Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/386

 310 NOTES BY THE WAY.

"N.B. To me the revival of the slander appears scandalous. I am too ill to write fully, although I have such intense conviction that John Murray has acted nobly throughout."

The work to which Ebs worth thus referred was " Astarte : a Fragment of Truth concerning George Gordon Byron, sixth Lord Byron. Recorded by his Grandson Ralph Milbanke, Earl of Love- lace. London, printed at the Chiswick. Press, 1905." Only a limited impression was offered for sale at 3?. 10s. net, the larger part being reserved for private distribution. Although the work was " formally published," it was " not intended for the market, the principal object being to place these records hi the hands of those who for special reasons ought to have the means of acquainting them- selves with the true position of Lord and Lady Byron and their descendants so long and fundamentally misunderstood."

The late Lord Lovelace states in the preface : " Facts and com- ments have been here placed together in obedience to two duties. It was right to preserve a minimum of truth and justice from eventual risks, and in some measure at the same time to testify how deeply the sources of literature were poisoned by Byronese traders. The truth may not be attended to now, or adapted for a wide circulation ; still it is henceforth perpetuated in a form accessible to those who choose to search, and the reign of falsehood at last meets with authorized resistance." Lord Lovelace continues : " There was nothing in Lord Byron's amazing indiscretions to justify a counter- feit work of exposing or explaining him away. The sombre outlaw Manfred is a fairer and nobler portrait than the bookseller's Lord Byron, emptied of his character and history, converted into an advertising nuisance and inflated into a copious soporific for re- spectable citizens willing to take a dose of edification .... The work of invention did not stop at Lord Byron, but was indulged in against Lady Byron with at least equal profusion ; and in addition to a natural wish that un veracities may burst, there are strong reasons for establishing her truth and honour against the unmeasured imposture of certain accusers. Her own authority for such a refutation exists in a paper of directions signed 18th February,

1850, as well as in the provisions of her will, drawn up in 1860

I am in possession of the original manuscripts subject to those trusts, and it is in exercise of the responsibility attached, that ' Astarte ' has been compiled from the documents thus authenticated."

In 1849 Lady Noel Byron consigned certain documents to the care of Miss Frances Carr at Ockham Park in a metal box, and on the decease of Miss Carr the box was to be transferred to the following trustees : Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, William Lushington (son of Dr. Lushington), and Henry Bathurst, to be "opened at the ex- piration of Thirty Years, namely in 1880, by the then surviving

�� �