INTRODUCTORY. .*]3 
 
 Tom's Cabin " to be accepted as Lady Byron's 
 story as told by herself. Besides, it is con- 
 tradicted, before it was heard, by Lord 
 Byron himself, who owns that he was some- 
 what vexed and annoyed on finding, when he 
 got into the carriage with his bride, tliat a 
 lady's-maid had been stuck in between them. 
 Possibly Lord Byron's annoyance on the oc- 
 casion, to which he very good-naturedly and 
 good-humouredly referred in a letter written 
 at the time to his not very judicious friend, 
 Thomas Moore, might be explained on the 
 very innocent and very natural supposition, 
 that the bridegroom would have liked to 
 have put his arms round his bride's waist, 
 and given the conjugal kiss of strong affection 
 which he had just been privileged to bestow 
 upon her, and which he had too much deli- 
 cacy of mind to indulge in before a third 
 person, even if that person had been a lady 
 instead of a domestic servant. 
 
 Third. The adulterous and incestuous con- 
 nection, commenced before marriage, brought 
 about by Miss ^lilbanke's first refusal — as 
 Mrs. Stowe would have the world believe — 
 
 D 
 
34 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 was continued after marriage. " There 
 came," she says (but she does not inform us 
 how, or from whence it came), " an hour of 
 revelation — an hour when, in a manner 
 which left no kind of room for doubt, Lady 
 Byron saw the full depth of the abyss of 
 infamy which her marriage was expected to 
 cover, and understood that she was expected 
 to be the cloak and the accomplice of this in- 
 famy. Many women would have been utterly 
 crushed by such a disclosure ; some would 
 have fled from him immediately, and exposed 
 and denounced the crime. Lady Byron did 
 neither. When all the hope of womanhood 
 died out of her heart, there arose within her, 
 stronger, purer, and brighter, that immortal 
 kind of love such as God feels for the sinner 
 — the love of which Jesus spoke, that makes 
 the one wanderer of more account than the 
 'ninety -and -nine that went not astray.' 
 She would neither leave him nor betray him, 
 nor yet would she for one moment justify 
 his sin. And hence came two years of con- 
 vulsive struggle, in which sometimes, for a 
 while, the good angel seemed to gain the 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 36 
 
 ground, and then the evil one returned witli 
 sevenfold vehemence." 
 
 As Lord and Lady Byron only lived for 
 thirteen months together, the " two years " 
 of this remarkable charge, made by a living 
 woman against a dead man's memory, must 
 be taken as a proof of carelessness on the 
 part of the narrator — suggestive not alone 
 of carelessness in this one respect, but of 
 possible inaccuracy in others. If the story 
 be true, Lady Byron, in condoning such a 
 sin, must have been a person of superhuman 
 coldness and absence of passion — a pure ab- 
 straction, without any of the loveable human 
 weakness that even when wrong takes all of 
 us who are worth taking out of the line of 
 geometry and mathematics, and vindicates 
 our possession of blood and feelings. 
 
 Fourth. Lord Byron having committed, 
 and being determined to continue to commit, 
 this sin, endeavoured to undermine the faith 
 of his long-suffering and most forgiving lady 
 in the doctrines of Christianity in which she 
 had been nurtured, and to which she hope- 
 fully clung. " Lord Byron," says Mrs. Stowe, 
 
36 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 " argued his case (incest and adultery), with 
 himself and with her, with all the sophistries 
 of his powerful mind. He repudiated Chris- 
 tianity as an authority, and asserted the right 
 of every human heing to follow out what he 
 called the impulses of nature. Subsequently " 
 (in 1821 — five years and more after his separa- 
 tion from his wife) '' he introduced into one 
 of his dramas (Cain) the reasoning by which 
 he justified himself in incest." This charge, 
 as regards the dramatic poem of ** Cain," 
 whether made by Lady Byron or Mrs. Stowe, 
 is almost too monstrous for comment. If 
 poets are to be accused of the crimes which 
 they depict (and in the case of Cain and 
 Adah the incest was not incest, inasmuch as 
 Adah was the only marriageable woman in 
 the world, except Eve, his mother, at the 
 time when Cain espoused her), Shakespeare 
 must be considered a murderer, and Milton 
 a blasphemer. 
 
 Fifth, Having failed to undermine and 
 destroy her religious convictions, Lord Byron 
 endeavoured to corrupt his wife's morals, so 
 as to induce her to wink at, or prudently 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 37 
 
 ignore, the sins which lie was determined to 
 commit. " His first attempt," says Mrs. 
 Stowe, " luul been to make Lad}^ Byron his 
 accompHce : by sophistry, by destroying her 
 faith in Christianity, and confusing her sense 
 of rii2-ht and wronc:, to brino^ her mto the 
 ranks of those convenient w^omen who regard 
 the marriage tie only as a friendly alliance to 
 cover license on both sides. AVlien he de- 
 scribed to her the continental latitude — the 
 good-humoured marriages, in which complai- 
 sant couples mutually agree to form the cloak 
 for each other's infidelities, and gave her to 
 understand that in this w^ay alone she could 
 have a peaceful and friendly life w^ith him — 
 she answered him simplj^, ' I am too trul}' 
 your friend to do this.' " Supposing this 
 charge to be true — of which there is no proof 
 except Mrs. Stowe's assertion, unless Lady 
 Byron has left it in a document which can be 
 produced — what becomes of that angelic 
 charity which thinks no evil, and repeats 
 none, for which Lady Byron is so enthusias- 
 tically praised by her romantic confidante ; 
 and with what purpose was such a charge 
 
38 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 disinterred from the grave of him who could 
 not answer ? 
 
 Sixth. ""When Lord Byron found that 
 he had to do with one who would not yield 
 — who knew him fully, who could not be 
 bUnded, and would not be deceived — he de- 
 termined to rid himself of her altogether." 
 If Lady Byron's assertion, made to Mrs. 
 Stowe forty years after the event, be good 
 for anything, Lord Byron's assertion, made 
 immediately after the event, and repeated, 
 in and out of season, at every convenient 
 opportunity during the eight years that he 
 lived after the separation, ought certainly to 
 count for as much, and to be fairly weighed in 
 the balance of evidence. Byron's account of 
 the separation bears all the impress of contem- 
 poraneous truth and sincerity ; Lady Byron's 
 (or Mrs. Stowe' s) that of an afterthought, 
 coloured and distorted by the feelings and 
 prejudices of the interval. If Lord Byron 
 drove his lady away from him — of which 
 there is not a particle of proof — he earnestly, 
 penitently, solemnly, and affectionately urged 
 her to return to him. The proofs of this are 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 39 
 
 manifold and overwhelming, and Lady Byron, 
 when alive, never ventured to deny them. 
 
 Seventh. A renewed charge of " unmanly 
 brutality " to a weak and suffering woman, 
 to whom he was bound by the holiest and 
 tenderest ties. " It was," says Mrs. Stowe, 
 *' when the state of affairs between Lady Byron 
 and her husband seemed darkest and most 
 hopeless, that the only child of their union 
 was born. Lord Byron's treatment of his lady 
 during the sensitive period that preceded the 
 birth of his child, and during her confine- 
 ment, was marked by paroxysms of unmanly 
 brutality, for which the only charity on her 
 part was the supposition of insanity. 
 . . . . A day or two after the birth 
 of this child. Lord Byron came suddenly 
 into Lady Byron's room, and told her that 
 her mother was dead. It was an utter 
 falsehood, but it was a specimen of the 
 many nameless injuries and cruelties by 
 which he expressed his hatred of her." If 
 these allegations were true, and Lady Byron 
 accounted for such aberrations from the 
 line of gentlemanly, and even of human be- 
 
40 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 haviour, towards a lad}^ in her delicate posi- 
 tion, by the allegation of insanity, it is 
 scarcely consistent with the angelic character 
 given to Lady Byron by her friend Mrs. 
 Stowe, that she should mention such charges 
 to his injury after the lapse of forty years. 
 
 Eighth. This charge, though reproduced 
 by Mrs. Stowe, was not originally made by 
 her, but by Lady Byron herself, in a letter 
 to Thomas Moore, who had submitted to her, 
 in 1830, the proof-sheets of his "Life of 
 Byron," and requested to know if she had 
 any remark to make upon passages referring 
 to herself. In this letter she says — speaking 
 of the inexplicable separation of 1816, and 
 six years after Byron's death : — 
 
 " The facts are : I left London for Kirkby- 
 Mallory, the residence of my father and 
 mother, on the 15th of January, 1816. 
 Lord Byron had signified to me in 
 WRITING, January 6th, his absolute de- 
 sire THAT I should LEAVE LONDON ON THE 
 EARLIEST DAY THAT I COULD CONVENIENTLY 
 
 FIX. It was not safe for me to undertake 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 41 
 
 the fatigue of a journey sooner than the 
 15th. Previously to my departure, it liad 
 been strongly impressed upon my mind that 
 Lord Byron was under the influence of in- 
 sanity. This opinion was derived in a great 
 measure from the communications made me 
 by his nearest relatives and personal at- 
 tendant, who had more opportunity than 
 myself for observing him during the latter 
 part of my stay in town. It was even re- 
 presented to me that he was in danger of 
 destroying himself 
 
 " With the concurrence of his family, I had 
 consulted Dr. Baillie as a friend, January 
 8th, respecting the supposed malady. On 
 acijuainting him with the state of the case, 
 and with Lord Byron's desire that I should 
 leave London, Dr. Baillie thought that my 
 absence might be advisable as an experiment, 
 assuming the fact of mental derangement ; 
 for Dr. Baillie, not having had access to 
 Lord Byron, could not pronounce a positive 
 opinion on that point. He enjoined that, in 
 correspondence with Lord Byron, I should 
 avoid all but light and soothing topics. 
 
42 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 Under these impressions I left London, 
 determined to follow the advice given by 
 Dr. Baillie. Whatever might have been the 
 conduct of Lord Byron towards me from the 
 time of my marriage, yet, supposing him to 
 be in a state of mental alienation, it was not 
 for me, nor for any person of common 
 humanity, to manifest at that moment a 
 sense of injury." 
 
 Mrs. Stowe appends to this extract — the 
 main fact stated in which (Lady Byron's ex- 
 pulsion) is denied by the whole tenor of Lord 
 Byron's correspondence and conversations 
 with his friends and acquaintances, and con- 
 stantly reiterated by him, that Lady Byron 
 left him, he knew not why, with a promise to 
 return, which she did not keep — her opinion, 
 that "nothing more than this letter from 
 Lord Byron is necessary to substantiate the 
 fact, that she did not leave her husband, but 
 was driven from him." She adds the utterly 
 gratuitous allegation, that he expelled her in 
 order that " he might follow out the guilty 
 infatuation that was consuming him, without 
 
 \' 
 
INTKODUCTORY. 43 
 
 being tortured by lier imploring face, and by 
 the silent power of her presence and her 
 prayers in his house." 
 
 In connection with this charge — that Lord 
 Byron gave her notice to quit nine days 
 before she finally departed, with full know- 
 ledge of Lord Byron's crime — how is the 
 world to understand the following passage 
 in ^Irs. Stowe's own story ? 
 
 " Only a few days before Lady Byron left 
 him for ever, Lord Byron sent Murray 
 manuscripts, in Lady Byron's handwriting, 
 of the * Siege of Corinth ' and ' Parisina/ 
 and wrote : — 
 
 " ' I am very glad that the handwriting 
 was a favourable omen of the morale of the 
 piece ; but you must not trust to that, for 
 m-y copyist would write out anything I 
 desired, in all the ignorance of innocence.' " 
 
 This does not look like the action of a 
 woman driven away against her will by her 
 husband ; but very like, it seems to us, the 
 action of a woman who was playing a part, 
 who did not wish to arouse her husband's 
 
44 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 suspicions — but who, being resolved to leave 
 him, deceived him to the last moment, by 
 the display of innocent affection, and 
 sympathy with his literary pursuits. 
 
 Ninth. This is the crowning charge, and 
 for the first time brings Lady Byron face to 
 face with her husband and his alleged 
 paramour and sister, the Hon. Augusta 
 Leigh. '' On the day of her departure " 
 (when she says she was driven away, and 
 when Lord .Byron says she went away of 
 her own free will, with a falsehood upon 
 her lips), " she passed," as Mrs. Stowe in- 
 forms us, " by the door of his room, and 
 stopped to caress his favourite spaniel, which 
 was lying there ; and she confessed to a 
 friend the weakness of feeling a willing- 
 ness even to be something as humble 
 as that poor little creature, might she only 
 be allowed to remain and watch over him. 
 She went into the room where he and the 
 jjartner of his sins were sitting together, 
 and said, ' Byron, 1 come to say good- 
 bye,' offering at the same time her hand. 
 Lord Byron put his hands behind him, 
 
/ 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 45 
 
 retreated to the mantelpiece, and, looking 
 round on the two that stood there, with 
 a sarcastic smile, said, ' When shall we three 
 meet again ?' Lady Byron answered : 
 ' In heaven, I trust.' And those were her 
 last words to him on earth." 
 
 If this bit of romance could be accepted as 
 true (Lord Byron's dog, by the way, not a 
 little spaniel, but a large and powerful 
 animal, familiar by description to all the 
 readers of his Life and Letters), Lady Byron, 
 by her own and Mrs. Stowe's showing, was 
 so meek, so spiritless, so abject, so stupidly 
 forgiving, so unconscious of the respect due 
 to herself and to the outra2:ed laws of God 
 and man, that she preferred to be a dog 
 sleeping at the door of an incestuous adul- 
 terer, rather than an honest and outraged 
 woman, leaving the adulterer's presence, 
 with forgiveness, perhaps, in her heart, but 
 with disapproval, if not scorn, in her mind. 
 This is not a llattering picture to draw of 
 Lady Byron, but it is Mrs. Stowe who has 
 drawn it. 
 
 These nine charges_, however distinct 
 
46 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 as they may appear, all resolve themselves 
 into a cluster around the one great and fear- 
 ful charge, that two years before, and during 
 the whole of his wedded life until its close, 
 on Lady Byron's departure from his roof, 
 never again to return, Lord Byron was 
 guilty of incest with a married lady, whom 
 Mrs. Stowe does not name, but who is dis- 
 tinctly pointed at, and can be, and means no 
 other, than his father's daughter, his half- 
 sister, the Hon. Augusta Leigh. Of this 
 incestuous and adulterous crime. Lady 
 Byron, it appears, told Mrs. Stowe in 1856, 
 thirty-two years after her husband's death, 
 that there was issue, one child, a daughter. 
 Again, to prevent involuntary injustice to 
 Mrs. Stowe, we quote her own words : — 
 " There was," she says, " an unfortunate 
 child of sin, born with the curse upon her, 
 over whose wayward nature Lady Byron 
 watched wath a mother's tenderness. She 
 was the one who could have patience when 
 the patience of every one else failed; and 
 though the task was a difficult one, from the 
 strange abnormal propensities to evil in 
 
IXTRODUCTORY. 47 
 
 the subject of it, yet Lady Byron never 
 faltered, and never gave over till death 
 took the responsibility from her hands." 
 Though this might have been the child of 
 some other sin, and not the issue either of 
 incest or of adultery, it has been taken by 
 all readers to mean the child of Lord Byron 
 and his sister ; and it is clearly Mrs. Stowe's 
 meaning so to consider and represent it ; 
 and to depict the more than mortal — the 
 heavenly Christian charity of Lady Byron, 
 in taking notice of, and acting a mother's 
 part towards it. On this point, the strange 
 and melancholy history of Medora Leigh, to 
 be subsequently related in these pages, will 
 throw additional light. Meanwhile let us 
 proceed with Mrs. Stowe, as the denun- 
 ciator of Lord Byron, to learn, if possible — 
 supposing that she be the faithful reporter 
 of the sad story which Lady Byron confided 
 to her ear, and fell into no misunderstanding 
 of Lady Byron's words or meaning — on 
 what impulse, and by what authority, she 
 unfolded to the world an accusation against 
 the dead, and of which no living man or 
 
48 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 woman was able to establish the truth. 
 Mrs. Stowe shall tell us. She expected, that 
 when Lady Byron died in 1860, four years 
 after she had become the confidante of her 
 great wrongs, and her, till then, unuttered 
 and unutterable sorrows, that some one 
 would have come forward in Lady Byron's 
 behalf with a memoir of her life, setting 
 forth her true character and the exact facts 
 of her story. No such memoir appeared. 
 Nevertheless, Mrs. Stowe still waited and 
 hoped, though labouring with the weight 
 of a secret apparently much too weighty for 
 her to bear. At last, the Countess of Guic- 
 cioli, widow of the eccentric Marquis de 
 Boissy, who was very fond of individual 
 Englishmen, but detested, with a fantastic 
 as well as fanatical hatred, the collective 
 British nation and its Government, published, 
 in the early summer of 1869, her " Recol- 
 lections of Lord Byron," who after his 
 expatriation from England in 1816, and 
 during his residence in Italy, became, in 
 Italian fashion, her cavaliei^e serviente, or 
 cicisheo. This work, with its laudation of 
 
IXTPvODrCTORY. 49 
 
 Lord Byron's character and poetry, and its 
 allegations of cold-heartedness and want of 
 sympathy, and general unfitness to be a 
 poet's wife, made against Lady Byron (for 
 nothing severer was said), was too much 
 for the patience of Mrs. Stowe. Her 
 secret was eating her heart away. She 
 could keep silence no longer. As " uo per- 
 son in England," according to her belief, 
 •' would, at that time, take the responsibi- 
 lity of relating the true history which was 
 to clear Lady Byron's memory," she, an 
 American, undertook it, without fear or 
 scruple ; though she would not have done 
 so but for the wicked Guiccioli. She de- 
 clared, in the "Atlantic Monthly/' and in 
 " Macmillan's Magazine," in which two pub- 
 lications the story appeared simultaneously, 
 that all the materials of the story were left 
 in her hands unreservedly by Lady Byron, 
 and that to her judgment alone was left the 
 use that should he made of them, " Had this 
 melancholy story (of Lord Byron) been 
 allowed to sleep by Madame Guiccioli," no 
 public use would have been made of this 
 
 E 
 
50 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 knowledge ; but the appearance of a popular 
 attack on the character of Lady Byron 
 called for a vindication, and the true history 
 of her married life was therefore related. 
 
 Unless Lady Byron's intellect failed in 
 her declining years, which no one has 
 asserted, but which might not very un- 
 charitably be supposed, it can scarcely be 
 thought that, with the remarkable and, in 
 fact, the cruel reticence which she displayed 
 for forty years, she would have been goaded 
 into the betrayal of so carefully kept a 
 secret, and of such an odious chapter in her 
 husband's life, if it were true, by such a 
 hash of old materials as was given to 
 the world by the vain and foolish though 
 once lovely and fascinating Madame GuiccioH. 
 Lady Byron, if she were only a tenth part 
 as magnanimous as Mrs. Stowe describes 
 her to have been, could have well afforded 
 to despise the attacks, the insinuations, and 
 the second-hand criticism of the fair Italian. 
 But Mrs. Stowe seems to have craved the 
 notoriety which Lady Byron all her Hfe 
 woided; justifying, in a remarkable man- 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 51 
 
 ner, the triitli of the old achieve, that our 
 friends continually do us more harm than 
 our enemies. 
 
 The completion of the story remains to 
 be told. AVhen Lady Byron discovered her 
 Lushand's criminality with his half-sister, 
 and was " driven " from his house, as alleged 
 by herself and by Mrs. Stowe — fled from it 
 of her own free will, and under a false 
 pretence, as alleged by Lord B3^ron himself 
 at the time and afterwards, till wdthin a few 
 weeks or days of his " death,"- — Lady Byron 
 made but one condition with him. *' She had 
 him in her power, and lie stood at her mercy. 
 She exacted only that the unhappy partner 
 of his sins should not follow him out o^ 
 Enofland, and that the ruinous intrio'ue 
 should be given up." 
 
 Now, Mrs. Leigh, alleged to be the partner 
 of Lord Byron's sins, was to the certain know- 
 ledge of Lady Byron at this time, and for years 
 afterwards. Lady Byron's particular friend 
 and intimate associate, as will appear from 
 her own letters; and was, moreover, living 
 quietly, and to all appearance happily, with 
 
52 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 her husband. She had four children, all 
 supposed by him to be his, and born in 
 lawful wedlock. One of these children, the 
 youngest, Elizabeth Medora, was born in 
 1815, the same year as Lady Byron's own 
 daughter, Augusta Ada. This daughter, so 
 dearly beloved by Lord as well as by Lady 
 Byron, would not, most people would think, 
 have been called by the name borne by Mrs. 
 Leigh had Lady Byron supposed her at that 
 time to be, as Mrs. Stowe expresses it, " the 
 unhappy partner of Lord Byron's guilt." 
 More than this, Mrs. Leigh continued to live 
 with her husband, who had no such suspicions 
 of his wife as haunted the mind of Lady Byron 
 — if such positive knowledge as Mrs. Stowe 
 claims for her can be designated by such a 
 weak word as " suspicion." For more than 
 twenty years after the separation of Lord 
 and Lady Byron, Colonel and the Hon. 
 Augusta Leigh lived together as man and 
 wife ; in the course of which time three 
 more children, or seven in all, were born to 
 them. This, to say the least of it, is a 
 remarkable circumstance as affecting the 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 60 
 
 truth of Mrs. Stowe's narnitivc : nor is this 
 the only incomprehensible portion of the 
 tale ; or how could Lady Byron — unless 
 she were either a consummate hypocrite or 
 a very exceptionable piece of mortal clay, 
 without wholesome human blood in her 
 veins — write to such a w^oman as Mrs. 
 Leigh must be considered, if the story 
 were not the growth of a much later period 
 of Lady Byron's life, with the affection, 
 the cordiality, and confidence which one 
 virtuous woman feels for another as virtuous 
 as herself, and whom she deems worthy to 
 be treated as her friend? The letters, of 
 which the genuineness is guaranteed on the 
 unimpeachable authority of Mr. Murray and 
 the '* Quarterly Eeview," appeared in that 
 publication in October, 18G9. The first, 
 undated, was, in the opinion of the " Quar- 
 terly Review," and as internal evidence 
 would show, written in Lord Byron's house 
 in Piccadilly shortly before Lady Byron 
 left, and sent to Mrs. Leigh, who was also 
 at the same time an inmate of the troubled 
 household, who had come thither as a peace- 
 
54 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 maker, whose presence was equally accept- 
 able to both parties. Mrs. Leigh, it should 
 be added — and the circumstance, if it were 
 not for Lady Byron's letters, might be 
 taken as partly corroborative of Mrs. Stowe's 
 recital — remained in the house for several 
 weeks after Lady Byron left, and until she 
 knew that the rupture was final, and that 
 her intercession and good offices were no 
 longer available. 
 
 "You will think me very foolish, but I 
 have tried two or three times, and cannot 
 talk to you of your departure with a decent 
 visage — so let me say one word in this way 
 to spare my philosophy. With the expec- 
 tations which I have, I never will nor can 
 ask you to stay one moment longer than 
 you are inclined to do. It would [be] the 
 worst return for all I ever received from 
 you. But, in this at least, I am ^ truth 
 itself when I say that, whatever the situa- 
 tion may be, there is no one whose society 
 is dearer to me, or can contribute more to 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 55 
 
 my happiness. These feelings will not 
 change under any circumstances, and I 
 should be grieved if you did not understand 
 them. Should you hereafter condemn me 
 I shall not love you less. I will say no 
 more. Judge for yourself about going or 
 staying. I wish you to consider yourself, 
 if you could be wise enough to do that for 
 the first time in your life. 
 
 " Thine, A. I. B. 
 
 " Addressed on the cover * To the Hon. Mrs. Leigh.' " 
 
 " Kirkby ^lallory, January IC, 1816. 
 (The day after she left London.) 
 
 "My dearest A., — It is my great com- 
 fort that you are in Piccadilly." 
 
 in. 
 
 " Kirkby Mallory, January 23, 1816. 
 
 *' Dearest A., — I know you feel for me 
 as I do for you, and perhaps I am better 
 understood than I think. You have been, 
 ever since I knew you, my best comforter, 
 
56 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 and will so remain, unless you grow tired of 
 the office, which may well be." 
 
 IV. 
 
 "January 25, 1816. 
 
 '' My dearest Augusta, — Shall I still be 
 your sister? I must resign my rights to be 
 so considered ; but I don't think that will 
 make any difference in the kindness I have 
 so uniformly experienced from you." 
 
 "Kirkby Mallory, February 3, 1816. 
 
 *' My dearest Augusta, — You are desired 
 by your brother to ask if my father has acted 
 with my concurrence in proposing a sepa- 
 ration. He has. It cannot be supposed that, 
 in my present distressing situation, I am 
 capable of stating^ in a detailed manner, the 
 reasons which will not only justify this 
 measure, but compel me to take it ; and it 
 never can be my wish to remember unneces- 
 sarily [_sic\ those injuries for which, however 
 deep, I feel no resentment. I will now only 
 recall to Lord Byron's mind his avowed and 
 insurmountable aversion to the married state, 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 57 
 
 and the desire and determination he ex- 
 pressed ever since its commencement to free 
 himself from that bondage, as finding it 
 (|uite insupportable, though candidly acknow- 
 ledging that no etibrt of duty or affection has 
 been wanting on my part. He has too pain- 
 fully convinced me that all these attempts 
 to contribute towards his happiness were 
 wholly useless, and most unwelcome to him. 
 I enclose this letter to my father, wishing it 
 to receive his sanction. Ever yours most 
 
 aliectionately, 
 
 " A. I. Byron." 
 
 VI. 
 
 " February 4, 1816. 
 
 ** I hope, my dear A., that you would on 
 no account withhold from your brother the 
 letter which I sent yesterday, in answer to 
 yours written by his desire ; particularly as 
 one which I have received from himself to- 
 day renders it still more important that he 
 should know the contents of that addressed 
 to you. I am, in haste and not very well, 
 yours most affectionately, 
 
 " A. I. Byron." 
 
58 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 VII. 
 
 "Kirkby Mallory, February 14, 1816. 
 
 *' The present sufferings of all may yet be 
 repaid in blessings. Do not despair abso- 
 lutely, dearest ; and leave ine but enough of 
 your interest to afford you any consolation, 
 by partaking of that sorrow which I am 
 most unhappy to cause thus unintentionally. 
 You will be of my opinion hereafter, and at 
 present your bitterest reproach would be for- 
 given ; though Heaven knows you have con- 
 sidered me more than a thousand would have 
 done — more than anything but my affection 
 for B., one most dear to you, could deserve. 
 I must not remember these feelings. Fare- 
 well ! God bless you from the bottom of my 
 
 heart ! 
 
 "A. LB." 
 
 These letters are conclusive of the fact 
 that the scene recorded by Mrs. Stowe — with 
 all its dramatic incidents — never occurred; 
 that at the time of the separation no sus- 
 picion of Mrs. Leigh had entered Lady 
 Byron's mind, or that, if it had, she was 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 59 
 
 one of the most incomprehensible hypo- 
 crites the world ever saw. And tliouc^h 
 no one will assert that Lady Byron did 
 not in the year 1 856 tell Mrs. Stowe 
 the story of 1816 (we must do Mrs. 
 Stowe the justice to say that she did not 
 invent it), we cannot do otherwise than be- 
 lieve that at some later time — before or 
 after Lord Byron's death, but certainly not 
 for many years after the separation — Lady 
 Byron, by hallucination in her own troubled 
 and more or less disordered mind, either 
 became convinced that Lord Byron had 
 really committed incest and adultery, or that 
 some exterior agency — out of and beyond 
 herself — was brought to bear upon her ; and 
 that she ultimately was brought to believe 
 in the later years of her life what she could 
 not have believed, as an honest woman, as 
 Ions: as she treated Mrs. Lei<3:h as her dear 
 friend and companion, and one in every way 
 worthy to associate with and confide in. 
 
 That there were such extraneous circum- 
 stances is now known, and they will be fully 
 detailed in the history of Elizabeth Me- 
 
60 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 dora Leigh, whose name gives a title to 
 this volume. In the meanwhile, and as 
 further preparation for the proper compre- 
 hension of this sorrowful tale of an erring 
 and most unfortunate young lady, it will 
 make the narrative of Lady Byron's charge 
 against her husband more complete if we 
 present a short summary of the fierce Hterary 
 controversy that arose immediately after Mrs. 
 Stowe's publication, both in England and 
 America. The bitterness of feeling that was 
 shown on behalf of Lord Byron's memory, as 
 well as on behalf of his lady's, showed that 
 the lapse of forty-five years after Byron's 
 death, and of fifty-three after his separation 
 from his wife, had neither impaired the ad- 
 miration of his countrymen for his genius, nor 
 diminished the love of personal scandal and 
 slander, as between man and woman, which 
 unhappily distinguishes the idle, the frivo- 
 lous, and the shallow, in all ages and coun- 
 tries of the world. The majority ranged 
 themselves on Lord Byron's side, though a 
 strong, vehement, and passionate minority 
 took the part of Lady Byron^ believed im- 
 
INTRODUCTORY. G 1 
 
 plicitly in licr truth, and dwelt witli marked 
 delight on the defects of Lord Byron's char- 
 acter ; defects that were but too glaring and 
 too manifold, and too completely upon the sur- 
 face, but that might and would have been 
 allowed to rest in the oblivion into which 
 they were fast falling, if it had not been for 
 Mrs. Stowe's unauthorised publication. 
 
 Into the consideration of the faults, the 
 vices, or the crimes of Lord Byron, whatever 
 they may have been, we decline to enter. 
 More than enough has been said about them. 
 All that we or the world have to do with the 
 matter at this time is to judge of the truth or 
 falsehood of the narrative with which Lady 
 B}Ton inspired her American friend, and of 
 the one great charge involved in it. To this 
 one charge we confine ourselves. Three onl}" 
 of the letters among all the voluminous cor- 
 respondence which the discussion of the 
 subject brought down upon the columns of 
 the daily, weekly, and monthly press, appear 
 to us to require detailed notice ; the more 
 especially as they were all written by the 
 friends, relatives, or legal agents of Lady 
 
62 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 Byron herself, and not by any personal or 
 literary friends of Lord Byron. 
 
 The first, addressed to all the daily papers of 
 London, bore the date of the 1st of September, 
 the date of the ]Dublication of Mrs. Stowe's 
 article, and is signed by Messrs. Wharton and 
 Fords, of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the solicitors 
 of the descendants and representatives of 
 Lady Byron. These gentlemen emphatic- 
 ally and authoritatively repudiated and con- 
 demned Mrs. Stowe's action in the matter, 
 and denounced the publication as not only 
 incomplete and erroneous, but as a gross 
 breach of trust. " Of the paper itself," says 
 Messrs. Wharton and Fords, " we should 
 probably have abstained from taking any 
 public notice if it had appeared in a less 
 respectable journal than ' Macmillan,' or 
 if even in this periodical the authoress had 
 been allowed to tell her story without edi- 
 torial preface or comment. The editor of 
 * Macmillan,' however, has not only admitted 
 Mrs. Stowe's article, but he has prefixed to 
 it a note in which he authoritatively pro- 
 claims to the world that ' the paper on Lady 
 
INTRODUCTORY. G3 
 
 Byron's life and relations to Lord Byron is 
 the complete and authentic statement of the 
 wliole circumstances ofthat disastrous affair.' 
 Nay, more — * that this paper is, in fact, Lady 
 Byron's oicn statement of the reasons which 
 forced her to the separation which she so 
 long resisted.' Again, the editor states that 
 the contribution of Mrs. Stowe supplies 
 * evidence at once new and direct ' on Lady 
 Byron's history. 
 
