He speaks thus of the state of feeling at the time of his separation from his wife:-- 'I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and private rancour; my name, which had been a knightly or a noble one since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Norman, was tainted.

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.
I withdrew; but this was not enough.

In other countries--in Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue depth of the lakes--I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight.

I crossed the mountains, but it was the same; so I went a little farther, and settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who betakes him to the waters.
'If I may judge by the statements of the few friends who gathered round me, the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all precedent, all parallel, even in those cases where political motives have sharpened slander and doubled enmity.

I was advised not to go to the theatres lest I should be hissed, nor to my duty in parliament lest I should be insulted by the way; even on the day of my departure my most intimate friend told me afterwards that he was under the apprehension of violence from the people who might be assembled at the door of the carriage.' Now Lord Byron's charge against his wife was that SHE was directly responsible for getting up and keeping up this persecution, which drove him from England,--that she did it in a deceitful, treacherous manner, which left him no chance of defending himself.
He charged against her that, taking advantage of a time when his affairs were in confusion, and an execution in the house, she left him suddenly, with treacherous professions of kindness, which were repeated by letters on the road, and that soon after her arrival at her home her parents sent him word that she would never return to him, and she confirmed the message; that when he asked the reason why, she refused to state any; and that when this step gave rise to a host of slanders against him she silently encouraged and confirmed the slanders.