‘very gentle and good’: The Athenaeum, November 1869, p. 669.
‘You never forgot one word of your speech nor was any fear discernable in your speech’: AIM, 7 November 1803. Playfully inscribed on the back of the paper: ‘Compliments – No.1. – praises – to be sold only to those on whom the compliments are made. Price a good deal, viz. 2s.’. Dep. Lovelace Byron 117, fol. 1.
‘A peace would set all afloat again’: JM to MN, 31 May 1794 and 24 May 1795, Dep. Lovelace Byron 18, fols. 17–18, 51–3.
‘nearly resembling the heavenly, in the divine illumination of that countenance of hers’: Sarah Siddons to JM, both quotations from the same letter of 11 July 1810, Dep. Lovelace Byron 14, fols. 102–4.
whose ‘natural simplicity and modest retirement’ was accompanied by ‘a . . . charming manner’: Joanne Common, Seaham Hall Historical Project, 1998, p. 10, extracted from University of Durham SEQ 40.
Chapter Three: The Siege of Annabella (1810–12)
‘she is to be shunned by all who do not honour iniquity’: Ethel Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Charles Scribner, 1929), p. 29.
for ‘a character so far beyond what any of your years possess’: Lady Auckland to AIM, 26 July 1811, Dep. Lovelace Byron 62, fols. 8–12.
Annabella’s readily bestowed friendship did nothing to speed her progress to the altar: George Eden (later Lord Auckland) to AIM, 26 July 1811, DLM transcript.
‘an unfounded pursuit of other objects?’: Vere Foster (ed.), The Two Duchesses (Blackie & Son, 1898), pp. 348–9.
‘I would give the world to go back for six months . . .’: Augustus Foster to Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire, 26 May, 1812, ibid., p. 365.
‘I shall live in hope for you,’ the duchess wrote: Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire to Sir Augustus Foster, 28 May and 4 July 1812, ibid., pp. 368, 372.
‘she was much embarrassed’, Mrs Lamb wrote; worse, she ‘has never mentioned you since’: Mrs George Lamb (‘Caro George’) to Sir Augustus Foster, 31 August 1812, ibid., pp. 373–4.
‘I do not believe that Mac[kenzie] has any thoughts of me though I am sure Lady Seaforth has’: AIM to RM, 14 and 13 April 1812, Dep. Lovelace Byron 29, fols. 90–1.
‘I am much the fashion this year. Mankind bow before me, and womankind think me somebody’: AIM to RM, 9 April 1812, Dep. Lovelace Byron 29, fols. 33–4.
‘Farewell old Woman – make yourself merry with thinking how merry I am’: AIM to JM, 11 July 1811, Dep. Lovelace Byron 29, fols. 23–4.
‘If she sometimes is mistaken as to the best method of securing your comfort’: Dr Fenwick to AIM, 2 February 1812, Dep. Lovelace Byron 69, fols. 43–5.
‘I therefore propose not to be in London till this day fortnight . . .’: AIM to JM, n.d. but probably 9 or 10 February 1812, two weeks before her departure for London, Dep. Lovelace Byron 18, fols. 47–9.
‘for a time [it] gave her the appearance of blooming health’: AIM to JM, 24 February 1812, Dep. Lovelace Byron 18, fols. 51–3.
Chapter Four: Entering the Lists (1812–13)
‘Childe Harold . . . is on every table, and himself courted, visited, flattered and praised’: Vere Foster (ed.), The Two Duchesses (Blackie & Son, 1898), pp. 375–6
Miss Milbanke’s reserved manner and air of ‘quiet contempt’: Byron to AIM, 26 September 1814, BL&J, vol. 4.
‘I was astonished – overpowered – I could not believe it’: Byron to AIM, enclosing a cutting about Annabella from Caroline’s letter to himself, 9 October 1814, BL&J, vol. 4.
Lord Byron was ‘without exception’: AIM to JM, 16 April 1812, Dep. Lovelace Byron 29, fols. 33–4.
‘But these are all, has she no others?’: Byron to Lady Caroline Lamb, 1 May 1812, BL&J, vol. 2.
‘the cleverest most agreeable, absurd, amiable, perplexing dangerous fascinating little being that lives’: Byron to Lady CL, [April] 1812, ibid.
‘As to Love, that is done in a week’: Byron to Lady Melbourne, 18 September 1812, ibid.
‘the result of all this seems to me’: Lady Melbourne to Byron, 29 September 1812, in Jonathan David Gross (ed.), Byron’s ‘Corbeau Blanc’: The Life and Letters of Lady Melbourne (Rice University Press, 1997), pp. 118–121.
