Гарриет Бичер-Стоу – Lady Byron Vindicated (страница 14)

It is because of such transgressors as Byron, such supporters as Moore and the Noctes Club, that there are so many helpless, cowering, broken-hearted, abject women, given over to the animal love which they share alike with the poor dog,—the dog, who, beaten, kicked, starved, and cuffed, still lies by his drunken master with great anxious eyes of love and sorrow, and with sweet, brute forgiveness nestles upon his bosom, as he lies in his filth in the snowy ditch, to keep the warmth of life in him.  Great is the mystery of this fidelity in the poor, loving brute,—most mournful and most sacred

But, oh that a noble man should have no higher ideal of the love of a high-souled, heroic woman!  Oh that men should teach women that they owe no higher duties, and are capable of no higher tenderness, than this loving, unquestioning animal fidelity!  The dog is ever-loving, ever-forgiving, because God has given him no high range of moral faculties, no sense of justice, no consequent horror at impurity and vileness.

Much of the beautiful patience and forgiveness of women is made possible to them by that utter deadness to the sense of justice which the laws, literature, and misunderstood religion of England have sought to induce in woman as a special grace and virtue.

The lesson to woman in this pathetic piece of special pleading is, that man may sink himself below the brute, may wallow in filth like the swine, may turn his home into a hell, beat and torture his children, forsake the marriage-bed for foul rivals; yet all this does not dissolve the marriage-vow on her part, nor free his bounden serf from her obligation to honour his memory,—nay, to sacrifice to it the honour due to a kind father and mother, slandered in their silent graves.

Such was the sympathy, and such the advice, that the best literature of England could give to a young widow, a peeress of England, whose husband, as they verily believed and admitted, might have done worse than all this; whose crimes might have been ‘foul, monstrous, unforgivable as the sin against the Holy Ghost.’  If these things be done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?  If the peeress as a wife has no rights, what is the state of the cotter’s wife?

But, in the same paper, North again blames Lady Byron for not having come out with the whole story before the world at the time she separated from her husband.  He says of the time when she first consulted counsel through her mother, keeping back one item,—

‘How weak, and worse than weak, at such a juncture, on which hung her whole fate, to ask legal advice on an imperfect document!  Give the delicacy of a virtuous woman its due; but at such a crisis, when the question was whether her conscience was to be free from the oath of oaths, delicacy should have died, and nature was privileged to show unashamed—if such there were—the records of uttermost pollution.’

Shepherd.—‘And what think ye, sir, that a’ this pollution could hae been, that sae electrified Dr. Lushington?’

North.—‘Bad—bad—bad, James.  Nameless, it is horrible; named, it might leave Byron’s memory yet within the range of pity and forgiveness; and, where they are, their sister affections will not be far; though, like weeping seraphs, standing aloof, and veiling their wings.’

Shepherd.—‘She should indeed hae been silent—till the grave had closed on her sorrows as on his sins.’

North.—‘Even now she should speak,—or some one else for her,– . . . and a few words will suffice.  Worse the condition of the dead man’s name cannot be—far, far better it might—I believe it would be—were all the truth somehow or other declared; and declared it must be, not for Byron’s sake only, but for the sake of humanity itself; and then a mitigated sentence, or eternal silence.’

We have another discussion of Lady Byron’s duties in a further number of ‘Blackwood.’

The ‘Memoir’ being out, it was proposed that there should be a complete annotation of Byron’s works gotten up, and adorned, for the further glorification of his memory, with portraits of the various women whom he had delighted to honour.

Murray applied to Lady Byron for her portrait, and was met with a cold, decided negative.  After reading all the particulars of Byron’s harem of mistresses, and Moore’s comparisons between herself and La Guiccioli, one might imagine reasons why a lady, with proper self-respect, should object to appearing in this manner.  One would suppose there might have been gentlemen who could well appreciate the motive of that refusal; but it was only considered a new evidence that she was indifferent to her conjugal duties, and wanting in that respect which Christopher North had told her she owed a husband’s memory, though his crimes were foul as the rottenness of the grave.

Never, since Queen Vashti refused to come at the command of a drunken husband to show herself to his drunken lords, was there a clearer case of disrespect to the marital dignity on the part of a wife.  It was a plain act of insubordination, rebellion against law and order; and how shocking in Lady Byron, who ought to feel herself but too much flattered to be exhibited to the public as the head wife of a man of genius!

