"Sketch;" but of herself he wrote (March 8, 1816), "I do not believe that
there ever was a brighter, and a kinder, or a more amiable or agreeable
being than Lady Byron. I never had nor can have any reproach to make to
her, when with me." Elsewhere he adds, that he would willingly, if he had
the chance, "renew his marriage on a lease of twenty years." But as time
passed and his overtures were rejected, his patience gave way, and in some
of his later satires he even broke the bounds of courtesy. Lady Byron's
letters at the time of the separation, especially those first published in
the _Academy_ of July 19, 1879, are to Mrs. Leigh always affectionate and
confidential, often pathetic, asking her advice "in this critical moment,"
and protesting that, "independent of malady, she does not think of the
past with any spirit of resentment, and scarcely with the sense of
injury." In her communications to Mr. Hodgson, on the other hand--the
first of almost the same date, the second a few weeks later--she writes
with intense bitterness, stating that her action was due to offences which
she could only condone on the supposition of her husband's insanity, and
distinctly implying that she was in danger of her life. This supposition
having been by her medical advisers pronounced erroneous, she felt, in the
words only too pungently recalled in _Don Juan_, that her duty both to man
and God prescribed her course of action. Her playful letter on leaving she
seems to defend on the ground of the fear of personal violence. Till Lord
Byron's death the intimacy between his wife and sister remained unbroken;
through the latter he continued to send numerous messages to the former,
and to his child, who became a ward in Chancery; but at a later date it
began to cool. On the appearance of Lady Byron's letter, in answer to
Moore's first volume, Augusta speaks of it as "a despicable tirade," feels
"disgusted at such unfeeling conduct," and thinks "nothing can justify any
one in defaming the dead." Soon after 1830 they had an open rupture on a
matter of business, which was never really healed, though the then
Puritanic precisian sent a message of relenting to Mrs. Leigh on her