The Sun.
London, England, 1869-09-04 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

LORD BY.ROY.

The discussion about Lord Byron waxes fierce and
furious, and the Siandard takes part in it very earnestly,
holding up the story of Mrs. Stowe as absolutely in-
credible. Mrs. Stowe wants people to believe :—"1.
That Lord Byron conceived an incestuous passion for his
sister. 2. That he declared it to her. 3. That
she conceived a similar passion for him. 4.
That they indulged it ; she, too, being a mar-
ried woman; 5. That Lord Byron married a third
person, to whom he was profoundly indifferent, in order
to cloak a crime which, ex confess°, was known only tc
the two guilty parties. G. That he then gratuitously in.
formed his wife of it. 7. That he tried to persuade hes
there was no harm in it. g. That she did not quit him in
consequence of the confession and this strange pleading.
0. That he quitted her or drove her from him because
she tried to oppose his sin, though he had married her in
order more conveniently to commit it. 10. That having
driven her from Lim out of infatuation for his sister, he
permitted himself to be separated from the latter for the
remainder of his life."
The Standard goes on to quote the writings of the
poet. The way in which he spoke of his sister as "pure,''
" sweet," as lead'ug him away from " stern delight," PI
loving him as a sister should, preclude, in the opinion of,
the Standard, the possibility of the truth of Mrs.
Stowe's story. Then as to " Manfred," he made
his hero out to be a murderer. C &Aire tells a story
making the poet such. Anybody reading " Manfred '.
would—under Mrs. Stowe's theory—be convinced that
Goethe was right. WcTs Byron also a murderer? Mrs.
Stowe's story, mot cover, is inconsistent. She speaks of
two years' of suffering ; the couple were only together one
year. Lady Byron is said to have named her daughter after
one whose character she knew to be of the worst, and who helZ
the affection of her husband. She tells us that Byre's.
insanely dreaded to have his guilty secret exposed, am
that he wrote about himself and his wickedness with much
profusion. She quotes his words about. Ad—
a" The child of love, though born in bitterness
And nurtured in convulsion,"
and positively quotes them Incorrectly, substituting
convulsions for convulsion, in order to fortify a
story she tells about Byron coming suddenly into
his wife's room a day or two after the child's birth
and informing her, with cruel and malicious untruth, that
her mother was dead ; utterly unable to see, firstly, that
if Byron had done anything of the kind he would scarcely
have recorded it in a poem ; secondly, that " nurtured "
does not describe the condition of a child two days old ;
and, thirdly, that if the passage is good to prove, which
it no doubt is, that Ada was born in bitterness and
nurtured in convulsion—not convulsions—it is equallA
good to prove that she was " the child of love," a fact
utterly inconsistent with Mrs. Stowe's whole story.
Examining the foundation of the story, the Standard finds
them wholly wanting in stability. She heard some story
—it is not clear what—from Lady Byron. She received a
paper with dates which are either incorrect, or without the
principal times. How did she listen to her ladyship? In
several places she speaks of Lady Byron's qualities as divine,
and in two places she distinctly compares her to Christ. She
talks of her as the impersonation of conscience, as a vision of
heaven, as a guardian angel, as possessing a supernatural
power of moral divination, as placing people's hands in
that of the Saviour, as having more divine strength of
faith and love than ever existed in a woman,
and as more like a blessed being detached from
earth than an ordinary mortal. In this worshipping
vein she discourses of her throughout ; and it is
plain, therefore, that she sate wraptly credulous
during the whole interview, listening as to the
sacred words of a celestial revelation, and that it is vain
to expect from her at the time any critical or even ordi-
narily cautious scrutiny of Lady Byron's manner and
words, or any submission of them since to the ordeal of
reason, consistency, or common sense. The Standard,
however, has no doubt that Lady Byron suffered from
hallucinations. 'When she was first imbued with the idea
that her husband was what she afterwards thought him to
be is not clear ; what she regarded him as, is not discovered
either. Perhaps Dr. Lushington will—for he ought—tell
the world what he knows. But it is not impossible that
having had hints made to her by those around her, she
evolved out of Byron's heroes a monster image of her
husband. But that she was told by Byron of the wicked.
ness ascribed to him is inconsistent with her subservient
conduct : the whole thing is irreconcileable with Byron's
writings and doings- The story is stamped as the sensa-
tional performance of an American writer of romance
skilled in the art of special pleading, and using all her powers
of melodramatic art to blast the character of a writes
whose verse is the most cherished possession of mankind.
This is the Standards' conclusion. The same is drawn
by other correspondents of several of the papers. Those
who believe the story let it rest on its own ground A I
corresponddnt of the Star says:—" Till now it has never
been doubted that the poet's conception of `Manfred' was
derived from an antecedently issued romance, entitled,
The Three Brothers.' It was published, I believe, by
the notorious Stookdale, of Piccadilly. The correspon-
dence of incident, sentiment, Etc., between the two--
romance and dramatic poem—is most remarkable.
Indeed, the very name " Manfred" was borrowed from
the former." Mr. William Itowitt, writing to the Da4.y
News, says that Lady Byron, whom he knew well,
though most honourable and conscientious, was
subject to a constitutional idiosyncracy of a
most peculiar kind, which rendered her, when
under its influence, absolutely and persistently un-
just. "I am quite sure from my own observation of her
that, when seized by this peculiar condition of the
nerves, she was helplessly under its control. I have
seen her of an evening in the most amiable, cordial,
and sunny humour, full cf interest and sympathy ; and I
have seen her the next morning come down as if she had lain
all night not on a feather-bed, but on a glacier—frozen as
it were to the very soul, and no efforts on the part of
those around her could restore her for the day to a genial
social warmth. In such moments she seemed to take
sudden and deep impressions against persons and things,
which, thought the worst might pass away, left a perma•
nent effect. Mr. Howitt gives several instances, of which we
quote one : —" Lady Byronwas deeply interested in the esta-
blishment of working reboots for the education of children
of the labouring, classes. On one occasion in one of her most
amiable moods, she asked me to lunch with her in town,
that we might discuss her plans. She promised to
arrange that we should not be interrupted for some hours.
I went at the time fixed ; but, to my consternation,
found her in one of her frozen fits. The touch of her hand
was like that of death ; in her manner there was the
silence of the grave. We sate down to luncheon by our-
selves, and I endeavoured to break the ice by speaking ef
the incidents of the day. It was in vain. The devil of
the North Pole was upon her. and I could only extract icy
monosyllables. When we returned th the drawing-room
I sought to interest her on the topic on hich we hadmet,
and which she had so truly at heart. It, was hopeless.
She said she felt unable to go into it, and I was glad tc
get away."
The Spectator, discussing the story, says it may or may
not have a ground of truth, and that it is to be hoped
soon we shall have an authoritative story from Lady
Byron's papers. It is very severe on Mrs. Stowe for the
way in which she could not keep in the truth, though
Lady Byron's own friends have done so. The story is
neither complete or authentic. It is a recollection of a
conversation which may or may not have been under-
stood.

