Such a Memoir was contemplated. Lady Byron's letters to Mrs. Follen were
asked for from Boston; and I was applied to by a person in England, who I
have recently learned is one of the existing trustees of Lady Byron's
papers, to furnish copies of her letters to me for the purpose of a
Memoir. Before I had time to have copies made, another letter came,
stating that the trustees had concluded that it was best not to publish
any Memoir of Lady Byron at all.

This left the character of Lady Byron in our American world precisely
where the slanders of her husband, the literature of the Noctes Club, and
the unanimous verdict of May Fair as recorded by 'Blackwood,' had placed
it.

True, Lady Byron had nobly and quietly lived down these slanders in
England by deeds that made her name revered as a saint among all those
who valued saintliness.

But in France and Italy, and in these United States, I have had abundant
opportunity to know that Lady Byron stood judged and condemned on the
testimony of her brilliant husband, and that the feeling against her had
a vivacity and intensity not to be overcome by mere allusions to a
virtuous life in distant England.

This is strikingly shown by one fact. In the American edition of Moore's
'Life of Byron,' by Claxton, Remsen, and Haffelfinger, Philadelphia,
1869, which I have been consulting, Lady Byron's statement, which is
found in the Appendix of Murray's standard edition, is entirely omitted.
Every other paper is carefully preserved. This one incident showed how
the tide of sympathy was setting in this New World. Of course, there is
no stronger power than a virtuous life; but, for a virtuous life to bear