 " We, as the family solicitors, beg most 
 distinctly to state that the article is not ' a 
 complete ' or ' authentic statement ' of the 
 facts connected wdth the separation, that it 
 cannot be regarded as Lady Byron's own 
 statement, and that it does not involve any 
 direct evidence on Lady Byron's history. 
 ***** 
 " Without for a moment conceding that 
 Mrs. Stowe's naiTative contains a complete 
 account of Lady Byron's relations with her 
 husband, we must protest against it as being 
 professedly, first, a most gross breach of the 
 trust and confidence stated to have been re- 
 posed in her ; secondly, as inconsistent with 
 
64 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 her own recommendation to Lady Byron; 
 aod thirdly, as an ignorant violation (at least 
 we shall in charity suppose Mrs. Stoweto 
 be ignorant) of the express terms of Lady 
 Bja'on's last will and testament. 
 
 " First, as relates to a breach of trust. Mrs. 
 Stowe states that she was consulted in an in- 
 terview, which, to use her own words, ' had 
 almost the solemnity of a death-bed,' not as 
 to whether she would undertake a redaction 
 of Lady Byron's married history, but only 
 as to tlie policy of publishing such a history 
 at all. Secondly, Mrs. Stowe, on her own 
 admission, returned to Lady Byron the brief 
 memorandum-paper which had been entrusted 
 to her, with the statement of her opinion that 
 ' Lady Byron would be entirely justifiable in 
 leaving the truth to be disclosed after her 
 death, and recommended that all facts neces- 
 sary should be put in the hands of some 
 persons to be so published.' Thirdly, Lady 
 Byron did by her last will and testament, 
 executed a few days only before her decease, 
 bequeath to three persons as trustees all her 
 manuscripts, to be by them first sealed up, 
 
 I 
 
INTRODUCTORY. G5 
 
 and afterwards deposited in a bank in the 
 names of such trustees, and she directed that 
 no one else, however nearly connected with 
 her, should upon any plea whatever be allowed 
 have access to or inspect such documents, 
 which the trustees thereof were alone to make 
 use of as they might judge to be best for the 
 interests of her grandchildren. Mrs. Stowe 
 is not one of these three. Her paper is en- 
 tirely gratuitous, and unauthorised. It is, 
 as we have said, not consistent with her own 
 counsel ; it is an offence against Lady Byron's 
 dying wishes ; and the authoress has written 
 in utter disregard of the feehngs of those 
 grandchildren, of whom she speaks in a 
 vague fulsome way as ' some of the best and 
 noblest of mankind.' 
 
 ***** 
 " ' Lady Byron's own statement is in 
 the possession of those who love her memory 
 too well to make a rash use of it ; and if the 
 world is ever to learn the true story of Lady 
 Byron's hfe it will learn it from them." 
 * * * * ^- 
 
 The second contribution towards the 
 
66 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 clearing up of the true history which Mrs, 
 Stowe had darkened, came from Lord Went- 
 worth, son of Ada Byron, Countess of Love- 
 lace, grandson of Lord and Lady Byron, 
 and inheritor of the harony of Wentworth, 
 to which Lady Byron herself would have 
 succeeded had her life been spared. Tt was 
 dated Boulogne, September the 7th, and 
 addressed to the Pall Mall Gazette : — 
 
 *^ Sir, — In your number of September 3, | 
 you say that Mrs. Stowe is not a flagrant \ 
 offender against proprieties, because my j 
 sister and I are supposed to have intended [ 
 to publish correspondence relating to Lord 
 and Lady Byron's conjugal differences. 
 
 '' Now, supposing Mrs. Stowe's narrative 
 to have been really a *true story,* and that 
 we had meant to reveal the whole of our 
 grandmother's history, I do not see what 
 defence that is to Mrs. Stowe against the 
 charge of repeating what was told her in a 
 * private, confidential conversation.' 
 
 '• But it is not true that Lady Anne Blunt 
 and 1 ever intended to publish correspond- 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 67 
 
 ence of the nature mentioned. About three 
 years ago a manuscript in Lady Noel 
 Byron's handwriting was found among her 
 papers, giving an account of some circum- 
 stances connected with her marriage, and 
 apparently intended for publication after her 
 death ; but as this [seemed not quite cer- 
 tain, no decision as to its publication was 
 come to. In the event of a memoir being 
 AVTitten, this manuscript might, perhaps, be 
 included, but hitherto it has not been pro- 
 posed to publish any other matter about her 
 separation. 
 
 " This statement in Lady Byron s own hand- 
 writing does not contain any accusation of so 
 grave a nature as that which Mrs. Stowe as- 
 serts was told her, and Mrs. Stowe' s story of 
 the separation is inconsiste^it ivith what I have 
 seen in various letters, ^'c, of Lady Byron's. 
 
 " Lady Byron says in her own statement 
 that before being published it ought to be 
 submitted to some person who had read 
 through the consumed Byron memoirs, su 
 as to secure the correction of any misstate- 
 ments. I cannot see that Messrs, Wharton 
 
68 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 and Fords make no charge of material in- 
 accuracy against Mrs. Stowe ; I believe they 
 meant to assert the inaccuracy of the whole 
 article. /, for one, cannot allow that Mrs, 
 Stowe s statement is suhstantially correct (ac- 
 cording to your inference, and that of one 
 or two other newspapers). 
 
 '* I remain your obedient servant, 
 
 " Wentworth." 
 
 A second letter from Lady Byron's grand- 
 son appeared nine days afterwards, addressed 
 to the editor of the Daily News, in reply 
 to some comments which had been made by 
 that journal, but need not be republished 
 here, as it adds nothing to his Lordship's 
 previous and very decisive communication. 
 
 The third and last of this series of com- 
 munications to the press, to which it is 
 necessary for the purpose of these pages to 
 refer, vf ere two letters addressed to the editor 
 of the Times by Lord Lindsay, one on the 3rd 
 and the other on the 14th of September. The 
 first was particularly remarkable, as stating 
 the experience of Lady Anne Barnard, an old 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 69 
 
 and intimate friend of Lady BjTon, a lite- 
 rary lady, and a poetess of no mean mark, 
 who, for the sake of literature, might possibly 
 have sympathised with Lord Byron — if it 
 were possible to do so — but who, on t!ie con- 
 trary, thought very badly of Lord Byron, and 
 spoke her mind unreservedly of his strange 
 behaviour to his wife, but never dreamed of 
 or imagined as possible such a charge as that 
 made by Mrs. Stowe, and which, if Lady 
 B}Ton had herself made it at the time 
 alleged by her to Mrs. Stowe, could not 
 have failed to come to Lady Anne's know- 
 ledge. The letter was as foUow^s : — 
 
 " Sir, — I have waited in expectation of a 
 categorical denial of the horrible charge 
 brought by Mrs. Beecher Stowe against 
 Lord Byron and his sister, on the alleged 
 authority of the late Lady Byron. Such 
 denial has been only indirectly given by the 
 letter of Messrs. Wharton and Fords, in your 
 impression of yesterday. That letter is suffi- 
 cient to prove that Lady Byron never con- 
 templated the use made of her name, and 
 
fjO MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 tliat lier descendants and representatives 
 disclaim any countenance of Mrs. B. Stowe's 
 article ; but it does not specifically meet 
 Mrs. Stowe's allegation tliat Lady Byron, 
 in conversing with her thirteen years ago, 
 affirmed the charge now before us. It re- 
 mains open, therefore, to a scandal-lovmg 
 world to credit the calumny through the ad- 
 vantage of this flaw, involuntary, I believe, 
 in the answer produced against it. My ob- 
 ject in addressing you is to supply that defi- 
 ciency by proving that what is now stated 
 on Lady Byron's supposed authority, is at 
 variance in all respects with what she stated 
 immediately after the separation, when every- 
 thing was fresh in her memory in relation to 
 the time during which, according to Mrs. B. 
 Stowe, she believed that Byron and his sister 
 were living together in gunt. I publish this 
 evidence with reluctance, but in obedience to 
 that higher obligation of justice to the voice- 
 less and defenceless dead which bids me break 
 through a reserve that otherwise I should 
 have held sacred. The Lady Byron of 1818 
 would, I am certain, have sanctioned my 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 7] 
 
 doing so liacl she foreseen the present im- 
 paralleled occasion, and tlie bar that the con- 
 ditions of her will present (as I infer from 
 Messrs. Wharton and Fords' letter) against 
 any fuller communication. Calumnies such 
 as the present sink deep and with rapidity 
 into the public mind, and are not easily 
 eradicated. The fame of one of our greatest 
 poets, and that of the kindest, and truest, 
 and most constant friend that Byron ever 
 had, is at stake ; and it will not do to wait 
 for revelations from the fountain-head which 
 are not promised, and possibly may never 
 reach us. 
 
 ^^ The late Lady Anne Barnard, who died in 
 1825, a contemporary and friend of Burke, 
 Windham^ Dundas, and a host of the wise 
 and good of that generation, and remembered 
 in letters as the authoress of * Auld Eobin 
 Gray,' had known the late Lady Byron from 
 infancy, and took a warm interest in her, 
 holding Lord Byron in corresponding repug- 
 nance, not to say prejudice, in consequence 
 of what she believed to be his harsh and 
 cruel treatment of her young friend. I tran- 
 
72 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 scribe the following passages, and a letter 
 from Lady Byron herself (written in 1818) 
 from ricordi, or private family memoirs, in 
 Lady Anne's autograph now before me. I 
 include the letter because, although treating 
 only in general terms of the matter and causes 
 of the separation, it affords collateral evidence 
 bearing strictly upon the point of the credi- 
 bility of the charge now in question : — 
 
 " ' The separation of Lord and Lady 
 Eyron astonished the world, which believed 
 him a reformed man as to his habits, and a 
 becalmed man as to his remorses. He had 
 written nothing that appeared after his mar- 
 riage till the famous " Fare Thee Well," 
 which had the power of compelling those to 
 pity the writer who were not well aware 
 that he was not the unhappy person he 
 affected to be. Lady Byron's misery was 
 whispered soon after her marriage, and his 
 ill-usage ; but no word transpired, no sign 
 escaped from her. She gave birth shortly 
 to a daughter ; and when she went as soon 
 as she was recovered on a visit to her father's. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 73 
 
 taking lier little Ada with her, no one knew 
 that it was to return to her lord no more. 
 At tliat period a severe fit of illness had con- 
 fined me to bed for two months. I heard of 
 Lady Byron's distress ; of the pains he took 
 to give a harsh impression of her character 
 to the world. I wrote to her, and entreated 
 her to come and let me see and hear her, if 
 she conceived my sympathy or counsel could 
 be any comfort to her. She came — but 
 what a tale was unfolded by this interesting 
 young creature, who had so fondly hoped to 
 have made a young man of genius and 
 romance (as she supposed) happy ! They 
 had not been an hour in the carriage which 
 conveyed them from the church when, break- 
 ing into a malignant sneer : " Oh ! what a 
 dupe you have been to your imagination. 
 How is it possible a woman of your sense 
 could form the wild hope of reforming me ? 
 Many are the tears you will have to shed 
 ere that plan is accomplished. It is enough 
 for me that you are my v/ife for me to hate 
 you ; if you were the wife of any other man 
 I own you might have charms," &c. I, who 
 
74 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 listened, was astonished. '' How could you 
 go on after this/' said I, " my dear? Why 
 did you not return to your father's ?" " Be- 
 cause I had not a conception he was in 
 earnest ; because I reckoned it a bad jest, 
 and told him so, — that my opinions of him 
 were very different from his of himself, other- 
 wise he would not find me by his side. He 
 laughed it over when he saw me appear hurt, 
 and I forgot what had passed till forced to 
 remember it. I believe he was pleased with 
 me, too, for a little while. I suppose it had 
 escaped his memory that I was his wife." 
 But she described the happiness they enjoyed 
 to have been unequal and perturbed. Her 
 situation in a short time might have entitled 
 lier to some tenderness, but she made no 
 claim on him for any. He sometimes re- 
 proached her for the motives that had induced 
 her to marry him — all was " vanity^ the 
 vanity of Miss Milbanke carrying the point 
 of reforming Lord Byron ! He always knew 
 her inducements ; her pride shut her eyes to 
 his ; he wished to build up his character and 
 his fortunes ; both were somewhat deranged ; 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 7j 
 
 she had a liigli name and would have a 
 fortune worth his attention, — let her look to 
 that for his motives !" " Byron, Byron," 
 she said, '' how you desolate me !" He 
 would then accuse himself of beinf' mad, and 
 throw himself on the ground in a frenzy, 
 which she believed was affected to conceal 
 the coldness and malignit}' of his heart — an 
 affectation which at that time never failed to 
 meet with the tenderest commiseration. I 
 could find by some implications, not followed 
 up by me, lest she might have condemned 
 herself afterwards for her involuntary dis- 
 closures, that he soon attempted to corrupt 
 her principles, both with respect to her own 
 conduct and her latitude for his. She saw 
 the precipice on which she stood, and kept 
 his sister with her as much as possible. He 
 returned in the evenings from the haunts of 
 vice, where he made her understand he had 
 been, with manners so profligate ! " 0, the 
 wretch !" said I ; '' and had he no moments 
 of remorse ?" " Sometimes he appeared to 
 have them. One night, coming home from 
 one of his lawless parties, he saw me so in- 
 
76 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 dignantly collected, and bearing all with 
 such, a determined calmness, that a rush of 
 remorse seemed to come over him ; he called 
 himself a monster, though his sister was 
 present, and threw himself in agony at 
 my feet. I could not — no — I could not 
 forgive him such injuries. He had lost me 
 for ever !" Astonished at the return of 
 virtue, my tears, I believe, flowed over his 
 face, and I said, " Byron, all is forgotten ; 
 never, never shall you hear of it more !" He 
 started up, and, folding his arms while he 
 looked at me, burst into laughter. " What 
 do you mean ?" said I. " Only a philoso- 
 phical experiment, that's all," said he. " I 
 wished to ascertain the value of your resolu- 
 tions." I need not say more of this prince 
 of duplicity, except that varied were his 
 methods of rendering her wretched, even 
 to the last. When her lovely little child 
 was born, and it was laid beside its mother 
 on the bed, and he was informed " he might 
 see his daughter," after gazing at it with an 
 exulting smile, this w^as the ejaculation that 
 broke from him, " ! what an implement 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 77 
 
 of torture have I acquired in you!" Such he 
 rendered it by his eyes and manner, keeping 
 her in a perpetual alarm for its safety when 
 in his presence. All this reads madder than 
 I believe he was ; but she had not then 
 made up her mind to disbelieve his pre- 
 tended insanity, and conceived it best to 
 intrust her secret with the excellent Dr. 
 Baillie, telling him all that seemed to regard 
 the state of her husband's mind, and letting 
 his advice regulate her conduct. BailUe 
 doubted of his derangement, but, as he did 
 not reckon his own opinion infallible, he 
 wished her to take precautions as if her 
 husband was so. He recommended her 
 going to the country, but to give him no 
 suspicions of her intentions of remaining 
 there, and for a short time to show no cold- 
 ness in her letters till she could better ascer- 
 tain his state. She went — regretting, as 
 she told me,' to wear any semblance but the 
 truth. A short time disclosed the story to 
 the world. He acted the part of a man 
 driven to despair by her inflexible resent- 
 ment, and by the arts of a governess (once a 
 
78 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 servant in the family), who hated him. '' I 
 will give you/' proceeds Lady Anne, " a few 
 paragraphs transcribed from one of Lady 
 Byron's own letters to me. It is sorrowful 
 to think that in a very little time this young 
 and amiable creature, wise, patient, and feel- 
 ing, will have her character mistaken by 
 every one who reads Byron s works. To 
 rescue her from this I preserved her letters, 
 and when she afterwards expressed a fear 
 that anything of her writing should ever 
 fall into hands to injure him (I suppose she 
 meant by publication), I safely assured her 
 that it never should. But here this letter 
 shall be placed, a sacred record in her favour 
 unknown to herself: — 
 
 " * '' I am a very incompetent judge of the 
 impression which the last canto of " Childe 
 Harold" may produce on the minds of in- 
 different readers. It contains the usual 
 trace of a conscience restlessly awake, though 
 his object has been too long to aggravate its 
 burden, as if it could thus be oppressed into 
 eternal stupor. I will hope, as you do, that 
 it survives for his ultimate good. It was 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 79 
 
 the acutoness of his remorse, impenitent 
 in its character, which so long seemed to 
 demand from my compassion to spare every 
 semblance of reproach, every look of grief, 
 wliich might have said to his conscience, 
 " You have made me wretched." I am 
 decidedly of opinion that he is responsible. 
 He has wished to be thought partially 
 deranged, or on the brink of it, to perplex 
 observers, and prevent them from tracing 
 effects to their real causes through all the 
 intricacies of his conduct. T was, as I told 
 you, at one time the dupe of his acted 
 insanity, and clung to the former delusions 
 in regard to the motives that concerned me 
 personally till the whole system was laid 
 bare. He is the absolute monarch of words, 
 and uses them, as Bonaparte did lives, for 
 conquest, without more regard to their 
 intrinsic value, considering them only as 
 ciphers, which must derive all their import 
 from the situation in which he places them 
 and the ends to wliicli he adapts them witli 
 such consummate skill. Why, then, you will 
 say, does he not employ tliem to give a 
 
80 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 better colour to his own character ? Because 
 he is too good an actor to over-act, or to 
 assume a moral garb which it would be easy 
 to strip off. In regard to his poetry, egotism 
 is the vital principle of his imagination, 
 which it is difficult for him to kindle on any 
 subject with which his own character and 
 interests are not identified : but by the in- 
 troduction of fictitious incidents, by change 
 of scene or time, he has enveloped his 
 poetical disclosures in a system impenetrable 
 except to a very few, and his constant desire 
 of creating a sensation makes him not averse 
 to be the object of wonder and curiosity, 
 even though accompanied by some dark and 
 vague suspicions. Nothing has contributed 
 more to the misunderstanding of his real 
 character than the lonely grandeur in which 
 he shrouds it, and his afiectation of being 
 above mankind, when he exists almost in 
 their voice. The romance of his sentiments 
 is another feature of this mask of state. I 
 know no one more habitually destitute of 
 that enthusiasm he so beautifully expresses, 
 and to which he can work up his fancy 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 81 
 
 oil icily by contagion. 1 Jiad heard lie was 
 the best of brothers, the most cfcnerous of 
 friends ; and I thought such feeUngs onl}- 
 required to be warmed and cherished into 
 more diffusive benevolence. Though these 
 opinions are eradicated, and could never 
 return but with the decay of my memory, 
 you will not wonder if there are still 
 moments when the association of feelings 
 which arose from them soften and sadden my 
 thoughts. But I have not thanked you, 
 dearest Lady Anne, for your kindness in 
 regard to a principal object — that of rectify- 
 ing false impressions. I trust you under- 
 stand my wishes, which never were to injure 
 Lord Byron in any way ; for, though he 
 v/ould not suffer me to remain his wife, he 
 cannot prevent me from continuing his 
 friend ; and it was from considering myself 
 as such that I silenced the accusations by 
 which my own conduct might have been 
 more fully justified. It is not necessary to 
 speak ill of his heart in general ; it is 
 sufficient that to me it was hard and im- 
 penetrable — that my own must have been 
 
 G 
 
82 MEDOKA LEIGH. 
 
 broken before his could have been touched. 
 I would rather represent this as my mis- 
 fortune than as his guilt ; but, surely, that 
 misfortune is not to be made my crime! 
 Such are my feelings : you will judge how 
 to act. His allusions to me in " Childe 
 Harold " are cruel and cold, but with such a 
 semblance as to make me appear so, and to 
 attract all sympathy to himself. It is said 
 in this poem that hatred of him will be 
 taught as a lesson to his child. I might 
 appeal to all who have ever heard me speak 
 of him, and still more to my own heart, to 
 witness that there has been no moment when 
 I have remembered injur}^ otherwise than 
 affectionately and sorrowfully. It is not my 
 duty to give way to hopeless and wholly 
 unrequited affection ; but so long as I live, 
 my chief struggle will probably be not to 
 remember him too kindly. I do not seek 
 the sympathy of the world, but I wish to be 
 known by those whose opinion is valuable 
 and whose kindness is dear to me. Among 
 such, my dear Lady Anne, you will ever be 
 remembered by your truly affectionate, 
 
 ""'A. Byron." 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 83 
 
 '• It is the province of your readers," con- 
 tinues Lord Lindsay, *' and of the world at 
 large, to judge between the two testimonies 
 now before them — Lady Byron's in 18 10 
 and 1818, and that put forward in 18G0 
 by Mrs. Beecher Stowe, as communicated by 
 Lady Byron thirteen years ago. In the 
 face of the evidence now given, positive, 
 negative, and circumstantial, there can be 
 but two alternatives in the case, — either Mrs. 
 Beecher Stowe must have entirely misunder- 
 stood Lady Byron, and been thus led into 
 error and misstatement, or we must conclude 
 that, under the pressure of a lifelong and 
 secret sorrow, Lady Byron's mind had be- 
 come clouded with an hallucination in respect 
 of the particular point in question. 
 
 " The reader will admire the noble but 
 severe character displayed in Lady Byron's 
 letter ; but those who keep in view what 
 her first impressions were, as above recorded, 
 may probably place a more lenient inter- 
 pretation than hers upon some of the inci- 
 dents alleged to Byron's discredit. I shall 
 conclude with some remarks upon his cha- 
 
84 MEDOEA LEIGH. 
 
 racter, written shortly after his death by a 
 wise, virtuous, and charitable judge, the late 
 Sir Walter Scott, likewise in a letter to Lady 
 Anne Barnard : — 
 
 " ' Fletcher's account of poor Byron is ex- 
 tremely interesting. I had always a strong 
 attachment to that unfortunate though 
 most richly gifted man, because I thought 
 I saw that his virtues (and he had many) 
 were his own, and his eccentricities the 
 result of an irritable temperament, which 
 sometimes approached nearly to mental 
 disease. Those who are gifted with strong 
 nerves, a regular temper, and habitual self- 
 command, are not perhaps aware how much 
 of what they may think virtue they owe to 
 constitjition ; and such are but too severe 
 judges of men like Byron, whose mind, like 
 a day of alternate storm and sunshine, is all 
 dark shades and stray gleams of light, in- 
 stead of the twilight grey which illuminates 
 happier though less distinguished mortals. 
 I always thought that when a moral propo- 
 sition was placed plainly before Lord Byron, 
 
IXTRODUCTORY. 85 
 
 his mind yielded a pleased and willing assent 
 to it ; but if there was any side-view given, 
 in the way of raillery or otherwise, he was 
 willing enough to evade conviction. . . . 
 It augurs ill for the cause of Greece that 
 this master-spirit should have been with- 
 drawn from their assistance just as he was 
 obtaining a complete ascendency over their 
 counsels. I have seen several letters from 
 the Ionian Islands, all of which unite in 
 speaking in the highest praise of the wisdom 
 and temperance of his counsels, and the as- 
 cendency he was obtaining over the turbu- 
 lent and ferocious chiefs of the insurc^ents. 
 I have some verses written by him on his 
 last birthday ; they breathe a spirit of affec- 
 tion towards his wife, and a desire of dying 
 in battle, w^hich seems like an anticipation 
 of his approaching fate.' 
 
 " I remain, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 "Lindsay." 
 
 " Dunecht, Sept. 3." 
 
 Lord Lindsay's second letter to the Times 
 added nothing to the facts in the first, but 
 drew a series of incontrovertible deductions 
 
86 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 from the statements therein contamed, as 
 compared with the statements of Mrs. Stowe, 
 all of them tending to confirm the view we 
 have already taken in the preceding pages, 
 and which all impartial and competent per- 
 sons, who have devoted adequate attention 
 to the subject, have taken — namely, tliat 
 whatever were the charges brought secretly 
 or overtly against Lord Byron, prior to and at 
 the time of the separation, the charge of incest 
 was not seriously entertained, if heard of, by 
 anybody. He was accused, if not by his wife, 
 by the idle scandalmongers who drew their 
 own conclusions from her inexpUcable silence, 
 of " brutality," " drunkenness," " madness, " 
 " bigamy," " murder," and, as Lord Byron 
 himself mockingly said, " of every crime that 
 could be, and of many that could not be com- 
 mitted." But though it is evident from all con- 
 temporary evidence, and from Lady Byron's 
 own letters to Mrs. Leigh, that the charge 
 of incest was not made in 1816 — and from 
 Lady Byron's letter to her friend Lady Anne 
 Barnard, in 1818, that it was not made two 
 years afterwards — it is equally evident that 
 
iNTi:onrcTORY. 87 
 
 the story as tolJ by ]\rrs. Stowe is untrue, 
 as regards its date, and that the charge was 
 first made at a much Liter time. When was 
 that time ? Who made it ? And did Lady 
 Byron believe it^ and lend it countenance? 
 These inquiries will all find their answer in 
 the history and autobiography of Elizabeth 
 Medora Leigh, which will be duly set forth 
 in the next chapter. 
 
PART II. 
 
 MEDOEA LEIGH ; 
 A HISTORY A.^J) AX AUTOBIOGEAPHY. 
 
 Serenely purest of her sex that live, 
 But wanting one sweet weakness — to forgive ; 
 Too sbock'd at faults her soul can never know, 
 She deems that all could be like her below : 
 Foe to all vice, yet hardly Virtue's friend, 
 For Virtue pardons those she would amend. 
 
 Lord Dyron. « A Sketch^ 
 

 I 
 
( ^i ) 
 
 PART II. 
 
 MEDOIIA LKIGII. 
 
 In the summer of 1S43, twenty-seven years 
 after the separation of Lord and Lady Byron, 
 and nineteen years after the death of Lord 
 Byron at ]\[issolonghi, there arrived in London 
 from Paris and the South of France, where 
 she had resided for some time previously, a 
 young lady, with a pretty little daughter, 
 nine or ten years old. The lady represented 
 herself as the fourth child of the Hon. Au- 
 gusta Leigh, the sister of Lord Byron. She 
 was horn, she said, in IS 15, and was conse- 
 quently in her twenty-eighth year. She was 
 good-looking rather than eminently hand- 
 some, had dark eyes and hair, and a dark 
 complexion, and was altogether a very lively 
 and agreeable person. She was not, how- 
 ever, in strong health ; and, worst of all to her 
 
92 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 at the moment, she was without the means 
 of subsistence for herself and daughter, the 
 Httle girl Marie, to whom she w^as passion- 
 ately attached, and whom she had brought 
 with her from Hyeres. She had come to 
 England to urge a claim which she had, 
 or fancied she • had, upon the generosity 
 and kind feeling of Lady Byron ; and her 
 expenses from Paris to London had been 
 
 defrayed by Captain De B , a gallant 
 
 veteran of the British army, who had served 
 through the Peninsular war in the 7 1st 
 Regiment, and had received several severe 
 wounds at the battle of Waterloo, for which 
 he enjoyed a pension of £100 per annum. 
 This officer, who had long been resident in 
 the South of France, had found Miss Leigh 
 in Paris in a state of utter destitution, 
 had heard her sad story, had relieved her 
 to the extent his limited means allowed, 
 and had defrayed the charges of her 
 return to England, in order that she might 
 plead her cause in person with her wealthy 
 and powerful relatives, and especially with 
 Lady Byron, who had long treated her with 
 
A IIISTOIIY AND AN ACTOBIOUKAril V. 03 
 
 motherly affection, and paid I'or licr main- 
 tenance, but who had suddenly withdrawn 
 her favour, and left her and her child to 
 perish of neglect and hunger. Captain De 
 
 ]) (the ofHcer just mentioned), in the 
 
 course of a business visit to his London 
 correspondents, incidentally mentioned, as a 
 reason for requiring some more money than 
 usual, the circumstances of his extra expen- 
 diture for ]\[iss Leigh, whose parentage he 
 stated, alleging her to be the daughter of 
 Lord Byron and Mrs. Leigh. This strange 
 statement, if only as an apparent solution of 
 the hitherto undivulged cause of the sepa- 
 ration of Lord and Lady Byron, naturally 
 excited great curiosity and interest in those 
 who heard it, particularly in one of the part- 
 ners, who had spent some days in Lord 
 Byron's company in one of the Greek islands ; 
 and he determined to inquire into the truth 
 of it. j\Iiss J!feigli proved to his entire satis- 
 f\ictioii, by documentary evidence in her pos- 
 session, that she was indeed the daughter of 
 the Hon. Augusta Leigh; detailed to him, 
 and afterwards gave him in w^riting, the 
 
94 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 whole history of her unhappy Hfe ; and so 
 deeply impressed him in her favour, that 
 he took measures, without divulging their 
 ohject, to obtain confidential access to some 
 of the high personages interested in her 
 case — in order, if possible, that she might 
 be reinstated in the high position which 
 she had formerly held in Lady Byron's 
 affections, and which she had strangely 
 forfeited, without, as she knew, any fault 
 of her own. She alleged (as it satis- 
 factorily appears from other and . corrobo- 
 ratory evidence, with perfect truth) that 
 her mother, Mrs. Leigh, and her aunt, 
 Lady Byron, had given her what is called in 
 legal parlance a " Deed of Appointment," by 
 which the sum of £3000 was to become pay- 
 able to her after the death of these ladies. She 
 was in such dire distress, on the very brink 
 of starvation, dependent wholly upon the 
 pitying charity of an unw^althy officer, 
 on whom she had no claim beyond that 
 of common humanity, that she desired to 
 sell her reversionary interest for whatever 
 sum, however moderate, it might realise in 
 
A HISTORY AM) AX Al'TOBlOGrvAlMl V. 95 
 
 the market. She also chiimed a hox of valu- 
 able family papers and letters which she had 
 entrusted to Lady Byron's custody, l)ut 
 which was said to have been stolen from 
 Lady Byron's house in Moore Place, by a 
 French waiting-woman and her husband, 
 a valet or courier, who had been em- 
 ployed by Lady Byron, in the days when 
 she and Miss Leigh were friends, to act 
 as her servants in the South of France. 
 This man being, as was believed, in pos- 
 session of the box and documents, attempted 
 to extort money from Lady Byron, and 
 from the Earl and Countess of Lovelace, 
 by threats of publishing the particulars of 
 Miss Leigh's birth and parentage, which 
 he thought would be painful to all the 
 noble families interested in and related 
 to the Kon. Mrs. Leigh and her husband. 
 The most active of the tw^o partners in the 
 firm to whom Miss Leigh was introduced 
 by their climit — the most active, at least, as 
 far as this poor lady's case was concerned — 
 was a gentleman whom, for the purposes of 
 til is narrative, we shall designate by the 
 
96 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 initial letter of liis name as Mr. S . 
 
 The documents and papers on which this 
 narrative is founded came from his hands, 
 and are published by his consent and autho- 
 rity. The originals are in the possession of 
 the publisher of this volume, and will be 
 shown to any one who has any legal pre- 
 tence to inspect them. 
 
 Before proceeding further with Miss 
 Leigh's previous history and career, or with 
 a narrative of the efforts that were made in 
 1843, by herself and her friends, to procure 
 for her a return of the maternal kindness of 
 Lady Byron, a few words in relation to the 
 pedigree and genealogy of the Byron family 
 will not only be in place, but will materially 
 conduce to the clear comprehension of Miss 
 Leigh's history, and of the claims she pre- 
 ferred upon certain noble persons with whom 
 she was connected through her mother. 
 
