Meaning of "Whose husband only knows her not a whore" From Byron's _Don Juan_ : > Oh beautiful! and rare as beautiful > But theirs was love in which the mind delights > To lose itself when the old world grows dull, > And we are sick of its hack sounds and sights, > Intrigues, adventures of the common school, > Its petty passions, marriages, and flights, > Where Hymen's torch but brands one strumpet more, > **Whose husband only knows her not a wh-re.** Just to make sure: is the meaning here "only her husband _thinks_ that she is not a whore, but all the rest _know_ that she is"?

I'm tempted to say this belongs on ELU, but ...

Almost. It's not clear _what_ the husband thinks, but I'd say it's implied that he's blissfully ignorant.

A more prosaic rendering would be _“it's only [her] husband who doesn't know that she is a wh-re”_.