The Henson Journals

[176]

Saturday, February 23rd, 1924.

The post brought me a letter from Foakes–Jackson in which he describes a literary venture on which he is embarking, and invites my cooperation: but I have neither the time nor the will for anything of the kind. I motored to Darlington, and caught a train which left at 10.34 a.m. and brought me to Oxford at 4.35 p.m. changing at Banbury with half an hour's wait. I went at once to All Souls, where a kindly reception awaited me.

Pember's father was keenly interested in the Byronic Mystery, and had books on the subject. Frank was able to produce two editions of Lord Lovelace's "Astarte", and a book on the unhappy young woman Medora Leigh who was thought by some to be Byron's daughter. ("Medora Leigh" a history and an Autobiography, edited by Charles Mackay, R. Bentley, 1869.) Also I read through a short biography of Lord Lovelace by his widow. From this it appears that he was a very odd young man, very oddly nurtured mainly by his grandmother, Lady Byron, who, in order to guard him against any risk of reproducing his famous God–father's faults, subjected him to a thoroughly cranky up–bringing with the result that he grew up a strange man. He conceived himself under an honourable obligation to guard his grand–dame's memory against the libellous representations of Ld Byron's admirers and advocates.

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