 The grandfather of Lord Byron was 
 Admiral Byron, celebrated by his grandson, 
 with a pardonable pride, as a great navi- 
 gator, or circumnavigator of the globe, at a 
 time when such circumnavigation was so 
 
A IIISTOIIV AND AX AITOHIOGK APIl V. 1> i 
 
 rare as to be remarkable. In tbe year 1748, 
 the Admiral married a Miss Trevanion, oi' 
 Carhays, in Cornwall. His son, Captain 
 Byron, born in 1756, and the father of the 
 poot, was twice married — first to Lady 
 Amelia D'Arcy, only daughter and heiress 
 of Kobert, last Earl of lioldernesse. The 
 earldom did not descend to heirs female, but 
 the barony of Conyers did ; and Baroness 
 Conyers married for the first time Francis, 
 Marquis of Carmarthen, and afterwards the 
 fifth Duke of Leeds. She had two children 
 by this nobleman, one of whom succeeded to 
 his father's dukedom and his mother's baron}'. 
 She was divorced from and by her husband in 
 ^lay 1779. Captain Byron, the predisposing 
 cause of the divorce, immediately afterwards 
 married Lady Conyers, who dropped, as a 
 matter of course, the title of Marchioness of 
 Carmarthen. By her, who died in 1 78 1, he had 
 two daughters — one who died an infant, and 
 the other, Augusta, who married her cousin, 
 Colonel Leigh, of the 10th Dragoon Guards. 
 Four years after the death of Lady Conyers, 
 Caj)tain Byrun married Miss Gordon, of 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 Gigbt, a Scottish lady, by wliom he had 
 a son, the afterwards famous poet, George 
 Gordon, Lord Byron. The Hon. Augusta 
 Byron, afterwards by marriage the Hon. 
 Augusta Leigb, was thus the half-sister of 
 Lord Byron — his father's but not his 
 mother's child. It follows, from this 
 genealogical statement, that tbere w^as a 
 connection between the noble families of 
 Leeds, Conyers, and Byron, which will ac- 
 count for some of the names introduced into 
 the autobiography of Miss Leigh. 
 
 Mr. S (and the reader, for reasons 
 
 satisfactory to that gentleman and to the 
 Editor, must be pleased to accept the initial 
 under which be chooses to screen himself 
 from a publicity which at his age would be 
 unwelcome") was no sooner persuaded that 
 the case of Medora Leigh was genuine, than 
 he souofht an introduction to and an inter- 
 view witb Dr. Lushington, who was then, 
 as be had been since 1816, in Lady Byron's 
 fullest confidence. The object of the inter- 
 view was not communicated in the letter of 
 introduction ; and Mr. S had to state 
 
A HISTORY AM) AN AUTOBIOGKAPIIY. *J'.) 
 
 it, together with his grounds of intercession, 
 in direct terms to the eminent civiUan, who 
 on his part received the statement as an 
 understood fact. The first interview led to 
 no other result than the following note : — 
 
 " Dr. Lushington presents his compli- 
 ments to Mr. S , and is sorry to say that 
 
 he has no communication to make from Lady 
 Noel Byron. Dr. Lushington has written 
 twice to Lady Byron since he saw Mr. 
 
 S , but, unfortunately, his first letter 
 
 has not reached her, in consequence of her 
 moving from place to place. 
 
 " Great George Street, July — " 
 (day of the month omitted). 
 
 Between the day when this note was 
 written and the 21st of the same montii, 
 Dr. Lushington received two letters from 
 Lady Byron in reply to those which he had 
 addressed to her. He thereupon requested 
 
 a second interview with Mr. S , in order 
 
 to read those letters to him. Mr. S 
 
 attended to the summons, and, as in tlie 
 
100 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 first instance, noted down the whole con- 
 versation within half an hour after its occur- 
 rence, and while every word^ phrase, point, 
 and question were still fresh in his memory. 
 
 L 
 
 ( 
 
A HISTORY AXD AX AUTOBIOGRAPIIV. 101 
 
 "MEMORAXnrM OF CONVERSATION WITH DK. 
 LUSIIINdTOX, THIS 21sT OF JULY, 1843, AT 
 4 O'CLOCK. 
 
 *' Dr. Lusliingtoii read a letter from Lady 
 Noel Byron, stating' ' that she had re- 
 ceived his letters, but was not to be moved, 
 by the arguments used in behalf of Miss 
 LeiL;"li, from her determination to have no 
 further intercourse with her. That Mr. 
 
 S was very imperfectly informed as to 
 
 Miss Leigh's conduct towards her, and she 
 (Lady Byron) did not mean to make it more 
 known. She deeply commiserated Miss 
 Leigh, but she could not consent to renew 
 comnmnication with her.' 
 
 " I said that that letter seemed to shut the 
 door upon all hope of reconciliation, what- 
 ever Miss Leigh miglit do in the way of 
 submission ; and that as to mv being im- 
 perfectly informed of her conduct, I might 
 be so, but it must be something done be- 
 tween Lady Byron's last letter to her in Paris 
 and Dr. King's offer of £300 a year, and the 
 present time. That down to Miss Leigh's 
 leaving Hyeres, nothing could be more affec- 
 
102 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 tionate, more motlierly and considerate, 
 than Lady Byron's letters. The going to 
 Paris had given offence, but it was justified; 
 and though the justification was not ad- 
 mitted, intercourse was reopened by letter, 
 and by messages and offers through Dr. King. 
 What had been done since, except the re- 
 ceiving of Mrs. Leigh's Deed of Appoint- 
 ment and the letter of Miss Leigh to Lord 
 Chichester, I did not know ; but I had heard 
 of nothing, and I did not think there was 
 anything unpardonably offensive in these. 
 
 *'Dr. Lushington said he knew no more 
 than I did, and had not heard of the affair 
 at all, till within the last six weeks or two 
 months ; that Lady Byron was not likely to 
 be moved by any further representations on 
 his part, as he had written two long letters 
 to her, filling two sheets of paper, with a full 
 recapitulation of everything I had urged at 
 our former conversation, and the answer 
 (which showed that he had so done) was 
 what he had read. 
 
 " I said that the case became one of simple 
 starvation for Miss Leigh and her child ; that 
 
A FIL^TOIIV AM) A.V A T TOIUOC:]; A Til V . lOi) 
 
 Captain I)e I> was not nu\v not al)le to 
 
 continue to pay lor lier living*, but he must 
 return to France immediately, and the f^irl 
 would be utterly destitute. I uriijed every 
 tiling* that I could think of to induce Dr. 
 Lushington to view the matter as of infinite 
 importance to Lady r>y ron's and to Lad}' 
 Lovelace's peace of mind ; that no idea of 
 threat, or terror, or extortion had ever entered 
 the heads of ^[iss Leigh's present advisers ; 
 that propriety was to be considered, publicity 
 to be guarded against in every way, — but 
 what was the girl to do for bread ? 
 
 *' Dr. Lushington gave no answer to any 
 of my remarks in the way of appeal to Lady 
 Byron's feelings, or to the consequences of 
 driving Miss Leigh to desperation^ or to some 
 communication with persons who, without 
 doing her ultimate good, might do infinite 
 harm to every member of the Byron family ; 
 but he said that if I would take his advice, I 
 should go to Sir George Stephen, and should 
 recommend Miss Leigh to see him and to 
 conduct herself well to him. That there 
 was a chance that he mii^ht effect somethinsr 
 
104 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 favourable for her, but he had no authority 
 for saying this, and guarded me against 
 being led to hope anything from it. 
 
 " I said that I could not conceive, that 
 after the failure of his attempts to conciliate 
 Lady Byron, there could be any hope of 
 "^ir George Stephen's succeeding, and I repu- 
 diated the thought of trying him. 
 
 " Dr. Lushington : ' There may be others 
 of the family to whom he lias access, — I 
 cannot say more ; I believe that is the only 
 chance at all for Miss Leigh. I am not at 
 liberty to say more— you understand me?' 
 
 " I said I should consult Miss Leigh and 
 act according to her instructions, but upon the 
 strength of v/hat he said, I should recommend 
 the adoption of his advice, although I doubted 
 Miss Leigh's concurrence ; and at all events, 
 if I succeeded in procuring means of subsist- 
 ence from any other source than Lady Byron, 
 it was clear that there was an end of all 
 obligation and all circumspection as regarded 
 her or her daughter. I mentioned that 
 the French valet was in London, and had said 
 that he sliould seek an opportunity of insult- 
 
A IIISTORY AND AN ArTOlUOGllAlMl Y. 105 
 
 ini^ or assaulting Lord Lovelace, that he 
 iiiiglit be taken to Bow Street for the ])urpose 
 of publisliing Miss Leigh's history through 
 the police reports. 
 
 *' Dr. Lushington said that the valet 
 had brought an action against Lady Byron, 
 and on my asking what for, he answerec 
 that he supposed it was of a general nature 
 for money, and that he most assuredly should 
 advise Lady Byron to defend it and to keep 
 him at arm's len^-th. 
 
 "" I pointed out to Dr. Lushington, as i 
 liad formerly done, that it was this man and 
 his wife who had caused all the mischief, and 
 that it was unfair not to consider Miss 
 Leigh's 3^outli and ignorance of the world. 
 
 "Dr. Lushington evaded all answer to 
 these allusions, but repeated his advice as to 
 Sir George Stephen. I said that I saw no re- 
 source but a sale of the Deed of Appointment 
 for present purposes ; and future events might 
 be as they may ; and that I was most deeply 
 grieved and disappointed at the upshot of 
 my endeavours. I said that the wife of the 
 valet had made application to Lady Byron, 
 
10 G MEDOKA LEIGH; 
 
 in behalf of Miss Leigh, for a box of impor- 
 tant documents and papers belonging to her, 
 of which Lady Byron had the custody ; but 
 she (Lady Byron) refused to give it up except 
 to Miss Leigh herself; that the valet's wife 
 had given back the key to Miss Leigh. 
 
 " Dr. Lushincrton said that the box had 
 disappeared from Moore House from tlie 
 moment that the valet's wife had been in it ; 
 that they had searched over and over again 
 for it. Lady Byron wanted to advertise the 
 loss, but he stopped it as useless and unad- 
 visable. 
 
 " We parted, on the understanding of my 
 communicating to Miss Leigh, and acting as 
 should be concerted ; but all hope of further 
 communication with Lady Byron, either at 
 an interview or by writing, was given up. 
 
 " The above is written within half an hour 
 after the conversation took place. 
 
 "T. S." 
 
 Acting, though somewhat reluctantly, 
 upon the advice given by Dr. Lushington 
 in this interview, Mr. S had several 
 
A HISTORY AXD A\ AUTOniOOl^VniY. 107 
 
 interviews and conferences with Sir George 
 Stephen, who at that time was an eminent 
 attorney in the city of London. lie acted 
 as tlie legal adviser of Lady Byron, and was 
 furthermore known in the world of letters 
 as the author of an amusing volume, " The 
 Adventures of a Gentleman in search of a 
 Horse, by Caveat Emptor.'' Sir George, 
 after ample time for deliberation, set forth 
 his views on the whole subject of Miss Leigh's 
 distresses, her claims upon the kindhearted- 
 ness of Lady Byron, and the methods by 
 which, and by which only, she could, in his 
 opinion, be restored to the favour she had 
 forfeited, in the following letter : — 
 
 " 17, King's Arms Yard, Coleman Street, 
 " Au-nst 9, 1843. 
 
 '' SiH, — I have not succeeded in obtaining 
 the letters of Miss Leigh. If I had, I should 
 have written to you before. 
 
 " I retain the same disposition to assist her, 
 by mediation with her friends, and shall feel 
 truly rejoiced to be the means of extricating 
 her from her present false and painful posi- 
 
108 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 tion ; but I cannot undertake tlie office 
 on any other terms than those that I pro- 
 posed to you in the interview with which 
 you favoured me, namely : 
 
 " Her surrender of the Deed of Appoint- 
 ment, as a sacred provision, to trustees — for 
 her child. 
 
 *^ Her written expression of her sincere 
 contrition for her conduct to Lady Byron. 
 
 " Her return to seclusion in France. 
 
 " On these terms I will exert myself to the 
 utmost, to obtain for her from her friends 
 a permanent and comfortable domicile in 
 Prance, and I am convinced that I shall 
 succeed. But on any other terms I cannot 
 feel it right again to interpose. Heaven 
 forbid that I should stipulate for any self- 
 de^Tadino" conditions ! I am so far from 
 meaning it, that if there is any modification 
 of my terms that you or she can suggest, 
 consistent with the substance of them, I 
 will gladly attend to the suggestion. My 
 only object is to effect an arrangement that 
 may conduce to the peace and comfort of all 
 parties, in the most distressing case that 
 
A HISTORY AND AN AUTOBlOGllAril V. 100 
 
 ever fell within my knowledge. I feel as- 
 sured that I have intluence enouii^li tu aecom- 
 plish it with one party, if I can hrini^^ the 
 other to a full conviction of her duly, no k'ss 
 than her interest. 
 
 *' l]ut still I cannot, even in self-respect, 
 undertake the office of mediator on any 
 terms but such as I feel are honestly due 
 to Lady Byron. I personalhj know the 
 motive as well as the extent of tlio kindness 
 that she has shown to Miss Leigh, and there 
 are very few, certainly not more than three, 
 who know it as well. She has deserved all 
 that is grateful and all that is respectful at 
 Miss Leigh's hands ; and therefore, till her 
 feelings are consulted and satisfied, so far as 
 under the present unfortunate circumstances 
 they can be, I will never approach her, or 
 any of her family, as an intercessor for 
 further assistance. Indeed, from her, per- 
 sonally, I can expect nothing, unless it is to 
 co-operate with others in doing what actual 
 necessity seems to require ; but I am confident 
 that none of the high circle to whom my 
 appeal must be made, if made at all, will 
 
110 MEDORA LEIGH 
 
 move in the matter except full atonement is 
 first made to her justly wounded feelings. 
 " I remain, Sir, 
 
 " Yours very obediently, 
 
 *' George Stephen." 
 
 " T. S , Esq." 
 
 In addition to the conversation of Mr. 
 S with Sir George Stephen, in re- 
 ference to Miss Leigh's distress, to which 
 this letter is a formal reply, an intimation 
 was thrown out, in subsequent interviews 
 between the parties, that the wealthy families 
 with whom Miss Leigh was so closely re- 
 lated, could not, as a matter of delicacy and 
 honour, allow a by no means wealthy stranger, 
 
 like Captain De B , to remain without 
 
 reimbursement of the small sums — small in 
 themselves, though comparatively large to a 
 gentleman in his humble circumstances — 
 which he had expended on her behalf, to 
 secure her from the positive deprivation of 
 food, and the commonest necessaries of life ; 
 or perhaps, if he had not taken her so 
 generously in hand, from the workhouse or 
 
A HISTOIiV AM) AX ArTOniOGRATMI V. Ill 
 
 the streets. On the 7tli of July, ^h\ 
 
 S wrote to Lord Lovehice, with wlioni 
 
 lie had some previous acfjuaintance, on tliis 
 suhject. Two days afterwards, liis h)rds]n|) 
 repHed, in a note dated from Ockham Park, 
 
 that, '' as Captain De 13 liad liad the 
 
 advantai^e of one or two personal inter- 
 views with Lady Byron's soHcitor, in conse- 
 quenee of his (Captain De B 's) applica- 
 tion to her ladysliip, and as no arrangement 
 had residted therefrom, he (Lord Lovelace) 
 must decline to enter into any communication 
 
 with Mr. S upon the subject; the more 
 
 so as Captain De ]> 's intervention in the 
 
 matter was wholly uninitiated by Lady 
 Noel Byron, and by himself (Lord Lovelace)." 
 
 Mr. S , still earnest in the cause, both 
 
 of Captain De B and of the unfortunate 
 
 ]\liss Leigh, endeavoured, without altogether 
 losing heart and hope, to work yet a little 
 further upon the kindly feelings of Sir 
 George Stephen — whose letter showed a dis- 
 ])osition, stronger perhaps in the man than 
 in the lawyer, to assist an unfortunate 
 woman — so as to bring his great and un- 
 
112 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 doubted influence to bear upon liis noble 
 clients. Nothing, however, came of these 
 attempts and these interviews, for the reason 
 that both Lady Byron and Miss Leigh were 
 equally firm — if obstinate be not the better 
 \/ord — on the subject of the "Deed of Ap- 
 pointment." Lady Byron refused to be 
 reconciled to Miss Leigh, or to' have any- 
 thing to do with her, unless that document 
 were surrendered ; and Miss Leigh refused, 
 point-blank, to surrender it on any conditions 
 whatever. Finally, on the 4th of September, 
 1843, after an interval of nearly four weeks 
 spent in these fruitless negotiations, Mr. 
 
 S wrote to Sir George Stephen, in 
 
 reply to that gentleman's letter of the 9tli 
 of August. In this document he deplored 
 the unsatisfactory result of the negotiations, 
 and expressed both his regret and surprise, 
 that Lady Byron should not only have 
 hardened her heart against one whom she 
 had formerly treated as if she had been her 
 own child, but that her family and connec- 
 tions, and the husband of her daughter Ada, 
 who had been Miss Leigh's playmate in 
 
A HISTORY AXD AX AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 113 
 
 childhood, should, on a punctilio of offended 
 
 dignity, allow Captain De B 's Christian 
 
 benevolence to be a drain upon a pocket that 
 was far less capacious than his human sym- 
 pathy. It was nearly a month after the 
 receipt of Sir George Stephen's communica- 
 tion, during which time ]\Iiss Leigh had re- 
 peatedly expressed her willingness to do any- 
 thing that was required of her by Lady 
 Byron, with the sole exception of delivering 
 up her mother's Deed of Appointment, that 
 
 Mr. S wrote the following letter to Lady 
 
 Byron's solicitor [Sir George Stephen] : — 
 
 " September 4, 1843. 
 
 *' Sir, — I have so fully communicated to 
 you in conversation the sentiments of Miss 
 Leigh upon the conditions which you think 
 would through your mediation again pro- 
 cure her the means of existence from Lady 
 Byron, that it is now perhaps superfluous to 
 acknowledge formally the receipt of your 
 letter of the 9th August. But as, to my 
 deep regret, and I will ever say to my utter 
 astonishment, the spirit of all that I have 
 
 I 
 
114 MEDOEA LEIGH; 
 
 heard on the part of Lady Byron has been 
 so different from what I think there was 
 reason to expect, I deem it advisable to 
 state in writing that Miss Leigh has always 
 been willing, with or without countervailing 
 advantage to herself, to make any acknow- 
 ledgments, and to express any contrition, 
 that might be required by Lady Byron, and 
 to come under any reasonable obligation as 
 to her future mode of life ; — so that, although 
 there was nothing in your offers which 
 could be regarded as a definite undertaking 
 that certain results would follow compliance 
 with certain terms, two of your three con- 
 ditions were unhesitatingly accepted. 
 
 " With regard to the third, Miss Leigh is 
 most desirous of preserving entire for herself 
 and her child the provision in her mother's 
 Deed of Appointment ; but she objects to put 
 it irrevocably under the control of other 
 persons, without some equally irrevocable 
 obligation for her support adequate to the 
 surrender which she would thereby make. 
 
 " It is, therefore, solely upon this her objec- 
 tion, that I must presume Lady Byron 
 
A HISTORY AND AX AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 115 
 
 continues in her determination to abandon 
 her to ^Yant and miser}^ insi^-tin^ upon the 
 surrender of the Deed as a test of the sincerity 
 of Miss Leigh's repentance. 
 
 "Having due regard to the relative posi- 
 tions of the parties, and in particular to 
 Lady Byron's past benevolence and maternal 
 interest in this unfortunate young lad}^ it is 
 difficult to say that, as far as Lady Byron's 
 personal feelings are in question, this is an 
 unreasonable requisition, nor, as Miss Leigh 
 showed by having ' unasked left the Deed 
 in Lady Byron's custod}^ would she have 
 hesitated to have left it again with her^ had 
 she been restored to her flivour ; — but, on the 
 other hand, taking Miss Leigh's personal 
 feelings, her present position, and her wrongs 
 into consideration, it surely is not surprising 
 that she should object to part with the only 
 property in the world that she can call her 
 own, for no return which change of opinion 
 or of circumstances may not wrest from 
 her as suddenly and unexpectedly as in the 
 recent instance of Lady Byron's abandon- 
 ment. 
 
116 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 "It is not for me to express any opinion 
 on the course adopted by the principal par- 
 ties in this very painful and singular case. 
 I have the misfortune to differ widely from 
 you as to the degree of culpability attributable 
 to the offending party, and though assured 
 by you of the existence of many causes 
 of offence, I have failed in obtaining a 
 specification of any beyond that for which 
 I must ever think there was mach extenua- 
 tion, while the imparting of the power of 
 offending in the particular way alluded to, 
 would assuredly be viewed by third parties 
 as of very questionable propriety. 
 
 " But with regard to the branch of the 
 subject which brought me into connection 
 with it, namely, the intervention of Captain 
 
 De B to save Miss Leigh and her child 
 
 from actual want, I may be permitted to ex- 
 press my amazement — and I cannot imagine 
 any discreet and reasonable person not par- 
 ticipating in it — that by the cold denial of 
 his claim for reimbursement Lady Byron 
 and her family should have necessitated the 
 disclosure which Captain De B felt him- 
 
A HISTORY AND AX AUTOBlOGKAPnV. 117 
 
 self bound to make to his agents, of the 
 circumstances under which he was placed by 
 such an unlooked-for result of his readiness 
 to assist an English lady in distress. That 
 this denial has been the cause of whatever 
 Lady Byron and her family may think them- 
 selves aggrieved by since our interven- 
 tion, there is not, and there cannot be, the 
 shadow of a doubt. From an expression in 
 Lord Lovelace's letter to me, it might be 
 inferred that his lordship looks upon Captain 
 
 De B 's intervention as impertinent and 
 
 officious, and as if some permission should 
 have been asked before money was paid 
 for Miss Leisfh. I cannot understand 
 
 this idea. Captain De B accidentally 
 
 met a lady whom he had known as a neigh- 
 bour, without present means of subsistence, 
 in Paris, but wdio, from letters and obliga- 
 tions to a large pecuniary amount, he saw 
 was connected with one of the most distin- 
 guished ladies in England. He refused to 
 enquire further into her circumstances, her 
 relationship, or her past history, but, relying 
 on the name and character of Lady Byron, 
 
118 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 he paid, and has continued to pay, for the 
 subsistence of one whom he found her 
 ladyship had been treating as ' her other 
 <ihiixL' Por this he received an enquiring 
 visit from a sohcitor, and an impression was 
 taken of his motives and conduct, of which 
 I am much mistaken if Lady Byron and 
 her family have not already discovered the 
 erroneousness, and possibly may already feel 
 regret for having entertained. 
 
 ''I conclude this too long letter by as- 
 serting emphatically that the earnest desire 
 
 of Captain De B and his friends was to 
 
 prevent the infliction of a single painful sen- 
 sation on Lady Byron's mind, either from 
 the effects of present revelations, or of future 
 consequences of them. Deeply deploring our 
 utter failure in this our object, 
 
 " I have the honour to be, &c. 
 
 ^'T. S." 
 
 We have now arrived at that stage in the 
 narrative, when it becomes necessary to let 
 Medora Leigh speak for herself, and unfold, 
 in her own style and language, what w^ere 
 
A HISTORY A\D AN* AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 11'^ 
 
 the peculiar ckiims she had upon the afTec- 
 tion and generosity of Lady Byrou, otlier 
 than that she was in deep poverty and aOhc- 
 tion ; and that she was really and truly her 
 niece by marriage, and the daughter of Lord 
 Byron's sister. She wrote out and placed 
 
 in the hands of Mr. S , that he might 
 
 know — however painful and discreditable to 
 herself they might be — all the circumstances 
 of her life from her fifteenth year, when all 
 her errors and all her sorrows commenced, in 
 the shape of an autobiographical memoir. 
 This memoir is the saddest story of a young, 
 erring, deceived, and repentant girl, that per- 
 haps was ever laid bare to the scrutiny of a 
 harsh and unforgiving world. Like the last 
 mournful confession of a culprit at the point 
 of death, and ahnost at the bar of eternity, it 
 concealed nothing, either as affected herself 
 or others ; opened her heart, as if it were a 
 cabinet into which all the world might peer 
 and examine, either for monstrosities or curi- 
 osities ; and brought the most fearful accu- 
 sations against the mother who bore her, 
 and her elder sister, whom she more particu- 
 
120 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 larlj charged with being the origin of all 
 her calamities and desrradations. After loner 
 doubt and hesitation — the maturest con- 
 sideration, and consultation with others to 
 whom the circumstances are known, and 
 who have perused Miss Leigh's manuscripts 
 — the editor of this volume decided to repro- 
 duce it in its entirety, on account of the 
 light which it throws upon the one great 
 matter of present controversy — the charge 
 brousrht bv Ladv Byron and Mrs. Stowe 
 against Lord Bvron's memory — the only 
 matter in which it can really interest the 
 public of this or any other day. Xot to 
 create what is called a sensation — not to 
 pander to scoundrel curiosity — not to feed 
 the greedy maw of scandal, that loves to 
 prey upon the reputation of the great, 
 the exalted, and the gifted : but in the 
 interest of truth, irrespective of all or any 
 whom the truth may touch, and with 
 the fullest reUance that no one truth can 
 ever contradict or be antagonistic to any 
 other truth, the story of the erring and un- 
 happy child of Lord Byron s sister will now 
 
A HISTORY AND AX AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 121 
 
 bo told, as it affects Mrs. Leigh, Lady Xoel 
 Bvron, and the minor characters that revolve 
 around these two. Lord Byron himself she 
 never saw ; and if Lord Byron ever saw her — 
 which is nowhere recorded by Lord Byron, 
 or others, that we can discover — it must have 
 been as an infant in the cradle ; for she was 
 bom in 1S15, and in 181G Lord B}Ton 
 quitted England, never again to return. He 
 never again saw either his daughter Ada, or 
 that beloved sister Augusta, about his affec- 
 tion for whom such awful charges have been 
 piled against his memory. Miss Leigh's 
 narrative is for the most part written in her 
 own neat hand — small and ladyHke — and 
 shows in every sentence the composition of 
 an educated, but certainly not of a literary 
 lady. The later portion of the manuscript 
 is in another hand, is not so grammatical, or 
 so orthographically correct as the previous 
 portion, and appears to have been dictated 
 to an amanuensis, while she was suffering 
 from illness. 
 
122 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 
 
 " I AM the fourth child of a family of seven. 
 [Miss Leigh does not mention her own 
 name or that of her mother at the com- 
 mencement of her narrative, but plmiges 
 at once, in Homeric fashion, into the detail 
 of the events which decided her fate.] 
 My eldest sister, Georgiana, married Mr. 
 Henry Trevanion, a distant cousin, in 1826, 
 when I was eleven years old. The marriage, 
 which had met the approbation of no one 
 except my mother, did not turn out very 
 happily, owing to the smallness of fortune, 
 and ^the uneven temper of both parties. I 
 was frequently called in to keep them com- 
 pany, and in March, 1829 (after they had 
 been married three years), it was decided 
 that I should accompany them to a country 
 house which had been placed at their dis- 
 posal by my aunt Annabella, Lady Byron, 
 during the time of my sister's approaching 
 confinement. The house was in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Canterbury. The last injunc- 
 
A HISTORY AND AX ALTOBTOGRAPIIV. 123 
 
 tions and admonitions I received from my 
 mother on startincf, were to devote mysclt' 
 in all things to please my brother-in-law, 
 Mr. Trevanion ; to get rid of the dislike I 
 entertained for him, and to cease ridiculing 
 him, as I had been in the habit of doing. 
 I was urged more particularly to this course 
 of behaviour in consideration not alone of 
 his delicate health, but of tlie poverty which 
 made him peculiarly sensitive. I promised 
 compliance, and accompanied them to the 
 country, as my mother and sister had ar- 
 ranged. My sister's illness, before her con- 
 finement, was the occasion of my being left 
 much alone with Mr. Trevanion. Indeed, I 
 found myself thrown entirely upon him for 
 society. I was with him both in-doors and 
 out, by day and by night, and was frequently 
 sent by my sister into his bedroom on 
 errands, after every one else in the house 
 had retired to rest. Some months passed 
 in this manner, during which Mr. Trevanion 
 took advantage of my youth and weakness, 
 and effected my ruin, and I found myself 
 likely to become a mother, by one I had 
 
124 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 ever disliked. Mr. Trevanion, when made 
 aware of my position, implored me to tell 
 Georgiana the truth, and throw him and my- 
 self upon her mercy. I did so. My misery 
 and my repentance appeared to move her 
 much ; and she blamed herself for having 
 thrown me so much in Henry's (Mr. Tre- 
 vanion's) way. I was but fifteen years of 
 age at this time — in the year 1830. My 
 sister concerted with her husband as to 
 the steps to be taken, and it was agreed 
 between them that they should ask my 
 mother's permission to take me abroad 
 along with them. Permission was obtained 
 without much difficulty, and when I was 
 within three or four months of my confine- 
 ment, I was taken by them to Calais. The 
 misery and anguish of mind which I suffered 
 contributed, along with my weak state of 
 health, to bring on a premature confinement ; 
 and I was delivered clandestinely, under my 
 sister's roof, of a male child, which was 
 taken away, to be brought up under the 
 charge of the medical gentleman who at- 
 tended me. Three months afterwards, when 
 
A HISTORY AND AX AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 125 
 
 my health was partially restored, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Trevanion returned to England with 
 me — they to the house of an aunt, and I 
 to the house of my mother. My mother 
 did not appear to have a suspicion of any 
 kind. Mr. Trevanion came very often — 
 almost daily — to see me, and his visits 
 were not in any way discouraged by my 
 mother. My mother, at this time, endea- 
 voured to force me, much against my wish, 
 into society and balls, though I endeavoured 
 to excuse myself on account of my extreme 
 youth, and by the fact that I was in 
 mourning for another sister whom we 
 had recently lost. [Here Miss Leigh enters 
 into the details of some efforts that she was 
 informed were made, in some unaccountable 
 and very mysterious way, by the then Lord 
 Byron, or a person deputed by him, to dis- 
 cover the facts connected with the birth of 
 her child ; and of her being informed by the 
 doctor at Calais, who had taken charge of 
 it, that it had died at three months old of 
 convulsions. She goes on to say] : — During 
 the whole autumn and winter of this year I 
 
126 MEDORA LEIGH ; 
 
 was constantly left in Henry's (Trevanion's) 
 society ; and early in 1831, I, for the second 
 time, found myself likely to become a 
 mother. He begged and entreated me to 
 confide in my mother, and wrote a letter, 
 which I copied and signed, in which I in- 
 voked her assistance in my trouble. She 
 burned this letter as soon as she read it, 
 and was at first very kind to me ; though 
 she afterwards became very cruel. It was 
 finally agreed between her and Georgiana, 
 that I should again leave London, and ac- 
 company my sister and her husband into 
 the country : I was not told what part. 
 This was in March, 1831. In June of the 
 same year, or three months afterwards. 
 Colonel Leigh* unexpectedly arrived at the 
 country house, preceded by an attorney 
 and a sherifi"s officer.f These parties 
 having gained admittance, Colonel Leigh 
 drove up to the door in a travelling car- 
 riage. His old coachman was on the box, 
 
 * Her supposed father, and the husband of Mrs. Leigh, 
 t Miss Leigh, in her ignorance of the world, appears to 
 
 have mistaken a doctor, or a keeper from a private hmatic 
 
 asylum, for a sheriff's officer. 
 
