Upon this, I immediately began collecting and reading
the various articles and the book, and perceived that
the public of this generation were in a way of having
false history created, uncontradicted, under their
own eyes.
I claim for my countrymen and women, our right to
true history. For years, the popular literature
has held up publicly before our eyes the facts as
to this man and this woman, and called on us to praise
or condemn. Let us have truth when we are called
on to judge. It is our right.
There is no conceivable obligation on a human being
greater than that of absolute justice. It is
the deepest personal injury to an honourable mind
to be made, through misrepresentation, an accomplice
in injustice. When a noble name is accused, any
person who possesses truth which might clear it, and
withholds that truth, is guilty of a sin against human
nature and the inalienable rights of justice.
I claim that I have not only a right, but an obligation,
to bring in my solemn testimony upon this subject.
For years and years, the silence-policy has been tried;
and what has it brought forth? As neither word
nor deed could be proved against Lady Byron, her silence
has been spoken of as a monstrous, unnatural crime,
’a poisonous miasma,’ in which she enveloped
the name of her husband.
Very well; since silence is the crime, I thought I
would tell the world that Lady Byron had spoken.
Christopher North, years ago, when he condemned her
for speaking, said that she should speak further,—
‘She should speak, or some one for her.
One word would suffice.’
That one word has been spoken.
An editorial in The London Times’ of Sept. 18
says:—
’The perplexing feature in this
“True Story” is, that it is impossible
to distinguish what part in it is the editress’s,
and what Lady Byron’s own. We are given
the impression made on Mrs. Stowe’s mind by
Lady Byron’s statements; but it would have
been more satisfactory if the statement itself
had been reproduced as bare as possible, and been
left to make its own impression on the public.’
In reply to this, I will say, that in my article I
gave a brief synopsis of the subject-matter of Lady
Byron’s communications; and I think it must
be quite evident to the world that the main fact on
which the story turns was one which could not possibly
be misunderstood, and the remembrance of which no
lapse of time could ever weaken.
Lady Byron’s communications were made to me
in language clear, precise, terrible; and many of
her phrases and sentences I could repeat at this day,
word for word. But if I had reproduced them at
first, as ’The Times’ suggests, word for
word, the public horror and incredulity would have
been doubled. It was necessary that the brutality
of the story should, in some degree, be veiled and
softened.
