But the time is now come when the truth may be told. All the actors in the scene have disappeared from the stage of mortal existence, and pa.s.sed, let us have faith to hope, into a world where they would desire to expiate their faults by a late publication of the truth.

No person in England, we think, would as yet take the responsibility of relating the true history which is to clear Lady Byron's memory; but, by a singular concurrence of circ.u.mstances, all the facts of the case, in the most undeniable and authentic form, were at one time placed in the hands of the writer of this sketch, with authority to make such use of them as she should judge best. Had this melancholy history been allowed to sleep, no public use would have been made of them; but the appearance of a popular attack on the character of Lady Byron calls for a vindication, and the true story of her married life will therefore now be related.

Lord Byron has described in one of his letters the impression left upon his mind by a young person whom he met one evening in society, and who attracted his attention by the simplicity of her dress, and a certain air of singular purity and calmness with which she surveyed the scene around her.

On inquiry, he was told that this young person was Miss Milbanke, an only child, and one of the largest heiresses in England.

Lord Byron was fond of idealising his experiences in poetry; and the friends of Lady Byron had no difficulty in recognising the portrait of Lady Byron, as she appeared at this time of her life, in his exquisite description of Aurora Raby:--

'There was Indeed a certain fair and fairy one, Of the best cla.s.s, and better than her cla.s.s,-- Aurora Raby, a young star who shone O'er life, too sweet an image for such gla.s.s; A lovely being scarcely formed or moulded; A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.

Early in years, and yet more infantine In figure, she had something of sublime In eyes which sadly shone as seraphs' shine; All youth, but with an aspect beyond time; Radiant and grave, as pitying man's decline; Mournful, but mournful of another's crime, She looked as if she sat by Eden's door, And grieved for those who could return no more.

She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew, As seeking not to know it; silent, lone, As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew, And kept her heart serene within its zone.

There was awe in the homage which she drew; Her spirit seemed as seated on a throne, Apart from the surrounding world, and strong In its own strength,--most strange in one so young!'

Some idea of the course which their acquaintance took, and of the manner in which he was piqued into thinking of her, is given in a stanza or two:--

'The dashing and proud air of Adeline Imposed not upon her: she saw her blaze Much as she would have seen a glow-worm shine; Then turned unto the stars for loftier rays.

Juan was something she could not divine, Being no sibyl in the new world's ways; Yet she was nothing dazzled by the meteor, Because she did not pin her faith on feature.

His fame too (for he had that kind of fame Which sometimes plays the deuce with womankind,-- A heterogeneous ma.s.s of glorious blame, Half virtues and whole vices being combined; Faults which attract because they are not tame; Follies tricked out so brightly that they blind),-- These seals upon her wax made no impression, Such was her coldness or her self-possession.

Aurora sat with that indifference Which piques a preux chevalier,--as it ought.

Of all offences, that's the worst offence Which seems to hint you are not worth a thought.

To his gay nothings, nothing was replied, Or something which was nothing, as urbanity Required. Aurora scarcely looked aside, Nor even smiled enough for any vanity.

The Devil was in the girl! Could it be pride, Or modesty, or absence, or inanity?

Juan was drawn thus into some attentions, Slight but select, and just enough to express, To females of perspicuous comprehensions, That he would rather make them more than less.

Aurora at the last (so history mentions, Though probably much less a fact than guess) So far relaxed her thoughts from their sweet prison As once or twice to smile, if not to listen.

But Juan had a sort of winning way, A proud humility, if such there be, Which showed such deference to what females say, As if each charming word were a decree.

His tact, too, tempered him from grave to gay, And taught him when to be reserved or free.

He had the art of drawing people out, Without their seeing what he was about.

Aurora, who in her indifference, Confounded him in common with the crowd Of flatterers, though she deemed he had more sense Than whispering foplings or than witlings loud, Commenced (from such slight things will great commence) To feel that flattery which attracts the proud, Rather by deference than compliment, And wins even by a delicate dissent.

And then he had good looks: that point was carried Nem. con. amongst the women.

Now, though we know of old that looks deceive, And always have done, somehow these good looks, Make more impression than the best of books.

Aurora, who looked more on books than faces, Was very young, although so very sage: Admiring more Minerva than the Graces, Especially upon a printed page.

But Virtue's self, with all her tightest laces, Has not the natural stays of strict old age; And Socrates, that model of all duty, Owned to a penchant, though discreet for beauty.'

The presence of this high-minded, thoughtful, unworldly woman is described through two cantos of the wild, rattling 'Don Juan,' in a manner that shows how deeply the poet was capable of being affected by such an appeal to his higher nature.

For instance, when Don Juan sits silent and thoughtful amid a circle of persons who are talking scandal, the poet says,--

''Tis true, he saw Aurora look as though She approved his silence: she perhaps mistook Its motive for that charity we owe, But seldom pay, the absent.

