"Who is the lady who is to do me this injury?' "Miss Milbanke.'"'

Anne Isabella was the only daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke. She had a fortune of £10,000 and expectations of seven or eight thousand a year from her uncle, Viscount Wentworth. Byron on his marriage gave her £60,000. It was certainly not a brilliant marriage, though the lady was good-looking, a clever mathematician, a poet, and versed in French, Latin, Italian, and Greek, and was regarded as a paragon of virtue.

There is no doubt Byron was in love with her or thought that he was. The marriage took place Jan.

2, 1815, and as the carriage drove away Lady Byron's words to Hobhouse were, "If I am not happy it will be my own fault."

At first they were happy. Byron wrote to Moore just a month later:

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"The treacle-moon is over and I am awake and find myself married. My spouse and I agree to admiration. I still think one ought to marry upon lease; but I am very sure I should renew mine at the expiration, though next term were ninety and nine years."

Byron called his wife " Pippin;" she called him "Duck;" his sister, who called him " "Baby," they both called "Goose." It seemed like a happy family.

Lord Wentworth died in April and left the bulk of his property to his sister, to revert on her death to Lady Byron. This did not bring any relief to Lord Byron. During the few months that they lived in London (March 18, 1815,-Jan. 15, 1816) there were nine executions upon them for debt.

And yet they lived economically.

Lady Caroline Lamb was Lady Byron's cousin. His renewed intimacy with her at Melbourne house began to be a cause of anxiety. Byron was a great joker, and often his "chaff " was coarse and ungentlemanly. Lady Byron was intensely practical and could not see a joke.

Just before the daughter Ada was born Byron undoubtedly treated his wife with positive unkindness. She was not the only one who thought that he might be insane. When she once asked him if she were in his way, he replied, "Damnably." He more than once "breathed the breath of bitter words." Even if his statement that he married her out of revenge for her having once refused him were a jest, it was a cruel one. Once when pressed for money he flung his watch on the hearth and smashed

it with a poker.

He chewed tobacco and partook copiously of opium to soothe the pangs of his outraged stomach: he was suffering from jaundice and his mind was evidently in a highly overwrought state.

But the doctors whom she engaged to investigate his state reported that he was sane. Lady Byron's former governess, Mrs. Clermon, known now as the Mischiefmaker, broke into Byron's private desk and found some compromising letters written to a married lady before his marriage.

Lady Byron felt justified in leaving her husband. The decision was made known to him Feb. 2, 1816. He at first refused to sign the private agreement, and only consented when it was threatened that the case would be taken into court.

About this time, Jane Clairmont, a step-daughter of William Godwin, applied at Drury Lane Theatre for a position as an actress. Byron, who was on the so-called Board of Mis-management, took a fancy to her. She become the mother of his favorite natural daughter, Allegra.

The scandal of the separation brought down upon Lord Byron a perfect storm of calumnies. Such storms sour the milk of human kindness.

He was advised not to go to the House of Lords lest he should be mobbed. "I was accused," he wrote, "of every monstrous vice by public rumor and private rancor. . . . I felt that if what was whispered and muttered and murmured was true, I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for me."

As for the reasons for their separation Byron later declared that they were "too simple to be found out." It is certain that Lady Byron kept up her friendship with Augusta Leigh until 1830, so that the story circulated by Mrs. Stowe seems to be effectually disproved.

The turning of English society against Lord Byron was one of the most curious phenomena of history. But the explanation is not far to seek. Byron painted a portrait in the blackest colors. The world believed that he himself was the model, and accepted the likeness in spite of his disclaimer. The men of his own order hated him because he did not lead their life. Politically he was dangerous; he had outraged the religious susceptibilities of the English Philistines. He became the scapegoat of the nobility-attacked by all classes.

Lady Caroline Lamb wrote a novel showing under a

thin disguise how he treated ladies who compromised themselves for his sake.

Just before he left England, Lady Jersey braved public opinion and gave a party in his honor. Even there he was snubbed and avoided.

He left England, April 25, 1816, never to return. Near Geneva he met Shelley, who, having deserted his wife, was travelling with the brilliant Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin who had already taken his name. Her step-sister, Jane Clairmont, was with them. However subversive of morals such a combination may have been, it was favorable to poetry. During the sojourn on the Swiss lake, Byron wrote much of the third canto of Childe Harold, The Prisoner of Chillon, and other poems; Shelley read and meditated; "Mrs." Shelley produced her tremendous story of Frankenstein.

The English tourists, who deliberately cut the poets and their loves, gratified their curiosity by spying upon them through telescopes. All sorts of monstrous stories were reported. Doubtless Byron with his penchant for making himself out worse than he was, deliberately contributed to the scandal.

Madame de Staël (who after reading his farewell lines had exclaimed, "How gladly would I have been unhappy in Lady Byron's place!") was living at Coppet. Byron went to call upon her. A lady novelist "of mature virtue and maturer years " fainted at the announcement of his presence!

In Switzerland Byron tried to arrange for a reconciliation with his wife. She refused it. After that his feelings toward her changed to bitterness, and he wrote a

number of savage lines which would better have been left unwritten. Here also he composed parts of Manfred, Prometheus, and other poems inspired by the Alps and showing the influence of Wordsworth and possibly that of Goethe. He now began to take pay for his writings. Between 1816 and 1821 Murray paid him over twelve thousand pounds. For the third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold he received £3,675, equivalent probably at the present time to nearly $25,000.

In October, 1816, Byron went down to Italy and settled in Venice.

Old Roger Ascham says of Italy:

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"She is able to turne a saint into a devil and deprave the best natures, if one will abandon himselfe and become a prey to dissolute courses and wantonesse."

There is an old proverb, "An italianate Inglischyeman is an Incarnate Devil." Byron for a time at least proved the truth of this proverb.

It seemed as if he wanted to commit a sort of lingering suicide. A weary, homesick, conscience-stricken exile, he exhausted his strength by low debaucheries. Hitherto, for the most part, abstemious and temperate, he now became a glutton, and imbibed quantities of brandy. His propensity to corpulency returned upon him. At the same time he was troubled with malaria and sleeplessness. His palace was filled with lewd revellers. One of his mistresses was the wife of a gondolier - scarcely more cultured than a fishwife.

This wretched, prodigal life lasted till early in 1819, when he suddenly began to have better thoughts. He wrote Tom Moore: "I was obliged to reform my 'way