A HISTORY AND AX AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 127 
 
 and a woman, intended to represent a lady's- 
 maid, sat inside. AMuit ensued was great 
 misery to me, I then Lclieved, though 1 
 had been told the contrary by my sister and 
 her hushandj that Colonel Leigh was my 
 fatlier. I wished to spare him the knowledge 
 of my shame, ^^'e were never, any of us, 
 taught to love and honour him. But, strange 
 to say, I was his favourite child, and had 
 greater influence over him than any one 
 when he was violent, and would have done 
 anything to hide his faults or spare his 
 feelings. I was allowed to have ten minutes' 
 private conversation alone with Henry, 
 during which he exacted a promise from 
 me that I would escape as soon as possible 
 from my mother, and run away with him. 
 Colonel Leigh proposed to take me home 
 with him, and sent me to my room to pre- 
 pare for my journey while the carriage 
 waited. I found Georgiana in my room, 
 apparently in great distress of mind. She 
 begged forgiveness of me if she had done me 
 any wrong, assured me that she would imme- 
 diately procure a divorce, and that then I 
 
128 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 could marry Henry if disposed to do so. 
 Colonel Leigh showed much emotion, as did 
 every one present ; but all his grief seemed 
 dispelled at the first turnpike, in his eagerness 
 to pass crooked farthings,^ 
 
 "At 12 o'clock at night we arrived in 
 London, and stopped somewhere in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Oxford Street, where Colonel 
 Leigh dismissed his own carriage, called a 
 hackney-coach from the stand, and made me 
 enter it along with him. "We were driven 
 I know not whither, until we arrived at a 
 house where I was given into the charge of 
 a lady. The windows of the room into 
 which I was put were securely nailed and 
 fastened down, and there were outside 
 chains and bolts, and other fastenings to 
 the door. There was every show and 
 ostentation of a prison. During my con- 
 finement in this place, Colonel Leigh came 
 to see me three times, when I declined to 
 see him any more. My mother came once. 
 Some religious books were sent to me by 
 
 * The meaning of this phrase, if it have any, is difficult to 
 explain.— Editoe. 
 
A HISTORY AND AX AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 120 
 
 one of my aunts, I forget wliicli. After a 
 fortnight, wlien one day, looking into the 
 street from the closed window, I recognised 
 Trevanion driving ' by with Georgiana, he 
 saw me ; and afterwards, for another fort- 
 night, continued to drive by almost every 
 day. Notes were sew^ed in my linen when 
 it came from the wash, I did not know by 
 whom, but I suspected by my sister. By 
 this means I was enabled to understand the 
 signs he made to me when he drove past the 
 house. One day the lady to whose care I 
 had been entrusted told me that if I liked 
 to walk out of the house nobody would 
 stop me, and showed me how to remove the 
 chains affixed to the door. I did not hesi- 
 tate in any choice between two evils, but at 
 once put on my bonnet, followed her in- 
 structions, and found Trevanion outside 
 waiting to receive me. We left the street 
 with all possible haste and secrecy, which 
 we might have spared ourselves, as nobody 
 attempted to follow us. 
 
 '* We made our way to the Continent, and 
 for two years after this time lived together 
 
 K 
 
130 MEDORA LEIGH ; 
 
 as man and wife on the coast of Normandy, 
 under the assumed name of Monsieur and 
 Madame Aubin. My sister applied for the 
 divorce as promised, but Trevanion informed 
 me some time after that it could not be ob- 
 tained. An active correspondence of some 
 kind was kept up between him and his wife, 
 perhaps about the divorce, and the Earl of 
 Chichester wrote to him several times, urging 
 his separation from me ; and though I never 
 read their letters, I was told by Trevanion 
 what they were about, and that he and Lord 
 Chichester could not agree. At last, how- 
 ever, as my health grew more and more deli- 
 cate every day, and as Trevanion began to lose 
 hope that I should ever bear a living child, 
 he agreed to my wish that we should sepa- 
 rate. I wrote to my mother informing her 
 of my earnest desire and intention to enter 
 as a boarder in a convent in Lower Brittany. 
 The letter remained unanswered for a con- 
 siderable time ; but after much delay and 
 difficulty, I left Trevanion and entered a 
 convent, my mother engaging to allow me 
 £60 a year. But I was again likely to be- 
 
A HISTORY AND AX AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 131 
 
 come a mother. And now my greatest, hope 
 was that 1 might in some way be able to 
 conceal the dehcate state of my health, which 
 forbad the hope that the child would live. 
 Other circumstances combined with this to 
 make me leave the convent, which I did 
 with the permission of the abbess, wlio also 
 allowed me to have my letters addressed there 
 as usual. 1 had the hope of entering another 
 convent, at a later time when I should have 
 no reason to leave it, and I did not feel that I 
 was doing wrong. Trev anion was not under 
 the same roof with me, and from the time I 
 entered the convent I never was but as a 
 sister to him. After eight months I gave 
 birth to my little girl (who still lives), to 
 H.'s (Trevanion's) great joy. At that time 
 an uncle of H.'s undertook to come and see 
 him ; and he, discovering that I was no 
 longer in a convent, wrote to my mother. 
 We (Trevanion and I) continued to live on, 
 in an old chateau^ in a secret and unfre- 
 quented spot, in great poverty, but as 
 brother and sister. Henry at this time gave 
 himself up wholly to religioi\ and shooting ; 
 
132 MEDORA LEIGH ; 
 
 I to my child. We never met alone, and 
 seldom met at all. Sixteen months after- 
 wards poverty forced H. to go to England, 
 and after an absence of six weeks he re- 
 turned with money. Then I saw remains 
 of what I had thought wholly extinguished 
 — his passionate attachment to me. But I | 
 was no longer a child — I was twenty-one ; 
 and two years' experience had enabled me to 
 know how to resist. I pass over three years 
 of misery ; but I am willing to give every 
 detail of what I was made to suffer, though 
 I do not think it is absolutely necessary to 
 do so. In the spring of 1838, the hardships 
 I had endured caused me to fall dangerously 
 ill; and after some days my life, contrary 
 to all expectation, was saved, though I was 
 declared to be in a consumption, without 
 hope of living beyond a few months. The 
 medical man who attended me was very 
 kind, and the little experience of kindness 
 which I had had during my lifetime, made 
 me, at his solicitation, confide to him my real 
 history. I asked his aid to free me from 
 the cruelty of one whom I had never really 
 
A HISTORY AND AX AUTOmOGnAPIIY. 133 
 
 loved, and who by his conduct every day 
 convinced me more and more of his worth- 
 lessness. ^ly greatest wish was to die away 
 from him. Through ^Ir. C.'s means * I wrote 
 to my mother, and my aunt, Lady Chichester, 
 informing them of my position, and imploring 
 the means to free myself. I obtained £5, 
 left Trevanion's roof, and went to the neigh- 
 bouring town, where I continued to receive 
 most atlectionate letters from my mother, but 
 very little money. I endeavoured to per- 
 suade her to allow me regularly £120 per 
 annum — the smallest sum I could live on in 
 a vjery cheap place. She promised, but did 
 not perform ; so that after a year and a half 
 I found I should be compelled, as I was 
 advised to do, to sell the reversion to £3000 
 which I had, with some difficulty, obtained 
 as a provision for my child, after my death, 
 if I did not wish to be forced to return 
 to Mr. Trevanion. During: some months 
 the correspondence between myself and my 
 mother continued as affectionate as ever, I 
 
 * The medical gentleman alluded to, whose name is not 
 fully given by Miss Leigh. 
 
134 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 endeavouring all the while to obtain from 
 her the means of existence, and she retaining 
 the Deed. At length I wrote to my aunt, 
 Lady Chichester, who had sent me the £5, 
 begging her influence to obtain the Deed for 
 me, and to Sir George Stephen, to whom I 
 had applied to sell the reversion, stating that 
 I was sure my aunt. Lady Noel Byron, would 
 use any influence she might possess with my 
 mother, to induce her to give up to me that 
 which was my right. Some months pre- 
 viously, on m}^ having implored interference 
 from England to save me from Mr. Tre- 
 vanion's tyranny and persecution. Sir E. 
 Horton proposed to me that he (Trevanion) 
 should be thrown into prison for a debt 
 wdiich he had contracted to Lady Noel 
 Byron, at the time of his marriage, and 
 which sum alone had enabled the marriage 
 to take place. I was well aware that it was 
 understood that this sum was never to be 
 repaid. Sir R. Horton assured me of Lady 
 Byron's consent to such a measure. I 
 openly expressed my opinion of such a dis- 
 honourable transaction. I rejected such 
 
A HISTORY AND AN AUTOUIOORAPIIY. 135 
 
 interference, and even informed Mr. Tre- 
 vanion of wliat had been proposed to me, 
 in order that he raight guard against what 
 was neither lionourable nor just. On Sir 
 George Stephen forwarding my letter to 
 Lady Byron, I received a most kind and 
 affectionate letter from Lady Byron, and 
 money, with offers of protection for myself 
 and child, and the power of quitting a 
 neighbourhood which was most painful to 
 me. This was in August, 1840. I willingly 
 and joyfully accepted these offers, and accom- 
 panied a medical gentleman whom Lady 
 Byron had sent, and met her at Tours, 
 where it was first thought I should reside. 
 Lady Byron, however, proposed that I 
 should accompany her to Paris, and re- 
 main with her for a time. I did so, being 
 desirous of attendin"* to the least wishes of 
 one towards whom I had reason to feel so 
 grateful. 
 
 " At Fontainebleau, where she was detained 
 by illness, Lady Byron informed me of the 
 cause of the deep interest she felt, and must 
 i'ver feel, for me. Her husband had been 
 
136 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 my father. She implored and sought my 
 affection by every means ; and almost exacted 
 my confidence to the most unlimited extent. 
 I was willing and anxious, in any and every 
 way I could, to prove both my gratitude and 
 the desire I so sincerely felt to repay by my 
 affection and devotion any pain she must 
 have felt for circumstances connected witk 
 my birth and her separation from Lord 
 Byron. Her only wish, she said, was to 
 provide for me, according to Lord Byron's 
 intentions respecting me, and according to 
 my rank in life. She evinced much anxiety 
 for my health and comfort, expressed indig- 
 nation for all I had suffered, spoke of the 
 comfort I would be to her, and of the neces- 
 sity that I should be a devoted child to her. 
 There was a Chancery suit begun against my 
 mother, to obtain possession of the Deed. 
 All these circumstances decided me on stay- 
 ing with Lady Byron till that should be 
 settled. I received money from her in small 
 sums and presents, but nothing was definitely 
 settled. We continued nine or ten months 
 in Paris. At the latter period of this time, 
 
A HISTORY AND AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 137 
 
 Ada and Lord Lovelace came over, and I re- 
 ceived kindness and promises from both, and 
 was made to feel that I was to be Ada's 
 sister in all thini^s, as I Avas really. In 
 May, 1S41, I accompanied Lady Byron to 
 England, and remained for a few months, 
 during which she showed me letters of Lord 
 Byron, relating to her separation, which, as 
 she afterwards said, might be useful in the 
 Chancery suit. Mistreatment of an illness 
 rendered me too ill to quit England that 
 autumn without great difficulty and expense, 
 which I was always anxious to avoid. All 
 this rendered me the more desirous to comply 
 with Lady Byron's earnest wish that I should 
 not leave her, which, she used to say, would 
 cost her her life. Even after my experience 
 I could not believe (though her temper 
 caused me great misery, and her strange 
 arrangements were often most painful) 
 tliat all her aftection was assumed. In 
 May, 1842, my long anxiety in the matter 
 of the Chancery suit was ended. The suit 
 was concluded in a way, without consultation 
 with me, that showed me that all that had 
 
138 MEDORA LEIGH ; 
 
 been promised me, unsolicited and unsought, 
 was not sincere, and that I had been in a 
 manner sacrificed in my mother's interest. I 
 openly expressed to Lady Byron all I felt, 
 and my determination of leaving England 
 immediately, and solicited from her (Lady 
 Byron) the means to do so. She again con- 
 tinued, as ever, saying that it v^as for her to 
 provide as Lord Byron would have done, 
 &c., &c. But on finding that the impressions 
 I had received were not to be done away with, 
 she spoke of the necessity of my having a 
 lady to live with me abroad. This I rejected, 
 because I knew of no one whose constant 
 society I could wish for, and I had never 
 given her in any way to believe that I 
 could submit to such. Matters continued 
 unsettled, and my increasing ill-health 
 made me desirous of immediately quit- 
 ting England, and going to the South of 
 France, where I had long been ordered (by 
 medical advice) to go. In July, 1842, there 
 began a correspondence, talking of conditions, 
 that I had never heard of till then, informing 
 me that Lady Byron would allow me £150 
 
A niSTORY AND AX AUTOniOGRAPIIY. 139 
 
 per annum for my niiiintenanco, Ijcsidcs 
 paying the wages of a lady's-maid that 
 she and Lady Lovehice had engaged for 
 me some montlis before, and who had never 
 lived but in the richest families. On 
 being engaged for my service, she men- 
 tioned lier particular desire of being with 
 a lady whose conduct had ever been ir- 
 reproachable. This appeared so strong a 
 wish on her part, and was so often expressed, 
 that after a short time I told her what she 
 could not but have suspected, from all she 
 was a witness of, that she had better avail 
 -herself of the opportunity of quitting me, as 
 my life and past history were not such as 
 she would wish. She thanked me, refused 
 to quit me, and assured me of her devotion 
 under all circumstances. I informed Lady 
 Byron of my belief that it would be impos- 
 sible for me to live where she proposed, at 
 Hycres, for £150 per annum ; that I would 
 endeavour to do so, but that I would not, as 
 in the past, suffer poverty and privation ; and 
 that whatever sum in addition (to the £150) 
 should be necessary for my health and Marie's 
 
140 
 
 education, I should endeavour to procure in 
 some other way. To this she answered, 
 * How can you imagine I will ever let you 
 want either T She assured me of her affec- 
 tion by words, and of her unmerited and 
 unjust mistrust — by her actions, and by every 
 arrangement she made for me, which seemed 
 to me most ingeniously painful — such as 
 exacting that my money should be paid 
 to the maid, and that she should expect 
 to receive from her an account of the way 
 in which the money was spent. This it 
 was agreed my servant should do. Lady 
 Byron sent me £40 to travel to Hyeres 
 with, recommending me to travel in the most 
 comfortable way, &c. I was anxious not to 
 judge hastily, but trusted that when Lady 
 Byron's health improved (she was ill), she 
 would be more just and reasonable. I also 
 was ill, and asked Lady Byron, as my maid- 
 servant suggested I should do, that I should 
 have a man-servant to travel with me. Lady 
 Byron consented, and my maid's husband^ 
 being out of place, was fixed upon. After 
 consultation with Ada and Lord Lovelace, it 
 
A HISTORY AND AX ArTOBIOGRAPHY. 141 
 
 was thought best I should leave, and Ada 
 promised, and I thought I miglit trust to 
 such, to watch over and protect me, assuring 
 me her mother was deeply attached to me. 
 I trusted to tliis, and left Enghmd on Friday 
 evening, the 22nd of July, 1842. And partly 
 in order to prove to Lady Byron my earnest 
 wish to please her still, and on my maid's 
 solicitation on account of their importance, in 
 the event of my death, I left a box of letters 
 and papers with Lady Noel Byron's house- 
 keeper, to be given to Lady Byron on her 
 return to Moore Place ; and the Deed of Ap- 
 pointment to Ada on her leaving me at G 
 o'clock that evening, to be deposited with 
 Lord Lovelace's papers at Ockham. The 
 Deed I had kept till then in my own posses- 
 sion, and intended doing so, fearing to let it 
 again escape me.* The letters and papers are 
 all most important to me. Lady Byron had 
 asked me to, and by my promise made me, 
 leave them to her by my will. And when 
 
 • It would appear from this, tlioucrh Miss Leigh omitkd tc 
 mention tlie fact in its proper phico in her narrative, that by 
 means of the Chancery suit she had recovered the Deed from 
 her mother. — Ed. 
 
142 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 she begged me, only a few days previously, 
 never to mistrust her affection, I thought 
 this would convince her (that I did not do 
 so). When she never acknowledged their 
 receipt in any letter, I was still far from 
 suspecting she would do what she is now 
 doing — making her lawyer give evasive 
 answers, and denying me what I entrusted 
 with confidence to her honour." 
 
 [The concluding portion of Miss Leigh's 
 narrative is not in her own handwriting, 
 and appears to have been written to her 
 dictation. It is by no means so clear, so 
 consecutive, or so grammatical as the pre- 
 ceding parts of the story — facts which are 
 possibly to be accounted for by Miss Leigh's 
 ill-health, and the inattention, or inexperience 
 in composition, of her amanuensis.] 
 
 " Though I travelled as expeditiously as 
 my health allowed — and much more so — on 
 arriving at Lyons, there was not money 
 enough to pay the boat, &c. ; and from the 
 arrangements, much difficulty in obtaining 
 the £87 from the bankers there. After 
 three days vv^e proceeded on our journey. 
 
A HISTORY AND AX AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 14:] 
 
 but on arriving at Hyeres we were again 
 without (money). I wrote, and my maid 
 also Avrote, as she had been requested to do, 
 in case of increased illness ; and Lady Byron 
 was informed of my indisposition most fully, 
 and of all expenses and probabilities of such. 
 She approved, and continued her terms of 
 aftection as ever ; engaged to neglect no 
 expense for my health ; wished me to get 
 masters for ^larie's education ; to hire car- 
 riages, (Src, for my driving out, and said she 
 would send me books from England. I in- 
 sisted most minutely on expense,* and en- 
 deavoured most earnestly to avoid all. And 
 when Lady Byron suggested my moving 
 elsewhere to a cheaper place, I adopted all I 
 was capable of — that of approaching Toulon. 
 To concur in all her wishes, a country-house 
 about three-quarters of a league from Toulon 
 was hired. I wrote, as well as my man-servant 
 — sending the accounts monthly, with every 
 detail. She (Lady Byron) approved of all ; but 
 in November wrote concerning the rent of the 
 
 • Thus in the original ; but evidently from the context 
 meaning, "on not incurring eipense." — Ed. 
 
144 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 house, of which I told my man-servant, who 
 was responsible, and whom Lady Byron 
 wished to stay with me till further notice. He 
 got certificates as to the rent being far from 
 unreasonable, from the mayor of Hyeres, and 
 from an English gentleman residing near. 
 These satisfied Lady Byron, or seemed to do 
 so, and though she always said he (the man- 
 servant) was to go, her non-payment of what 
 she had agreed to give him prevented his 
 doing so. She received the monthly ex- 
 penses (accounts) from him ; and, though I 
 neither complied with all her wishes that I 
 should incur expense, and deprived myself 
 and child of all I possibly could, it was 
 not possible that tliey should not exceed 
 £150 a year. She expressed no dis- 
 satisfaction. We were always without 
 money, from all being spent, and much 
 owing, before any more arrived. But all 
 this she was well aware of, through her own 
 arrangements, of knowing how the money 
 was spent, and all I was in want of. In 
 December she expressed dissatisfaction, and 
 accused me of rendering all the money 
 
A HISTORY AXD AX AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 145 
 
 arrangements as vexatious as possible to her, 
 as may be seen in her correspondence. She 
 exacted receipts from me of all the sums 
 that had been paid, saying, I had received 
 them in the name of my maid. I wrote 
 briefly back, regretting only that she could 
 say or think what was so far from being 
 true." 
 
 [At this point the narrative becomes so 
 confused as to be all but unintelligible ; but 
 it is reprinted verbatim et literatim^ in order 
 that possible injustice may not be done by any 
 attempt to put it into a shape that might be 
 erroneous.] 
 
 " The bankers who paid the money informed 
 them it was paid by Lady IN'oel Byron's 
 orders — her own arrancfements having: been 
 what she accused me of; and refused, till I 
 heard further, giving the signature required. 
 From her answer — in which she informed me 
 of the necessity of having that signature to 
 answer the malicious interpretation her con- 
 duct, from peculiar circumstances, might be 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 guilty of towards me, and which my signa- 
 ture alone could answer — and also finding 
 she would send more to answer the 600 
 francs due for the rent she had long 
 been aware must be paid by the 20th of 
 December ; and, being without any, I gave 
 the signature of my maid's having faith- 
 fully paid me the several sums, and at 
 the same time asked for £20, necessary for 
 an arrangement for my little girl's educa- 
 tion. She sent the money necessary for the 
 rent, which my man-servant had paid from 
 what she had sent a few days previously to 
 pay him. I never saw the letters that passed 
 from her to him, and having had no control 
 whatever over the money paid for my main- 
 tenance, neither ever having clearly under- 
 stood its application, cannot explain it. But 
 when I received Lady Byron's answer to me 
 — she should pay him no further after the 
 1st of January — I told him so. He laughed, 
 and said by her letters to him, she must 
 write so to him, and assured me of his devo- 
 tion, &c., to me, and his intention of sooner 
 than leaving me and his wife in the posi- 
 
A HISTORY AND AX AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 1 17 
 
 tion Lady Byron placed us, to stay for 
 nothing. I could say nothing. Lady Byron 
 returned no answer to the £;20 I had asked, 
 but sent expressions of affection, &c., whicli 
 I could neither trust nor value. My maid 
 and her husband urged me, and recommended 
 me most strongly, by every means in their 
 power, to profit by the money he had re- 
 ceived, and go to Paris while yet I was able, 
 and there endeavour to obtain a more cer- 
 tain and suitable arrangement. After re- 
 flection, I agreed to do so. They protested 
 much devotion — promised me much — and, 
 insupportable as was my position, I caught 
 at the straw thus offered me, and was very 
 grateful for it. In March, 1843, I went to 
 Paris, of which I informed Lady Byron as 
 briefly as possible, and consulted M. Berryer, 
 who promised to write and use his influence, 
 which he did not doubt would succeed. 
 Finding that he delaj^ed, I wrote to Lady 
 Byron, and explained why I came to PiU'is. 
 To this I received no answer, but a visit from 
 Miss DavisoD, to tell me I must beg Lady 
 Byron's pardon, and assure me of her affec- 
 
148 MEDORA LEIGH ; 
 
 tion.* I waited an answer to my letter. My 
 servants wrote ; Mons. Berry er waited; and 
 thus things continued till the beginning of 
 May. Lady Byron in the meantime wrote to 
 my servants, accusing them of having for- 
 warded my going to Paris, which they denied ; 
 and also accusing my maid of not having ful- 
 filled the office of spy, which she had under- 
 taken to fill. This my maid denied, and also 
 refused to quit me in such a position, as ex- 
 acted by Lady Byron. Lady Byron also wrote 
 to the master of the hotel, accusing me of 
 what I had never done — of using her credit ; 
 and telling him all she could of the past his- 
 tory of my life that could be unfavourable and 
 painful. My servants obtained money, once 
 or twice, from a friend of Lady Byron, Miss 
 Doyle, then in Paris ; and at length we were 
 able to get lodgings. Early in May my 
 maid came and told me, one Sunday after- 
 noon, that Dr. King had come from Lady 
 Byron and had asked for Miss Leigh. I 
 
 * It seems as if the pronouns were misplaced in this 
 passage, and that it should read, "and assure her of my 
 affection." — Ed. 
 
 m 
 
A HISTORY AXD AX AUTOBIOGRAPnY. 149 
 
 refused to see him, and told liim to commu- 
 nicate with Mons. Eerrycr, who at last — 
 but only two or three days previously — had 
 written to Lady Byrou. He waited some 
 time, and sent me in an accusation ;* and a 
 proposal from Lady Byron that I should re- 
 sign to her all control over myself and 
 child. This I instantly refused, and told 
 him, through my maid and Mons. Berryer, 
 that he might leave Paris within the forty- 
 eight hours, as he threatened to do, for I 
 should never sign. On the AVednesday he 
 sent a humble supplicating letter, asking to 
 see me. To comply with Mons. Berryer's 
 wish, I did so. He showed letters, &c., on 
 which, and after some days' calculation and 
 divers propositions, he offered me £300 a 
 year. To Mons. Berryer he promised what 
 Mons. Berryer desired [here the MS. again 
 becomes confused], and was absolutely neces- 
 sary for me to live on this sum, circum- 
 stanced as I was in Paris. What I already 
 knew of Dr. King and my seeing him 
 agreed. He was a great friend with my 
 
 * Thus in the oriirinal. 
 
150 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 servants, whom he, when not present, blamed. 
 The mission he had undertaken, together 
 with his mode of fulfilling it, gave me no 
 confidence. When he refused, I included 
 what I knew could not be dispensed with, 
 and that he had agreed to ; and attempted 
 by intimidation to make me sign what I 
 knew would not be fulfilled, and would there- 
 fore give rise to new complications which I 
 was anxious to avoid, T refused to sign. I 
 submitted to all the abuse he was pleased to 
 bestow — though it contributed all the more to 
 make me refuse — when he said, ' Sign, sign, 
 you great fool !' He left Paris the next morn- 
 ing; and on my writing to Messrs. Wharton to 
 forward the Deed to Paris, to Mons. Berryer, 
 they refused unless I would send a person 
 to them to receive it ; informing me at the 
 same time that, had I signed, the conditions 
 would not have been fulfilled ; the same to 
 Mons. Berryer, informing him that I had 
 contracted the Deed on certain conditions. 
 Lady Byron wrote to my maid informing 
 her of her illness. My maid decided on 
 going to England to get paid for her 
 
A HISTORY AND AN AUTOBTOGRA PlIV. 151 
 
 Imsbaud, and told me of ^[ons. Berry er's 
 advice that she should receive the Deed, 
 for I could not go myself, not being well 
 enough. I hesitated, but gave her the au- 
 thority which was necessary — having little 
 clioice — an order authorising her to receive 
 the box of papers I was anxious for. I en- 
 trusted her with a letter to my mother, whom 
 she much urged me to address. I also gave 
 her tlie name and direction of my family in 
 case she should be in difficulties in England ; 
 and it was agreed she should go first and 
 consult Lady Mahon, whom she had been 
 formerly recommended to. She obtained £5 
 for her journey from Miss Davison, and set 
 ofi". The letters which she wrote to me and 
 her husband showed that she was not actincr 
 as had been agreed upon. I went with 
 her letter to Mons. Berry er, who recom- 
 mended my going to Mr. Bulwer, of the 
 British Embassy, wlio instantly said it was 
 of the greatest importance to prevent her 
 getting possession of the Deed. I acted ac- 
 cording to his instructions, and awaited the 
 result of an interview he was to have with 
 
152 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 Mons. Berrjer, who, lie said, had not suf- 
 ficiently considered the case. He recom- 
 mended that I should conciHate Lady 
 Byron ; but, above all, he distrusted my 
 servants. They behaved most insolently, 
 and every day my misery increased. 
 
 Captain De B came to Paris and called 
 
 upon me. He agreed with Mons. Berryer 
 that I ought to go to England and con- 
 ciliate Lady Byron, if it were possible. 
 He refused to listen to the details of my 
 past life, or even to look at letters relating 
 to my present. He had only known me in 
 the South of France as Madame Aubin, and 
 I had a grateful recollection of the kindness 
 I had received from him as such, listened 
 with confidence to the advice he gave me, 
 acted in accordance with it, and by his 
 means was enabled to come to England. I 
 am still indebted to him for that and for my 
 subsistence since my arrival. I have seen 
 my maid since, whose behaviour in all 
 things made me mistrust her more and 
 more; and though I endeavoured to keep 
 friends with her, as Captain De B re- 
 
A HISTORY AXD AX AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 153 
 
 commended, it was impossible to submit 
 to the untrue accusations she made. My 
 patience got exhausted one evening, since 
 wlien I have heard no more of lier, nor her 
 charges of ingratitude. To these I can only 
 say, for what' am I to be grateful, either 
 to Lady B3'ron, my mother, my sister, Mr. 
 Trevanion, and, indeed, all who charge me 
 with it ? Kindness I feel ; but I do not 
 fear having to answer this charge (of ingra- 
 titude) from Him who will demand an 
 account of all. 
 
 *' Since I have been in London Sir Geor^re 
 Stephen has called. I have received anony- 
 mous letters, and Lord Chichester has 
 written twice requesting me not to reject 
 Lady Byron's kindness, liberality, and gene- 
 rosity, of all of which I am ignorant after 
 
 the past, and Captain B 's interview 
 
 with Mr. Wharton.* 
 
 " This is a brief sketch of a long life of 
 misery and sorrow. Whatever is not clear 
 or too brief I can explain. I have done my 
 
 * The nature of this interview and its results, if any, are 
 not stated by Miss Leigh. 
 
154 MEDORA LEIGH ; 
 
 best to make it clear, particularly in all that 
 relates to Lady Byron, whom, if I could, I 
 would still believe kind in her intentions, 
 though far from kind in her actions. Now, 
 I cannot, though I would, say otherwise 
 than that she has cruelly deceived me, and 
 is as guilt j^ in thus oppressing and driving 
 me to the utmost extremity as the mother, 
 who has only made me the instrument to 
 serve her avarice and the sacrifice to be 
 made to those she feared. 
 
 "(Signed) Elizabeth Medora." 
 
 In addition to this minute and painful 
 narrative, that bears upon it the impress of 
 truthfulness, as far as the belief and con- 
 viction of the writer are concerned — though 
 coloured perhaps by her passion, her pre- 
 judices, or even her ignorance, or it might 
 even be said, her innocence of the world and 
 the world's ways, though she was by no 
 means innocent of evil, and does not repre- 
 sent herself as being so — Miss Leigh wrote 
 in a shorter form an epitome of the events 
 of her unhappy life, which was forwarded 
 
Ij A HISTORY AND AX AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 155 
 
 by licr to the Duke of Leeds, who, like lier- 
 self, was a descendant of the Baroness Con- 
 yers, and to whom she had applied, as she 
 did to many other rehitives, for advice and 
 assistance. The copy of this letter was en- 
 closed to Mr. S , by Captain De 13 , 
 
 in the following note, undated, but bearing 
 the postmark of August 24th, 1843 :— 
 
 " Dear S , — Enclosed I send you 
 
 a copy of what Miss Leigh yesterday wrote 
 in answer to an enclosure of £10 from 
 the Duke of Leeds. He is the only one 
 who has answered. I have been somewhat 
 occupied, or I would have called. 
 
 " Miss Leigh has been unwell, 1 presume 
 from over-anxiety. Should anything trans- 
 pire I will write or send to you. 
 " Very truly yours, 
 
 '' J. De B." 
 
 " P.S. It is entirely her own composi- 
 tion. / did not like it." 
 
156 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 " 8, Churcli Row, Old St. Pancras, 
 
 "August 23,1843." 
 
 " Your Gtrace, — I beg most gratefully 
 to acknowledge the receipt of tlie £10 
 you sent for the relief of my distress ; and, 
 though fearing, from the briefness of its en- 
 closure, to be deemed presuming or intrusive, 
 the hard pressure of misery drives me to 
 do that for which I solicited your Grace's 
 permission. 
 
