At the time of Lord Byron’s death, the English
public had been so skilfully manipulated by the Byron
propaganda, that the sympathy of the whole world was
with him. A tide of emotion was now aroused in
England by his early death—dying in the
cause of Greece and liberty. There arose a general
wail for him, as for a lost pleiad, not only in England,
but over the whole world; a great rush of enthusiasm
for his memory, to which the greatest literary men
of England freely gave voice. By general consent,
Lady Byron seems to have been looked upon as the only
cold-hearted unsympathetic person in this general mourning.
From that time the literary world of England apparently
regarded Lady Byron as a woman to whom none of the
decorums, nor courtesies of ordinary womanhood, nor
even the consideration belonging to common humanity,
were due.
‘She that is a widow indeed, and desolate,’
has been regarded in all Christian countries as an
object made sacred by the touch of God’s afflicting
hand, sacred in her very helplessness; and the old
Hebrew Scriptures give to the Supreme Father no dearer
title than ’the widow’s God.’
But, on Lord Byron’s death, men not devoid of
tenderness, men otherwise generous and of fine feeling,
acquiesced in insults to his widow with an obtuseness
that seems, on review, quite incredible.
Lady Byron was not only a widow, but an orphan.
She had no sister for confidante; no father and mother
to whom to go in her sorrows—sorrows so
much deeper and darker to her than they could be to
any other human being. She had neither son nor
brother to uphold and protect her. On all hands
it was acknowledged that, so far, there was no fault
to be found in her but her utter silence. Her
life was confessed to be pure, useful, charitable;
and yet, in this time of her sorrow, the writers of
England issued article upon article not only devoid
of delicacy, but apparently injurious and insulting
towards her, with a blind unconsciousness which seems
astonishing.
One of the greatest literary powers of that time was
the ‘Blackwood:’ the reigning monarch
on that literary throne was Wilson, the lion-hearted,
the brave, generous, tender poet, and, with some sad
exceptions, the noble man. But Wilson had believed
the story of Byron, and, by his very generosity and
tenderness and pity, was betrayed into injustice.
In ‘The Noctes’ of November 1824 there
is a conversation of the Noctes Club, in which North
says, ’Byron and I knew each other pretty well;
and I suppose there’s no harm in adding, that
we appreciated each other pretty tolerably.
Did you ever see his letter to me?’
The footnote to this says, ’This letter,
which was PRINTED in Byron’s lifetime,
was not published till 1830, when it appeared in
Moore’s “Life of Byron.” It
is one of the most vigorous prose compositions in the
language. Byron had the highest opinion of Wilson’s
genius and noble spirit.’