‘I am never sulky’: AIM to Lady Melbourne, 21–25 October 1812, ibid., pp. 124–6.
‘till you can attain this power over Yourself never boast of your command over yr passions’: Lady Melbourne to AIM, 25 October 1812, ibid., pp. 126–7.
‘After so full an explanation you will perhaps take off my stilts, and allow that I am only on tiptoe’: AIM to Lady Melbourne, October 1812, n.d. but after the 25th. ibid., pp. 133–4.
‘if she does not misunderstand me nor my views’: Byron to Lady Melbourne, 12 February 1813, BL&J, vol. 4.
‘Perhaps, unconscious as I was, the engagement was then formed on my part . . . but every time I felt more pain, & at last I shunned the occasions’: AIM, Journal, 6 May to 26 June 1813, quoted in Ethel Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Charles Scribner, 1929), p. 55.
Caroline Lamb was merely signalling a frenzied wish to recapture her lost lover’s interest: Lady Melbourne to Byron, 7 July 1813, in Gross, op. cit., pp. 142–3.
‘I have not the skill – ’: Byron to Lady Melbourne, 18 July 1813, BL&J, vol. 4.
‘In particular I would not have it known to Ly Melbourne . . .’: AIM to Byron, 22 August 1813, NLS.
Chapter Five: An Epistolary Courtship (1813–14)
humbly sought permission to address her as ‘My dear friend’: Byron to AIM, extracted from letters written on 6 and 26 September, and 10 November 1813, BL&J, vol. 3.
Annabella was to be his mentor, not his confidante: Byron to AIM, 26 September 1813, ibid.
the kind of young woman who ‘enters into a clandestine correspondence’: Byron to Lady Melbourne, 28 September 1813, ibid.
‘What I want is a companion – a friend rather than a sentimentalist’: Byron to Lady Melbourne, 19–21 February 1814, ibid.
‘He has never yet suspected me,’ she sighed: AIM to Lady Gosford, 1 and 3 December 1813, Dep. Lovelace Byron 72, fols. 81–4.
‘the moment I sunk into your friend . . . you never did – never for an instant – trifle with me’: Byron to AIM, 12 February 1814, BL&J, vol. 4.
‘six hundred in heart and in head & pursuits about six’: Byron to AIM, 19 February 1814, ibid.
‘My doubt then is – and I ask a solution – whether you are in any danger of that attachment to me’: AIM to Lord Byron, 6 August 1814, NLS.
‘Not, believe me, that I depreciate your capacity for the domestic virtues . . .’: AIM to Lord Byron, 13 August 1814, NLS.
‘It never rains but it pours’: Narrative Q, 1816, one of the many documents in which Annabella revisited the circumstances of the engagement and the marriage (Dep. Lovelace Byron 130, item 4). The lettered labelling (‘Q’ etc.) was later added by Annabella’s grandson, the 2nd Earl of Lovelace. (See notes to Ch. 6).
‘I stood on the opposite side of the fireplace’: Malcolm Elwin, quoting one of Annabella’s several later re-statings of the courtship and her marriage, in Lord Byron’s Wife (Macdonald, 1962), pp. 227–8.
‘if there is a break – it shall be her doing not mine’: Byron to Lady Melbourne, 13 November 1814, BL&J, vol. 4.
‘everything is in your power’: Lady Melbourne to Lord Byron, 18 November 1814, in Jonathan David Gross (ed.), Byron’s ‘Corbeau Blanc’: The Life and Letters of Lady Melbourne (Rice University Press, 1997), pp. 187–8.
‘Ma Mignonne’: Byron to AIM, 16, 20 and 28 November 1814, BL&J, vol. 4.
that a visitor ‘has found out a likeness to your picture in Mignonne’: AL to Byron, 15 December 1814, NLS. Annabella, when finally in possession of all Augusta’s correspondence relating to her own situation, sent the letter on to Mrs Leigh’s intimate friend, Theresa Villiers, as evidence of what double-dealing had been in play. Copies of the Augusta–Annabella letters are in WP, Add MS 310
37.
‘I do not see any good purpose to which questions of this kind are to lead’: Byron to AIM, 22 December 1814, BL&J, vol. 4.
Chapter Six: A Sojourn in Hell (January to March 1815)
‘gazing with delight on his bold and animated face’: Hobhouse’s Diary, transcript by Ralph, 2nd Earl of Lovelace, from the original in NYPL. But see also p. 487 for the much more accessible Cochran online edition of Hobhouse’s Diary.
