The Highland weekly news. [volume] (Hillsborough [Hillsboro], Highland County, Ohio) 1853-1886, 1869-09-23

THE BYRON CONTROVERSY.
Mrs. Stowe Sustained by the
London Times

4 -
Mrs. Stowe Sustained by the
London Times
The London Times, of the Both ult.,
emphatically avows its belief in the
truth of Mrs. Stoves disclosures con-
cerning Lord Byron. It says:
There is no doubt that Mrs. Stoves
narrative will owe much of its univer-
sal interest to the fact that it gratifies
the lowest kind of curiosity; but it
was not written, and ought not to be
read, with this end in view. It is a
late and necessary act of justiCe-Of
Justice to the wife, clearing her from
the accusations of feold-heartedness and
uncharitable prudery made so repeat
edly during her life and since her
death-and of justice on the husband,
destroying at once and forever the rO-
nance which has so long been allowed
to drape the falsehOod and meanness
of his character. Leaving the present
revelation out of the question, the fact
that those interesting misfortunes
which at one time the world delighted
to weep over were the natural conse-
quences of the vices of their victim,
has all along been clear enough, yet
seldom, if ever, has this been boldly
insisted on, while in nearly every ex-
tant biographical notice of the poet
and their name is legiOn-his wretch
edness has been pleaded in mitigation
of his errors.
His domestic quarrels have been
discussed wherever English poetry is
read, and the public forced reluctantly
to take Lady Byron's part, has done
so with the worst grace. To blame
her, was, indeed, impossible; but it
was easy to pity him to condOle with
this genius thrown away on q woman
who could not understand him, and
paying so dearly for his mistake
Men, and women, too, made haste to
revile the cold and ungenerOus prude,
who left her husband to make what
wreck he pleased of his life, when, by
bearing with his faults, as the good
wife of a great man ought to bear, she
might have saved him from himself,
and done the duty she owed no less to
the world than to its poet.
The public, however, has had some
excuse for its tacit condemnation of
the most devoted wife that ever sac
rificed herself to an unworthy man,
for Lady Byron never uttered a word
in her own justification, and it is only
now, when she herself and all those
whom the dreadful revelation would
Overwhelm are in their graves, that it
is given to the world. AS it is, the
seals of it would have remained un-
broken, perhaps forever, were it not
for the recent publication by ByrOn's
mistress of a book reviving the old
and threadbare calumnies against his
wife, and referring his reckless indul-
gence and miserable life TO the despair
which took possession of him when
he found himself abandoned by the
woman on whom he rested his hopes
of better things. ~.
Mrs. Stowe states fully her unim-
peachable authority for the narrative
laid before us. When, as the authoress
of "Uncle Toms Cabin" she first
came to England, she formed a friend
ship with Lady Byron; crossing the
Atlantic a second time, in 1856, this |
was renewed, and Mrs. Stowe received
one day an invitation, in which her
friend "indicated that she wished to |
have some private conversation upon
important subjects" Lady Byron, of
delicate health for many years, had at
that time been warned by her physi-
clans that she had not long to live; she
considered that the time had come
when her long silence should at last
be broken, or when, at least, the
means of breaking it should be placed
in other hands than her own.
The daylight has thus at last stream
ed in on the stage romance of Lord
ByrOn's life, has struck the thin tinsel
and the dirty paint, and now the cur
tain may be dropped, and the play,
still dragging on, put an end to-
As far as Lord Byron himself is con-
.cerned, we do not regret it; the truth
is the truth, and we would sooner
know him for what he was than take
him for what he might have BEEN
Sad it is beyond everything how black
a mark is forever set against some of
the most perfect poems--those to his
halEsister Augusta-in this, our moth
er tongue; but, horrible as is the crime
now divulged, the unutterable mean
ness of the man is still more desDica-
BILE. When we learn that the author
of Childe Harold not only brutally
i'll used his wife, and turned her out of
his house, but challenged her against
the world to say a word against him,
well knowing that her noble nature
sealed her lips, and that he all the
while kept her money, which she had
scOrned to secure to herself, to be the
means of his debaucheries, we almost
feel that we can never open his works
again.