Meanwhile Byron had seen much of Moore and Rogers and had met, after many years, his half-sister, Mrs. Leigh, the "Augusta" of some of his best poems, and the being of all others to whom his heart went out most fondly. In after years his memory and hers were to be clouded by a dark suspicion which, whether true or false, would probably never have soiled the ears of the world but for the jealousy of another woman —his wife. Whether the scan dal which Mrs. Stowe (q.v.) spread and which Byron's own grandson, Lord Lovelace, unac countably revived will ever be substantiated or laid completely to rest is a matter upon which the data for a decision are not forthcoming. In the interim generous minds and hearts will prefer to believe in the purity of the 'Epistle to Augusta.' The story of Byron's courtship and mar riage, while less mysterious than that of Mil ton, is not a clear one. In 1812 he seems to have been rejected by an heiress in expectation, Miss Anna Isabella Milbanke, four years his junior and a connection of his flame, Lady Lamb. The young woman appears to have been fond of mathematics and theology, to have written poems, to have been somewhat priggish and prudish and very self-centred. Some cor respondence was kept up between the pair and, as a marriage seemed likely to steady his habits and better his fortunes, Byron proposed again by letter in September 1814. This time he was accepted. Miss Milbanke was apparently proud of her catch and Byron of his. They were married on 2 Jan. 1815 and they seem to have got on well at first, though each later made reports to the contrary. The young wife soon inherited money and promised him a child; the poet behaved himself well on the surface, took an interest in the management of Drury Lane, saw something of Sir Walter Scott (al ways his defender) and helped Coleridge to publish But the pair were evi dently incompatible, and after the birth of their only child, Augusta Ada, on 10 Dec. 1815, a separation was arranged for, Lady Byron be lieving that her husband was insane — a notion obviously stupid, but possibly charitable from her own point of view. The doctor, the lawyer and the father-in-law she let loose upon Byron may have irritated him into conduct that did not allay her suspicions. It is all a tangle; perhaps the easiest way out is to censure Byron and resolutely refrain from admiring his wife.
The separation was followed by an astonish ing public clamor against Byron, whose friends seem to have thought his life in danger. Sir Leslie Stephen has contended that the public indignation was not unnatural. Perhaps it was not, in the sense that it represented some of the worst elements of human nature. For a society that tolerated the Regent and his boon associ ates to fawn upon a man and then to condemn him unheard on the score of practically unspeci fied charges was simply to put an indelible blot upon Englishmen of the upper and middle classes—a blot the blackness of which may be somewhat gauged from the depth of the vin dictiveness with which Byron's fame has been since attacked by many of his countrymen. It by no means follows, however, that Byron was at all justified in writing and publishing his numerous poems and passages relating to the separation—though literature would do ill with out 'Fare Thee Well,' and would like to have had a chance to see his destroyed novel on the 'Marriage of Belphegor' — or that he can be excused for much of his conduct during the exile that began at the end of April 1816 and lasted for the rest of his spectacular life. One
can, however, pardon his constant desire to shock the British public; and, taking account of his temperament, one can understand his varying moods of conciliatory tenderness and defiant scorn toward his implacable wife.
Byron first visited Belgium, traveling luxu riously. Then he went, by the Rhine, to Geneva, where he met the Shelleys and Claire Clair mont, who had made up her mind in London to be his mistress. She bore him in January 1817 a daughter, Allegra, with whom he charged himself and whose death in 1822 grieved him deeply. The intercourse with the Shelleys at Geneva was probably more beneficial to Byron than to Shelley. (The Prisoner of Chillon,) the most popular of his poems of the type, the third canto of 'Childe Harold) which, thanks to Shelley, showed the influence of Words worth, the stanzas 'To and other poems are memorials of the period and proofs that his experiences had ripened Byron's poetic powers. After the Shelleys returned to Eng land, Byron, with Hobhouse, crossed into Italy.
He was in Milan in October 1816 and then went for the winter to Venice, where he prac tically remained for three years. His excesses in the Palazzo Macenigo are unfortunately but too well known; yet, although his health and his character suffered from them, to say nothing of his reputation, he did not a little reading, and his poetical genius continued active. The fourth cantos of 'Childe Harold' and 'Man f red,' which date, in part at least, from 1817 and reveal the effects of a visit to Rome, show his genius almost at its zenith, and 'Beppo,' suggested by Frere's (Whistlecraft Cantos' preluded the greatest of his works—perhaps the greatest of modern English poems— the incomparable medley, 'Don Juan,' the first canto of which was written in September 1818. The first two cantos, between which he wrote 'Mazeppa,) were published, without indication of either author or publisher, in July 1819.
Meanwhile Byron had met the Countess Teresa Guiccioli, the young, beautiful and ac complished daughter of Count Gamba of Ra venna. They became passionately attached to each other, and, aided by the customs of the country, were constantly together at Ravenna and other places, Venetian society finally giv ing them up when she resided under his roof. After some extraordinary business negotiations with the lady's elderly husband, it looked as if the temporarily weary lover might regain his freedom; but finally the affection of the Countess prevailed, and Byron, yielding to an influence higher and better than any he had known of late, established himself near her at Ravenna at the end of 1819. Here for a time, at her request, he gave up 'Don Juan,' and, after some translating from the Italian poets, began to write dramas.