are, had no idea of the width of the world they were
living in, and the exigency of the crisis. When
time passed on and no voice was raised, I spoke.
I gave at first a simple story, for I knew instinctively
that whoever put the first steel point of truth into
this dark cloud of slander must wait for the storm
to spend itself. I must say the storm exceeded
my expectations, and has raged loud and long.
But now that there is a comparative stillness I shall
proceed, first, to prove what I have just been asserting,
and, second, to add to my true story such facts and
incidents as I did not think proper at first to state.
In proving what I asserted in the first chapter, I
make four points:
1st. A concerted attack upon Lady Byron’s
reputation, begun by Lord Byron in self-defence.
2nd. That he transmitted his story to friends
to be continued after his death.
3rd. That they did so continue it.
4th. That the accusations reached their climax
over Lady Byron’s grave in ‘Blackwood’
of 1869, and the Guiccioli book, and that this re-opening
of the controversy was my reason for speaking.
And first I shall adduce my proofs that Lady Byron’s
reputation was, during the whole course of her husband’s
life, the subject of a concentrated, artfully planned
attack, commencing at the time of the separation and
continuing during his life. By various documents
carefully prepared, and used publicly or secretly as
suited the case, he made converts of many honest men,
some of whom were writers and men of letters, who
put their talents at his service during his lifetime
in exciting sympathy for him, and who, by his own
request, felt bound to continue their defence of him
after he was dead.
In order to consider the force and significance of
the documents I shall cite, we are to bring to our
view just the issues Lord Byron had to meet, both
at the time of the separation and for a long time after.
In Byron’s ‘Memoirs,’ Vol.
IV. Letter 350, under date December 10, 1819,
nearly four years after the separation, he writes to
Murray in a state of great excitement on account of
an article in ‘Blackwood,’ in which his
conduct towards his wife had been sternly and justly
commented on, and which he supposed to have been written
by Wilson, of the ’Noctes Ambrosianae.’
He says in this letter: ’I like and admire
W—–n, and he should not have indulged
himself in such outrageous license. . . . . When
he talks of Lady Byron’s business he talks of
what he knows nothing about; and you may tell him
no man can desire a public investigation of that
affair more than I do.’ {7}
He shortly after wrote and sent to Murray a pamphlet
for publication, which was printed, but not generally
circulated till some time afterwards. Though
more than three years had elapsed since the separation,
the current against him at this time was so strong
in England that his friends thought it best, at first,
to use this article of Lord Byron’s discreetly
with influential persons rather than to give it to
the public.
