Lady Byron Vindicated | Page 9

in open court in a suit for divorce.'
What, now, ought to have been the conduct of any brave, honest man, who believed that his wife was taking advantage of her reputation for virtue to turn every one against him, who saw that she had turned on her side even the lawyer he sought to retain on his; {24} that she was an unscrupulous woman, who acquiesced in every and any thing to gain her ends, while he stood before the public, as he says, 'accused of every monstrous vice, by public rumour or private rancour'? When she, under advice of her lawyers, made the alternative legal separation or open investigation in court for divorce, what did he do?
HE SIGNED THE ACT OF SEPARATION AND LEFT ENGLAND.
Now, let any man who knows the legal mind of England,--let any lawyer who knows the character of Sir Samuel Romilly and Dr. Lushington, ask whether they were the men to take a case into court for a woman that had no evidence but her own statements and impressions? Were they men to go to trial without proofs? Did they not know that there were artful, hysterical women in the world, and would they, of all people, be the men to take a woman's story on her own side, and advise her in the last issue to bring it into open court, without legal proof of the strongest kind? Now, as long as Sir Samuel Romilly lived, this statement of Byron's--that he was condemned unheard, and had no chance of knowing whereof he _was accused--never appeared in public_.
It, however, was most actively circulated in private. That Byron was in the habit of intrusting to different confidants articles of various kinds to be shown to different circles as they could bear them, we have already shown. We have recently come upon another instance of this kind. In the late eagerness to exculpate Byron, a new document has turned up, of which Mr. Murray, it appears, had never heard when, after Byron's death, he published in the preface to his 'Domestic Pieces' the sentence: '_He rejected the proposal for an amicable separation, but consented when threatened with a suit in Doctors' Commons_.' It appears that, up to 1853, neither John Murray senior, nor the son who now fills his place, had taken any notice of this newly found document, which we are now informed was drawn up by Lord Byron in August 1817, while Mr. Hobhouse was staying with him at La Mira, near Venice, given to Mr. Matthew Gregory Lewis, for circulation among friends in England, found in Mr. Lewis's papers after his death, and now in the possession of Mr. Murray.' Here it is:--
'It has been intimated to me that the persons understood to be the legal advisers of Lady Byron have declared "their lips to be sealed up" on the cause of the separation between her and myself. If their lips are sealed up, they are not sealed up by me, and the greatest favour they can confer upon me will be to open them. From the first hour in which I was apprised of the intentions of the Noel family to the last communication between Lady Byron and myself in the character of wife and husband (a period of some months), I called repeatedly and in vain for a statement of their or her charges, and it was chiefly in consequence of Lady Byron's claiming (in a letter still existing) a promise on my part to consent to a separation, if such was really her wish, that I consented at all; this claim, and the exasperating and inexpiable manner in which their object was pursued, which rendered it next to an impossibility that two persons so divided could ever be reunited, induced me reluctantly then, and repentantly still, to sign the deed, which I shall be happy--most happy--to cancel, and go before any tribunal which may discuss the business in the most public manner.
'Mr. Hobhouse made this proposition on my part, viz. to abrogate all prior intentions--and go into court--the very day before the separation was signed, and it was declined by the other party, as also the publication of the correspondence during the previous discussion. Those propositions I beg here to repeat, and to call upon her and hers to say their worst, pledging myself to meet their allegations,--whatever they may be,--and only too happy to be informed at last of their real nature.
'BYRON.'
'August 9, 1817.
'P.S.--I have been, and am now, utterly ignorant of what description her allegations, charges, or whatever name they may have assumed, are; and am as little aware for what purpose they have been kept back,--unless it was to sanction the most infamous calumnies by silence.
'BYRON.'
'La Mira, near Venice.'
It appears the circulation of this document must have been