He gained esteem where it was worth the most; And certainly Aurora had renewed In him some feelings he had lately lost Or hardened,--feelings which, perhaps ideal, Are so divine that I must deem them real:--

The love of higher things and better days; The unbounded hope and heavenly ignorance Of what is called the world and the world's ways; The moments when we gather from a glance More joy than from all future pride or praise, Which kindled manhood, but can ne'er entrance The heart in an existence of its own Of which another's bosom is the zone.

And full of sentiments sublime as billows Heaving between this world and worlds beyond, Don Juan, when the midnight hour of pillows Arrived, retired to his.' . . .

In all these descriptions of a spiritual unworldly nature acting on the spiritual and unworldly part of his own nature, every one who ever knew Lady Byron intimately must have recognised the model from which he drew, and the experience from which he spoke, even though nothing was further from his mind than to pay this tribute to the woman he had injured, and though before these lines, which showed how truly he knew her real character, had come one stanza of ribald, vulgar caricature, designed as a slight to her:--

'There was Miss Millpond, smooth as summer's sea, That usual paragon, an only daughter, Who seemed the cream of equanimity 'Till skimmed; and then there was some milk and water; With a slight shade of blue, too, it might be, Beneath the surface: but what did it matter?

Love's riotous; but marriage should have quiet, And, being consumptive, live on a milk diet.'

The result of Byron's intimacy with Miss Milbanke and the enkindling of his n.o.bler feelings was an offer of marriage, which she, though at the time deeply interested in him, declined with many expressions of friendship and interest. In fact, she already loved him, but had that doubt of her power to be to him all that a wife should be, which would be likely to arise in a mind so sensitively const.i.tuted and so unworldly.

They, however, continued a correspondence as friends; on her part, the interest continually increased; on his, the transient rise of better feelings was choked and overgrown by the thorns of base unworthy pa.s.sions.

From the height at which he might have been happy as the husband of a n.o.ble woman, he fell into the depths of a secret adulterous intrigue with a blood relation, so near in consanguinity, that discovery must have been utter ruin and expulsion from civilised society.

From henceforth, this d.a.m.ning guilty secret became the ruling force in his life; holding him with a morbid fascination, yet filling him with remorse and anguish, and insane dread of detection. Two years after his refusal by Miss Milbanke, his various friends, seeing that for some cause he was wretched, pressed marriage upon him.

Marriage has often been represented as the proper goal and terminus of a wild and dissipated career; and it has been supposed to be the appointed mission of good women to receive wandering prodigals, with all the rags and disgraces of their old life upon them, and put rings on their hands, and shoes on their feet, and introduce them, clothed and in their right minds, to an honourable career in society.

Marriage was, therefore, universally recommended to Lord Byron by his numerous friends and well-wishers; and so he determined to marry, and, in an hour of reckless desperation, sat down and wrote proposals to two ladies. One was declined: the other, which was accepted, was to Miss Milbanke. The world knows well that he had the gift of expression, and will not be surprised that he wrote a very beautiful letter, and that the woman who had already learned to love him fell at once into the snare.

Her answer was a frank, outspoken avowal of her love for him, giving herself to him heart and hand. The good in Lord Byron was not so utterly obliterated that he could receive such a letter without emotion, or practise such unfairness on a loving, trusting heart without pangs of remorse. He had sent the letter in mere recklessness; he had not seriously expected to be accepted; and the discovery of the treasure of affection which he had secured was like a vision of lost heaven to a soul in h.e.l.l.

But, nevertheless, in his letters written about the engagement, there are sufficient evidences that his self-love was flattered at the preference accorded him by so superior a woman, and one who had been so much sought.

He mentions with an air of complacency that she has employed the last two years in refusing five or six of his acquaintance; that he had no idea she loved him, admitting that it was an old attachment on his part. He dwells on her virtues with a sort of pride of ownership. There is a sort of childish levity about the frankness of these letters, very characteristic of the man who skimmed over the deepest abysses with the lightest jests. Before the world, and to his intimates, he was acting the part of the successful fiance, conscious all the while of the deadly secret that lay cold at the bottom of his heart.

When he went to visit Miss Milbanke's parents as her accepted lover, she was struck with his manner and appearance: she saw him moody and 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 that she had observed that he was not happy in the engagement; and magnanimously added, that, if on review, he found he had been mistaken in the nature of his feelings, she would immediately release him, and they should remain only friends.

Overcome with the conflict of his feelings, Lord Byron fainted away. Miss Milbanke was convinced that his 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 a dissolution of the engagement.

There is no reason to doubt that Byron was, as he relates in his 'Dream,'

profoundly agonized and agitated when he stood before G.o.d's altar with the trusting young creature whom he was leading to a fate so awfully tragic; yet it was not the memory of Mary Chaworth, but another guiltier and more d.a.m.ning memory, that overshadowed that hour.