 " Ruined at the age of fifteen, by the un- 
 principled man to whom I was exposed by 
 those whose duty it was to watch over and 
 protect me (and from whom I alone freed 
 myself three years since), I unexpectedly 
 found kindness and protection for myself 
 and child, from one whose subsequent con- 
 duct proves how deeply I was deceived in 
 trusting to her as I did, gratefully and sin- 
 cerely, and in giving what she sought — all I 
 had to give — unbounded confidence ; after 
 giving more than I had long hoped to re- 
 ceive from those near to me — affection, and 
 trying to waken in me, what I never pos- 
 sessed, a taste for the delicacies, &c., my 
 
A HISTORY AND AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 157 
 
 broken licaltli required, and wbieh money 
 alone can procure, and teacliing me all I 
 had yet to learn of the infamy of the 
 mother, once so dearly loved, that I owed 
 my bii'th to incest and adultery ; to impress 
 on me the claims I had (which I did not 
 seek) to be enabled to live according to the 
 rank in life to which I was born, I found 
 myself placed by her in a position not to be 
 endured, dependent on servants over whom 
 I had no control, unable to have what was 
 necessary for my health, and refused what 
 my child's education required ; and, in the 
 endeavours I have made to save myself from 
 such, have found destitution. 
 
 '' Though Mons. Berry er. Captain De 
 
 B , and Mr. S , who have kindly 
 
 endeavoured to help me — the first by ad- 
 dressing Lady Byron on my behalf, the 
 others in becoming the channels of commu- 
 nication denied directly to me — have been 
 met by distrust, almost by disdain ; three 
 times have I, as I was wished, sought, 
 humbly asked pardon, if I had displeased or 
 pained by the step I liad taken, to alter the 
 
158 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 position in whicli I had been 'placed. She who 
 had shown me kindness, who had called me 
 * her other child,' and begged me, when in 
 every other point she might err, ' never to 
 mistrust her affection, which could not 
 change/ has now unhesitatingly accused me 
 of what has been proved untrue, and detained, 
 and still detains, on false pretensions, what I 
 entrusted to her care, and seeks, dares, and 
 drives me to what I now do, to ask aid and 
 protection from all. The only resource for 
 existence I have is a Deed of Appointment 
 for £3000, payable at the death of Lady 
 Byron and my mother, the sole provision 
 made for me out of the large property she 
 received from my father — and her brother — 
 Lord Byron. For nearly three months I 
 have been indebted for the existence of 
 myself and child to the kindness of those 
 on whom I have no claim but pity, but who 
 know me as I am, and not as those who 
 have cast me on the world without home or 
 protection would have me. 
 
 " The distance at which your Grace is, 
 renders it difficult to do as I should be 
 
A HISTORY AND AX AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 159 
 
 anxious, to give all and every proof of the 
 truth of what I advance, and which is known 
 to those alike respected and respectahle. I 
 must heg your Grace's indulgence to what I 
 now write, as I am suffering from the effects 
 of over-exertion, not to deny me the pro- 
 tection I so much need. I could say much 
 more, but almost a stranger as I am to your 
 Grace, I can only beg you to consider my 
 desolate and destitute, position and its 
 causes, and subscribe myself most gratefully 
 
 " Your Grace's 
 
 " Obedient humble servant, 
 
 "E. M. Leigh. 
 
 " His Grace the Duke of Leeds, 
 
 " Mar Lodge, Braemar, X.B." 
 
 Before writing this letter to the Duke of 
 Leeds, and making application to various 
 other relatives, Miss Leigh had made efforts 
 to communicate with or see her mother. 
 
 In a note from Captain De B to Mr. 
 
 S , dated the 15th of August, the 
 
 former states : " Miss Leigh has not received 
 any answer to any of her notes forwarded 
 
160 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 on Saturday. She called on her mother, but 
 was refused. ' Not at home !' Miss Leigh 
 has a wish to forward the enclosed (three 
 letters) ; perhaps you may be able to put 
 the addresses upon them. Should anything 
 transpire, I will lose no time in letting you 
 know. If you should not approve of the 
 letter to Mrs. Leigh, retain it." 
 
 A memorandum on the back of Captain 
 
 De B 's note, dated August 16, shows 
 
 that its receipt was acknowledged in the 
 following terms next day : — 
 
 " I received your note with Miss Leigh's 
 
 three enclosures. We (Mr. S and his 
 
 partner) think that to Mrs. Leigh is very 
 proper and natural under the circumstances ; 
 but is it not somewhat premature ? A day 
 or two may make an important change, and 
 we think a short time may yet be given for 
 answers to the letters already sent. We 
 retain them till we see or hear from you.'' 
 
 Two of the letters were addressed to Miss 
 Leigh'§ cousins, the Hon. D'Arcy Osborne, 
 and the Hon. W. Osborne, and were as 
 follow : — 
 
A HISTORY AXD AN AUTOBIOORA PII V. Kil 
 
 " 8, Church Row, St. Pancras, 
 " August 14, 1843. 
 
 " When I was a happy child, you used to 
 be kind and good-natured to nie. Now that 
 I am in suffering and misery, will you refuse 
 me what I am compelled to ask of all wlio 
 will give it me — aid and protection ? I am 
 sure you will not, if you will let me tell you 
 why I am so. " Your cousin, 
 
 " Elizabeth Medora Leigh." 
 
 " To the Hon. Wm. Osborne." 
 
 *' 8, Church Row, St. Pancras, 
 " August 14, 1843. 
 
 " I have thought that, though so many 
 long years have gone by since we met, you 
 will not have forgotten, or refuse to be- 
 friend, one you were once fond of ; — destitute, 
 alone in the world, forced to seek aid and 
 j^rotection from all who give it. I do not 
 think you will refuse to listen and hear why 
 I am so, and then accord me the help and 
 assistance that are in your power. If I am 
 mistaken in so thinking, forgive this appli- 
 cation from " Your cousin, 
 
 " Elizabeth Mehora Leigh." 
 
 M 
 
162 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 The third letter, the one to Mrs. Leigh, 
 is the most painful of all the documents in 
 this unhappy case, and must have been 
 written under deep feelings of irritation, 
 caused bv her mother's refusal to see her or 
 admit her into her house. It is of such a 
 nature, that, after mature deliberation, we 
 have deemed it both expedient and proper to 
 exclude it from these pages. 
 
 Whether Mrs. Leigh were innocent of 
 the charge against her — which we believe 
 and shall attempt to prove hereafter — or 
 guilty, of which there is no evidence, it was 
 not likely that a letter sucli as this was, 
 haughty, unfilial, and cruel, could have any 
 effect in softening her heart towards her 
 daughter. That it was actually sent to her 
 
 appears from a letter of Captain De B 
 
 to Mr. S , dated more than five weeks 
 
 afterwards : — 
 
 « September 20, 1843. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — Miss Leigh has not received 
 any answer to her letter to her mother, and 
 she now wishes to know if she shall make 
 
A HISTORY AND AX AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 1G3 
 
 application to Sir F. Eowe, fur a private 
 interview. I have told her that I had not 
 the least objection to accompany her, but 
 that, unless asked for by Sir Frederick, I 
 had no wish for my name going abroad. 
 
 " She seems to say that both you and me 
 (sic) promised to go with her to Sir Frederick. 
 Is it your idea of the case ? If so, pray let 
 me know. Her hopes to answers, as she ex- 
 pected, have turned out, as I said, blanks. 
 
 " I shall expect a few lines from you to- 
 morrow morning. I would have called ; but, 
 to prevent misunderstanding, I would rather 
 have your answer to this ; as she seems to 
 think you and me were to be present at the 
 interview with Sir Frederick. 
 " I remain, 
 
 ''' Yours most truly, 
 
 " J. De B ." 
 
 An additional letter from Miss Leigh to 
 
 Captain De B 's agent will complete the 
 
 correspondence. It would appear from 
 
 Captain De B 's previous communication, 
 
 that it was in contemplation to ask the aid 
 
164 
 
 of a police magistrate, with what distinct 
 object it is now impossible to ascertain, 
 though it may not unreasonably be suspected 
 that it had reference to the missing box of 
 family papers : — 
 
 " My DEATi Sir, — I called on Mr. S 
 
 on Friday morning, being anxious that my 
 affairs should terminate ; and he begged that 
 I should write and ask you to name the 
 time when it would be convenient for me to 
 see and confer with you as to the steps to be 
 taken, which I would do at your office. 
 
 " I am, my dear Sir, 
 
 " Yours very sincerely, 
 
 "Elizabeth Medoua Leigh. 
 
 " Thursday, October, 12, 1843. 
 " Address Madame Aubin, 18, Aldenham Terrace, 
 "Old St. Pancras Road." 
 
 Thus ends the correspondence that came 
 into the possession of the friends and corre- 
 spondents of Captain De B , in connec- 
 tion with Miss Leigh. It does not appear 
 that the threatened application to Bow 
 Street was ever made, or that any reconcili- 
 ation between Miss Leigh and Lady Byron 
 
 il 
 
A HISTORY AND AX AUTOBIOGRAPll V. 1G5 
 
 was ever effected. Upon this subject ^Tr. 
 S , in a letter dated the 24th of Septem- 
 ber, 1869, twenty-six years after the time in 
 whicli these events occurred, and forty-iivo 
 years after the death of Lord Byron, writes : 
 " I did not succeed in my endeavours, and 
 my failure is somewhat contradictory of Mrs. 
 Beecher Stowe's statement, that Lady Byron 
 never faltered, never gave over in motherly 
 tenderness towards the lady whom she calls 
 ' the child of sin.' I ascertained at the same 
 time (1843), that the so-called ^secret' was 
 known to very many persons besides Dr. 
 Lushington and Sir George Stephen, and I 
 do not know how to reconcile this fact with 
 the ' dignified and magnanimous silence ' 
 claimed as a merit for Lady Byron ; for if slie 
 did not impart the knowledge, who else can 
 have done so ?" 
 
 It is possible, however, although the 
 circumstance may never have come to the 
 
 knowledge of Captain De B or Mr. 
 
 S , that at some after-time, when Miss 
 
 Leigh passed out of their vision, she may have 
 agreed to all the terms demanded of her by 
 
166 MEDORA LEIGH; 
 
 Lady Byron, been restored to lier favour 
 and protection, and ended her days in the 
 receipt of her bounty. 
 
 However that may be, Miss Leigh, with 
 her sins, her sorrows, and her sufferings, and 
 l^earing with her her Kttle daughter Marie, 
 disappeared at the close of the year 1843, 
 from the great, heartless, busy, cruel world 
 of London, and soon afterwards sank into 
 that beneficent grave, where "the wicked 
 cease from troubling, and the weary are 
 at rest." She sinned much, was much 
 and grievously sinned against, and sufiered 
 penalties too great for her haughtj/^ spirit 
 and her weak frame to bear. Her mother, 
 her mother's husband, Lady Byron, her 
 sister, and her sister's husband, all the per- 
 sons mainly imphcated in her story, have all 
 followed her to the tomb ; and her narra- 
 tive, and the story told by Lady Byron to 
 Mrs. Stowe, remain the only foundations 
 on which Lady Byron's awful charge against 
 her husband's memory can rest, as far as 
 is now known to the world. We have 
 already endeavoured to show that Lady 
 
A HISTORY AND A\ AUTOBIOGRArilV. 111! 
 
 Byron's story, as told by Mrs. Stovve, cannot 
 be true, nnless Lady Byron herself were at 
 one and the same time a paragon of super- 
 human and of angelic virtue, and one of the 
 most heartless hypocrites that ever lived. 
 We now proceed to examine into the truth 
 of Miss Leigh's allegations, to compare the 
 two narratives together, and to show that this 
 odious charge against Lord Byron was not 
 concocted until long after his death. 
 

 i 
 
PART 111, 
 
 I^ECAPITULATIOX OF THE XAKKATIVES 
 
 MKS. BEECHER STOAVE AXD MEDORA LEIGH, 
 
 VINDICATION OF LORD BYROX. 
 
( 171 ) 
 
 PAET III. 
 
 VINDICATION OF LORD BYRON. 
 
 If it be as true in the moral as in the 
 physical world that there never can be smoke 
 without fire, let us try to discover wliat is 
 the fire, and what is its extent, which has 
 produced the very black smoke that has 
 been poured forth from the funnel of Mrs. 
 Beecher Stowe's literary engine to darken 
 the fame of Lord Byron, as well as of that 
 other smoke, which obscures the air, in 
 the melancholy story of ^ledora Leigh. To 
 discover how the fire originated — and whose 
 was the hand that first kindled and fed it 
 with fuel — is the sole object of this volume. 
 If on impartial examination of the two 
 stories, which we shall strive to make as 
 fair and unbiassed as the summing-up of a 
 
172 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 judge upon the bench, we seem to bear hard 
 upon the reputations of persons hitherto 
 unsuspected, who can make no reply, and 
 who have long ago passed to their account, 
 it must be remembered that the accusers of 
 Lord Byron are the aggressors, and that for 
 any evil consequences that may result to 
 ip^ividuals in the search after ''the truth, 
 tne whole truth, and nothing but the truth/' 
 those only are to blame who took the 
 initiative in calumny, and disinterred, as 
 it were, the heart of a great poet for the 
 gratification of a dastardly malice, or a 
 no less dastardly curiosity, forty-iive years 
 after his errors and crimes — if he had com- 
 mitted any — ought to have been allowed to 
 rest in the kind oblivion of the tomb, or the 
 charitable construction of a world that does 
 not possess too much genius to which to be 
 ungrateful. Who does not remember the 
 inscription upon the tomb of Shakspeare ? — 
 
 " Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear 
 To dig the dust enclosed here ; 
 Blest be the man that spares these stones, 
 And curst be he that moves my bones !" 
 
VIXDICATIOX OP LORD BYROX. 173 
 
 The awful imprecation startles the atten- 
 tion of the most indifferent in the solitude of 
 the clmrcli of Stratford-upon-Avon, and 
 falls upon the mind of the reverential ad- 
 mirer of Sliakspeare's genius witli all the 
 solemnity of a voice from the other world. 
 And the words, we think, convey a double 
 meaning and admonition, and apply, not 
 only to the perishing material part of the 
 dead poet, but to the immortal soul ; and 
 warn the profane against the crime of raking 
 up, from the sanctity that ought to enshroud 
 them from the gaze of posterity, the secrets of 
 the inner life that the poet lived, or the records 
 of the errors into which the poet, no less than 
 meaner mortals, may have fallen during his 
 weary pilgrimage through the snares and 
 pitfalls of the world. Somebody is greatly 
 to be condemned for inventing: such a charo:e 
 as that of incest against Lord Byron — if 
 the charge be an invention, as we shall 
 endeavour to show. Somebody is almost 
 as greatly to be condemned for giving un- 
 necessary and malicious currency to it, 
 even if it sliould prove to be well-founded. 
 
174 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 Were the autobiography of Medora Leigh 
 read entirely by itself, and without support- 
 ing evidence of its truth, it would be of 
 little weight or importance. Though the 
 narrative is plain, simple, and truth-like 
 in its minuteness, and tells, at first, very 
 terribly against the narrator ; yet such a story 
 might be a fiction — for fictions quite as life- 
 like and as seemingly honest have often 
 been invented, either to amuse or to defraud 
 the public. But as regards Miss Leigh, the 
 supposition that she drew up a wholly ficti- 
 tious narrative cannot be reasonably enter- 
 tained. She was truly the fourth child of 
 the Hon. Augusta Leigh ; and until she 
 had passed her fifteenth year, and become 
 precociously a woman, she lived as, and 
 believed herself to be, the daughter of 
 Colonel Leigh, and as legitimately the child 
 of both these respectable people as the three 
 elder and three younger children of the same 
 marriage. There is, in her narrative, no 
 doubt of her maternity; neither was it 
 denied or doubted by Lady Byron, or by 
 Dr. Lushington, or Sir George Stephen, 
 
VINDICATION' OF LORD P.YROX. 175 
 
 acting in Lady Byron's behalf. This f\ict 
 stands out clear and distinct, and must be 
 accepted as positively true, whatever opinions 
 may be formed of the complete or partial 
 truth of the sad story of her life, as she 
 relates it. 
 
 Let us glance at the Leigh family as it 
 existed in the year 1816, when Lady Byron 
 quitted her husband's roof, after trying to 
 discover whether he were not insane, and 
 persistently refusing to return to him. 
 Colonel Leigh had married his cousin, the 
 woman of his choice, and was living hap- 
 pily with her — if his happiness can be pre- 
 sumed from the number of his young 
 larnily, and the absence of any whisper of 
 his unhappiness in that outer world, which 
 at the time was but too apt to pry into 
 the secrets of Lord Byron's household, and 
 of those connected with him by birth or 
 marriage. Mrs. Leigh had lost her mother 
 in her infancy, and her father when she was 
 yet a child. As her mother, the Baroness 
 Conyers, married her father. Captain Byron, 
 in 1779, and died in 1781, the Hon. Au- 
 
176 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 gusta Byron (afterwards Mrs. Leigh), must 
 have been born in 1780 or 1781, and had 
 consequently arrived at the age of thirty- 
 five or thirty-six at the time when she 
 enjoyed the confidence and friendship (real 
 or pretended) of Lady Byron, immediately 
 prior to and for some weeks subsequent to her 
 departure from her husband and her return 
 to her parents. Mrs. Leigh's half-brother, 
 Lord Byron, issue of his father's second 
 marriage with Miss Gordon, was eight years 
 her junior, and she had been accustomed to 
 look upon him with a maternal as well as 
 a sisterly affection — which was very natural 
 when it is considered that he was a school- 
 boy when she was a married woman. She 
 took a motherly interest in his health, 
 his comfort, his character, and his career; 
 and when time removed somewhat of the 
 disparity between their ages, he returned 
 her affection with an impulsiveness that 
 reflected honour on the innate warmth and 
 goodness of his nature. At the time of 
 the separation, though a scandalous press — 
 repeating the more scandalous innuendoes, 
 
VINDICATION OF LORD BYRON. 177 
 
 hints, whispers, or broader accusations of 
 society, that longed to humble the great 
 Lord B^'roii because he was great — accused 
 him of incest, as well as of murder, and 
 even hinted that he was not only Childe 
 Harold, but Conrad the Corsair, Alp the 
 Renegade, if not Satan incarnate, the 
 charge of incest made no impression on 
 Lord Byron's mind. It passed by him as 
 the idle wind, w^as not accepted by Lady 
 Byron — as her letters to Mrs. Leigh, re- 
 printed in the " Quarterly Review/' suffi- 
 ciently testify — and had, in all probability, 
 never reached the privacy of Colonel Leigh's 
 household, or been whispered into his ears 
 or those of his wife. 
 
 It has always been a difficulty in the 
 case — supposing the crime to have been com- 
 mitted — to discover how Lady Byron could 
 have been made aware of it, either in 1816, 
 if she suspected it then, or at the later 
 period, after Lord Byron's death, when it is 
 probable that the idea first took firm posses- 
 sion of her mind. Did Lord Byron divulge 
 his guilt ? Did Mrs. Leigh confess it ? Did 
 
 N 
 
178 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 Colonel Leigh discover it? Or did Lady 
 Byron make herself acquainted with the fact 
 by some means not yet explained to the world ? 
 It is not likely that either Lord Byron or Mrs. 
 Leigh would be so false to each other as to 
 confess such a crime, and it is quite as un- 
 likely, if such a crime had been confessed by 
 either, that Colonel Leigh would have con- 
 tinued to live quietly and amicably with his 
 wife until three more children had been born 
 to them, and until his death. In reply to 
 the question, whether Lady Byron might 
 not have discovered some documentary proofs 
 of a crime of which for years afterwards 
 she kept the knowledge to herself and Dr. 
 Lushington (if it be indeed true that that 
 was the crime she divulged to him), there is 
 nothing but the story of the breaking open 
 of Lord Byron's writing-desk in his absence 
 by Lady Byron, in a fit of jealousy, or by 
 her confidante, Mrs. Charlemont, by Lady 
 Byron's order or connivance. Lord Byron 
 told the story of the desk to Captain 
 Medwin, and spoke of it with more mild- 
 ness than might have been expected from 
 
VIXDICATIOX OF LORD BYUOX. 179 
 
 a man of his impetuous nature. "There 
 was," he says — and the conversation occurred 
 in 1821, five years after the separation—" one 
 act of which I might justly have complained, 
 and wliich was unworthy of any one but 
 such a confidante. I allude to the breakino- 
 open my writing-desk. A book was found 
 in it that did not do much credit to my 
 taste in literature, and some letters from a 
 married woman with whom I had been 
 intimate before my marriage. The use that 
 was made of the latter was most unjusti- 
 fiable, whatever may be thought of the 
 breach of confidence that led to their dis- 
 covery. Lady Byron sent them to the 
 husband of the lady, who had the good 
 sense to take no notice of their contents. 
 The gravest accusation that has been made 
 against me is that of having intrigued with 
 Mrs. Mardyn in my own house — introduced 
 her to my own table, &c. There never was 
 a more unfounded calumny. Being on the 
 committee of Drury Lane Theatre, I have 
 no doubt that several actresses called on 
 me ; but as to Mrs. Mardyn, who was a 
 
180 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 beautiful woman, and might have been a 
 dangerous visitress, I was scarcely acquainted 
 (to speak) with her." 
 
 Though Lord Byron in this passage spoke 
 much too lightly of his intrigue with a mar- 
 ried woman before his own marriage, it cannot 
 be supposed that proof of incest with his 
 sister could have been found in, or rather 
 stolen from, his writing-desk, when he posi- 
 tively declares, that among all the charges 
 brought against him, then and subsequently, 
 the gravest was that after his marriage he 
 had intrigued with a beautiful actress whom 
 he only knew by sight, but scarcely knew to 
 speak to. If this were the '^ gravest " charge, 
 and one so satisfactorily disproved, there 
 cannot have been the graver accusation of 
 incest, unless Lord Byron believed — which 
 none but a raging lunatic would suppose — 
 that it was a graver offence to intrigue with 
 an actress than to intrigue with his own 
 married sister ! 
 
 From all contemporary accounts, as well 
 as from the revelations that have been made 
 since the publication of Mrs. Stowe's " True 
 
VIXDICATIOX OF LORD BYROX. IS I 
 
 Stoiy,' Mrs. Leigli, thoiig-li a very excellent 
 woman, was neither a beauty in the eyes of 
 the great world, nor a very good manager 
 within the little world of her own household. 
 Let us take, for instance, the description 
 given of her by Mrs. Shelley : — 
 
 " I have seen a great deal of Mrs. Leigh 
 (Augusta). . . . Mrs. Leigh was like a 
 mother to Byron, being so much older, and 
 not at all an attractive person. I afterwards 
 went with her, at her request, to pay a 
 wedding-^'isit to Lady Byron when she 
 returned to town, and she (Mrs. Leigh) 
 expressed the greatest anxiety that his mar- 
 riage should reform him. . . . My 
 astonishment at the present accusation is 
 unbounded: she a Dowdy-Goody, I being 
 then, I suppose, a young fine lady. Scrope 
 Davies used to come to dinner, and talked to 
 me a great deal al)out Byron afterwards, 
 when he resided in the country, and I never 
 remember a hint at this unnatural and im- 
 probable liaison when all London was at 
 Byron's feet. . . . She must have been 
 
182 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 married (in 1807) when Byron was quite a 
 boy. She had no taste for poetry. She had 
 sad misfortunes in her later years. Her ex- 
 cellent and only surviving daughter nursed 
 her with the tenderest affection in her last 
 illness. How any one could have been so 
 wicked as to write so horrible a story of one 
 too long dead to have friends left who could 
 refute the story seems beyond belief." 
 
 The Leigh family were not rich in worldly 
 goods — were always in pecuniary difficulty, 
 from which they were not finally or even 
 wholly relieved by the bequest made to 
 them in the will of Lord Byron. We hear 
 little of them except from Lord Byron, 
 who, speaking of his sister to Lady Bles- 
 sington at Genoa, the year before his death, 
 said of her, and of himself : — 
 
 '' My first and earliest impressions were 
 melancholy — my poor mother gave them ; 
 hut to my sister, who, incapable of ivrong her- 
 self, suspected no icrong in others, I owe the 
 little good of ivhich I can boast ; and had 1 
 
VINDICATIOX OF LORD BYROX. 1S3 
 
 earlier known ]iei\ it mi(/ht have injluenced my 
 destiny. Augusta has g-reat strcngtii of 
 mind, which is displayed not only in lier 
 own conduct, but to support tlie weak and 
 infirm of purpose. To me she was, in the 
 hour of need, as a tower of strength. Iler 
 affection was my last rallying -point, and is 
 now the only bright spot that the horizon of 
 England offers to my view. Augusta knew 
 all my weaknesses, but she had love enough 
 to bear with them. I value not tlie false 
 sentiment of affection tliat adheres to one 
 while we believe him faultless — not to love 
 him would then be difficult : but give me 
 the love that, with perception to view the 
 errors, has sufficient force to pardon them 
 — who can ^ love the offender, 3xt detest the 
 offence ;' and this my sister had. She has 
 given me such good advice, and yet, finding me 
 incapable of following it, loved and pitied me 
 but the more because I was erring. This is 
 true affection, and, above all, true Christian 
 feeling. . . 
 
 " Lotxl Byron speaks of his sister , Mi 
 
 rs. 
 
184 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 Leigh, constantly, and always with strong ex- 
 pressions of affection^ He says she is the 
 most faultless pei^son he ever kneio, and that 
 ■ she was his only source of consolation in his 
 troubles on the separation." 
 
 These confessions to Lady Blessington, 
 coupled, as they ought to be, with all that 
 Lord Byron wrote and said to others who 
 were intimate with himduring the closing 
 years of his life, do not point to the conclu- 
 sion that his love for his sister was other 
 than as pure and holy as he represented it to 
 be in the beautiful poems which his love in- 
 spired. Nor did he forget his wife, or even 
 once admit to any one a knowledge, even the 
 slightest, of her cause of quarrel with him. 
 "It is evident," writes Lady Blessington, 
 "that Lady Byron occupies his attention 
 continually. He introduces her name fre- 
 quently; is fond of recurring to the brief 
 period of their living together ; dwells with 
 complacency on her personal attractions, 
 saying that, though not regularly handsome, 
 he liked her looks. He is very inquisitive 
 
VIXDICATIOX OF LORD HYROX. 185 
 
 about lier ; was much disappointed that I 
 had never seen her, nor could give any 
 account of her appearance at present. In 
 short, a thousand indescribable circumstances 
 have left the impression on my mind tliat 
 she occupies much of his tlioughts, and that 
 they appear to revert continually to her and 
 his child. He owned to me, that when he 
 reflected on the whole tenor of her conduct 
 — the refusing any explanation, never 
 answering his letters, or holding out even 
 a hope that in future years their child 
 might form a bond of union between them 
 — he felt exasperated against her, and vented 
 this feeling in his writings ; nay, more, he 
 blushed for his own weakness in thinking so 
 often and so kindly of one who certainly 
 showed no symptom of ever bestowing a 
 thought on him." If any more conclusive 
 evidence than these conversations afford were 
 wanting to prove that Lord Byron knew 
 nothing of this awful charge of incest — any 
 more than he did of a charge of piracy or 
 murder, it may be found in the last letter 
 which Lord Byron ever wrote, only a few 
 
186 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 days before his death, and left unfinished, 
 addressed to his sister. The letter shows 
 that eight years after the rupture, which 
 would not have been final or irreparable 
 except for Lady Byron's obduracy, Lady 
 Byron and Mrs. Leigh were on terms of 
 friendly intimacy, and that they united in 
 sending a joint report to Lord Byron on the 
 health of his daughter Ada. It is dated 
 Missolonghi, February 23rd^ 1824: — 
 
 " My dearest Augusta, — I received a 
 few days ago your and Lady Byron's report 
 of Ada's health, with other letters from 
 England, for which I ought to be, and am 
 (I hope) sufficiently thankful, as they are of 
 great comfort, and I wanted some, having 
 been recently unwell, but am now much 
 better, so that you must not be alarmed. 
 
 " You will have heard of our journeys, 
 and escapes, and so forth — perhaps with 
 some exaggeration ; but it is all very well 
 now, and I have been some time in Greece, 
 which is in as good a state as could be 
 expected, considering circumstances. But I 
 
VINDICATION OF LORD BYROX. 187 
 
 will not plague you with politics, wars, or 
 earthquakes, though we have had a rather 
 smart one three nights ago, which produced 
 a scene ridiculous enough, as no damage was 
 done, except to those who stuck fast in 
 the scuffle to get first out of the doors or 
 windows; amongst whom some recent im- 
 portations from England, who had been 
 used to quieter elements, were rather 
 squeezed in the press for precedence. 
 
 *' I have been obtaining the release of 
 about nine-and-twenty Turkish prisoners — 
 men, women, and children — and have sent 
 them, at my own expense, home to their 
 friends ; but one pretty little girl of nine 
 years of age, named Hato, or Hatagee, has 
 expressed a strong wish to remain with me, 
 or under my care ; and I have nearly de- 
 termined to adopt her, if I thought that 
 Lady Byron would let her come to England 
 as a companion to Ada. They are about 
 the same age, and we could easily provide 
 for her; if not, I can send her to Italy for 
 education. She is very lively and quick, 
 and with great black Oriental eyes and 
 
188 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 Asiatic features. All her brothers were killed 
 in the revolution. Her mother wishes to 
 return to her husband, who is at Trevisa, 
 but says that she would rather entrust the 
 child to me in the present state of the 
 country. Her extreme youth and sex have 
 hitherto saved her life, but there is no saying 
 what might happen in the course of the 
 war, and of such a war. I shall probably 
 commit her to the care of some English lady 
 in the islands for the present. The child 
 herself has the same wish, and seems to have 
 a decided character for her as^e. 
 
 " You can mention this matter, if you 
 think it worth while. I merely wish her to 
 be respectably educated and treated ; and if 
 my years and all things be considered, I 
 presume it would be difficult to conceive me 
 to have any other views. 
 
 ^' With regard to Ada's health, I am glad 
 to hear that she is so much better; but I 
 think it right that Lady Byron should be 
 informed, and guard against it accordingly, 
 that her description of much of her dis- 
 position and tendencies very nearly resembles 
 
VINDICATION OF LORD BYRON. 180 
 
 that of my own at a similar age, except that 
 I was miicli more impetuous. Her prefer- 
 ence of prose (strange as it may seem) icas^ 
 and indeed is, mine ; for I hate reading 
 verse, and always did, and I never invented 
 anything but boats, ships, and generally 
 something relative to the ocean. I showed 
 the report to Colonel Stanhope, who was 
 struck with the resemblance of parts of it 
 to the paternal line, even now. 
 
 '' But it is also fit, though unpleasant, 
 that I should mention, that my recent 
 attack — and a very severe one — had a strong 
 appearance of epilepsy ; why, I know not, for 
 it is [not ?] late in life. Its lirst appearance 
 at tliirty-six, and, so far as I knoWy it is not 
 hereditary ; and it is that it may not become 
 so, that you should tell Lady Byron to take 
 some precautions in the case of Ada. 
 
 " My attack has not returned, and I am 
 fighting it off with abstinence and exercise, 
 and thus far with success — if merely casual, 
 it is all very well." 
 
 A few days after writing this fragment. 
 
