It is in this same circle and paper that Lady Byron’s private affairs come up for discussion. The discussion is thus elegantly introduced:—
Hogg.—‘Reach me the black bottle. I say, Christopher, what, after all, is your opinion o’ Lord and Leddy Byron’s quarrel? Do you yoursel’ take part with him, or with her? I wad like to hear your real opinion.’
North.—‘Oh, dear! Well, Hogg, since you will have it, I think Douglas Kinnard and Hobhouse are bound to tell us whether there be any truth, and how much, in this story about the declaration, signed by Sir Ralph’ [Milbanke].
The note here tells us that this refers to a statement that appeared in ‘Blackwood’ immediately after Byron’s death, to the effect that, previous to the formal separation from his wife, Byron required and obtained from Sir Ralph Milbanke, Lady Byron’s father, a statement to the effect that Lady Byron had no charge of moral delinquency to bring against him.18
North continues:—
‘And I think Lady Byron’s letter—the “Dearest Duck” one I mean—should really be forthcoming, if her ladyship’s friends wish to stand fair before the public. At present we have nothing but loose talk of society to go upon; and certainly, if the things that are said be true, there must be thorough explanation from some quarter, or the tide will continue, as it has assuredly begun, to flow in a direction very opposite to what we were for years accustomed. Sir, they must explain this business of the letter. You have, of course, heard about the invitation it contained, the warm, affectionate invitation, to Kirkby Mallory’—
Hogg interposes,—
‘I dinna like to be interruptin’ ye, Mr. North; but I must inquire, Is the jug to stand still while ye’re going on at that rate?’
North—‘There, Porker! These things are part and parcel of the chatter of every bookseller’s shop; à fortiori, of every drawing-room in May Fair. Can the matter stop here? Can a great man’s memory be permitted to incur damnation while these saving clauses are afloat anywhere uncontradicted?’
And from this the conversation branches off into strong, emphatic praise of Byron’s conduct in Greece during the last part of his life.
The silent widow is thus delicately and considerately reminded in the ‘Blackwood’ that she is the talk, not only over the whisky jug of the Noctes, but in every drawing-room in London; and that she must speak out and explain matters, or the whole world will set against her.
But she does not speak yet. The public persecution, therefore, proceeds. Medwin’s book being insufficient, another biographer is to be selected. Now, the person in the Noctes Club who was held to have the most complete information of the Byron affairs, and was, on that account, first thought of by Murray to execute this very delicate task of writing a memoir which should include the most sacred domestic affairs of a noble lady and her orphan daughter, was Maginn. Maginn, the author of the pleasant joke, that ‘man never reaches the apex of civilisation till he is too drunk to pronounce the word,’ was the first person in whose hands the ‘Autobiography,’ Memoirs, and Journals of Lord Byron were placed with this view.
The following note from Shelton Mackenzie, in the June number of ‘The Noctes,’ 1824, says,—
‘At that time, had he been so minded, Maginn (Odoherty) could have got up a popular Life of Byron as well as most men in England. Immediately on the account of Byron’s death being received in London, John Murray proposed that Maginn should bring out Memoirs, Journals, and Letters of Lord Byron, and, with this intent, placed in his hand every line that he (Murray) possessed in Byron’s handwriting. . . . . The strong desire of Byron’s family and executors that the “Autobiography” should be burned, to which desire Murray foolishly yielded, made such an hiatus in the materials, that Murray and Maginn agreed it would not answer to bring out the work then. Eventually Moore executed it.’
The character of the times in which this work was to be undertaken will appear from the following note of Mackenzie’s to ‘The Noctes’ of August 1824, which we copy, with the author’s own Italics:—
‘In the “Blackwood” of July 1824 was a poetical epistle by the renowned Timothy Tickler to the editor of the “John Bull” magazine, on an article in his first number. This article. . . professed to be a portion of the veritable “Autobiography” of Byron which was burned, and was called “My Wedding Night.” It appeared to relate in detail everything that occurred in the twenty-four hours immediately succeeding that in which Byron was married. It had plenty of coarseness, and some to spare. It went into particulars such as hitherto had been given only by Faublas; and it had, notwithstanding, many phrases and some facts which evidently did not belong to a mere fabricator. Some years after, I compared this “Wedding Night” with what I had all assurance of having been transcribed from the actual manuscripts of Byron, and was persuaded that the magazine-writer must have had the actual statement before him, or have had a perusal of it. The writer in “Blackwood” declared his conviction that it really was Byron’s own writing.’
The reader must remember that Lord Byron died April 1824; so that, according to this, his ‘Autobiography’ was made the means of this gross insult to his widow three months after his death.
If some powerful cause had not paralysed all feelings of gentlemanly honour, and of womanly delicacy, and of common humanity, towards Lady Byron, throughout the whole British nation, no editor would have dared to open a periodical with such an article; or, if he had, he would have been overwhelmed with a storm of popular indignation, which, like the fire upon Sodom, would have made a pillar of salt of him for a warning to all future generations.
‘Blackwood’ reproves the ‘John Bull’ in a poetical epistle, recognising the article as coming from Byron, and says to the author,—
‘But that you, sir, a wit and a scholar like you,
Should not blush to produce what he blushed not to do,—
Take your compliment, youngster; this doubles, almost,
The sorrow that rose when his honour was lost.’
We may not wonder that the ‘Autobiography’ was burned, as Murray says in a recent account, by a committee of Byron’s friends, including Hobhouse, his sister, and Murray himself.
Now, the ‘Blackwood’ of July 1824 thus declares its conviction that this outrage on every sentiment of human decency came from Lord Byron, and that his honour was lost. Maginn does not undertake the memoir. No memoir at all is undertaken; till finally Moore is selected, as, like Demetrius of old, a well-skilled gilder and ‘maker of silver shrines,’ though not for Diana. To Moore is committed the task of doing his best for this battered image, in which even the worshippers recognise foul sulphurous cracks, but which they none the less stand ready to worship as a genuine article that ‘fell down from Jupiter.’
Moore was a man of no particular nicety as to moralities, but in that matter seems not very much below what this record shows his average associates to be. He is so far superior to Maginn, that his vice is rose-coloured and refined. He does not burst out with such heroic stanzas as Maginn’s frank invitation to Jeremy Bentham:—
‘Jeremy, throw your pen aside,
And come get drunk with me;
And we’ll go where Bacchus sits astride,
Perched