III.—­Byron’s Unfortunate Marriage

Byron’s restlessness is reflected throughout his “Journal,” which he began at this time.  He had dreams of living in the Grecian Islands and of adopting an Eastern manner of life; but in December, 1813, when “The Bride of Abydos” was published, he was still feverishly dissipating himself in England.

A significant entry in the “Journal” says:  “A wife would be the salvation of me,” and Lord Byron became a suitor for the hand of Miss Milbanke, a relative of Lady Melbourne.  His proposal was not at first accepted, but a correspondence ensued between them, and in September, 1814, after the appearance of “The Corsair” and “Lara,” they became formally affianced.  I was much in his society at this time, and was filled with foreboding anxieties, which the unfortunate events that followed only too fully justified.  At the end of December he set out for Seaham, the seat of Sir Ralph Milbanke, the lady’s father, and on January 2, 1815, was married.  On March 8, he wrote to me from Seaham:  “Bell is in health, and unvaried good-humour and behaviour.”

Lord Byron’s pecuniary embarrassments now accumulated upon him, and just a year after his marriage, and shortly after the birth of their daughter, I received a letter which breathed a profound melancholy, due partly to his difficulties, but more, I thought, to a return of the restless and roving spirit.  I replied:  “Do tell me you are happier than that letter has led me to fear, and I shall be satisfied.”  It was only a few weeks later that Lady Byron adopted the resolution of parting from him.  She had left London in January on a visit to her father, and Byron was to follow her.  They had parted in the utmost kindness; she wrote him a letter, full of playfulness and affection, on the road; but immediately on her arrival her father wrote to acquaint Lord Byron that she would return to him no more.  At the time when he had to stand this unexpected shock, his financial troubles, which had led to eight or nine executions in his house within the year, had arrived at their utmost; and at a moment when, to use his own expression, he was “standing alone on his hearth, with his household gods shivered around him,” he was also doomed to receive the startling intelligence that the wife who had just parted with him in kindness, had parted with him for ever.

I must quote from a letter he wrote me in March:  “The fault was not in my choice, unless in choosing at all; for I do not believe—­and I must say it in the very dregs of all this bitter business—­that there ever was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder, or a more amiable and agreeable being than Lady Byron.  I never had any reproach to make her while with me.  Where there is blame, it belongs to myself, and if I cannot redeem, I must bear it.”

IV.—­Wanderings and Work