Lady Byron Vindicated: A History of the Byron Controversy. Stowe Harriet Beecher
has thought fit to give us of this stay at La Mira, beginning with Letter 286, dated July 1, 1817,10 where he says: 'I have been working up my impressions into a Fourth Canto of Childe Harold,' and also 'Mr. Lewis is in Venice. I am going up to stay a week with him there.'
Next, under date La Mira, Venice, July 10,11 he says, 'Monk Lewis is here; how pleasant!'
Next, under date July 20, 1817, to Mr. Murray: 'I write to give you notice that I have completed the fourth and ultimate canto of Childe Harold… It is yet to be copied and polished, and the notes are to come.'
Under date of La Mira, August 7, 1817, he records that the new canto is one hundred and thirty stanzas in length, and talks about the price for it. He is now ready to launch it on the world; and, as now appears, on August 9, 1817, two days after, he wrote the document above cited, and put it into the hands of Mr. Lewis, as we are informed, 'for circulation among friends in England.'
The reason of this may now be evident. Having prepared a suitable number of those whom he calls in his notes to Murray 'the initiated,' by private documents and statements, he is now prepared to publish his accusations against his wife, and the story of his wrongs, in a great immortal poem, which shall have a band of initiated interpreters, shall be read through the civilised world, and stand to accuse her after his death.
In the Fourth Canto of 'Childe Harold,' with all his own overwhelming power of language, he sets forth his cause as against the silent woman who all this time had been making no party, and telling no story, and whom the world would therefore conclude to be silent because she had no answer to make. I remember well the time when this poetry, so resounding in its music, so mournful, so apparently generous, filled my heart with a vague anguish of sorrow for the sufferer, and of indignation at the cold insensibility that had maddened him. Thousands have felt the power of this great poem, which stands, and must stand to all time, a monument of what sacred and solemn powers God gave to this wicked man, and how vilely he abused this power as a weapon to slay the innocent.
It is among the ruins of ancient Rome that his voice breaks forth in solemn imprecation: —
'O Time, thou beautifier of the dead,
Adorner of the ruin, comforter,
And only healer when the heart hath bled! —
Time, the corrector when our judgments err,
The test of truth, love, – sole philosopher,
For all besides are sophists, – from thy shrift
That never loses, though it doth defer! —
Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift
My hands and heart and eyes, and claim of thee a gift.
'If thou hast ever seen me too elate,
Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne
Good, and reserved my pride against the hate
Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn
This iron in my soul in vain, – shall THEY not mourn?
And thou who never yet of human wrong
Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis,
Here where the ancients paid their worship long,
Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss,
And round Orestes bid them howl and hiss
For that unnatural retribution, – just
Had it but come from hands less near, – in this
Thy former realm I call thee from the dust.
Dost thou not hear, my heart? awake thou shalt and must!
It is not that I may not have incurred
For my ancestral faults and mine, the wound
Wherewith I bleed withal, and had it been conferred
With a just weapon it had flowed unbound,
But now my blood shall not sink in the ground.
'But in this page a record will I seek;
Not in the air shall these my words disperse,
Though I be ashes, – a far hour shall wreak
The deep prophetic fulness of this verse,
And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse.
That curse shall be forgiveness. Have I not, —
Hear me, my Mother Earth! behold it, Heaven, —
Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?
Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?
Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,
Hopes sapped, name blighted, life's life lied away,
And only not to desperation driven,
Because not altogether of such clay
As rots into the soul of those whom I survey?
'From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy,
Have I not seen what human things could do, —
From the loud roar of foaming calumny,
To the small whispers of the paltry few,
And subtler venom of the reptile crew,
The Janus glance of whose significant eye,
Learning to lie with silence, would seem true,
And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh,
Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy?'12
The reader will please notice that the lines in italics are almost, word for word, a repetition of the lines in italics in the former poem on his wife, where he speaks of a significant eye that has learned to lie in silence, and were evidently meant to apply to Lady Byron and her small circle of confidential friends.
Before this, in the Third Canto of 'Childe Harold,' he had claimed the sympathy of the world, as a loving father, deprived by a severe fate of the solace and society of his only child: —
'My daughter, – with this name my song began, —
My daughter, – with this name my song shall end, —
I see thee not and hear thee not, but none
Can be so wrapped in thee; thou art the friend
To whom the shadows of far years extend.
'To aid thy mind's developments, to watch
The dawn of little joys, to sit and see
Almost thy very growth, to view thee catch
Knowledge of objects, – wonders yet to thee, —
And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss, —
This it should seem was not reserved for me.
Yet this was in my nature, – as it is,
I know not what there is, yet something like to this.
'Yet though dull hate as duty should be taught,
I know that thou wilt love me; though my name
Should be shut out from thee as spell still fraught
With desolation and a broken claim,
Though the grave close between us, – 't were the same,
I know that thou wilt love me, though to drain
My blood from out thy being were an aim
And an attainment, – all will be in vain.'
To all these charges against her, sent all over the world in verses as eloquent as
Vol. iv. p. 40.
Ibid. p. 46.
The italics are mine.