I

APPENDIX II

THE MEMOIRS

N 1819-21 Byron wrote these Memoirs. They related particularly to his life in London after the publication of Childe Harold in 1812, and to his marriage and separation. He gave the first portion to Moore in October 1819 at La Mira, Venice, and continually added to the MS. during 1820-21. He authorised Moore to show the papers to "the Elect"; and Moore did show them to many persons, both in Paris and at home. Byron wrote from Ravenna in December 1820 that if Moore could "make anything of them now in the way of reversion . . . I should be very glad". They were absolutely Moore's property, by Byron's own desire. When Moore fell into pecuniary difficulties in 1821, an arrangement was made at Byron's suggestion whereby Murray bought from Moore these Memoirs for the sum of two thousand guineas, binding himself not to publish until after Byron's death. Moore, who had employed a person to copy them, gave Murray the copy as well as the original MS. when this agreement was made in November 1821. There was a stipulation that Moore should edit these papers, and supply an account of subsequent events in Byron's life as well; so that the two thousand guineas paid by Murray was really, as Murray afterwards said, "a simple loan ". This agreement gave neither Byron nor Moore any powers of redemption.

Before long, Byron began to vacillate; and when Lady Noel died in January 1822, and he had hopes of a reconciliation with his wife, he felt that he should like to be in a position to redeem the Memoirs from Murray. He had already, in January 1820, offered the perusal of the MS. to Lady Byron, and she had (in March) very decisively refused it. (See Chapter XVI.) The upshot of Byron's desire for a different position with regard to the MS. was that Murray consented to execute, and did execute on May 6, 1822, a deed giving Byron and Moore, or either of them, the power of redeeming the MS. during Byron's life.

In March 1824 Murray for the first time obtained possession of the original agreement of 1821 from Douglas Kinnaird. Kinnaird had thought the transaction an odd one, and had detained the paper until he should receive from Lord Byron positive orders as to whom he wished it to be delivered to. This ambiguous conduct had made Murray anxious to know where he stood; and on obtaining the original agreement, he at once requested Moore either to exercise the power of redemption accorded by the second paper of 1822, or to

cancel that paper. Moore declared that both he and Byron wished to redeem the MS., and that, by insuring his life, he intended to procure the sum necessary for doing so. He promised to come to town in a few days, and take all the necessary steps. He came to town, but he took none of the necessary steps; he did not even call on Murray; and before anything was done, there arrived on May 14, 1824, the news of Byron's death.

By that event, the MS. of the Memoirs became the absolute property of Murray; for the deed of 1822 empowered Moore to redeem them only during Byron's life.

In the Temple Bar articles of 1869-70,1 there is a long attack upon Moore's conduct with reference to the news of Byron's death. No sooner had he heard than he hastened to Murray's (his own diary is the authority for his movements) and, failing to see the publisher, left a note urging him to "complete the arrangement agreed upon while I was last in town". The Temple Bar writer continues : "Then he rushed up and down to Rogers, Kinnaird, Brougham, Hobhouse, Wilmot Horton, etc., striving to persuade them all that Murray ought to return the Memoirs to him ".

Meanwhile, Hobhouse was already in consultation with Sir Francis Burdett as to the best means of preventing the Memoirs from being published, for Hobhouse had from the first considered them foolish documents. On the same day that Hobhouse got the news from Missolonghi (May 14, 1824) Augusta Leigh also got it; and also on that day Captain George Byron (then seventh Lord) went down to Beckenham in Kent to inform Lady Byron. Hobhouse, calling on Augusta that day, urged upon her the importance of this question of the Memoirs. On Saturday, May 15, he called again and told her that he had seen Moore, and that Moore had resolved to place the Memoirs at her disposal. Murray had already volunteered to do this. There was some uncertainty in everybody's mind as to the actual property in the Memoirs. Moore believed that he still retained some right in them; he declared that he would deliver the MS. to Mrs. Leigh with his own hands; "he would have the grace of this sacrifice himself". But the Memoirs were now, in reality, Murray's absolute property.