The Saturday Review in discussing the Byron contro-
versy says that on Mrs. Beecher Stowe's own shewing, Lady
Byron never commissioned her, either before her death
or after her death, to give to the whole world this loath-
some revelation, or to write an article on the Byron
mystery in lifacmillan'sMagazine, or the Atlantic Monthly;
that Mrs. Stowe has not produced Lady Byron's written
memorandum, but only her own sensational amplification
of it ; and that, if Lady Byron had acceded—and we have
now a good reason for supposing that she did accede—to
Mrs. Stowe's own suggestion that " the facts should be
put into the hands of some persons" for publication, this
intention of Lady Byron's is rather strangely carried out
by their publication by one person, and that person Mrs.
Stowe, and in this very grotesque form. Lady Byron's
solicitors have just told us that the very course recom-
mended by Mrs. Stowe was adopted by Lady Byron, who,
in her will, executed shortly before her death entrusted
her papers to certain trustees, thereby excluding every
other person than those trustees—Mrs. Beecher
Stowe included—from making any use, public or
private, of the - great secret of her life. The
fact is this, that Mrs. Stowe- could not keep the great
secret confidentially entrusted to her, and was bursting
for an opportunity to tell it, as much for the purpose of
reviving our interest in herself and of being the first to
tell a horrible story, as of vindicating the memory of one
who in the eyes of right-minded people wanted no vindi-
cator. So she has told her ugly tale with great inaccuracy and
carelessness, in the worst possible taste, for a reason which,
if true, is quite inadequate to the occasion ; and, further,
as far as we can make out, without the slightest justifica-
tion arising from any request on Lady Byron's part.
Stripped of its verbiage and sensationalism, Mrs. Stowe's
authentication and authority amounts to this :—That
Lady Byron told her a certain history, and gave het a
memorandum of certain facts in 1856, asking for Mrs.
Stowe's opinion whether they should be then and there
published by Lady Byron for a certain reason in 1856.
Mrs. Stowe advised against the publication in 1856 ; and
now in 1869, thirteen years afterwards, and nine years
after Lady Byron's death, Mrs. Stowe publishes this his-
tory, authorised and empowered and commissioned to do
so by—Mrs. Beecher Stowe.
The Spectator thinks there is little to wonder at in the
alarm which every rumour abort the Emperor's health
creates in Paris. France, with its scientific administra-
tion, its class jealousies, its inveterate parties, and its
capital, at once so powerful and so isolated in opinion, is
not the country which can " get on" very well without
any Government at all, and the risk involved in any
temporary interregnum to follow the Emperor's death is
very great indeed, and has been greatly increased by the
• death of Marshal Niel. The written theory of the Con-
stitution is, that on the Emperor's death his son will be
proclaimed Emperor, and his wife Regent during that
son's minority ; and if the Constitution were "sacred," as
it is in America, or as in England, subject to interpreta-
tion only by a House of Commons, whose will u ould in
the last resort be obeyed even by the disaffected, the
transmission of power would be sufficiently easy. But,
unfortunately, the Constitution in France is based on an
unwritten as well as a written theory ; the principle, that
is, of individual "representation," with its natural rider
that no individual can be considered truly representative
until accepted by a majority of the nation. Napoleon
might be proclaimed in the most regular and constitutional
manner ; but until a plebiscitum had been taken his title
would still, under the theory of Cmsarism, be considered
bad, so bad that every party would hold itself at liberty
on the smallest prospect of success to resist, to corrupt
regiments, to " descend into the streets" in armed insurrec-
tion, which would have to be suppressed—by whom? But
it may be said, France, to all appearance, seeks liberty,
and liberty being compatible with constitutional forms,
the Regency may be quietly proclaimed, and the country
governed by a Ministry elected by the Legislature, in fact,
by a Parliament. We deny that France seeks only
liberty. She seeks that, but she seeks that under logical
forms, forms which imply liberty, and not under an
absurd compromise with forms which imply something
totally different. France, as we read her history, has
never yet seen any utility in establishing one government
and pretending all the while to establish another. If the
Legislature is to be really sovereign, to appoint and
displace Ministers at its own discretion, and to pass laws
unimpeded by the veto, the majority of Frenchmen will
say that the Throne is an expensive surplusage which had
better disappear, and under those circumstances it will
disappear, because nobody will take the trouble to defend
it from the attacks to which it is certain to be exposed.
So far from founding anything permanent, the effect of
the Empire has been to prevent the possibility of anything
founding itself. The temporary dictatorship it established
resulted only in destruction, in the removal of all insti-
tutions, the demoralisation of all ideas, the repression of
all men who might have stood between France and a vio-
