Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron

I apprehended in an instant how a Caro Lamb might crave such thralldom; how to enter a room Byron owned was to breathe a more electric air. How , my reeling mind stuttered, had Catherine Twining been proof against such a man? What better angel had sustained her? Impossible to ignore Byron’s will !

A faint smile formed at his lips; he was waiting for my reply. What was it he had said?—That the ambitious always knew their rivals?

“I do not understand you,” I gasped.

The smile widened. “Was there ever so fickle a tongue as that of woman? You understand me too well, I suspect. Nothing has been so praised or sought as Pride and Prejudice since Scott last cast his wretched verses upon the adoring public; and therefore it was imperative in me to pierce the veil of A Lady .—Is that not your captious name, my Jane? For shame, for shame, to disavow it! How could you deny your own child, and at birth ? I call it missish , a sort of prudery and deceit that will not be borne! If you will write, then proclaim your words to the World! Let the avid ghouls of Bond Street and Pall Mall know to whom they owe the mirror of Mrs. Bennet, in all her mercenary glory!”

My eyes dropped; I drew a shuddering breath, and regained some shred of composure. “How can you know this?” I demanded. “Whom have I trusted, that ought rather to be suspected?”

“Do not make yourself anxious—I am sure dear Eliza carried your secret to the grave,” he said. “—But for the one exception all women must make, soon or late— myself. ” Of course. She would have felt it immediately: that quivering, seductive bond—that cord impossible to break. In her dying state it would have been as life-blood to Eliza, to brave a rout party where Byron lounged, merely to have his gaze meet hers and feel, for an instant at least, more alive and ardent than she should ever feel again.

“My relations with the frailer sex rarely conform to rules, you know,” he said, “and they have next to nothing to do with vows . I am sure she meant to keep her promises most faithfully—but poor Eliza was a butterfly creature, susceptible to flattery and the influence of fashion; I was all the rage in her final months. Childe Harold having lately broken upon an astonished ton , she must use her knowledge to attract me.”

“Her knowledge?” I repeated.

Those eyes raked over me once more. “It was as gold in Eliza’s hands. She possessed something no other lady possessed: the name of a greater writer than I.”

My gloved hands formed tight claws where they lay in my lap. My second novel, sped by the success of my first, had appeared in January; and in April Eliza had expired. When had she shared her secret?

Of a sudden, I was visited in memory by her dying words. Regret … regret . Had this been meant for me?

“You should rather thank than blame her,” Byron said in a lowered tone, meant for my ears alone. “I have not thought to publish your secret to the world. There is no value to anything once it is known everywhere. But do, Miss Austen, confess to your next work—It ought to be your policy, as it is mine, to proclaim your every sin. The publick will devour you alive—but it will also devour your books, which is all to the good.” He took another draught of his claret, and for an instant, I was freed of the consuming gaze. “Sins are the writer’s stock-in-trade, however vicious. Incest, rape, idolatry, sodomy—nothing is too violent for my appetites; all these have I known, and you may find their ghosts reanimated in my verse.”

I believed it now, when I might have scoffed earlier, but it was time to summon control, and place a quelling distance between myself and the poet. Intimacy must be unsafe, when one fenced with Byron.

“I have only looked into Childe Harold, ” I remarked mildly, “but enjoyed what little I read of it.”

Those eyes glittering with drink or fury narrowed at my tepid praise; then he bestowed upon me the most seraphic of smiles. Instantly, the hectic brow was revealed as a child’s; the vicious tendencies, as mere play-acting. Another woman might have felt swift sympathy; my cooling brain was the more active, in perceiving a warning.

“You chuse to invoke our first meeting, Lord Byron, at Cuckfield,” I persisted. “I am emboldened, therefore, to ask a home question. What drove you then to take up and bind a respectable young lady of only fifteen—one known, moreover, to enjoy the protection of a father?”

“Snapping my fingers beneath the General’s nose was half the attraction.” His eyelids drooped, brooding. “But Catherine herself incited me to it, that morning, as my coach came alongside her—so fresh as she was, so delicate, her look half-shy, half-inviting, as tho’ she had begun to trust me at last. She gave me her hand, and I lifted her into the chaise—ready to cherish her, ready to ravish her if she would but swoon in my arms a little—Pure innocence! Can you have an idea of it, Miss Austen?”

The piercing gaze held mine again and I drew an unsteady breath.

“—How o’erwhelming the throes of passion for an unaccustomed purity might be?” he muttered. “All the complicity of that closed carriage! Her face, her figure, her soft voice were incitement to anything you may imagine—and I should never be proof against their charms!”

A groan broke from somewhere in the room—I looked away, and saw Scrope Davies with his hands pressed against his face, as tho’ his skull throbbed with acutest pain. Henry, who had been conversing with the gentleman, paused in perplexity and placed a hand on Davies’s arm. Byron, however, heard nothing of his friend’s distress—being too intent upon reliving his thwarted passion.

“Catherine did not trust me, however. She did not swoon. When presented with the soul and heart of a poet—she first screamed, and then shrank, as tho’ from a leper. It is my lameness—I know it is my lameness; she saw the blighting mark as the Devil’s touch. His token of ownership.” Byron sneered, but the hateful look was entirely for himself. “The beautiful Catherine was as repulsed by me as by a reptile, slimed and dank; as by a relic dug too soon from a foetid grave. In her disgust, I knew my worth. Perhaps it was this that formed the chief part of her fascination—the girl despised me almost as much as I despise myself.”

Ah! Sudden comprehension flooded my mind. Not self-hatred, but self-love, was Byron’s consuming demon. He was incapable of apprehending a fellow creature’s outline, however ardent his object might feel in his presence; the world entire must be viewed solely as it related to Byron .

“Being the victim, as I see you mean to stile yourself,” I observed in a lowered tone, “why stop at abduction? If Catherine could not love you—could never endure to be yours—why not end the agony of her refusal, with her life?”

“Ah, but that should be a poem , Miss Austen—not the sequel to a dull evening’s entertainment at the Brighton Assembly,” he said abruptly. “I might write such a poem; but I should never form the elaborate intention of quitting a ball, deserting my rooms, and employing my friend Davies as surety for my reputation, in actual life. I was too drunk to hunt the girl through the entire town at the dead of night, for one thing; and for another, too sick of Caro Lamb. Besides, I must confess my ardour for young Catherine had already begun to wane; one cannot always be proclaiming deathless love to a chit who colours, avoids one’s eye, and ducks behind a pillar rather than surrender her heart. It verges on the ridiculous; and I avoid the ridiculous at all costs—in life, as in poetry.”