The Stowe-Byron controversy : a complete resume of all that has been written and said upon the subject, re-printed from 'The Times', 'Saturday review', 'Daily News', 'Pall Mall Gazette', 'Daily Telegraph', etc. Together with an impartial review of the merits of the case / by the editor of 'Once a week'.

  • Dallas, E. S. (Eneas Sweetland), 1828-1879.
Date:
1869
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Stowe-Byron controversy : a complete resume of all that has been written and said upon the subject, re-printed from 'The Times', 'Saturday review', 'Daily News', 'Pall Mall Gazette', 'Daily Telegraph', etc. Together with an impartial review of the merits of the case / by the editor of 'Once a week'. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    if Mrs. Stowe had concealed her knowledge, true or false, and herself observed that “ religious silence ” she was so very- ready to commend in Lady Byron. That Mrs. Stowe’s publi- cation of this secret, without consulting the feelings or wishes of the persons most intimately concerned in the matter, was in the worst possible taste, is the most merciful comment we can make upon her conduct. She lias laid herself open to a large amount of criticism, and has received from her critics, both in England and America, a very fair share of abuse ; and for her folly she certainly deserves some chastisement; but we acquit her at once of all mercenary or other improper motives in the matter, believing her to he a well-meaning, tolerably clever, and not very prudent woman. We have no doubt she felt keenly, though very needlessly, the attacks made by the Countess Guiccioli upon the character of a lady, whose moral character Mrs. Stowe compares to that of our Saviour, and whose gentleness and forbearance she describes as more than human. In this part of her story she is curiously inconsistent, “ thinking that no person in England would as yet undertake the responsibility of relating the true history7, which is to clear Lady Byron’s memory,” and so supplying the world with one herself, and yet after Lady Byron’s death, and, we presume, quite irrespectively of any publications of the Countess Guiccioli, she looked anxiously hoping to see a memoir of the person whom she considered the most remarkable woman that England had produced in this century.” Her praises of the character of Lady Byron are exaggerated and extravagant to hyperbole and compel her to paint Lord Byron in equally strong colours. If with Mrs. Stowe the wife was an angel in human form, the husband was at least an incarnate fiend, and probably all Mrs. Stowe knew of the character of the latter, she learned from his widow’s description of him; and having heard and accepted as the truth that narration, she would of course shrink from reading his works, or an acquaintance with this verse might have saved her the mistake she fell into of representing the married life of Lord and Lady Byron as having lasted for two years. “ This day of all our day-s has done The worst for me and yrou ; ’Tis just six years since we were one, And five since we were two.” Of the internal] evidence of the truth of Mrs. Stowe’s “ True