The Black Friar

( Originally Published 1922 )

Beware! beware! of the Black Friar
Who sitteth by Norman stone,
For he mutters his prayer in the midnight air,
And his mass of the days that are gone.

And whether for good or whether for ill
It is not mine to say,
But still to the house of Amundeville
He abideth night and day.

DON JUAN

ONE may wonder what my Lord Byron in the shades thinks of his noble grandson's performance in summoning the obscene Furies to a final desecration of his grave. Surely the ghouls of scandal that find their congenial food in the shrouds of the illustrious dead, have never had richer quarry. True, they have already had their noses at the scent (through the sweet offices of an American authoress), and have even picked a little at the carrion; but the full body-of-death was never before delivered to them.

This point has been clouded over in the public discussion of the infamy. It should be made clear in order that the Earl of Lovelace may receive his due credit. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's revelations were, of course, to the same purport, but they were based on the unsupported word of Lady Byron and some very free readings of certain passages in the poet's works. Everybody was shocked, nobody convinced. Mrs. Stowe's book was damned by universal consent and withdrawn from public sale.

Lord Lovelace has about the same story to tell, and his revival of the horrid scandal would go for naught, were it not that he is himself a kind of witness against the dead. It would be foolish to deny that many people will as such accept him. There is nobody now living to share or dispute his preeminence in shame. Lord Lovelace should have a portion, at least, of the burden of Orestes.

Yes, there are terrible things in this darkly perplexed drama of the house of Byron, which make it seem like a modern version of the old Greek tragedy. Look at the figures in it. A great poet—among the very greatest of his race—beautiful as a god, born to the highest place, the spoiled darling of nature and of for-tune, dazzling the world with his gifts, drunk himself with excess of power, crowding such emotion and enthusiasm, such vitality and passion, such adventure and achievement, such a fulness of productive power within the short span of a life cut off in its prime, as have scarcely ever marked the career of another human being. Never have men's eyes wonderingly followed so splendid and lawless a comet in the sky of fame. Never was man loved more passionately, hated more bitterly, ad-mired more extravagantly, praised more wildly, damned more deeply. His quarrel divided the world into armed camps which still maintain their hostile lines. He was the Napoleon * of the intellectual world and bulked as large as the Corsican, with whom indeed he shared the admiration of Europe. And by Europe he was acclaimed and almost deified when England had first exiled and later denied him a place in the pantheon of her great.

Never, too, were great faults redeemed by grander virtues, worthy of his towering genius —virtues to which the eyes of those who loved him still turned with shining hope after each brief eclipse of his nobler self, as when the sudden summer storm has passed over, men seek the sun. Virtues which drew the hatred of his race and caste, and have left his name as a sword and a burning brand in the world.

Such is the chief actor in this terrible and sinister drama which has lately been unveiled by the perfidy of the heir of his blood—the son of that "Ada" whom his verse has immortalized. The remaining characters are few, which is also fatally in accordance with the rules of Greek tragedy. For the most tremendous dramas of the flesh and the spirit do not ask a crowd of performers; two or three per-sons will suffice and the eternal elements of love and hate.

So here we have, besides the poet, only the unloved and unloving wife, who meekly discharged her bosom of its long-festering rancor ere she left the world; the beloved-perhaps too wildly beloved—half-sister of the poet, whose memory (in spite of the hideous calumny laid upon her) is like a springing fountain of bright water in the hot desert of his life; * and, lastly, the evil grandson in whom the ancestral curses of the house of Byron have found a terribly fit medium of execution and vengeance. It seems a circumstance of added horror that this parricidal slanderer should be a hoary old man, while the world can not imagine Byron save as he died, in the glory and beauty of youth.

'What madness possessed the man? 'Was it perhaps the hoarded rage and bitterness of many years, that he should have been compelled to live his long life without fame or notice, in the shadow of a mighty name? A wild enough theory, but such extraordinary madness as my Lord Lovelace's will not allow of sane conjecture. One does not pick and choose his hypotheses in Bedlam.

That my Lord Lovelace is mad doth sufficiently, indeed overwhelmingly, appear from his part in this shameful and lamentable business; but, as often happens in cases of reasoning dementia, the truth comes out rather in some petty detail than in the general conduct. Thus, at the outset, he orders his charges very well and maintains a semblance of dignity that would befit a worthier matter. One is, passingly, almost tempted to believe that the noble lord has been moved to the shocking enter-prise by a compelling sense of moral and even filial obligation. He seems to speak more in sorrow than in anger and comes near to winning our sympathy, if not our approval. This at the threshold of his plea. But his malignity soon reveals itself, horrifying and disgusting us, and suddenly the detail crops up—the little thing for which intelligent alienists are always on the alert—and losing all control, he abandons himself to the utter freedom of his hatred and his madness. I refer now to the atrocious passage in his book in which he exults over the alleged fact revealed by the post-mortem examination of Byron's remains—that the poet's heart was found to be partly petrified or turned into stone!

A pretty bauble this to play with ! There are saner men than my Lord Lovelace trying to seize the moon through their grated windows, and coming very near to doing it—oh, very near!

But I should like to have a look at my Lord Lovelace's heart!

Lovers of Byron's fame may be glad, at least, that the worst has now been said and calumny can not touch the great poet further. Ever since his death nearly a hundred years ago, the hyenas of scandal have wrangled over his grave, shocking the world in their hunt for uncleanness. All the nameless things that delight to see greatness brought low, genius disgraced, the sanctuary of honor defiled and the virtue of humanity trampled in the dirt, were bidden to the feast. Those obscene orgies have lasted a long time : they are now at an end. The unclean have taken away the uncleanness, if such there was, and are dispersed with their foul kindred in the wilderness. The clean remains, and all that was truly vital and imperishable of Byron—the legacy of his genius, the inspiration of his example in the cause of liberty, the deathless testimony of his spirit for that supreme cause, and his flamehearted protest against the enthroned Sham, Meanness and Oppression which still rule the world. These precious bequests of Byron we have immortal and secure. As for the rest ---

Glory without end

Scattered the clouds away, and on that name attend

The tears and praises of all time !