She resolves to ask counsel of her lawyer, in view
of a statement of the whole case.
Lady Byron is spoken of by Lord Byron (letter 233)
as being in town with her father on the 29th of February;
viz., fifteen days after the date of the last
letter to Mrs. Leigh. It must have been about
this time, then, that she laid her whole case before
Lushington; and he gave it a thorough examination.
The result was, that Lushington expressed in the most
decided terms his conviction that reconciliation was
impossible. The language be uses is very striking:—
’When you came to town in about
a fortnight, or perhaps more, after my first interview
with Lady Noel, I was, for the first time, informed
by you of facts utterly unknown, as I have no doubt,
to Sir Ralph and Lady Noel. On receiving
this additional information, my opinion was entirely
changed. I considered a reconciliation impossible.
I declared my opinion, and added, that, if such
an idea should be entertained, I could not, either
professionally or otherwise, take any part towards
effecting it.’
It does not appear in this note what effect the lawyer’s
examination of the case had on Lady Byron’s
mind. By the expressions he uses, we should
infer that she may still have been hesitating as to
whether a reconciliation might not be her duty.
This hesitancy he does away with most decisively,
saying, ’A reconciliation is impossible;’
and, supposing Lady Byron or her friends desirous
of one, he declares positively that he cannot, either
professionally as a lawyer or privately as a friend,
have anything to do with effecting it.
The lawyer, it appears, has drawn, from the facts
of the case, inferences deeper and stronger than those
which presented themselves to the mind of the young
woman; and he instructs her in the most absolute terms.
Fourteen years after, in 1830, for the first time
the world was astonished by this declaration from
Dr. Lushington, in language so pronounced and positive
that there could be no mistake.
Lady Byron had stood all these fourteen years slandered
by her husband, and misunderstood by his friends,
when, had she so chosen, this opinion of Dr. Lushington’s
could have been at once made public, which fully justified
her conduct.
If, as the ‘Blackwood’ of July insinuates,
the story told to Lushington was a malignant slander,
meant to injure Lord Byron, why did she suppress the
judgment of her counsel at a time when all the world
was on her side, and this decision would have been
the decisive blow against her husband? Why, by
sealing the lips of counsel, and of all whom she could
influence, did she deprive herself finally of the
very advantage for which it has been assumed she fabricated
the story?
It will be observed, that, in this controversy, we
are confronting two opposing stories,—one
of Lord and the other of Lady Byron; and the statements
from each are in point-blank contradiction.