lent convulsion. We do not say the dictatorship was not
a necessity ; it may have been, for aught we know, just
as, for aught we know, an earthquake or an eruption may
be a necessity ; but then, though we must accept earth-
quakes or eruptions as parts of an order too vast for our
comprehension, we are not hound to assert without
believing that earthquakes found.
The John Bull, in estimating our national food pros-
pects, thinks we may look for a mild and rainy winter
and spring, followed by a warm and early summer. A
succession of heavy falls in the corn market during the
autumn and winter of 1869 will probably tend to check
the ardour of importers during the present season.
Although prices have recently receded considerably, we
cannot but believe that they will speedily recover, and
maintain their firmness at fair rates. We pointed out
last year the importance of a trade which was then be-
ginning to assume features of commercial importance,
viz., that is, Australia and South America meat preserved
by various processes, the best of which, in our opinion,
is the fresh cooked food without bone, in hermetically
sealed tins. The Australian beef, though very excellent,
is not so superlatively fine as the mutton. The short thin
grass of Australia suits sheep better than horned kine.
On the other hand, the luxuriant and even rank vegeta-
tion of 2e•nth America suits cattle, though it is
too rich and long in feather for sheep, and we
shall probably draw a considerable proportion of our
beef from the estancias of Buenos Ayres, and the fat
plains of Venezuelan Guayana. Within the last fort-
night a cargo of live cattle has been landed in a toler-
able state, after a sea voyage of thirty days. A project is
on foot, which, if carried into execution, will enable cattle
to be imported from South America on a large scale in
steamers specially built for the purpose, and making the
passage in something under three weeks. The deficiency
in the supplies of our animal food is so great that no
practicable importation can ever depress prices to a point
at which the home breeder cannot make good profit.
While thankful for the past year, let us not forget the
necessity of straining every nerve if we would continue on
our present path of peace and prosperity.
The Economist asks, What traffic will the canal com-
mand ? and what will be the force of its competition with
existing trade? Incidentally this may throw some light
on the proSpecti of a return to the shareholders, which is
in this country, however, mainly a question of speculative
interest, as• English capital is hardly at all engaged.
There are various ways of arriving at an estimate. One
which we find in the last report of the company is to look
at the total shipping of the two halves of the world to be
connected, the magnitude of the industrial interests on
both sides, and assume, in a somewhat arbitrary manner,
that the traffic by the canal ?nest be a certain figure.
Thus it is said the annual arrivals and departures in
Chinese ports are 6,418,000 tons ; in Marseilles alone,
5,000,000 tons ; in Liverpool, 6.000,000 tons ; in the
Dardanelles, 6,000,000 tons ; the figure of 6,000,000
tons will be a feeble minimum to take for the navigation of
all the commercial navies in the world by the canal. But
what ought to be done is to ascertain at the latest date
possible the actual shipping by which the business of the
East and the West is carried on. This is the nearest
measure of the existing wants to l;o supplied. However
fast the trade might grow, it would require an enormously
rapid expansion to attract new shipping on a lage scale,
and such expansion is not to be assumed beforehand. E
we know then what the trade is, we may have some means
of estimating what share, for it can only he a share at
first and fur a good many years, will fall to the canal.
The total tonnage with which the business of East and
West is transacted does not amount to the 6,000,000 tons
which are anticipated for the traffic of the canal We ars
thus far enough from the estimate of 6,000,000 tons for the
canal traffic, which can only be attained after the lapse of
some years. That it may in the long run lie attained,
if the canal is maintained in good order and reputation,
is both possible and probable. Steamers are gaining or,
sailing ships every clay, and though the canal dues will
be a heavy drawback, there is no doubt that a class of
steamers may be constructed to compete for the Indian
trade at once, and more slowly with the Chinese
and Australian trade. But the work will be one of
time, and in the meantime the canal will do well if it is
used annually by a shipping of one of two million tons.
- In one respect the prospect of a canal yielding no very
great return for a time is a matter of interest to us. The
Egyptian Viceroy is a large shareholder in the compa.sy
—to the extent of £3,000,000, if not snore. Naturally,
until the canal pays well, this will represent so much un-
prolitahle capital, and any expectations of prosperity in
the Egyptian revenues through the direct profit of the
Viecroy's canal investmentwill Le disappointed for a time.
This svill not prevent, hosv:tovoer,
whichth theeindirt profiteeetrvioe of h
to the
State through the population
Attract, and the local trade which will spring
anal Of the settlement as its loval tk,clyart.
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aI_CAIRP'' •