It was proposed that Moore should meet Murray-Hobhouse and Wilmot Horton to be also present-at Augusta's house, and in her presence repay the two thousand guineas, receive the MS., and hand it over to her to be absolutely at her disposal. She, who had never read a word of the Memoirs, had by this time been convinced by Hobhouse that the right way to dispose of them was to burn them. He had been urgent on that from the first. All this was arranged between Friday and Saturday, May 14 and 15.

1 Collected under the title A Vindication of Lady Byron (Bentley, 1870). • Captain Byron told Hobhouse and Augusta that Lady Byron was in a distressing state. "She said she had no right to be considered, but she had her feelings, and would wish to see any accounts that had come of his last moments". Hobhouse sent her his letters relating to the death by Captain Byron.

On Sunday, May 16, Moore and Kinnaird called on Hobhouse. Moore announcing that he had obtained the two thousand guineas. (He had got the sum from Messrs. Longmans.) On that day he for the first time intimated to Hobhouse his dislike to burning the Memoirs; he said that he would not be present at the destruction. Next day there came from him a letter, saying that his friends, who were Mr. Luttrell, Samuel Rogers, and Lord Lansdowne, had suggested a modification. The Memoirs were to be redeemed by him, and he was to peruse them and make extracts for publication. Wilmot Horton later suggested another compromise: they should be sealed and sent to the bank, so that at some future time they might be discreetly edited.1 Hobhouse repudiated firmly both these plans, and Murray ultimately joined with him in protesting that the MS. should at once be burned. All were still under the impression that Moore still retained some property in them. There was a heated discussion in Murray's room at Albemarle Street, where all the parties, except Augusta, assembled on the Monday, May 17. Colonel Doyle, representing Lady Byron, was also present. Every one but Moore acquiesced in the destruction of the MS.; and Wilmot Horton declared that they need not adjourn to Augusta's house, for she had given him her authority to see it burned. Moore protested against the burning, "as contrary to Lord Byron's wishes, and unjust to himself ".

By this time the agreement of 1821 and the deed of 1822 had been collated, and the MS. was at last perceived to be Murray's property alone. Colonel Doyle and Mr. Horton then tore up the MS. and Moore's copy of it, and put them both on the fire. Moore then placed the two thousand guineas on the table. Murray refused to take the money, saying that he had destroyed not Mr. Moore's property but his own: "he would take no money for that". Moore insisted. Murray then consented to take the money; but, retaining Hobhouse after the others had left, urged upon him the propriety of Lord Byron's family reimbursing Moore. Hobhouse, Horton,

1 Lord Lovelace thought this the course that should have been taken. • Though Colonel Doyle had been requested by Lady Byron to act for her, if necessary, in the matter, his presence at this meeting was accidental; Wilmot Horton had called upon him and asked him to go. Moore had told Colonel Doyle that he [Moore], in delivering the MS. to "Lord Byron's family", must be understood not to mean Lady Byron, or to include her. At this meeting, the point in debate was what Mrs. Leigh might be disposed to do with the MS. The question of its destruction had not been discussed between, or even thought of by, Lady Byron and Colonel Doyle; their debate had been as to whether the MS. should be suppressed-or partially published. "Lady Byron ", says Colonel Doyle in a letter to Wilmot Horton of May 18, 1825, certainly gave no consent to the destruction of the manuscript, either directly or indirectly". At this meeting, Colonel Doyle, finding an entirely new point under discussion," regarded himself" (when the MS. was destroyed)" only as a witness, and not as a party to the proceeding" (Astarte, App. A, pp. 327-8).

It will be noticed that in Hobhouse's narrative, from which my text derives, Colonel Doyle is said to have been one of those who actually put the MS. on the fire.

