Better Than Byron

A Stained Childhood

XII

'Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange;

Stranger than fiction.

-Lord Byron

My mother was Frances Augusta Redgrave, a country squire's daughter, and my father Asaph Edgar Deighton was a baronet's younger son – he had an old Hebrew name that meant collector, and truly I believed him to be the collector of our sorrows. My mother had two younger sisters and was therefore the heiress to her father's fortune and property, as the stars had not favoured the old gentleman with any sons and it was not entailed on the male line.

In character she was calm, gentle, and artistic. She was universally compassionate and would sooner love a stranger than hate him. She was free from pretension and prejudice, and was open to everyone – she was after all an heiress; therefore she did not feel the pressure that society put on her younger sisters of marrying a rich man.

Deighton was only a second son, but he was a respectable clergyman, and handsome into the bargain. My mother was instantly attracted to him. She had never been pretty – handsome perhaps – for she had inherited her grim-faced father's sharp angles and exaggerated features – and was therefore gratified by the young and handsome Mr. Deighton's attentions. She had heard him preaching once or twice before: he used very powerful, almost forceful language, and knew how to pierce the heart and trouble the mind with dark and serious reflections. He was endowed with a mysterious appeal to the emotions, and a firmly moral disposition that her father highly esteemed.

They did not know however that he was narrow-minded, selfish and tyrannical. My mother was not a very good judge of character, so she registered only what he allowed to be seen in public – his strong intellect and religious piety. After a mere fortnight of courting he made her an offer of marriage. It was tempting; and not being of a very independent mind, the offer was accepted in due course after some persuasion from her father and sisters. The marriage was the talk of the Upper Orders for weeks leading up to the ceremony, and when the day finally arrived, many peers deigned to attend it – most of them coming from families that are registered in Debrett's Peerage & Baronetage. The bride was hailed for her aristocratic look, and the groom for his classic cast of features, but for all that nature had given him his expression was remarked to be too severe, and many of the guests expressed subtle apprehensions for my gentle mother, who looked as fragile as a white lily. No one openly objected, because I suppose everyone was too wary of the groom's displeasure – he was said to have lost his temper at a very young age – to disapprove of the union. They honeymooned on the Continent: Paris, Vienna, Florence, Rome, Madrid, and Munich. They returned to England after a year abroad, and within the next year, I was born.

My mother was filled with even more bliss than on the day of her marriage, and she was quite ready to spoil her little boy, who had "eyes that looked into the very soul, bright and as black and burning as a coal," had I not severely irritated Deighton with my sharp wails and restless nature. After two days of enduring my natural defects he pronounced me a "hideous, tiresome imp." Indeed, Deighton soon proved to be a hard-hearted, ill-tempered tyrant who did not love his wife with the sincerity she had hitherto believed him to. The detestable man had only a pious madman's passion for the Church, and could only be loyal to his grotesque version of God. He seemed ever to stand by the saying, "Destruction cometh; and they shall seek peace, and there shall be none," for he was a black stain on our lives; he was sternly set on making it a living hell, though to him he was doubtless performing God's will.

I was five years old when a sister joined me in that dark, dismal life – for I had known but little peace and bliss in spite of my mother's efforts. She had been all mine up until then, and was still loyally affectionate, but she had now another child to dote on, a little girl, christened Amelia Prudence Deighton. We called her Amy, and she had been sent from Heaven with God's compliments, for she was the brightest, most affectionate child that ever lived. Though I was grim and grave by nature, little Amy made me into a mildly cheerful fellow. I was intensely defensive of her, and was loyally attached to her simple soul. The purely good are always simple in character, but according to the Christian belief, such simplicity is the reflection of God's purity, and I often scorned my own complexity of character, doggedly persuaded that I was more beast than man.