190 MEDORii LEIGH. 
 
 full of affectionate anxiety for his daughter 
 Ada, Lord Byron expired; and his last co- 
 herent words were, " My wife — my child — 
 my sister " — placing them, no doubt, in that 
 solemn moment when the next world was 
 opening before him, in the pure, holy, and 
 natural order in which they stood in his heart. 
 Two years after the premature termination 
 of a career glorious in itself, and that might 
 have been as happy as it was glorious, had 
 it not been for the ill-omened marriage which 
 embittered and, to some extent, disgraced 
 it — though only in the eyes of the male- 
 volent, or the unthinking — we get the next 
 glimpse into the family of Lord Byron's 
 sister; and learn from Medora Leigh, in 
 her Autobiography, that in the year 1826, 
 when she was eleven years old, her eldest 
 sister, Georgiana, was married to her distant 
 cousin, Mr. Henry Trevanion, of Carhays, 
 in Cornwall — a man, like the Leighs, not 
 blessed with any superabundance of the 
 gifts of fortune. The marriage was not a 
 happy one. Perhaps there had never been 
 much love in the case — even if poverty had 
 
VIXDICATIOX OF LORD BYRON. 191 
 
 not come in at the door, and lurcod such 
 love as there was to fly out of the window. 
 The characters of these two people, and of 
 tlie young sister of Mrs. Trevanion, deserve 
 especial study. What we know of the mar- 
 ried couple is wholly derived from the evi- 
 dence of the sister, who at the time of the 
 marriage was a mere child, and who at the 
 time of her first initiation into the world's 
 wickedness — four years afterwards — was still 
 a child in years, though a woman in expe- 
 rience of the evil communications that cor- 
 rupt alike the lieart, the manners, and the 
 principles. Medora Leigh states that her 
 sister's marriage met with no approval from 
 any one except her mother, and that incompa- 
 tibility of temper, as well as poverty, rendered 
 it unhappy. She was thrown much into 
 the society of the couple — not only while 
 they resided under Colonel Leigh's roof, but 
 at other places — and appears to have been 
 somewhat carelessly left by Mrs. Leigh to 
 the guidance of Mr. Trevanion. When this 
 child — thus thrust, as it were, into the com- 
 panionship of a man who had married a wife 
 
192 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 for whom he had no great or growing regard 
 — had arrived at the age of fifteen, when 
 her mind was pliant, when her education 
 was incomplete, when her character was un- 
 formed, when she particularly required the 
 guidance^ the control, the love, and the con- 
 tinuous care of her father and mother, and 
 of her mother especially — this Henry Tre- 
 vanion (whose base unmanly conduct lan- 
 guage fails to find adequate words to 
 condemn) took advantage alike of her 
 youth, her passions, and her inexperience, 
 and betrayed the confidence of his wife, and 
 of his wife's father and mother, and seduced 
 her. The story is told in such explicit terms 
 by the victim, and supported by such a cloud 
 of evidence, that it is impossible to beheve it 
 to be a fabrication ; and the consequences of 
 the crime which she committed against her 
 sister, and the laws of God and man, are so 
 artlessly and naturally related — even when 
 they bear most hardly upon herself — that 
 the credence of no one who reads it impar- 
 tially, and with the desire to form an honest 
 judgment, can be withheld from it. But while 
 
VINDICATION OF LORD IJYROX. 103 
 
 the charges which slie makes against Henry 
 Trevanion, and against herself — as being, 
 after the first false and fatal step, more or less 
 a willing partner of his crime — are to be ac- 
 cepted as coming from the one best qualified 
 to make and to prove them, no such com- 
 pulsion lies upon the reader to accept the 
 truth of the charges of connivance at, or 
 encouragement of, her offences, which she 
 brincrs asfainst her mother and sister. That 
 her mother may have neglected to watch 
 over her with the anxiety and constant care 
 that her age and temperament demanded, 
 and that her sister may never have conceived 
 the idea of such wickedness as her husband 
 perpetrated against a child whom he ought to 
 have protected with brotherly if not fatherly 
 care, considering his age and hers, are facts 
 which may be conceded ; but that i\lrs. Leigh 
 — a good woman, by all the accounts that 
 have come down to us concerning her — should 
 have wilfully encouraged and laid plans for 
 the seduction of her daughter, or that the 
 sister should have entered, for any purposes 
 of her own, into a plot so diabolical, and so 
 
 
 
194 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 seemingly purposeless — is not to be believed 
 on the evidence of* Medora Leigb^ or on any 
 other evidence than the confession, which 
 was never made, of the husband and wife 
 themselves. Indeed, Mrs. Leigh, on Me- 
 dora Leigh's own showing, acted a kindly 
 and a motherly part towards her after her 
 first great transgression became known, and 
 did her best, when her erring daughter 
 had recovered from the illness which that 
 transgression had caused, and all traces of 
 her guilt seemed to be removed, to draw 
 her away from the evil companionship of 
 her sister's husband, and bring her out 
 into society, where she might make purer 
 acquaintances. That under the circum- 
 stances she should have been allowed, either 
 by her mother or her sister, to become a 
 second time the inmate of Trevanion's house, 
 and that she should again be permitted to 
 associate with him on any terms whatever, 
 is, to say the least, extraordinary. But, as 
 Colonel Leigh had been carefully kept from 
 the knowledge of his child's guilt, it is 
 possible that some consideration connected 
 
VINDICATIOX OF LORD BYROX. 105 
 
 with the desirability of not exciting liis 
 suspicion, led to an arrangement that, as 
 told by IMedora Leigh, appears so wholly 
 objectionable. Colonel Leigh's suspicions, 
 however, appear at last to have been aroused ; 
 and, to rescue his infatuated daughter from 
 the clutches of Mr. Trevanion, his only re- 
 source — if her statement is to be accepted as 
 the absolute truth — was to take her forcibly 
 from the company of her sister and her 
 sister's husband, and confine her in a private 
 lunatic asylum. Until within a short 
 period previous to the occurrence of this 
 incident, Medora Leigh had always believed 
 Colonel Leigh to be her father — felt kindly 
 towards him, as he did tow^ards her, for 
 she was his favourite child — and w^ished 
 sincerely to spare him any knowledge of 
 her shame. But now she icas informed, both 
 by her sister and her sister s husband, that 
 Colonel Leigh was not her father. On what 
 authority, and on what knowledge, real 
 or supposed, did Georgiana Trevanion and 
 her unprincipled husband make this charge 
 against Mrs. Leigh? How could Mrs. 
 
196 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 Trevanion have known the fact, if it were 
 true ? Did her mother tell her ? Had she 
 heard it from her father? — for she never 
 asserted, it would appear, that Colonel Leigh 
 was other than her own father, in whatever 
 relation he might stand to the unfortunate 
 Medora. Had she been told of it by any 
 one nofc in the immediate circle of her own 
 family ? Had she got it — say, for instance, 
 — from Lady Byron ? And if so, where did 
 Lady Byron get it ? These questions admit 
 of no answer to be accepted as a clue out 
 of the entanglement, or as a proof — or as 
 even the shadow of a proof — of the guilt 
 of Mrs. Leigh. That lady never could have 
 told any of her sons or daughters such a 
 story. Colonel Leigh could not have heard 
 of, or believed it, or he would not have con- 
 tinued to live with his wife on any terms, 
 more especially on terms of domestic affec- 
 tion. Lady Byron could not have told 
 the story at that time, as will be shown 
 hereafter in the course of our dissection 
 of Miss Leigh's narrative, and by Lady 
 Byron's account of the separation, first pub- 
 
VIXDICATIOX OF LORD BYRON. 197 
 
 lished in 1830. Yet the story, as told to 
 Medora Leigh by her sister and Mr. Treva- 
 nion, must have originated with some one. 
 That Mrs. Trevanion should have made such 
 an accusation against her mother, proves her 
 to have been at aU events a heartless woman, 
 and a bad daughter — bad to her mother, 
 cruel to her father, as well as to all 
 her brothers and sisters then livinsr — even if 
 the charge were true. That Lady Byron 
 must be absolved from the imputation of 
 having made it, either in IS16 or in 1S30, 
 will be evident to all who read the ac- 
 count of the separation, which Lady Byron 
 caused to be privately printed in the latter 
 year and sent to Thomas Moore, then 
 engaged on the " Life of Byron/' who pub- 
 lished it in an appendix to his work ; — unless 
 Lady Byron told the story to Dr. Lusliington 
 in 1816, and afterwards confided it to other 
 people, who spread it abroad until it reached 
 the ears of Mrs. Trevanion. In this suppo- 
 sition, all the praise bestowed upon Lady 
 Byron, for her magnanimity in keeping a 
 painful secret J must fall to the ground as 
 
198 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 baseless and undeserved ; and her memory 
 must be charged with a double hypocrisy, in 
 keeping on affectionate terms with Mrs. 
 Leigh, while yet engaged in divulging 
 secrets to that lady's dishonour. Absolv- 
 ing Lady Byron at this time, as we 
 must do by the combined arguments of 
 a whole chain of strong consecutive evi- 
 dence, we come upon Mrs. Trevanion as 
 the original propagator, if not the sole 
 author, of the charge which, at the time she 
 made it, seems only to have implicated her 
 mother and some person unknown ; for Lord 
 Byron's name does not appear to have been 
 mentioned in the matter to Medora Leigh 
 until about nine years afterwards. That 
 Mrs. Trevanion, in making this accusation 
 against her mother, must have had some 
 strong motive is evident. No one would be 
 so wicked without some overpowering per- 
 sonal object. The object and the motive 
 seem to be not far to seek or difficult to find, 
 though the simple-minded Medora Leigh 
 does not anywhere betray that she had any 
 suspicion of them. Mrs. Trevanion wanted 
 
VINDICATIOX OF LORD BYRON. I 00 
 
 to get rid of her husband — Mr. Trevanion 
 wanted to get rid of his wife ; and INIr. Tre- 
 vanion, who had a certain animal attacli- 
 ment for his wife's sister, which he probably, 
 in his own mind, called by the desecrated 
 name of love, had made up his mind to 
 marry Medora Leigh, if the divorce could be 
 obtained. But if Mr. Trevanion could live 
 in concubinage with his divorced wife's sister, 
 he could not legally marry her. Hence, in all 
 probability, lies the germ of the \vhole story. 
 It was necessary to make Medora believe 
 that she was not really Georgiana's sister — 
 or, at all events, not the child of Georgiana's 
 father — in order that the unfortunate girl, 
 even at the sacrifice of her mother's good name, 
 might delude herself with the hope that if the 
 divorce were obtained, there would remain no 
 real obstacle to her marriage with her seducer. 
 Medora Leigh's elopement from the pri- 
 vate lunatic asylum, in which her father 
 and mother had placed her to remove 
 her for awhile from the contamination of 
 Mr. Trevanion's company, w^as afterwards 
 made one of the pleas on which Mrs. Tre- 
 
200 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 vanion grounded her suit in the Ecclesiastical 
 Court for a divorce from her husband. Me- 
 dora Leigh expressly accuses her sister, but 
 not her mother, of having been a party to 
 this elopement before it took place, of having 
 been in collusion with her husband to bring 
 it about, of having surreptitiously conveyed 
 letters to her sewed in her linen when it was 
 delivered from the laundress to the lunatic 
 asylum. These circumstances may or may 
 not be true, but they are at least probable, 
 when it is considered that the suit for the 
 divorce was dismissed, for the all-sufl&cient 
 reason that there was guilty collusion be- 
 tween the wife and the husband to procure it. 
 There is no necessity here for any reca- 
 pitulation of the story of Medora Leigh, or 
 of the facts connected with her long resi- 
 dence in France with Mr. Trevanion, under 
 the names of Mons. and Madame Aubin. 
 While there was a possibility that the divorce 
 might be obtained, Medora Leigh, who had 
 lost all the respect she ever entertained for 
 Mr. Trevanion — if she ever could have enter- 
 tained any, which is extremely doubtful — 
 
VINDICATIOX OF LORD BYROX. 201 
 
 and had ceased to feel towards him tliat poor 
 amount of misplaced affection wliicli had once 
 led her so wofuUy astray, continued to cohabit 
 with him, and make the best of her painful 
 situation. But when the divorce became hope- 
 less, and marriage with her seducer impossible, 
 she finally made up her mind to terminate 
 the connection. The struggle was a long 
 and a severe one, but she finally, some years 
 after the birth of her daughter Marie, resolved 
 to leave him. And she did so. He was utterly 
 unable, from extreme poverty, to support 
 lier or his child, and in this crisis of her 
 sorry fortunes, Miss Leigh appealed to 
 her mother for aid. She had been taught 
 that her supposed father was not her father, 
 and to him she appears to have made no ap- 
 plication. Mrs. Leigh — who was most pro- 
 bably unaware of the cruel accusation that 
 her elder daughter had made to her younger 
 one, against herself, Colonel Leigh, and some 
 other person unnamed or unknown — acted as 
 a forgiving mother should have done, wrote 
 to Medora kindly, and promised to allow her 
 a small annual income for her subsistence and 
 
202 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 that of her cliild in France. Mrs. Leigli, as 
 before remarked, was always in pecuniary 
 difficulties, and having provided for Medora, 
 as she had done for her other children, out of 
 the money bequeathed to her by Lord Byron, 
 by the Deed of Appointment for £3000, pay- 
 able at her and Lady Byron's death, found it 
 hard to meet the new claim from Medora 
 which the misconduct of that young lady had 
 brought upon her. She was not regular in the 
 promised payments of the poor pittance, which 
 would perhaps have satisfied Medora, and the 
 feelings of the latter towards her mother be- 
 came embittered. For this bitterness, how- 
 ever, her sister Georgiana was primarily to 
 blame ; for if Medora had believed in her 
 mother's innocence, she would, doubtless, have 
 felt more sympathy for her mother's poverty, 
 and accepted with a more grateful heart 
 whatever her mother might have been able 
 to allow her. 
 
 Amid all her errors and failings, and all 
 through the sad story that Medora Leigh 
 tells of herself and others, there runs an 
 undercurrent of pride and highmindedness. 
 
VINDICATION OF LORD BYROX. 203 
 
 Slie had a keen sense of what was right. 
 And it was her highmindedness that, in her 
 twenty-fifth year, brought her into contact 
 with Lady Byron, and opened out before 
 her, to all appearance, the prospect of a calm 
 if not a happy close to her hitherto turbu- 
 lent life, in the affection as well as in the 
 powerful patronage of a noble, wealthy, and 
 tender-hearted relative. When she left Mr. 
 Trevanion she made up her mind, what- 
 ever miglit happen otherwise to herself, that 
 the separation should be final. She w^as as 
 decided and as emphatic on this point as Lady 
 Byron herself had been under very different 
 circumstances. This, however, did not suit 
 the passions, or perhaps the calculations, of 
 Mr. Trevanion ; and it appears incidentally 
 from Medora's narrative, that he continued 
 to persecute her with his addresses, and urge 
 her to return to his protection. Lady Byron, 
 who was now to all appearance made aware 
 for the first time of Medora Leigh's history, 
 was recommended by her friend. Sir Robert 
 Wilmot Ilorton, to remove the persecutor 
 for awhile from Medora's path, by consigning 
 
204 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 Trevanion to prison for a debt contracted to 
 Lady Byron in 1826, for a snm of money the 
 possession of which at the time enabled him 
 to marry Georgiana Leigh, and without 
 which sum the marriage could not have taken 
 place. Medora Leigh had been informed 
 by Mr. Trevanion, during their cohabita- 
 tion and intimacy, of all the circumstances 
 connected with this loan, and knew that all 
 along: it had been Trevanion's idea that, 
 though called a loan, it was in reality a gift, 
 and was never to be repaid. When the 
 project of suing Mr. Trevanion for this sum 
 was first broached to Medora Leigh, her 
 mind revolted against it, as treacherous, dis- 
 honourable, and unjust. So strongly did 
 she feel upon the subject, that she not only 
 wrote to Lady Byron's solicitors to protest 
 against the wrong, as she considered it to 
 be, but informed Mr. Trevanion of what 
 was intended, in order that he might place 
 himself beyond the reach of any legal pro- 
 ceedings that might be attempted for the 
 recovery of the money. The letter was 
 forwarded by Lady Byron's solicitors to 
 
VINDICATION OF LORD JiYIlON. 205 
 
 Lady Byron herself, who seems to have 
 been so pleased with the spii'it displayed in 
 it, and the generous feeling of justice and 
 honour that it exhibited, even in the case of 
 a man to whom ^ledora neither owed crrati- 
 tude nor consideration, that she sought and 
 obtained a personal intimacy with her un- 
 happy niece. The circumstances are told 
 by Miss Leigh with the utmost plainness, 
 and with no attempt to create what, in our 
 day, would be called a '' sensation." It was 
 a beautiful vision that opened upon the eyes 
 of the child of sorrow — upon the poor forlorn 
 destitute creature^ who had more or less 
 estranged all her natural protectors, and who 
 scorned and loathed any longer to be indebted 
 for miserable bread to the selfish man who 
 had been the means of hurling hor from her 
 high and innocent estate, and who preferred 
 want itself to further relief from his hands. 
 Lady Byron took her to her heart, promised 
 to bestow motherly care and tenderness, and 
 lifelong support and bounty, upon her, on 
 the sole condition that her great and true 
 love should be as greatly and truly returned, 
 
206 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 and that her fullest confidence should be as 
 fully reciprocated. Miss Leigh was surprised 
 at the extent of her good fortune, and, to 
 satisfy her natural wonder at such a sudden 
 as well as bright and consolatory change in 
 her destiny. Lady Byron explained to her 
 how and why it was that she manifested 
 so warm an interest in her welfare. She 
 learned, from Lady Byron's own lips, 
 the secret of the alleged paternity — of 
 which her sister does not seem, from any 
 portion of Miss Leigh's narrative, to have 
 informed her — and was taught to look 
 upon Lord Byron as her father, upon Ada 
 (Lady Lovelace) as her sister, and upon 
 Lady Byron herself as one who was both 
 able and willing to supply to her the place 
 of the real mother who was in no position 
 to do a mother's duty towards her. This 
 was indeed a revelation to one in the lowest 
 depths of misery — to one who seemed as if 
 she were about to perish, alone and unaided, 
 in a world that had no place for her. But 
 here again the question recurs, how did 
 Lady Byron acquire this knowledge? when 
 
YIXDICATIOX OF LORD BYROX. 207 
 
 did she acquire it ? and who told her of a 
 fiict, if it were a fact, which was so likely to 
 have been known to none but the two people 
 who were co-partners in the sin ? If it were 
 Georgiana Trevanion, as may not unreason- 
 ably be supposed, who imparted the secret 
 to Lady Byron, we are no further advanced 
 in elucidation of the mystery, and are forced 
 back upon the questions, who told Georgiana 
 Trevanion? how did she become aware of 
 her mother's guilt ? or did she invent the 
 story for her own purposes ? 
 
 It is clear, from Medora Leigh's narrative, 
 that for the first sixteen years of her life she 
 believed that Colonel Leigh was as truly her 
 father as he was the father of Mrs. Trevanion. 
 It is also presumable, if not positively made 
 out, that it was not until her twenty-fifth 
 year that Lord Byron's paternity of herself 
 was revealed to her by Lord Byron's widow — 
 sixteen years after the death of Lord Byron, 
 and twenty-four after his separation from 
 his wife, under circumstances that set all 
 the bitter tongues of that many-headed and 
 scandalous monster, the public, wagging 
 
208 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 against him with a fury never before equalled 
 in England. That Lady Byron had not, 
 in the year 1830, become the confidante 
 of Georgiana Trevanion, and was not at that 
 time informed by her that Medora Leigh 
 was the daughter of Lord Byron and Mrs. 
 Leigh, that she did not and could not know 
 of such an imputation against her husband, 
 will appear from a careful perusal of the little 
 pamphlet of fifteen pages which in that year 
 she caused to be privately printed, which she 
 forwarded to Mr. Thomas Moore, then en- 
 gaged upon his " Life of Byron," and which 
 that gentleman published, in extenso, as an 
 appendix to his work. That Lord Byron 
 had behaved badly to her she explicitly 
 stated; as also that this bad behaviour, in 
 whatever it consisted, was the reason why 
 she left him ; though she admits that when 
 she left she would have returned to him, and 
 done her best duty as a wife to him, had it 
 been established, on satisfactory medical 
 evidence, that insanity might be pleaded in 
 extenuation of his offences towards her. 
 Lady Byron said, in that document, '' that. 
 
VINDICATION OF LORD BTROX. 209 
 
 with the concurrence of his family" (there 
 was no one who could be designated, at that 
 time, as belonging to his family beyond 
 herself and the infiint Ada, if it were not 
 his sister, Miss Leigh) — " she consulted 
 Dr. Baillie, as a friend, on the 8th of Jan- 
 uary, 1816" (seven days before she quitted 
 him for ever), " respecting this supposed 
 malady " (insanity). " AVhen," adds Lady 
 Byron, " I arrived at Kirk by Mallory, my 
 parents were unacquainted with the existence 
 of any causes likely to destroy my prospects 
 of happiness ; and when I communicated to 
 them the opinion which had been formed 
 concerning Lord Byron's state of mind, they 
 were most anxious to promote his restoration 
 by every means in their power. They 
 assured those relations who were with him 
 in London, that ' they would devote their 
 whole care and attention to the alleviation 
 of his malady,' and hoped to make tlie best 
 arrangements for his comfort, if he could be 
 induced to visit them. With these intentions 
 my mother wrote on the 17th to Lord Byron, 
 inviting him to Kirkby Mallory." 
 
 P 
 
210 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 In other words, whatever Lord Byron's 
 faults or crimes were, even if he had com- 
 mitted incest, and Lady Byron knew it at 
 the time — as we must beheve she did, if we 
 are to credit Mrs. Stowe — Lord Byron 
 would have been taken to the house of 
 Lady Byron's parents, and was actually 
 invited there two days after the separation, 
 and would have been carefully and affec- 
 tionately tended by the whole family until 
 his restoration to health. 
 
 But the charge of insanity not being 
 provable, Lady Byron would have nothing 
 further to do with her husband : — 
 
 " The accounts given me after I left Lord 
 Byron by the persons in constant intercourse 
 with him, added to those doubts which had 
 before transiently occurred to my mind, as 
 to the reality of the alleged disease ; and 
 the reports of his medical attendant were 
 far from establishing the existence of any- 
 thing like lunacy. Under this uncertainty, 
 I deemed it right to communicate to my 
 parents that, if I were to consider Lord 
 Byron's past conduct as that of a person of 
 
VIXDICATIOX OF LORD liVROX. 211 
 
 sound mind, nothing could induce nie to 
 return to him. It therefore appeared ex- 
 pedient, both to them and myself, to consult 
 the ablest advisers. For that object, and 
 also to obtain still further information re- 
 specting the appearances which seemed to 
 indicate mental derangement, my mother 
 determined to go to London. She was em- 
 powered by me to take legal opinions on a 
 written statement of mine, though I had then 
 reasons for reserving a part of the case from 
 the knowledge even of my father and mother. 
 
 " Being convinced by the result of these 
 inquiries, and by the tenor of Lord Byron's 
 proceedings, that the notion of insanity was 
 an illusion, I no longer hesitated to autho- 
 rise such m ensures as were necessary in 
 order to secure me from ever aq-ain bein^^ 
 placed in his power." 
 
 This narrative of Lady Byron, dated and 
 published in 1830, proves that, whatever 
 may have been the mysterious cause of the 
 separation of 181 G, it could not have been 
 incest with Mrs. Leigh ; jh'sfl?/, because 
 Lady Byron took her measures in friendly 
 
212 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 concert with Mrs. Leigh at that time, to 
 ascertain whether or not insanity could be 
 pleaded in extenuation of her husband's 
 errors or crimes against her; and, secondly, 
 because, up to the time of Lord Byron's 
 death, inl824 , she continued to maintain 
 the same friendly if not aflPectionate inti- 
 macy with Mrs. Leigh. It also helps to 
 prove that in 1830, fourteen years after the 
 separation, this charge had either not pre- 
 sented itself to her mind_, or she had not 
 thought fit to pleaxl it as a justification of 
 her conduct lest it should prove damaging 
 to her dear friend Mrs. Leigh. 
 
 If ignorant of such a charge against her 
 husband up to the year 1830, a year before 
 the information was given by Georgiana 
 Trevanion to her sister Medora, that 
 Colonel Leigh was not her father, it is 
 possible that Lady Byron may have heard 
 the charge made against Mrs. Leigh by 
 some one between 1831 and 1840. In the 
 latter year she herself made the charge to 
 Medora. and coupled it with the name of 
 Lord Byron. During this interval of nine 
 
VIXDICATIOX OF LORD 15YR0X. 2l;> 
 
 years there was no new evidence to be pro- 
 cured. None could come from Lord Byron 
 in his grave, none could come from tlic 
 much-maligned Mrs. Leigh ; none could 
 come from any one, unless it were from 
 Mrs. Trevanion, whose possession of any 
 knowledge of it, if it were true, was 
 m3'sterious, if not inexplicable, and whose 
 divulgence and propagation of it, if it were 
 false, was malignant, unfilial, and unnatural. 
 We do not wish to do Mrs. Trevanion 
 injustice ; and though she made to Medora 
 Leigh this most cruel accusation against 
 a mother, who always seems to have 
 done a mother's duty towards all her chil- 
 dren, it is just possible that Mrs. Trevanion 
 was not the actual inventress of the tale, 
 and that in the apparently lowest deep of 
 this unhappy business there was a lower 
 still. Lord Byron accused Mrs. Charlemont, 
 the former waiting-maid of Lady Byron's 
 mother, and afterwards the governess of 
 Lady Byron in her infancy and youth, and 
 her confidante after marriage, of being the 
 prime source of all the misunderstanding 
 
214 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 and misery which first caused the breach 
 between the husband and the wife, and as one 
 who afterwards persistently, malevolently, 
 and successfully widened it. Some fearful 
 wrong, at least in Lord Byron's opinion, 
 must have been done by this woman, or 
 he could not have written of her in such 
 scathing words as he employed in his world- 
 renowned " Sketch :" — 
 
 Oh ! wretch — without a tear — without a thought, 
 
 Save joy, above the ruin thou hast wrought — 
 
 The time shall come, nor long remote, when thou 
 
 Shalt feel far more than thou inflictest now ; 
 
 Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain, 
 
 And turn thee howling in unpitied pain. 
 
 May the strong curse of crush'd affections light 
 
 Back on thy bosom with reflected blight, 
 
 And make thee in thy leprosy of mind 
 
 As loathsome to thyself as to mankind ! 
 
 Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate. 
 
 Black — as thy will for others would create : 
 
 Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust, 
 
 And thy soul welter in its hideous crnst. 
 
 Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed, 
 
 The widow'd couch of fire, that thou hast spread ! 
 
 Then, when thou fain wouldst weary Heaven with prayer, 
 
 Look on thine earthly victims — and despair ! 
 
 Lord Byron may have been wrong to 
 
YIXDICATIOX OF LORD nVROX. 215 
 
 write thus of a woman ; it may have been 
 undignified on liis part to publish such bitter 
 vituperation ; but no one who impartially reads 
 the story of the separation, can disbelieve the 
 fact, that Mrs. Charlemont had much to do 
 with it ; and that, if Lord Byron had been 
 really guilty of the crime alleged against him 
 by Mrs. Stowe and Lady Byron, he would not 
 in common prudence have run the risk of exas- 
 perating against him, by such a fierce attack 
 as this, a w^oman who was in Lady Byron's 
 intimate confidence, who knew all her secrets, 
 and who could not but have been aware of 
 this, had the charge been true in itself, or 
 even as much as suspected by Lady Byron 
 at the time which Mrs. Stowe indicates. 
 
 Among the many mysteries of a case in 
 which so many women, either heartless and 
 unfeeling, or vicious and abandoned, were in 
 one way or other concerned, the true rela- 
 tion of this particular woman to Lady Byron 
 and her husband is not among the least per- 
 plexing. She who did so much mischief 
 prior to the separation, may perhaps have 
 been the person who, long after the separa- 
 
216 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 tion, first put the idea into the head of 
 Georgiana Leigh, which the latter after- 
 wards endeavoured to turn to her own ac- 
 count, in her dispute with her unworthy 
 husband. 
 
 Lady Byron, in the year 1840, and not 
 earher, however, and from whomsoever she 
 may have become possessed of the story, 
 beHeved it to be true. There is no posi- 
 tive proof, except in Mrs. Stowe's narrative, 
 that she either believed or knew of it at 
 any previous time. But hearing of it, 
 and believing it, in 1840, she certainly, on 
 the testimony of Medora Leigh, in 184B, 
 acted towards that misguided and repentant 
 young woman in the kindest and most 
 generous manner, and with a Christian 
 charity as admirable as it was unprecedented. 
 But after a short time this singular burst of 
 fiery tenderness cooled down, and the de- 
 pendent lady, whom she called her " other 
 child," and treated as if she, indeed, were so 
 for the ^ake of Lord Byron, whose child — 
 though the "child of sin" she considered 
 her to be — became every day of less import- 
 
VINDICATION OF LORD BYRON. 217 
 
 ance iu her sight. In tlic first warm clays 
 of their intercourse, she was everytliing to 
 her ; in the last cold days, she was as nothing. 
 "Whether from faults in Medora's character, or 
 whether Lady Bp-on considered her to be in- 
 sane, as Colonel Leigh had done nine years 
 previously, and she had once considered her 
 husband to be, she certainly made arrange- 
 ments for Medora's future mode of life 
 which w^re not likely to be satisfactory to 
 any high-minded or self-respecting person 
 of either sex. She placed Miss Leigh, as 
 it were, in the custody of two keepers, a 
 French serving- woman and her husband, 
 and paid the money she agreed to allow 
 for her subsistence, not to her, as she 
 ought to have done if ^ledora were lit to be 
 entrusted with money, but to them, her 
 domestics and underlings, whose society 
 Medora did not require, and ought not to 
 have been subjected to ; and who, if keepers 
 and custodians of her person in reality, as 
 Lady Byron seems to have intended, were 
 theoretically her servants. And when 
 Medora, after long struggles, and many 
 
218 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 entreaties to Lady Byron to be placed in a 
 more satisfactory and honourable position, as 
 the adopted child and niece of a lady of rank 
 and wealth, took the not very heinous step of 
 travelling to England without her gracious 
 permission, to obtain a personal interview 
 with her patroness, Lady Byron dropped the 
 character alike of mother, of aunt, of friend, 
 and of benefactress, and left her unlucky 
 protegee to perish. 
 
