John Buchan, Byron and evidence of incest
SIR – I read with astonishment the extraordinary claim by Chips Channon in his diaries (Arts, February 24) that John Buchan, my grandfather, and Henry James used their position as literary executors to burn hundreds of Byron’s letters, due to their “heinous” content.
The story is quite otherwise, as Janet Adam Smith describes in detail in her biography of Buchan (and as I mention in my book, Beyond the Thirty-nine Steps).
Buchan’s wife’s aunt, the Countess of Lovelace (“Mamie”), was the widow of Byron’s grandson, the Earl of Lovelace. The Earl had been concerned about the reputation of his grandmother and, in that connection, the idea that Byron had had an incestuous relationship with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh.
In 1909, Buchan and James were asked by Mamie (with whom they were staying as guests, not as “literary executors”) to look at the documents she had, to see if her late husband’s views were justified. These were copies (made by the Earl) of letters from Byron to Lady Melbourne (therefore, not Lovelace papers). The originals were owned by, and in the possession of, Lady Dorchester. They were published, without redaction or public outcry, by John Murray in 1922 – two years before the conversation alleged by Channon to have taken place with Buchan. No one could have thought, in 1924, that the original letters had been destroyed – they were in the public domain.
This story tells us more about Chips Channon than John Buchan. Ursula Buchan
Peterborough