merican Stamp Act, an event occurred which coloured the
whole of his after-life, and is curiously illustrative of the manners of
the time. On January 26th or 29th (accounts vary) ten members of an
aristocratic social club sat down to dinner in Pall-mall. Lord Byron and
Mr. Chaworth, his neighbour and kinsman, were of the party. In the course
of the evening, when the wine was going round, a dispute arose between
them about the management of game, so frivolous that one conjectures the
quarrel to have been picked to cloak some other cause of offence. Bets
were offered, and high words passed, but the company thought the matter
had blown over. On going out, however, the disputants met on the stairs,
and one of the two, it is uncertain which, cried out to the waiter to show
them an empty room. This was done, and a single tallow candle being placed
on the table, the door was shut. A few minutes later a bell was rung, and
the hotel master rushing in, Mr. Chaworth was found mortally wounded.
There had been a struggle in the dim light, and Byron, having received the
first lunge harmlessly in his waistcoat, had shortened his sword and run
his adversary through the body, with the boast, not uncharacteristic of
his grand nephew, "By G-d, I have as much courage as any man in England."
A coroner's inquest was held, and he was committed to the Tower on a
charge of murder. The interest in the trial which subsequently took place
in Westminster Hall, was so great that tickets of admission were sold for
six guineas. The peers, after two days' discussion, unanimously returned a
verdict of manslaughter. Byron, pleading his privileges, and paying his
fees, was set at liberty; but he appears henceforth as a spectre-haunted
man, roaming about under false names, or shut up in the Abbey like a
baited savage, shunned by his fellows high and low, and the centre of the
wildest stories. That he shot a coachman, and flung the body into the
carriage beside his wife, who very sensibly left him; that he tried to
drown her; that he had devils to attend him--were among the many weird
legends of "the wicked lord." The poet himself says that his ancestor's
only companions were the crickets that used to crawl over him, receive
stripes with straws when they misbehaved, and on his death made an exodus
in procession from the house. When at home he spent his time in
pistol-shooting, making sham fights with wooden ships about the rockeries
of the lake, and building u