 It is true that Lady Byron did not posi- 
 tively cast Miss Leigh adrift upon the world, 
 but required compliance with three condi- 
 tions which she imposed upon her acceptance, 
 through Sir Greorge Stephen, her solicitor. 
 But she would not see the young lady when 
 she came unbidden to London, or even read 
 her letters. The conditions were : jirst^ an 
 apology for her disobedience in daring to 
 come to London without Lady Byron's per- 
 mission, and contrary to her orders *, secondly^ 
 her immediate return to the south of France 
 — possibly in the company of the valet 
 and his wife, though this is not stated ; 
 and thirdly y the surrender of the Deed 
 
VINDICATION OF LORD HYRON". 210 
 
 of Appointment to trustees, for the benefit 
 of the little Marie, the child of Metlora and 
 Trevanion. To the two first conditions 
 Miss Leigh consented fully, entirely, almost 
 abjectly. The third she absolutely refused, 
 on the plea that, after what had passed, 
 she had no security, if she should give up 
 the document, that Lady Byron would 
 permanently continue her favour, and 
 the regular payment of the annual sum 
 proposed to be allowed to her. She pleaded 
 that if such calamity as the withdrawal of 
 Lady Byron's favour should unfortunately 
 occur, she would be even without the very 
 poor resource — but still a resource, which was 
 better than none at all— the chance of dis- 
 posing of her reversionary interest in the 
 sum of £3000, to provide for the immediate 
 wants of the evil day that would then break 
 over her unsheltered head. Lady Byron 
 remained inexorable. Lord Byron, in his 
 famous " Farewell," had accused his wife of 
 being "unforgiving." It was the most 
 serious charge which he brought against her 
 at a time when his heart was full alike of 
 
220 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 love and affliction, and it is impossible, on ■' 
 reading the latter portion of Medora Leigh's 
 autobiography, not to admit that this defect 
 in Lady Byron's character — of inexorability, 
 of unforgivingness, or of exaction of undue 
 submission to her sovereign will and pleasure, 
 whatever may be the word which best de- 
 scribes her idiosyncrasy — rendered it very 
 difficult for those in her intimacy to remain 
 intimate with her, and at the same time 
 preserve their self-respect. Thus Lord Byron, 
 it will be seen^ was not the only person who 
 had cause to complain of her in this respect, 
 and who was puzzled in his dealings to 
 account for the sudden and apparently 
 causeless hardenings of her heart towards 
 those for whom she had felt or expressed 
 affection. Writing upon this subject after 
 Mrs. Stowe's publication had divided the 
 whole English-speaking world into two 
 separate armies, the friends or the foes of 
 Lord Byron — the friends preponderating as a 
 hundred to one — Mr. WilHam Howitt, who 
 was admitted into the very variable and un- 
 certain atmosphere of Lady Byron's intimacy, 
 
VIXDICATIOX OF LORD RYROX. 221 
 
 describes a character in perfect accordance 
 with the idea that might be conceived of 
 it from ^liss Leigh's narrative. *' I am 
 sure," says Mr. Howitt, in a letter to the 
 Daily Neics, dated the 2nd of September, 
 18G9, '' that Lady Byron was a woman of tlie 
 most honourable and conscientious inten- 
 tions, but she was subject to a constitutional 
 idiosyncrasy of a most peculiar kind, which 
 rendered her, when under its influence, ab- 
 solutely and persistently unjust. I am quite 
 sure from my own observation of her that, 
 when seized by this peculiar condition of the 
 nerves, she was helplessly under its control. 
 Through this the changes in her mood were 
 sudden, and most painful to all about her. 
 I have seen her of an evening in the most 
 amiable, cordial, and sunny humour, full of 
 interest and s}Tiipathy ; and I have seen her 
 the next morning come down as if she had 
 lain all night not on a feather-bed, but on a 
 glacier — frozen as it were to the very soul, 
 and no efforts on the part of those around 
 her could restore her for the day to a genial 
 social warmth. In such moments she seemed 
 
222 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 to take sudden and deep impressions against 
 persons and things, which, though the worst 
 might pass away, left a permanent effect. 
 Let me give an instance or two. 
 
 '^ Lady Byron was at the period I speak 
 of deeply interested in the establishment of 
 working schools for the education of children 
 of the labouring classes. She induced Lord 
 Lovelace to erect one at Ockham ; she built 
 one on her estate at Kirkby Mallory, in 
 Leicestershire. On one occasion, in one of 
 her most amiable moods, she asked me to 
 lunch with her in town, that we might 
 discuss her plans for this system of educa- 
 tion. She promised to arrange that we 
 should not be interrupted for some hours. 
 I went at the time fixed ; but, to my con- 
 sternation, found her in one of her frozen 
 fits. The touch of her hand was like that 
 of death; in her manner there was the 
 silence of the grave. We sat down to 
 luncheon by ourselves, and I endeavoured to 
 break the ice by speaking of incidents of 
 the day. It was in vain. The devil of the 
 Nortii Pole was upon her, and I could only 
 
VIXDICATIOX OF LORD BYROX. 223 
 
 extract icy monosyllables. When we re- 
 turned to the drawing-room, I sought to 
 interest her in the topic on which we had 
 met, and which she had so truly at heart. 
 It was liopeless. She said she felt unable 
 to go into it, and I was ghid to get away. 
 
 " Again, she was in great difficulty as to 
 the selection of a master for her working 
 school at Kirkby Mallory. It was necessary 
 for him to unite the very rarely united 
 qualities of a thoroughly practical know- 
 ledge of the operations of agriculture and 
 srardeninc: with the education and informa- 
 tion of an accomplished schoolmaster. She 
 asked me to try and discover this rai^a avis 
 for her. I knew exactly such a man in 
 Xottinghamshire, who was at the same 
 time thoroughly honourable, trustworthy, 
 and fond of teachinf^. At her earnest re- 
 quest I prevailed on him to give up his 
 then comfortable position and accept her 
 offer. For a time he was everything in 
 her eyes that a man and a schoolmaster 
 could be. She was continually speaking of 
 him, when we met, in the most cordial terms. 
 
224 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 But in the course, as I remember, of two or 
 three years, the poor fellow wrote to me in 
 the utmost distress, saying that Lady Byron, 
 without the slightest intimation of being in 
 any way dissatisfied with him, or with his 
 management of tlie school, had given him 
 notice to quit. He had entreated her to 
 let him know what was the cause of this 
 sudden dismissal. She refused to give any, 
 and he entreated me to write to her and 
 endeavour to remove her displeasure, or to 
 ascertain its cause. I felt, from what I had 
 seen of Lady Byron before, that it was use- 
 less. I wrote to him, 'Remember Lord 
 Byron I If Lady Byron has taken it into her 
 head that you shall go, nothing will turn 
 her. Go you must, and you had better pre- 
 pare for it.' And the poor fellow, with a 
 family of about five children, and his old 
 situation filled up, turned out into the 
 world to comparative ruin." 
 
 If Mr. Howitt had known the history of 
 Medora Leigh, and been as fully acquainted 
 as the reader now is with the manner in 
 which she Avas first patronised and then 
 
 
neglected by Lady Byron, he could not have 
 made a more accurate sketch of* Lady 
 Byron's character — a woman whose first im- 
 pulses appear to have been always warm, 
 good, and generous ; whose second impulses 
 and thoughts were generally cold and unjust, 
 who was not to be depended upon for lier 
 love, but who was stern, unyielding, and un- 
 forgiving in her hate, and who, if she had 
 sufficient reason for her love in any case, 
 does not ever appear to have had sufficient 
 reasons for her hatred, either ot her husband 
 or of anybody else. 
 
 One peculiarity of Lord Byron's character, 
 which rendered him agreeable to those who 
 could understand him, and which was the 
 occasion of much mutual mirth in the social 
 circles which he adorned, was his habit of 
 jesting at his own expense. He was wliat the 
 French call a mauvais farceui\ and made such 
 ponderous jokes that it required a farceur 
 like himself to appreciate them. lie loved to 
 mystify stupid people, and often did so very 
 effectively, to his own great amusement, 
 while the fun lasted, and much to the dis- 
 
226 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 gust of the victims of liis humour, when 
 they discovered how their simplicity had 
 been played upon. He was also^ as the 
 French say, " le fanfaron des vices quit navait 
 pas,^' and with the gravest face accused 
 himself of crimes too great to be committed, 
 with his tongue in his cheek all the time, 
 and laughing, with inner laughter, at the 
 sensation which he created, and the maunder- 
 ing good faith of the listening believer. 
 Lady Byron seems to have been sometimes 
 the victim of these pranks of her lord, and 
 in the innocence — worthy of a harder name 
 — of her nature, accepted as truths the 
 monstrous creations of his morbid, though 
 sportive, fancy. And she, on her part, re- 
 sembled, while she disresembled, her lord ; 
 for if he was a trumpeter of his imaginary 
 vices for purposes of mystification, she was 
 the fanfaron, or trumpeter of virtues on her 
 own part, which were, perhaps, equally ima- 
 ginary. It is always unsafe to jest with 
 apathetic, soporific, unsympathetic people, 
 male or female, who have no sense of wit, 
 fun, or humour, or quick appreciation of the 
 
 
VINDICATIOX OF LOKD iniJOX. '121 
 
 play of words, and the flashing pliosphores- 
 cent lights of a double meaning. It is quite 
 evident, from all the course of her history, 
 that Lady Byron, excellent woman as she 
 was, was not one to understand a jest with- 
 out explanation, or by any means a person 
 to be jested with. 
 
 The literary evidence, which evidently 
 weighs much in the mind of jSh's. Beecher 
 Stowe, and which she has principally gathered 
 from the two dramatic poems, " Manfred " 
 and " Cain," may possibly, after long and 
 solitary brooding upon her woes, have had 
 its influence on Lady Byron's mind also, if it 
 did not first of all lead her thoughts towards 
 the suspicion that coloured the later years of 
 her life. But evidence of this kind is not to 
 be accepted as proof against Lord Byron any 
 more than passages descriptive of murder in 
 Shakespeare's plays could be accepted against 
 Shakespeare if any one charged him with 
 that crime. But if IMrs. Stowe and Lady 
 Byron were fair judges of the value ol 
 literary evidence, they might have gone to 
 poems that were not fictions and nut in- 
 
228 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 tended for fictions, but were the passionate 
 expression of fact and reality, and therein, if 
 they reverently studied them, they would 
 find much to prove that Byron's love for his 
 sister was pure and ennobling. Whether in 
 his " Domestic Poems," as published and in- 
 tended for publication, or in his private 
 communications to his literary and personal 
 friends, which were never intended for the 
 public eye, he always speaks of his sister with 
 the highest respect. To his mind she is all 
 goodness, all amiability, all excellence, all 
 purity, the incarnation of all the noblest 
 virtues and most winsome graces of her sex. 
 It is impossible not to see that he not only 
 loves but honours her, and it is just as impos- 
 sible for any one not led astray by passionate 
 prejudice, like Lady Byron in her later years, 
 and Mrs. Beecher Stowe, who took her words 
 for gospel, not to see that no man, however 
 base or hypocritical, could have truly 
 honoured a woman who had been his 
 partner in a sin so hateful. 
 
VIXDICATIOX OF LORD BYROX. 220 
 
 RECAPITULATION. 
 
 Let us endeavour to sum up the history 
 of Lady B^^ron's accusations against Lord 
 Byron in its several epochs chronologically. 
 
 In the year 181 G she parted from her 
 husband, alleging to her father and mother, 
 and to Dr. Lushington and Sir Samuel Bo- 
 milly, sixteen reasons in justification for the 
 step she had taken. Neither her father 
 nor her mother, nor Dr. Lushington nor 
 Sir Samuel Eomilly — though they all 
 agreed that these charges were very serious 
 — thought they were such, individually or 
 collectively, as might not be condoned. When 
 she discovered that the doctors did not con- 
 sider her husband to be insane, then, and 
 not tiU then, she told Dr. Lushington of a 
 seventeenth cause of sepai-ation, of which 
 she had made no mention to her parents. 
 Upon this seventeenth accusation, whatever 
 it was. Dr. Lushington thought reconcili- 
 ation and return to her husband impossible ; 
 and declared that, if it were attempted, he 
 would neither recommend nor have anything 
 
230 MEDORA LETGH. 
 
 to do with promoting it. But if this seven- 
 teenth charge was one of incest with Mrs. 
 Leigh, Lady Byron did not break off her 
 friendly, confidential, and affectionate inter- 
 course with that lady, but treated her as a 
 sister, and implored her for the continuance 
 of her love and goodv/ill. This is extraor- 
 dinary on the part of Lady Byron, to say 
 the least of it. 
 
 In the year 1818, two years after the 
 separation, she wrote to her friend. Lady 
 Anne Barnard, a letter in which she laid the 
 whole blame of her separation upon her hus- 
 band, and would take none to herself, stating 
 " that, though he would not suffer her to 
 remain his wife, he could not prevent her 
 from continuing his friend." She represented 
 her affection for Lord Byron as "hopeless 
 and unrequited," and asserted that " as long 
 as she lived her chief struggle would be not 
 to remember him too kindly. It was not 
 for her to speak ill of his heart in general ; 
 it was sufficient that to Jier it was hard and 
 impenetrable, and that hers must have been 
 broken before his could be touched." All 
 
VINDICATION OF LORD IJYIION. 1'.]] 
 
 these tender confessions to her friend, Lady 
 Anne, are doubtless the true exposition of 
 her feelings in 1818, while Lord Byron still 
 lived ; but how are they reconcileable with 
 any knowledge of such a crime as incest, 
 committed by her husband l)efore and during 
 the period of his marriage ? 
 
 In the year 1824, shortly before her hus- 
 band's death, Lady Byron wrote to Lord 
 Byron, in conjunction with Mrs. Leigh, a 
 letter descriptive of the state of health of 
 her daughter Ada; a fact which does not 
 look as if she knew Mrs. Leigh to be guilty 
 of the crime imputed to her. And if Mrs. 
 Leigh were not guilty. Lord Byron had no 
 other sister, and could not be guilty of that 
 particular crime, however guilty he might be 
 of some other. 
 
 In the year 1830, Lady Byron wrote a 
 history of the separation, and sent it to Mr. 
 Thomas Moore. We have already quoted 
 enough from it to show that in her mind 
 at that time the charge against her husband 
 could not have been that of incest. 
 
 In the year 1810, Lady Byron adopted 
 
232 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 Elizabeth Medora Leigh, because she either 
 knew, or supposed she knew, the fact at that 
 time, or had been told by some one, and 
 believed the story, that that young lady was 
 Lord Byron's daughter, and that Mrs. Leigh 
 was her mother. 
 
 In the year 1856, Lady Byron told Mrs. 
 Stowe that she knew and was convinced of 
 Lord Byron's guilt with his sister prior to 
 the separation in 1816, though she told Mrs. 
 Stowe, at the same time, that even with this 
 dreadful knowleds^e in her heart, and thous^h 
 Lord Byron had endeavoured not only to 
 corrupt her morals, but to shake her religious 
 faith, and make her the cloak, and, in a 
 manner, the accomplice of his adulterous and 
 incestuous intrigue, she loved Lord Byron so 
 well, that she envied the dog that was allowed 
 to remain with him, and would have been 
 srlad, even at the moment she was leavins: 
 
 7 O 
 
 him for ever, " if she could have been allowed 
 to remain and watch over him." Truly this 
 is an incomprehensible story, and the greatest 
 of all the Byron mysteries. 
 
 Up to the time of the publication of this 
 
VIXDICATIOX OF LORD BYROX. 233 
 
 charge by Mrs. Stowe in ISGO, the greatest 
 tenderness had been exliibited towards Lady 
 Byron — living and after her death — by all 
 writers and commentators upon Lord Byron's 
 life and poetry, and by all who still mentioned 
 her name in connection with her unhappy 
 marriage. Every one respected her character 
 and spared her feelings. No one accused 
 her of any breach of virtue or propriety. She 
 was doubtless considered hard and cold, 
 but nothing worse w^as said of her ; and if 
 any particular feeling was expressed towards 
 her, it was that of sorrow that she and Lord 
 Byron had not been able to pass through 
 life amicably and happily together. There 
 was, it is true, a vague idea, felt rather than 
 expressed, that she was doing great injustice 
 to Lord Byron's memory by her mysterious 
 silence — a silence more cruel than any direct 
 and plain accusation could have been. But 
 when at last this silence was broken, first 
 by her confidences to Mrs. Beecher Stowe, 
 and, secondly, by the publication of those 
 confidences by the latter, no greater charge 
 was even then, and on that amount of 
 
234 MEDOEA LEIGH. 
 
 provocation, brought against her than that 
 she was the victim of a strange haUucina- 
 tion, of which the germ was to be sought 
 in a peculiar jealousy — ^jealousy of Lord 
 Byron while he lived, born of the days when 
 he perhaps gave her too much cause for such 
 a feeling, and when she strove with herself, 
 as she told Lady Anne Barnard, not to re- 
 member him too kindly ; and jealousy after 
 his death because, among the poems that he 
 had bequeathed as an undying legacy to the 
 literature of his country, there were none by 
 any means so beautiful and touching ad- 
 dressed to his wife as those which he ad- 
 dressed to his sister, with the exception of 
 the pathetic '' Farewell," in which he had 
 depicted her as " unforgiving." 
 
 But the forbearance shown towards Lady 
 Byron by the whole world of English litera- 
 ture, was not shown by her towards her 
 husband's memory when she made her reve- 
 lations to Mrs. Stowe, and authorised their 
 publication. The provocation she alleged 
 for taking Mrs. Stowe into her confidence 
 was altogether unworthy of a sensible 
 
VINDICATION OF LORD UVllON. 235 
 
 woman — namely, the injurious popularity 
 about to be given to his poems by means of 
 the cheap editions that were thrown upon 
 the literary market. This plea, if honestly 
 pleaded in justification of her conduct, 
 can only be admitted as a proof of the 
 jealous monomania which possessed her.* 
 Neither was the provocation alleged by 
 Mrs. Stowe as a justification for giving 
 Lady B^Ton's confidences to the world, 
 a whit less nnw^orthy — for she expressly 
 stated that, had it not been for the praises 
 bestowed upon Lord Byron in Madame 
 Guiccioli's book, she w^ould have held her 
 peace — and that, had the *' mistress" (Guic- 
 cioli) not proved to be the bane, she (Mrs. 
 Stowe) w^ould not have thought it in- 
 
 * !Miss Harriet Martineaii, as stronf;; an admirer of Lady* 
 Byron as Mrs. Beecher Stowe, gives a very ditVerent account 
 of her ladyship's appreciation of her husband's genius. In 
 an obituary notice of Lady Uyron slie says : *' She loved 
 him [Lord Byron] to the last, with a love which it was not 
 in his power to destroy. (Site gloried in his fame; and s/ie 
 luould not interftre between him and the public who adored 
 him, any more than she would admit the public to judge 
 between him and her.'' 
 
236 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 cumbent upon her to act the part of the 
 antidote. Foolish and undignified conduct 
 on the part of both ladies if the charge 
 against Lord Byron's memory were true — 
 cruel beyond expression if it were false ! 
 
 It has hitherto been taken for granted — 
 by all who have written or spoken on the 
 subject — that Dr. Lushington, who still 
 lives, could clear up the Byron mystery if 
 he would. We think that questions of pro- 
 fessional secrecy, or etiquette, or punctilio, 
 ought no longer to prevent him from telling 
 what he knows. The admirers of Lord 
 Byron's genius, all who desire that the great 
 names of our literature should be morally 
 pure, need have no alarm for any revelations 
 that it may be in the power of Dr. Lushington 
 to make. Either Lady Byron, in 1816, con- 
 fided to him her seventeenth charge against 
 her husband — that charge being the charge 
 of incest — or she did not. If she did not. 
 Dr. Lushington ought, at the all-but-twelfth 
 hour of his long and honourable life, when 
 he has still the means of making his voice 
 heard, to declare the fact, and vindicate, not 
 
y INDICATION OF LOUD P.YRON. 237 
 
 only the memory of ^Frs. Leii^li and Jjord 
 Byron, but that of Lady Byron — and 
 rescue her from tlie charge of liypocritically 
 keeping up intimate and affectionate rela- 
 tions with a woman whom she believed to 
 be guilty of so foul a crime. If Lady Byron 
 did, in truth, make that particular charge 
 against her husband, let the fact be stated by 
 Dr. Lushington — and it will be accepted by 
 the world for what it is worth, and for 
 nothing more. It will be an ex parte 
 accusation made against a man secretly 
 behind his back ; and, though possibly made 
 in good faith, and with a conviction of 
 its truth on the part of the accuser, the 
 charge may have had no other foundation 
 than the monomaniacal delusions nurtured 
 in the brain of a proud and a jealous woman, 
 married to a husband whom she could not 
 wholly understand ; and the charge would 
 rest wholly upon her evidence. There could 
 be no other evidence, unless it could be 
 found in the written confession of both the 
 incriminated parties, which no one supposes 
 or ever has hinted to exist. 
 
238 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 Whether Lady B3^ron did or did not make 
 the charge in 1816, whether Dr. Lushington 
 will or will not divulge what he knows re- 
 lating to that year, we are still thrown upon 
 Mrs. Trevanion as having made a charge of 
 adultery against her mother in 1 83 1 to a sister 
 who, till 1831, had no suspicion of illegitimate 
 parentage, and upon Lady Byron as having 
 made to Medora Leigh the double charge of 
 incest and adultery against her husband in 
 1840. All these charges rest upon the testi- 
 mony of women who could not by any possi- 
 bility adduce any proof of their assertions, 
 and whose unsupported evidence would not 
 be accepted as conclusive of the guilt of the 
 accused in any court of justice in the world. 
 The witnesses are, none of them, clean-handed 
 or clean-minded, however clear-headed they 
 may have been, least of all Mrs. Trevanion ; 
 and certainly not Medora Leigh, who accepts 
 the charge without making it, and rests her 
 belief entirely upon the information of her 
 sister and of Lady Byron. Even Lady 
 Byron herself, though perfectly clean-handed, 
 is not at all clear-minded ; and has fallen into 
 
VINDICATION' OF LORD I5YK0N. 230 
 
 SO many contradictions and concealments, and 
 made mingled avowals and disavowals, as to 
 render her a very untrustworthy witness. 
 
 If Lord Byron, alive and in the flesh, were 
 on trial before any earthly tribunal for the 
 crime charged against him — if Lady Byron 
 was, as she is now, the only direct witness 
 against him, and jNIrs. Trevanion the only 
 direct witness against Mrs. Leigh, and the 
 one or both could be submitted to examina- 
 tion and to cross-examination on the various 
 remarkable discrepancies of the story, as 
 affecting one or the other — would any judge 
 sum up the evidence against these persons, 
 or any jury convict either? If they were 
 tried in the Court of Honour, there would 
 be no case. If they were tried in England, 
 the verdict w^ould be, Not Guilty. If they 
 were tried in Scotland, the verdict would 
 be, Not Proven. And more than this, in 
 the case of Lord Byron, shall he not be tri- 
 umphantly acquitted in the great Court of 
 Conscience ? and shall not the voice of Ca- 
 lumny against him be hushed for ever ? 
 The living prisoner arraigned for a crime 
 
240 MEDORA LEIGH. 
 
 even smaller than the one alleged against 
 Lord Byron — aye, for the smallest of crimes 
 to which any legal penalty is attached — can 
 speak for himself, or by the mouth of his 
 counsel, and if there be any doubt in his case, 
 is allowed by the merciful wisdom of our 
 law to claim and obtain for the behoof of 
 his innocence all the benefit of any and every 
 sad doubt that may have been excited in the 
 minds of those upon whom the decision and 
 the judgment are thrown. If this be so 
 with the living, however obscure and un- 
 worthy they may be, shall not the illustrious 
 dead, arraigned in their graves, be allowed 
 the same poor privilege ? 
 
 I 
 
PAKT IV. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 COXVEKSATIOXS WITH LORD BYRON IN GREECE 
 IN 1823. 
 
( 243 
 
 PART IV 
 
 COXVERSATIOXS AVITII LORD BYROX. 
 
 [Though the following reminiscences of an intercourse of 
 some days with Lord Byron in Greece, in the year 1823, have 
 little or no bearing on the subject discussed in the three pre- 
 ceding j3arts of this volume — except in so far as they confirm 
 all the previous accounts of persons who associated with the 
 poet during the i)eriod of his self-imposed exile, after his 
 separation from his wife until his death in 1824, which agreed 
 in stating that he always expressed his utter ignorance of and 
 incapacity to understand the charge or charges on which Lady 
 Byron justifieci her flight from his protection — they are, never- 
 theless, interesting in themselves. The circumstance of an 
 acquaintanceship between Lord Byron and the gentleman 
 who afterwards acted on behalf of Medora Leigh, having 
 been formed twenty years previous to his connection with 
 Miss Leigh's story, is somewliat remarkable. The narrator 
 made notes of his conversations with Lord Byron, began to 
 write them out after his return to England, finally laid the 
 notes aside, and only completed them, by request, to form 
 part of this volume.] 
 
 A MAN must be a little weak wlio tliiiiks lie 
 can communicate anything new regarding tlie 
 
244 CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 
 
 personal character of Lord Byron, or even add 
 much to the store of information upon which 
 the world has formed, and posterity will 
 form, its opinion of him. Still, one who has 
 had the good fortune to have had " conversa- 
 tions " with him, may take some credit for 
 self-denial in having kept the fact to him- 
 self for many years ; while, during almost 
 every month for ten or twelve years after his 
 lordship's death, the public was favoured 
 with some passages of his everyday life, 
 from the pens of numerous individuals, who 
 had, in greater or less degrees of intimacy, 
 associated with him. Having passed five 
 days in the great poet's company, I beg 
 to offer a condensed report of his conversa- 
 tions during that time, drawn from a memory 
 upon which, in this remarkable instance, I 
 can rely with as much confidence as upon 
 written memoranda. 
 
 It was in the island of Ithaca, in the 
 month of August, 1823, that I was shown into 
 the dining-room of the Resident Governor, 
 where Lord Byron, Count Gamba, Dr. 
 Bruno, Mr. Trelawney, and Mr. Hamilton 
 
CONVERSATIOXS WITH LORD BYROX. 245 
 
 Brown, were seated after dinner, with some 
 of the English officers and principal inhabit- 
 ants of the place. I had been informed of 
 Lord Byron's presence, but had no means of 
 finding him out, except by recollection of his 
 portraits ; and I am not ashamed to confess 
 that I was puzzled, in my examination of the 
 various countenances before me, where to fix 
 upon " the man." I at one time almost settled 
 upon Trelawney, from the interest which he 
 seemed to take in the schooner in which I 
 had just arrived; but on ascending to the 
 drawing-room, I w^as most agreeably un- 
 deceived by finding myself close to the side 
 of the great object of my curiosity, and en- 
 gaged in easy conversation with him, without 
 presentation or introduction of any kind. 
 
 He was handling and remarking upon the 
 books in some small open shelves, and fairly 
 spoke to me in such a manner that not to 
 have replied would have been boorish. 
 " ' Pope's Homer's Odyssey ' — hum ! — that is 
 well placed here, undoubtedly; — * Hume's 
 Essays ' ; — ' Tales of My Landlord '; — there 
 you are, Watty ! Are you recently from 
 
246 CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 
 
 England, sir?" I answered that I had not 
 been there for two years. " Then you can 
 bring us no news of the Greek Committee ? 
 Here we are all waiting orders, and no orders 
 seem likely to come. Ha ! ha !" The conver- 
 sation continued in this desultory flying 
 strain for some minutes ; but on a footing of 
 such apparent familiarity, that more than one 
 person in the room conceived, as I afterwards 
 learnt, that his lordship had had some previous 
 knowledge of me. This was so completely 
 the opposite of what I had always heard of 
 his inaccessibility, his hauteur, and repulsive- 
 ness (particularly towards the '' travelling 
 English"), that I believe my faculties were 
 visibly affected by my amazement. By de- 
 grees I recovered my self-possession, and 
 learnt, from his own lips, that he felt con- 
 siderably annoyed at some proceedings of the 
 Greek Committee ; that his undertaking had 
 more the character of a speculative adventure, 
 in favour of what he conceived to be a 
 glorious principle, than any admiration or 
 enthusiasm for the individual cause. 
 
 "I have not changed my opinion of the 
 
CONVERSATIOXS WITH LOKO in'KOX. 247 
 
 Greeks," he said. " I know thern as well as 
 most people " (a favourite phrase), " Ijut we 
 must not look always too closely at the men 
 who are to benefit by our exertions in a good 
 cause, or God knows we shall seldom do 
 much good in this Avorld. There is Tre- 
 lawney thinks he has fallen in with an angel 
 in Prince Mavrocordato, and little Bruno 
 would willingly sacrifice his life for the cause, 
 as he calls it. I must say he has shown 
 some sincerity in his devotion, in consenting 
 to join it for the little matter he makes of 
 me." I ventured to say that, in all proba- 
 bility, the being joined with him in any cause 
 was inducement enough for any man of mo- 
 derate pretensions. He noticed the compli- 
 ment only by an indifferent smile. '' I find 
 but one opinion," he continued, " among all 
 people whom I have met since I came here — 
 that no good is to be done for these rascally 
 Greeks ; that I am sure to be deceived, dis- 
 gusted, and all the rest of it. It may be so ; 
 but it is chiefly to satisfy myself upon these 
 very points that I am going. T go prepared 
 for anything, expecting a deal of roguery 
 
248 CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 
 
 and imposition, but hoping to do some 
 good." 
 
 " Have you read any of the late publica- 
 tions on Greece ?" I asked. 
 
 " I never read any accounts of a country 
 to which I can myself go," said he. " The 
 Committee have sent me some of their 
 ' Crown and Anchor ' reports, but I can make 
 nothing of them." 
 
 I was known to Captain Blaquiere, and 
 I had a few days before met him in Corfu, 
 and received what was then the latest in- 
 formation on Greek affairs. This afforded 
 me some pretence for being in the position, 
 which I could not help feeling was a false 
 one. I was just detailing what I knew, 
 when I happily discovered that I was well 
 acquainted with one of his lordship's party ; 
 and upon recognition he did me the kindness 
 to introduce me formally to him, as his very 
 good friend and ally. This made not the 
 slightest difference, except in relieving me of 
 all awkwardness of feeling, and the conversa- 
 tion continued in the same familiar flow. To 
 my increased amazement, he led it to his 
 
COXVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYROX. 210 
 
 works, to Lady Byron, and to his daughter. 
 The former was sug^gestcd by a volume of 
 " Childe Harold " which was on the table ; it 
 was the ugly square little German edition, 
 and I made free to characterise it as execrable. 
 He turned over the leaves, and said : " Yes, 
 it was very bad ; but it was better than one 
 that he had seen in French prose in Switzer- 
 land. I know not what my friend Mr. 
 Murray will say to it all. Kinnaird writes 
 to me that he is wroth about many things ; 
 let them do what they like with the book — 
 they have been abusive enough of the author. 
 ' The Quarterly ' is trying to make amends, 
 however, and ' Blackwood's ' people will sufier 
 none to attack me but themselves. Milman 
 was, I believe, at the bottom of the personali- 
 ties, because " [here he made a statement 
 
 regarding that gentleman which, as I do not 
 believe, I cannot put down] ; " Ijut they all 
 sink before an American reviewer, who de- 
 scribes me as a kind of fiend, and says that 
 the deformities of my mind are only to be 
 equalled by those of my body ; it is well that 
 any one can see them, at least." Our hostess, 
 
250 CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 
 
 Mrs. K., advanced to us about this moment, 
 and his lordship continued, smiHng : " Does 
 not your Gordon blood rise at such abuse of 
 a clansman? The gallant Gordons 'bruik 
 nae slight.' Are you true to your name, 
 Mrs. K. ?" The lady was loud in her re- 
 probation of the atrocious abuse that had 
 recently been heaped upon the noble lord, 
 and joined in his assumed clannish regard for 
 their mutual name. " Lady Byron and you 
 would agree," he said, laughing, "though / 
 could not, you are thinking ; you may say 
 so, I assure you. I dare say it will turn out 
 that I have been terribly in the wrong, hut 
 I always tvant to know what 1 did.'" I had 
 not courage to touch upon this delicate topic, 
 and Mrs. K. seemed to wish it passed over till 
 a less public occasion. He spoke of " Ada " 
 exactly as any parent might have done of a 
 beloved absent child, and betrayed not the 
 slightest confusion, or consciousness of a sore 
 subject, throughout the whole conversation. 
 I now learnt from him that he had ar- 
 rived in the island from Cephalonia only that 
 morning, and that it was his purpose (as it 
 
CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 251 
 
 was mine) to visit its antiquities and lo- 
 calities. A ride to the Fountain of Aretliusa 
 had been planned for the next day, and I 
 had the happiness of being invited to join 
 it. Pope's " Homer " was taken up for a 
 description of the place, and it led to tlie 
 following remarks : — " Yes, the very best 
 translation that ever was, or ever will be ; 
 there is nothing like it in the world, be 
 assured. It is quite delightful to find 
 Pope's character coming round again ; I 
 forgive Giftbrd everything for that. Puritan 
 as he is, he has too much good sense not to 
 know that, even if all the lies about Pope 
 were truths, his character is one of the best 
 among literary men. There is nobody now 
 like him, except Watty, and he is as nearly 
 faultless as ever human beins: was." 
 