The Saturday Review condemns Mrs. Stowe_ for telling
the story, hints that she has (lone so from unworthy
motives, but nevertheless believes it.

The ion. Arthur Kinnaird addressed his consti-
tuents at Perth on Thursday evening. lie briefly reviewed
the proceedings of the last session of Parliament, and con•
tended that much useful work bad been done. lie spoke
with satisfaction of the Irish Church Bill, and declared
against concurrent endowment in any shape. At the close
of his address Air. Kinnaird received a vote of thanks from
the meeting.

A rebel:ion has been go:ng on during this week at
the Eon= Catholic refernwtory in Wes` Do-by-re :y.l, Liver-
Tool, known as St. George's. Industrial Schools. The aid o!
the police Laving been obtained, the tffair, which threatener
to to serious, was kept within. moderato limits, bat nigh
of the inmates appear to have ezesped (luting the ccufu
sion attendant nn the dist mbances. TLo (ame of the out-
break appears to have been dissatisfaction at the manige-
meet.

A BOY OF SINITY-TIIIIEE !—Archdeacon Denison
was present at the East Brent harvest home on Thursday,
and during the day delivered several characteristic
speeches. Replying to the toast of his health, the Vene
rable Archdeacon said : He found the air of the place, as
well as the kindliness of the .place, produce almost a
second youth, and he bad a little story which he would
tell, that might betoken a little vanity, but which would
be followed by a sequel skewing how people could be
taken down. Friends said they wanted a photograph
taken of him, and as his stock was nearly exhaused, he
bad his likeness taken, and it was taken twice. In one of
the photographs he appeared like a man of 62 years, as he
was, and in the other as if he was about 35, and both
were taken in the same hour. His family—who were
veracious people—said of the second, " How did you
suffer such a face as this to come out? it makes you
look like a boy." He sent a little girl, the daughter of
Mr. Fowler, whom they recollected as his curate, one of
the likenesses, and she said, " Dear mamma, how pretty
he is !" (Roars of laughter.) He told that to a lady,. and
she, with that kindly sarcasm which the sex knew so well
how to employ, and for which they could not be called to
account, esdd, "I impost it was a . very long i.xpt_sinco
alaslOaughtor.);

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, SEPIEMBER 4, 1869.