Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/516

 510 BYRON the offer, but a confidential friend told him that Miss Milbanke's present fortune was not suf- ficient to relieve his necessities, and advised him to write to another heiress proposing mar- riage. Byron agreed, wrote, and was refused. He thereupon wrote to Miss Milbanke, and was accepted. The marriage took place Jan. 2, 1815, Byron being 27 years of age, his wife four years younger. Byron's creditors, learn- ing that he had married an heiress, soon began to press for payment of their debts. His wife's fortune melted away ; in a few months ten ex- ecutions were placed in his house, and he was saved from personal arrest only by his privilege as a peer. His daughter Ada was born Dec. 10, 1815. During this year he wrote "The Siege of Corinth," "Parisina," and several smaller poems. His wife had hardly risen from childbed when Byron insisted in writing that she should return to her father's house. She did so, Jan. 15, 1816, and on Feb. 2 her father wrote to Byron proposing a formal separation. Byron refused, but upon being threatened with legal proceedings consented. The real grounds for the separation are yet a matter of question. Apart from notorious infidelity on his part, and alleged ill treatment in other respects, it was whispered at the time that he had been guilty of incest with his half sister Augusta. This charge has been definite- ly reiterated within a few years by Mrs. Har- riet Beecher Stowe, upon the authority of statements made to her in 1856 by Lady Byron. At the time of the separation, however, and subsequently, Lady Byron alleged nothing more than that Byron was guilty of great harsh- ness ; that he had declared to her that inces- tuous intercourse between himself and his sis- ter had occurred ; that she then believed him to be insane, and upon that supposition would have consented to a reconciliation. She treat- ed Augusta with great kindness, and wrote to her in terms of confidence and affection which continued during the remainder of Byron's life, and apparently for several years after. Mrs. Leigh's whole life and character renders the supposition of her guilt improbable. She was six years older than Byron, nowise especially attractive, and at the time of the alleged crime she had been married eight years, and was the mother of four children. She died in 1851, at the age of 67 years, and, save for the rumor of a whole generation before, her reputation was never called in question. But there had been a sad episode in her domestic life. Her fourth daughter, Medora, born about the time of the marriage of Byron, entered about 1830 upon criminal relations with Henry Trevanion, the husband of her oldest sister, Georgiana. Me- dora, disowned by her relatives, fell into great distress, and was in the end befriended by Lady Byron, who as late as 1840 told her that she had learned that Lord Byron, and not Col. Leigh, was her father. Never was there a popular revulsion so sudden and fierce as in the case of Byron after the separation between him and his wife. Four years before he had become famous in a day; in a day he now found himself an outcast. He was lampooned in the newspapers, threatened with being hiss- ed in the theatres and mobbed in the streets. For a month he tried to brave it out, and then fled from his country, never to return. From England he went to Brussels, and thence trav- elled leisurely up the Khine to Switzerland. He went in state, with a physician and three ser- vants, in a carriage built after the model of that of Napoleon captured after the battle of Waterloo, having within it a bed, library, and dinner service. The money to pay his lavish expenses probably came from the family of his wife. He reached Geneva in May. Here he met Shelley, with his infant son, Mary Woll- stonecraft Godwin, its yet unwedded mother, and Jane Clermont, a young woman, daughter of a widow whom Godwin had married after the death of Mary Wollstpnecraft. Byron had never before seen either of them ; but in barely nine months Miss Clermont became the mother of his daughter Allegra. This child when 20 months old was sent to him at Venice, and he provided for her support ; she died at the age of five years. Byron sailed on the lake of Geneva, made excursions among the Alps, wrote the third canto of "Childe Harold," " The Prisoner of Chillon," and several minor poems, began "Manfred," and commenced a novel afterward written out from memory by his physician, Polidori, and published in 1819 under the title of " The Vampire." By- ron's sketch was written in consequence of an agreement that he, Shelley, and Mary Godwin should each write a ghost story. Her story, the only one ever completed, was " Frankenstein." In October, 1816, Byron left Switzerland, leaving behind his unborn child and its mother, and in November took up his abode in Venice, where he remained three years. He hired apartments in the house of an elderly Venetian merchant, who had a young wife, and in ten days Byron entered upon a liaison with her which lasted for months. He soon hired a palace, which he converted into a harem, the inmates of which belonged mainly to the lowest class of Vene- tian women. During these three years he studied the Armenian language, finished " Man- fred," wrote " The Lament of Tasso," "Beppo," the "Ode on Venice," "Mazeppa," the fourth and noblest canto of "Childe Harold," four cantos of " Don Juan," many smaller poems, and numerous letters filled with wit and ribaldry. But his excesses began to tell upon him; his hair grew thin and gray, and he seemed to be fast approaching his end. Having somewhat amended his way of life, and partially recovered his health, Byron, in April, 1819, happened to meet with Teresa Guiccioli. She was the daughter of Count Gamba, and some months before, at the age of 16, had become the third wife of Count Guiccioli, a wealthy noble- man of the Romagna, more than 60 years old.