 After what has already been repeatedly 
 published of Lord Byron's opinion of Sir 
 Walter Scott and the " Waverley Novels," it 
 would be a waste of time to specify what 
 was said by him on these subjects to the 
 present writer. The greater part of it, and 
 nearly in the same words, appeared in 
 
252 COXYERSATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 
 
 Captain Medwin's, Lady Blessington's, and 
 other journals, which need no support or 
 confirmation from any one. I therefore 
 omit what passed between us on these 
 topics, as already published, and well known 
 through other channels. One statement I 
 do not recollect to have seen noted, and that 
 was his intention, expressed and implied, 
 more than once, of paying a visit to Sir 
 Walter in the then ensuing spring. 
 
 The remainder of the evening was passed 
 in arranging the plan of proceeding on the 
 morrow's excursion, in the course of which 
 his lordship occasionally interjected a 
 facetious remark of some general nature; 
 but in such fascinating tones, and with such 
 a degree of amiability and familiarity, that, 
 of all the libels of which I well knew the 
 public press to be guilty, that of describing 
 Lord Byron as inaccessible, morose, and re- 
 pulsive in manner and language, seemed to 
 me the most false and atrocious. I found I 
 was to be accommodated for the night under 
 the same roof with his lordship, and I 
 retired, satisfied, in my own mind, that 
 
CONVERSATIONS -VVITnLORD BYRON. 253 
 
 favouring chance liad that day made me 
 the intimate (almost confidential) friend 
 of the greatest literary man of modern 
 times. 
 
 The next morning, about 9 o'clock, the 
 party for the Fountain of Arethusa assembled 
 in the parlour of Captain K. ; but Lord 
 Byron was missing. Trelawney, who had 
 slept in the room adjoining his lordship's, 
 told us that he feared he had been ill durins: 
 the night, but that he had gone out in a boat 
 very early in tlie morning. At this moment 
 I happened to be standing at the window, 
 and saw the object of our anxiety in the act 
 of landing on the beach, about ten or a dozen 
 yards from the house, to which he walked 
 slowly up. I never saw and could not con- 
 ceive the possibility of such a change in the 
 appearance of a human being as had taken 
 place since the previous night. He looked 
 like a man under sentence of death, or re- 
 turning from the funeral of all that he held 
 dear on earth. His person seemed shrunk, 
 his face was pale, and his eyes languid and 
 fixed on the groimd. He was leaning upon 
 
254 CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYROX. 
 
 a stick, and had changed his dark camlet- 
 caped surtout of the preceding evening for 
 a nankeen jacket, embroidered like a hussar's 
 — an attempt at dandyism, or dash, to which 
 the look and demeanour of the wearer formed 
 a sad contrast. On entering the room, his 
 lordship made the usual salutations ; and, 
 after some preliminary arrangements, the 
 party moved off, on horses and mules, to the 
 place of destination for the day, 
 
 I was so struck with the difference of 
 appearance in Lord Byron, that the determi- 
 nation to which I had come, to try to mono- 
 polise him, if possible, to myself, without 
 regard to appearances or hienseance, almost 
 entirely gave way under the terror of a 
 freezing repulse. I advanced to him under 
 the influence of this feeling, but I had 
 scarcely received his answer, when all un- 
 easiness about my reception vanished, and I 
 stuck as close to him as the road permitted 
 our animals to go. His voice sounded 
 timidly and quiveringly at first ; but as the 
 conversation proceeded, it became steady 
 and firm. The beautiful country in which 
 
 I 
 
COXYErv?ATIOXS WITH LORD m'ROX. 2r)5 
 
 we were travelling naturally formed a promi- 
 nent topic, as well as the character of the 
 people and of the Government. Of the 
 latter, I found him (to my amazement) an 
 admirer. " There is a deal of fine stuff 
 about that old Maitland," he said ; ''he 
 knows the Greeks well. Do you know if 
 it be true that he ordered one of their briers 
 to be blown out of the water if she stayed ten 
 minutes longer in Corfu Roads ?" I hap- 
 pened to know, and told him that it was 
 true. "Well, of all follies, that of daring 
 to say what one cannot dare to do is the 
 least to be pitied. Do you think Sir Tom 
 would have really executed his threat ? " 
 I told his lordship that I believed he cer- 
 tainly would, and that this knowledge of his 
 being in earnest in everything he said was 
 the cause not only of the quiet termination 
 of that affair, but of the order and subordi- 
 nation in the whole of the countries under 
 his government. 
 
 The conversation again insensibly re- 
 verted to Sir Walter Scott, and Lord Byron 
 repeated to me the anecdote of the interview 
 
256 CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 
 
 in Murrays shop, as conclusive evidence of 
 his being the author of the " Waverley 
 Novels." He was a little bat not durably 
 staggered by the equally well-known anec- 
 dote of Sir Walter having, with some solem- 
 nity, denied the authorship to Mr. Wilson 
 Croker, in the presence of George lY., 
 the Duke of York, and the late Lord Canter- 
 bury. He agreed that an author wishing to 
 conceal his authorship hai a right to give 
 any answer whatever that succeeded in con- 
 vincing an inquirer that he was wrong in 
 his suppositions. 
 
 When we came within sight of the object 
 of our excursion, there happened to be an 
 old shepherd in the act of coming down 
 from the fountain. His lordship at once 
 fixed upon him for Eumseus, and invited 
 him back with us to "fill up the pic- 
 ture." Having drunk of the fountain, 
 and eaten of our less classical re past of 
 cold fowls, &c., his lordship again became 
 lively, and full of pleasant conceits. To 
 detail the conversation (which was general, 
 and varied as the individuals that partook 
 
CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD liYRON. 2i) i 
 
 of it) is now impossible, and certainly not 
 desirable if it were possible. I wisli to 
 observe, however, that on this and one very 
 similar occasion, it was ver}^ unlike the kind 
 of conversation which Lord Byron is de- 
 scribed as holding with various individuals 
 who have written about him. Still more 
 unlike was it to what one would have sii//- 
 posed his conversation to be ; it was exactly 
 that of nine-tenths of the cultivated class of 
 English gentlemen, careless and unconscious 
 of everything but the present moment. Lord 
 Byron ceased to be more than one of the 
 party, and stood some sharp jokes, practical 
 and verbal, with more good-nature than 
 would have done many of the ciphers whom 
 one is doomed to tolerate in society. 
 
 We returned as we went, but no oppor- 
 tunity presented itself of introducing any 
 subject of interest beyond that of the place 
 and time. His lordship seemed quite re- 
 stored by the excursion, and in the evening 
 came to the Eesident's, bearing himself 
 towards everybody in the same easy, gen- 
 tlemanly way that rendered him the delight 
 
 s 
 
258 CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 
 
 and ornament of every society in wliicli lie 
 chose to unbend himself. 
 
 The Eesident was as absolute a monarch 
 as Ulysses, and I dare say much more hos- 
 pitable and obliging. He found quarters for 
 the whole Anglo-Italian party, in the best 
 houses of the town, and received them on 
 the following morning at the most luxurious 
 of breakfasts, consisting, among other native 
 productions, of fresh-gathered grapes, just 
 ripened^ but which were pronounced of some 
 danger to be eaten, as not having had the 
 '' first rain." This is worthy of note, as 
 having been apparently a ground of their 
 being taken by Lord Byron in preference to 
 the riper and safer figs and nectarines ; but 
 he deemed it a fair reason for an apology to 
 the worthy doctor of the 8th Eegiment (Dr. 
 Scott), who had cautioned the company 
 against the fruit. 
 
 " I take them, doctor," said his lordship, 
 "as I take other prohibited things — in order 
 to accustom myself to any and all things that 
 a man may be compelled to take where I am 
 
COXVERSATIOXS WITH LORD BYROX. 259 
 
 going — in tlio Siune way that I abstain from 
 all supertluities, even salt to my eggs, or 
 butter to my bread ; and I take tea, ^Irs. 
 Knox^ without sugar or cream. 13ut tea it- 
 self is, really, the most superfluous of super- 
 fluities, though I am never without it." 
 
 I heard these observations as they were 
 made to Dr. Scott, next to whom I was 
 sitting, towards the end of the table ; but 
 I could not hear the animated conversation 
 that was going on between his lordship 
 and Mrs. Knox, beyond the occasional 
 mention of ''Penelope," and, when one of 
 her children came in to her, " Telemachus,'* 
 — names too obviously apropos of the place 
 and persons to be omitted in any incidental 
 conversation in Ithaca. 
 
 The excursion to the '' School of Homer " 
 (why so called nobody seemed to know) was 
 to be made by water ; and the j)arty of the 
 preceding day, except the lady, embarked 
 in an elegant country boat with four rowers, 
 and sundry packages and jars of eatables 
 and drinkables. As soon as we were seated 
 under the awning — Lord B3'ron in the centre 
 
260 CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 
 
 seat, with his face to the stern — Tre- 
 lawiiey took charge of the tiller. The 
 other passengers being seated on the sides, 
 the usual small flying general conversation 
 began. Lord Bjron seemed in a mood 
 calculated to make the company think he 
 meant something more formal than ordinary 
 talk. Of course there could not be any- 
 thing said in the nature of a dialogue, which, 
 to he honest, was the kind of conversation 
 that I had at heart. He began by inform- 
 ing us that he had just been reading, with 
 renewed pleasure, David Hume's Essays. 
 He considered Hume to be by far the 
 most profound thinker and clearest reasoner 
 of the many philosophers and meta- 
 physicians of the last century. '' There is," 
 said he, " no refuting him, and for simplicity 
 and clearness of style, he is unmatched, and 
 is utterly unanswerable." He referred par- 
 ticularly to the Essay on Miracles. It was 
 remarked to him, that it had nevertheless 
 been specifically answered, and, some people 
 thought, refuted, by a Presbyterian divine, 
 Dr. Campbell of Aberdeen. I could not 
 
COXVERSATIOXS WITH LORD BYRON. 201 
 
 hear wlicther his lordship knew of the 
 author, but tlie remark did not affect his 
 opinion ; it merely turned the conversation to 
 Aberdeen and " poor John Scott," the most 
 promising and most unfortunate literary 
 man of the day, whom he knew well, and 
 who, said he, knew him (Lord Byron) as a 
 schoolboy. Scotland, AYalter Scott (or, as 
 his lordship always called him), " Watty," 
 the "Waverley Novels," the '* Rejected Ad- 
 dresses," and the English aristocracy (which 
 he reviled most bitterly), were the pro- 
 minent objects of nearly an hour's conversa- 
 tion. It was varied, towards the end of the 
 voyage, in this original fashion : " But come, 
 gentlemen, we must have some inspiration. 
 Here Tita, I'Hippocrena !" 
 
 This brought from the bow^s of the boat 
 a huge Venetian gondolier, with a musket 
 slung diagonally across his back, a stone jar 
 of two gallons of wdiat turned out to be 
 English gin, another porous one of water, and 
 a quart pitcher, into which the gondolier 
 poured the spirit, and laid the whole, with two 
 or three larsfe tumblers, at the feet of his ex- 
 
262 CONVERSATIONS AVITH LORD BYRON. 
 
 pectant lord, who quickly uncorked the jar, 
 and began to pour its contents into the 
 smaller vessel. 
 
 " Now, gentlemen, drink deep, or taste not 
 the Pierian spring ; it is the true poetic 
 source. I'm a rogue if I have drunk to-day. 
 Come " (handing tumblers round to us), 
 " this is the way ;" and he nearly half- 
 filled a tumbler, and then poured from the 
 height of his arm out of the water-jar, till 
 the tumbler sparkled in the sun like soda- 
 water, and drunk it off while effervescing, 
 glorious gin-swizzle, a most tempting beve- 
 rage, of which every one on board took his 
 share, munching after it a biscuit out of a 
 hug-e tin-case of them. This certainlv ex- 
 hilarated us till we landed within some fifty 
 or sixty yards of the house to which we 
 were directed. 
 
 On our way we learned that the Eegent 
 of the island — that is, the native governor, 
 as Captain Knox was the protecting Power's 
 Governor (viceroy over the king 1) — had 
 forwarded the materials of a substantial feast 
 to the occupant (his brother) ; for the " nobili 
 
CONVERSATIONS WITH LOUD IJVUOK. 20.3 
 
 Inglesi," who were to honour his premises. 
 In mentioninLT this act of the lle«:ent to 
 Lord Byron, his remark was a repetition of 
 the satirical line in the imitation address ot* 
 the poet Fitzgerald, " God hloss the Regent !" 
 and as I mentioned the relationsliip to our 
 approaching host, he added, with a laugh, 
 " and the Duke ot* York !" 
 
 On entering the mansion, we were received 
 by the whole fiimily, commencing with the 
 mother of the princes — a venerable lady of 
 at least seventy, dressed in pure Greek cos- 
 tume, to whom Lord Byron went up, with 
 some formality, and, with a slight bend of 
 the knee, took her hand, and kissed it re- 
 verently. We then moved into the adjoin- 
 ing " sala,"or saloon, where there was a profu- 
 sion of English comestibles, in the shape of 
 cold sirloin of beef, fowls, ham, &c., to whicli 
 we did such honour as a sea-appetite gene- 
 rally produces. It was rather distressing that 
 not one of the entertainers touched any of 
 these luxuries, it being the Greek Second or 
 Panagia Lent, but fed entirely on some cold 
 fish fried in oil, and green salad, of which 
 
2G4 CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 
 
 last Lord Byron, in adherence to his rule of 
 accustoming himself to eat anything eatable, 
 partook, though with an obvious effort — as 
 well as of the various wines that were on the 
 table, particularly Ithaca, which is exactly 
 port as made and drunk in the countrj^ of its 
 growth. 
 
 I was not antiquary enough to know to 
 what object of antiquity our visit was made, 
 but I saw Lord Byron in earnest conversa- 
 tion with a very antique old Greek monk in 
 full clerical habit. He was a bishop, sitting 
 on a stone of the ruined wall close by, and 
 he turned out to be the '' Esprit fort'' men- 
 tioned in a note at the end of the second 
 canto of '' Childe Harold " — a freethinker, at 
 least a freespeaker, when he called the 
 sacrifice of the Mass ""una Coglioneria'' 
 
 When we embarked, on our return to 
 Yathi, Lord Byron seemed moody and 
 sullen, but brightened up as he saw a ripple 
 on the water, a mast and sail raised in the 
 cutter, and Trelawney seated in the stern 
 with the tiller in hand. In a few minutes 
 we were scudding, gunwale under, in a posi- 
 
CONVERSATIONS TVITIl LOUD HYRON. 205 
 
 tion infinitely more beautiful than a<j^reeable 
 to landsmen, and Lord Byron obviously 
 enjoying the not improbable idea of a swim 
 for life. His motions as lie sat tended 
 to increase the impulse of the breeze, 
 and tended also to sway the boat to 
 leeward. ''I don*t know," he said, "if 
 you all swim, gentlemen ; but if you do, you 
 will have fifty fathoms of blue water to sup- 
 port you ; and if you do not, you will have 
 it over you. But as you may not all be pre- 
 pared, starboard, Trelawney — bring her up. 
 There ! she is trim ; and now let us have a 
 glass of grog after the gale. Tita^ i fiaschi 1" 
 This was followed by a reproduction of the 
 gin -and- water jars, and a round of the im- 
 mortal swizzle. To my very great surprise, 
 it w^as new to the company that the liquor 
 which they Avere now enjoying was tlie pro- 
 duct of Scotland, in the shape of what is 
 called " low-wines," or semi-distilled whisky 
 — chiefly from the distillery of mine ancient 
 friend, James Haig, of Lochrin ; but the 
 communication seemed to gratify the noble 
 drinker, and led to the recitation by one of 
 
266 CONVERSATIOXS WITH LOED BYRON. 
 
 the company, in pure lowland Scotch, of 
 Burns's Petition to the House of Commons 
 in behalf of the national liquor. The last 
 stanza, beginning, 
 
 " Scotland, my auld respeckit mither," 
 
 very much pleased Lord Byron, who said 
 that he too was more than half a Scotch- 
 man. 
 
 The conversation again turned on the 
 "'WaverleyNovels,"andon this occasion Lord 
 Byron spoke of "The Bride of Lammermuir," 
 and cited the passage where the mother of 
 the cooper's wife tells her husband (the 
 cooper) that she '' kent naething aboot what 
 he might do to his wife ; but the deil a finger 
 shall 3^e lay on my dochter, and that ye may 
 foond upon.'' Shortly afterwards, the con- 
 versation having turned upon poetry, his 
 lordship mentioned the famous ode on the 
 death of Sir John Moore as the finest piece 
 of poetry in any language. He recited some 
 lines of it. One of the company, with more 
 presumption than wisdom, took him up, as 
 
OONVERSATIOXS WITH LOUT) IJVllOX. 2()7 
 
 his memory seemed to lag, by iillin<r in the 
 line : 
 
 " And he looked like ;i warrior takinc: his rest, 
 With his martial cloak around him." 
 
 Lord Byron, witli a look at tlie interloper 
 that spoke as if death wore in it, and no 
 death was sufficiently cruel for him, shouted, 
 "'He lay' — 'he lay like a warrior,' not 
 'he lookedy The pretender was struck 
 dumb, but, with reference to his lordship's 
 laudation of the piece, he ventured half 
 to whisper that the " Gladiator " was su- 
 perior to it, as it is to any poetical picture 
 ever painted in words. The reply was a 
 benign look, and a flattering recognition, by 
 a little applausive tapping of his tobacco-box 
 on the board on which he sat. 
 
 On arriving at Vathi, w^e repaired to our 
 several rooms in the worthy citizens' houses 
 where we were billeted, to read and meditate, 
 and w^rite and converse, as we might meet, 
 indoors or out; and much profound lucu- 
 bration took place among us, on the cha- 
 racteristics and disposition of the very emi- 
 
268 CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYROX. 
 
 nent personage with whom we were for the 
 time associated. Dr. Scott, the assistant- 
 surgeon of the 8th Toot, who had heard 
 of, though he may not have witnessed, any 
 of the pecuharities of the great poet, 
 accounted for them, and even for the 
 sublimities of his poetry, by an abnormal 
 construction or chronic derangement of the 
 digestive organs — a theory which experience 
 and observation of other people than poets 
 afford many reasons to support : 
 
 " Is it not strange now — ten times strange — to think, 
 And is it not enough one's faith to shatter, 
 
 That right or wrong direction of a drink, 
 A plus or minus of a yellow matter. 
 
 One half the world should elevate or sink 
 
 To bliss or woe (most commonly the latter) — 
 
 That human happiness is well-formed chyle, 
 
 And human misery redundant bile !" 
 
 The next morning the accounts we heard 
 of Lord Byron were contradictory : Tre- 
 lawney, who slept in the next room to him, 
 stating that he had been writing the greater 
 part of tlie night, and he alleged it was the six- 
 teenth canto of '' Don Juan " ; and Dr.Bruno, 
 
COWERSATION? WITH LORD nVUOX. 209 
 
 who visited him at intervals, and was many 
 liours in personal attendance at his bedside, 
 assertin<^ that he had been seriously ill, and 
 had been saved only by those *' benedette 
 pillule " (blessed pills), which so often had had 
 that effect. His lordship again appeared 
 rowing in from his bath at the Lazzaretto, 
 a course of proceeding (bathing and boating) 
 which caused Dr. Bruno to wring his hands 
 and tear his hair with alarm and vexation. 
 
 It was, however, the day fixed for our 
 return to Cephalonia, and, having gladly 
 assented to the proposition to join the suite, 
 we all mounted ponies to cross the island to 
 a small harbour on the south side, w^here a 
 boat w^as waiting to bear us to Santa Eufemia, 
 a custom-house station on the coast of Ce- 
 phalonia, about half an liour's passage from 
 Ithaca, which we accordingly passed, and 
 arrived at the collector's mansion about 
 2 o'clock. 
 
 During the journey across the smaller 
 island, I made a bold push, and succeeded in 
 securing, with my small pony, the side-berth 
 of Lord Byron's large brown steed, and held 
 
270 CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 
 
 by him in tlie narrow path, to the exclusion 
 of companions better entitled to the post. 
 His conversation was not merely free — it was 
 familiar and intimate, as if we were school- 
 boys meeting after a long separation. I 
 happened to be "up" in the " Waverley 
 Novels," had seen several letters of Sir 
 Walter Scott's about his pedigree for his 
 baronetage, could repeat almost every one of 
 the " Eejected Addresses," and knew some- 
 thing of the " London Magazine " contribu- 
 tors, who were then in the zenith of their re- 
 putation — Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Talfourd, 
 Browning, Allan Cunningham, Eeynolds, 
 Darley, &c. But his lordship pointed at 
 the higher game of Southey, Gifford (whom 
 he all but worshipped), Jeffrey of the 
 "Edinburgh Eeview," John Wilson, and 
 other Blackwoodites. He said they were all 
 infidels, as every man had a right to be ; 
 that Edinburgh was understood to be the 
 seat of all infidelity, and he mentioned 
 names (Dr. Chalmers and Andrew Thomson, 
 for examples) among the clergy as being of 
 the category. This I never could admit. 
 
CONVERSATIONS WITn LORD r.YROX. 271 
 
 He was particularly bitter against Soutliey, 
 sneered at Wordswortli, admired Tliomas 
 Campbell, classing his '' Battle of the Baltic " 
 with the very highest of lyric productions. 
 " Nothing finer/' he said, *' was ever written 
 than : 
 
 " There was silerce deep as death, 
 And the boldest held his breath 
 For a time." 
 
 We arrived at one of the beautiiul bays 
 that encircle the island, like a wavy wreath 
 of silver sand studded with gold and emerald 
 in a field of liquid pearl, and embarked in 
 the collector's boat for the opposite shore 
 of St. Eufemia, wdiere, on arrival, we were 
 received by its courteous chief, Mr. Toole, 
 in a sort of state — with his whole establisli- 
 ment, French and English, uncovered and 
 bo win 2:. He had had notice of the illustrious 
 poet's expected arrival, and had prepared one 
 of the usual luxurious feasts in his honour — 
 feasts which Lord Byron said "■ played the 
 devil" with him, for he could not abstain 
 when cfood eatinc: was within his reach. 
 The apartment assigned to us was small, 
 
272 CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 
 
 and the table ^could not accommodate the 
 whole party. There were, accordingly, 
 small side or " children's tables," for such 
 guests as might choose to be willing to take 
 seats at them. " Ha !*' said Lord Byron, 
 " England all over — places for Tommy and 
 Billy, and Lizzie and Molly, if there were 
 
 any. Mr. " (addressing me), " will you 
 
 be my Tommy?" — pointing to the two vacant 
 seats at a small side-table, close to the chair 
 of our host. Down I sat, delighted, opposite 
 to my companion, and had a tete-a-tete dinner 
 apart from the head-table, from which, as 
 usual, we were profusely helped to the most 
 recherche portions. " Verily," said his lord- 
 ship, "I cannot abstain." His conversation, 
 liowever, was directed chiefly to his host, 
 from whom he received much local informa- 
 tion, and had his admiration of Sir Thomas 
 Maitland increased by some particulars of 
 his system of government. There were no 
 vacant apartments within the station, but we 
 learned that quarters had been provided for 
 us at a monastery on the hill of Samos, across 
 the bay. Thither we were all transported 
 
COXVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYROX. 273 
 
 at twiliirlit, tond ascended to tlic larsre vene- 
 rable abode of some dozen oi' IViars, who 
 were prepared for oui' arrival and iicconi- 
 modation. Outside the walls of the building 
 there were some open sarcophagi and some 
 pieces of carved frieze and fragments of 
 pottery. 
 
 I walked with his lordship and Count 
 Gamba to examine them, speculating pliilo- 
 sophically on their quondam contents. Some- 
 thing to our surprise, Lord Byron clambered 
 over into the deepest, and lay in the bottom 
 at lull length on his back, muttering some 
 English lines. I may have been wrong, 
 or idly and unjustifiably curious, but I leaned 
 over to hear what the lines might be. I 
 found they were unconnected fragments of 
 the scene in " Hamlet," where he morahses 
 with Horatio on the skull : 
 
 " Imperial CiEsar, dead and turned to clay, 
 Might stop a hole to keep the wind away ; 
 Oh that that eartli that held the world in awe 
 Should patch a wall to expel t)ie winter's flaw." 
 
 As he sprang out and rejoined us, iie 
 
 T 
 
274 CONVEKSATIOISrS WITH LORD BYRON". 
 
 said, " Hamlet, as a whole, is original ; but 
 I do not admire him to the extent of the 
 common opinion. More than all, he requires 
 the very best acting. Kean did not under- 
 stand the part, and one could not look at 
 him after having seen John Kemble, whose 
 squeaking voice was lost in his noble car- 
 riage and thorough right conception of the 
 character. Eogers told me that Kemble 
 used to be almost always hissed in the 
 beginning of his career. The best actor on 
 the stage, he said, is Charles Young. His 
 Pierre was never equalled, and never will 
 be." Amid such flying desultory conversa- 
 tion we entered the monastery, and took 
 'coffee for lack of anything else, while our 
 servants were preparing our beds. Lord 
 Byron retired almost immediately from the 
 sala. Shortly afterwards we were astonished 
 and alarmed by the entry of Dr. Bruno, 
 wringing his hands and tearing his hair — 
 a practice much too frequent with him — and 
 ejaculating : " Oh, Maria, santissima Maria, 
 se non e gia morto — cielo^ perche non son 
 morto to." It appeared that Lord Byron 
 
CONVERSATIONS WITH LOKD I;YR0N. 275 
 
 was seized with violent spasms in the 
 stomach and liver, and his brain was ex- 
 cited to dangerous excess, so that he would 
 not tolerate the presence of any person in 
 his room. He refused all medicine, and 
 stamped and tore all his clothes and bedding 
 like a maniac. We could hear him rattling 
 and ejaculating. Poor Dr. Bruno stood 
 lamenting in agony of mind, in anticipa- 
 tion of the most dire results if immediate 
 relief was not obtained by powerful cathar- 
 tics, but Lord Byron had expelled him from 
 the room by main force. He now implored 
 one or more of the company to go to his 
 lordship and induce him, if possible, to save 
 his life by taking the necessary medicine. 
 Trelawney at once proceeded to the room, 
 but soon returned, saying that it would 
 require ten such as he to hold his lordship 
 for a minute, adding that Lord Byron would 
 not leave an unbroken article in the room. 
 The doctor again essayed an entrance, l)ut 
 without success. Tlie monks were becoming 
 alarmed, and so, hi truth, were all present. 
 The doctor asked me to try to brinir his 
 
276 CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 
 
 lordship to reason ; " he will thank jou 
 when he is well," he said, " but get him to 
 take this one pill, and he will be safe." It 
 seemed a very easy undertaking, and I 
 went. There being no lock on the door, 
 entry was obtained in spite of a barricade 
 of chairs and a table within. His lordship 
 was half-undressed, standing in a far corner 
 like a hunted animal at bay. As I looked 
 determined to advance in spite of his im- 
 precations of " Baih ! out, out of my sight ! 
 fiends, can I have no peace, no relief from 
 this hell ! Leave me, I say !" and he simply 
 lifted the chair nearest to him, and hurled 
 it direct at my head ; I escaped as I best 
 could, and returned to the sala. The 
 matter was obviously serious, and we all 
 counselled force and such coercive measures 
 as might be necessary to make him swallow 
 the curative medicine. Mr. Hamilton 
 Browne, one of our party, now volunteered 
 an attempt, and the silence that succeeded 
 his entrance augured well for his success. 
 He returned much sooner than expected, 
 telling the doctor that he might go to sleep ; 
 
CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 277 
 
 Lord Byron had taken botli tlie pills, and 
 liad lain down on mv mattress and boddinsr, 
 prepared for liim by my servant, the only 
 regular bed in the company, the others 
 being trunks and portable tressels, with 
 such softening as might be procured for the 
 occasion. Lord Byron's beautiful and most 
 commodious patent portmanteau bed, with 
 every appliance that profusion of money 
 could provide, was mine for the night. 
 
 On the following morning Lord Byron 
 was all dejection and penitence, not ex- 
 pressed in words, but amply in looks and 
 movements, till something tending to the 
 jocular occurred to enliven him and us. 
 Wandering from room to room, from porch 
 to balcony, it so happened that Lord Byron 
 stumbled upon their occupants in the act of 
 writing accounts, journals, private letters, 
 or memoranda. He thus came upon me on 
 an outer roof of a part of the building 
 while writing, as far as I recollect, these 
 very notes of his conversation and conduct. 
 What occurred, however, was not of mucli 
 consequence — or none — and turned upon the 
 
278 CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 
 
 fact that so many people were writing, 
 when he, the great voluminous writer, so 
 supposed, was not writing at all. 
 
 The journey of the day was to be over 
 the Black Mountain to Argostoli, the 
 capital of Cephalonia. We set out about 
 noon, struggling as we best could over moor, 
 marsh ground, and watery wastes. Lord 
 Byron revived; and, lively on horseback, 
 sang, at the pitch of his voice, many of 
 Moore's melodies and stray snatches of 
 popular songs of the time in the common 
 style of the streets. There was nothing 
 remarkable in the conversation. On arrival 
 at Argostoli, the party separated — Lord 
 Byron and Trelawney to the brig of the 
 former lying in the offing, the rest to their 
 several quarters in the town. 
 
 During my stay of a week. Lord Byron 
 made himself in every way social and agree- 
 able to the officers of the garrison, from the 
 young subaltern to the Commander-in-chief 
 and Resident, Colonel Napier,* and became 
 
 * Afterwards General Sir Charles James Napier of Meanee. 
 
CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD RYRON. 270 
 
 intimate and Irienclly witli Dr. Henry 
 IMuir, mine ancient I'ricnd and ally, wiUi 
 wliom he corresponded, and IVom whom I 
 heard much of his doings and conversation. 
 Colonel Napier was a man in many respects 
 akin to his lordship in disposition and tem- 
 perament, had the same overweening opinion 
 of his own superiority, the same eccentric 
 habits of seeking notice and observation by 
 singularity and desire to be interesting, 
 and the same occasional displays of violence 
 of temper. They agreed thoroughly. 
 
 During my stay I became acquainted with 
 Staif-Assistant-Surgeon Kennedy and his 
 beautiful young wife, whose name (I mean 
 the Doctor's) is associated with Lord 
 Byron's for the so-called religious conver- 
 sations held with him in the view of 
 converting him from scepticism and infi- 
 delity. The doctor was an extreme speci- 
 men of the class of both sexes who think 
 that the pious motive which they assume 
 actuates them, while it is mere conceit and 
 assumption of self-importance, lie was a 
 very weak person in mind and body, igno- 
 
280 CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BYRON. 
 
 rant of the most common controversial 
 arguments even on his own side, but by 
 perseverance, and much more by the obvious 
 novelty and occupation afforded to a blase 
 English nobleman, he succeeded in arranging 
 meetings for his hearing Lord Byron for two 
 hours of controversy, if he thought fit, for 
 the doctor's one hour. He was a shallow 
 and ill-informed man. His book showed the 
 results ; but it did not, and could not, show 
 the quizzing that it excited in the garrison. 
 
 I took my leave of Lord Byron and his 
 companions with much regret, receiving from 
 him many cordial and flattering assurances 
 of regard, and a distinct promise of a visit to 
 me on his way home in the spring — a pro- 
 mise repeated some months later through 
 his friend and relative, Lord Sidney Osborne, 
 on his return from seeing him in Zante. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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