Means were at once adopted to subdue her contumacy, of which one may read in a note to the ‘Blackwood’ (Noctes), September 1832.  An artist was sent down to Ealing to take her picture by stealth as she sat in church.  Two sittings were thus obtained without her knowledge.  In the third one, the artist placed himself boldly before her, and sketched, so that she could not but observe him.  We shall give the rest in Mackenzie’s own words, as a remarkable specimen of the obtuseness, not to say indelicacy of feeling, which seemed to pervade the literary circles of England at the time:—

‘After prayers, Wright and his friend (the artist) were visited by an ambassador from her ladyship to inquire the meaning of what she had seen.  The reply was, that Mr. Murray must have her portrait, and was compelled to take what she refused to give.  The result was, Wright was requested to visit her, which he did; taking with him, not the sketch, which was very good, but another, in which there was a strong touch of caricature.  Rather than allow that to appear as her likeness (a very natural and womanly feeling by the way), she consented to sit for the portrait to W. J. Newton, which was engraved, and is here alluded to.’

The artless barbarism of this note is too good to be lost; but it is quite borne out by the conversation in the Noctes Club, which it illustrates.

It would appear from this conversation that these Byron beauties appeared successively in pamphlet form; and the picture of Lady Byron is thus discussed:—

Mullion.—‘I don’t know if you have seen the last brochure.  It has a charming head of Lady Byron, who, it seems, sat on purpose: and that’s very agreeable to hear of; for it shows her ladyship has got over any little soreness that Moore’s “Life” occasioned, and is now willing to contribute anything in her power to the real monument of Byron’s genius.’

North.—‘I am delighted to hear of this: ’tis really very noble in the unfortunate lady.  I never saw her.  Is the face a striking one?’

Mullion.—‘Eminently so,—a most calm, pensive, melancholy style of native beauty,—and a most touching contrast to the maids of Athens, Annesley, and all the rest of them.  I’m sure you’ll have the proof Finden has sent you framed for the Boudoir at the Lodge.’

North.—‘By all means.  I mean to do that for all the Byron Beauties.’

But it may be asked, Was there not a man in all England with delicacy enough to feel for Lady Byron, and chivalry enough to speak a bold word for her?  Yes: there was one.  Thomas Campbell the poet, when he read Lady Byron’s statement, believed it, as did Christopher North; but it affected him differently.  It appears he did not believe it a wife’s duty to burn herself on her husband’s funeral-pile, as did Christopher North; and held the singular idea, that a wife had some rights as a human being as well as a husband.

Lady Byron’s own statement appeared in pamphlet form in 1830: at least, such is the date at the foot of the document.  Thomas Campbell, in ‘The New Monthly Magazine,’ shortly after, printed a spirited, gentlemanly defence of Lady Byron, and administered a pointed rebuke to Moore for the rudeness and indelicacy he had shown in selecting from Byron’s letters the coarsest against herself, her parents, and her old governess Mrs. Clermont, and by the indecent comparisons he had instituted between Lady Byron and Lord Byron’s last mistress.

It is refreshing to hear, at last, from somebody who is not altogether on his knees at the feet of the popular idol, and who has some chivalry for woman, and some idea of common humanity.  He says,—

‘I found my right to speak on this painful subject on its now irrevocable publicity, brought up afresh as it has been by Mr. Moore, to be the theme of discourse to millions, and, if I err not much, the cause of misconception to innumerable minds.  I claim to speak of Lady Byron in the right of a man, and of a friend to the rights of woman, and to liberty, and to natural religion.  I claim a right, more especially, as one of the many friends of Lady Byron, who, one and all, feel aggrieved by this production.  It has virtually dragged her forward from the shade of retirement, where she had hid her sorrows, and compelled her to defend the heads of her friends and her parents from being crushed under the tombstone of Byron.  Nay, in a general view, it has forced her to defend herself; though, with her true sense and her pure taste, she stands above all special pleading.  To plenary explanation she ought not—she never shall be driven.  Mr. Moore is too much a gentleman not to shudder at the thought of that; but if other Byronists, of a far different stamp, were to force the savage ordeal, it is her enemies, and not she, that would have to dread the burning ploughshares.