The Lord Byron Scandal.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 8, 29 December 1869, Page 2

The Lord Byron Scandal.

The best summary wo have seen .of Mis Stowe’s charge is given by the, London correspondent of the Sydney Monday Herald, who writes of it in the following terms :—“ A new ‘ sensation’ has recently risen up. Mrs Beecher Stowe, the authoress of ‘ Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ a thrilling tale of negro life, &c., has written, in a recent number of Macmillan’s Magazine, an article professing to bo the true history of the life of Lord Byron. She founds her statements upon some intimacy with the late Lady Byron, ami an alleged written statement given to her by the same to read, and which she says she did read, whilst in a state of great excitement, some thirteen years ago, and returned to Lady Byron. Upon this slender foundation Mrs Stowe says that the true cause of the separation of Lord and Lady Byron was the knowledge possessed by the latter that her husband was carrying on an incestuous intercourse with his half-sister Augusta. The matter has been the chief subject of private conversation everywhere, and Mrs Stowe is condemned for her sensational article, and her want of taste and decency, as well as. broach of confidence. Defenders of Lord Byron have sprung up in all directions, but the stab and its sting cannot be wholly removed. The lawyers of Lady Byron and her* family say that under her will all papers, of every .kind, have been scaled up and placed irr the hands of trustees. The Australasian, in a long and able review of tlio subject, remarks ;—“ The very statement of the charge against Lord Byron is its best confutation. Profligate, during, unscrupulous, as the man is admitted to have been, lie must have been something more than a fiend to have done what was charged against him. Ho must have been a fool, of a folly incompatible with any perfection in wickedness. Wc need hardly ask whether the story is credible. We ask, Is it even consistent with itself 1 Docs it hold together by its parts 1 Let ns consider what it is wo are asked to believe. The subject of Mrs Beecher Stowe’s horrible calumny is Augusta,- Byron’s balfsister, born some six or seven years before himself, and therefore, at the period in question (1815) a mature woman of some thirty-three or thirty-four years of ago. (Byron himself was horn in 1788.) She was married at this time to Colonel Leigh, and was the mother of several children. Up to the publication of Mrs ft town’s article, not a single whisper had ever been breathed of any undue intimacy between the brother and sister, although many pens have been employed by his enemies to rake up matter of accusation against Byron. The whole tenor of his known intercourse with his sister is opposed to the idea of any incestuous connexion. The prurient imagination of the American authoress has indeed discovered hints and allusions to the filthy crime in some of Byron’s poems, hut we doubt whether there arc half-a-dozen other intelligent persons in the world, men or women, who could read ‘ Manfred’ or ! Cain’ in such a light. The direct references made in Lord Byron’s poems are among the most touching and beautiful things in his works, and wc cannot envy the soul of the creature who can conceive the idea of incest in such lines as these:— My sister, my sweet sister ! If a name Dearer and purer were, it should be thine ; Mountains and seas divide us, hut I claim No tears, hut tenderness to answer mine. Go where I will, to mo thou art the same— A loved regret, which I would not resign. There arc yet two things in my destiny— A world to roam through and a homo with thee.

The first were nothing ; had I still the last It were the haven of my happiness. But other claims arid other tics thou hast, And mine is not? the wish to make them less. A strange doom is thy father’s son’s, and past Recalling, as it lies beyond redress. II oversee! for him our grandsirc’s fate of yore— He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore. With reference to the sister of Lord Byron, upon whom Mrs Stowe has attempted to cast so foul a blot, the Athcnseum observes :—“ So long as nothing is 'proved of what has been asserted, a reservation of judgment is the merest justice to the parties implicated. The memory of one of them—Mrs Leigh—is sacred in the hearts of her two daughters, by whom she was as fondly loved when living as , she is now revered being dead. Her retired, gentle, pure, and modest life when she resided—by favour, we believe, of Quccu Adelaide —iti St. James’s Palace, is still a cherished theme with surviving friends God help those daughters for whom sympathy alone will not sullico! We refrain from inserting correspondence on this matter, the writers, for the most part, communicating only their opinions and convictions. Wc wait for light; and we sincerely wish that the commercial atmosphere did not closely envelope the relation. We arc ready to believe in Mis Stowe’s high principles, and wc hope to hoar from her a denial that she has touched honorarium for the story sho has told. Wc arc quite sure she holds, with all moralists, that gold unworthily earned loaves a stain indelible,”

Historians and numismatics will be interested in the fact that in the new coinage of Jamaica the Queen is represented of her own age, and not, as on our own coins, as a very young lady,