Luttrell, and Doyle all agreed with Murray. Augusta, who agreed on the main point, was emphatic in declaring that Lady Byron could not be asked to contribute: "nothing was being done for her sake". But Lady Byron had been already approached on the subject (by whom we know not); and, on finding later that no member of the Byron family except Augusta would pay, she "consented to a proposal that she and Augusta should each provide one thousand guineas for the purpose ".1

But this arrangement in the end fell through; and it was not until 1828 that any kind of reimbursement to Moore was made. In that year Leigh Hunt's book came out, and John Murray became convinced that a Life of Byron must be written. He therefore arranged with Moore to prepare the biography which was published in 1830. For this commission Moore was paid £1600; but over and above that sum, Murray discharged Moore's bond with his creditors (the Messrs. Longman) for the two thousand guineas, together with the interest thereon and other charges, amounting to £1020 more. The total sum paid by Murray was £4620. Jeaffreson thinks that Murray should be regarded as having discharged Moore's bond, with the interest and costs, "with money placed in his hands for that purpose ".

Though the loss of any prose writings from Byron's hand must be reckoned as acute, it is doubtful if in other respects the world has lost much by losing the Memoirs. That part of them which related to the early London life was, in so far as it was fit for general circulation at all, transferred by memory from Byron's MS. to Moore's Life-or so at any rate Moore tells his readers. He says that" on the mysterious cause of the separation, [the MS.] afforded no light whatever". Byron himself, while assuring Moore and Murray that his statement of this case was written with the fullest intention to be faithful and true, admitted that it was nevertheless "not impartial"; and he added passionately: "No, by the Lord! I cannot pretend to be that while I feel ".

As to the grossness, there are conflicting voices. Murray attributed to Gifford the opinion that "the Memoirs were of such a low, Pothouse description" that a bookseller of repute could not possibly publish them. Lord Lovelace, in Astarte, declares that at most four or five pages in the latter part were indelicate, and that they could perfectly have been spared. He cites as authorities for this opinion Lord John Russell, Lady Holland, and other readers. But again, Lord Rancliffe, who had been among "the Elect ", told Hobhouse that no one having read the MS., could have any excuse for wishing to publish it, and that no decent person could have any wish but for its destruction. "The flames were the fit place for it".

Was Augusta implicated? Lord John Russell said in 1869 that she was not; Lady Holland in 1843 (by no means so crucial a date) 2 said she was. Augusta never read, or heard read, a single word of

1 Jeaffreson, p. 429.

It was, however, to some extent crucial. Medora Leigh-see Appendix III. was then in England, and there were rumours in the air of blackmail by her servants.

the MS.; and I can find no proof that she showed any eagerness to have it destroyed-indeed, only the urgency of Hobhouse induced her "very decidedly" to sanction the burning. Hobhouse's attitude was based on the fact that Byron had expressed to him in 1822 a desire that the Memoirs should not be published.

Lady Byron had been from the first (see Chapter XVI) strongly opposed to publication; but she took no part whatever in the destruction, and did not approve when she heard of it (Astarte, pp. 122-3).

Moore, who has been universally blamed for the burning, very urgently protested against it. Jeaffreson declares that John Murray did so too; but this does not appear either from Hobhouse's very detailed narrative in the Recollections of a Long Life, or from John Murray's letter of May 19, 1824, to Wilmot Horton, to be found in the Appendix to the English translation of Elze's Life of Byron.

It must be added that at the time, and ever afterwards, Moore assumed an attitude of magnanimity and sacrifice in the matter of allowing the Memoirs to be destroyed which was wholly unsanctioned by the facts. He had no property whatever in the MS. at the time of its destruction, and it was through his own deliberate dilatoriness that he had lost that property. In December of the same year (1824) he told Hobhouse, in writing, that he had "become a convert to [Hobhouse's] opinion about the propriety of the destruction, and of not making extracts for publication" (Recollections of a Long Life, vol. iii.).