‘is very engaging in his manners . . . Papa says he could never be tired of listening to him’: Mary Noel (daughter of the Revd Thomas), writing from Kirkby Mallory, to Henrietta Jervis, in Bath, 10 January 1815, Dep. Lovelace Byron 21, fol. 126.
advice that Noel decided to ignore: AIB to her lawyer, Stephen Lushington, 19 February 1816, quoting a letter from the Revd Thomas Noel, Dep. Lovelace Byron 88, fols. 14–16 and 25–6. Eight days earlier, she told Stephen Lushington that it was John Hobhouse who, following his return to London in the summer of 1815, ‘had instigated, more than anyone else, the behaviour that has disunited us’.
and a request to wear it in remembrance of the donor: see note to p. 69, ‘is very engaging in his manners . . .’.
Jane Minns . . . was herself looking back over a gap of fifty-four years: Interview with Jane Minns, AIB’s former maid, Newcastle Daily Chronicle, (1869).
‘You would think . . . that we had been married these fifty years’: Byron to Lady Melbourne, 3 January 1815, BL&J, vol. 5.
the personality which Walter Scott privately described as ‘irritable to the point of mental disease’: Sir Walter Scott to Lady Anne Barnard (1824–5, n.d.), Charles Mackay (ed.), Medora Leigh, A History and Autobiography (R. Bentley, 1869), p. 84; Byron to AIB, 17 November 1821, BL&J, vol. 9.
‘It is so like him to try and persuade people that he is disagreeable’: Augusta Leigh’s letters, except where otherwise indicated, exist in original and transcript form in the Lovelace Byron Papers. A set of copies is also at HRC (Byron Papers, Misc III) and at the British Library Manuscripts, Add MS 31037. Annabella’s account comes from Narrative Q, July 1816 (see Ch. 5, note to p. 58, ‘It never rains but it pours’). The letter identification of AIB’s statements and narratives follows that chosen by the 2nd Earl of Lovelace, the first person to read his grandmother’s copious records in full. I have relied upon the meticulous (although often in shorthand) copies made from the originals, when held at Crabbet, by DLM.
‘bereaved of reason during his paroxysms with his wife’: Hobhouse’s Diary, 12 March 1816, from a part of Lord Lovelace’s transcript (see note to p. 68, above, ‘gazing with delight’).
‘well, and as happy as youth and love can make them . . .’: JM to Sir James Bland Burges, 27 January 1815, Burges Papers (Bodleian Library, Oxford).
Annabella had left Seaham for Halnaby looking like ‘a flower’: Mrs Clermont to Lady Gosford’s new son-in-law, Dr Henry Bence-Jones, 11 October 1846. Bence-Jones had been recruited by Annabella to care for her family’s old and mentally enfeebled friend. It was at this time that Bence-Jones himself began to research some of the story around the separation and first interviewed Jane Minns (see, note to p. 72 above, ‘Jane Minns . . .’).
Lady Melbourne, busily urging her protégé to put himself under his wife’s affectionate direction: Lady Melbourne to Byron, 31 January 1815, in Jonathan David Gross (ed.), Byron’s ‘Corbeau Blanc’: The Life and Letters of Lady Melbourne (Rice University Press, 1997), pp. 279–81; Byron to Lady Melbourne, 2 February 1815, BL&J, vol. 4.
Lady Byron resolved to omit such scenes: AL to AIB, n.d., Tuesday, 1815, has evidently taken the phrase ‘ramble-scramble’ from Annabella’s previous letter to her. Dep. Lovelace Byron 79, fol. 67.
Byron . . . had ‘vastly’ enjoyed his stay at Seaham Hall: Byron to Tom Moore, 8 March 1815, BL&J, vol. 4. Annabella’s expectations of pregnancy were confirmed by the end of that month.
It made up for the coldness and the ‘sort of unrelenting pity’: Annabella set her memories of the visit down in Statements R, Q (R being an expansion of Q, written in late 1816 or early 1817) and G (1816), to which she added extensive passages late in 1816 and again in the following spring. This process of revision and addition was still being carried out in the 1850s, for the purpose of providing a factual record and as part of the foundation for a book. Fact, by 1850, was becoming hard to distinguish from wishful interpretation. (See note to p. 74 above, ‘It is so like him’.)
‘My heart is withered away, so that I forget to eat my bread’: The level of the ‘deep horrors’ can be gauged by the fact that Annabella felt it necessary to write in shorthand (Statement G, 1816) that Byron claimed to know his sister wore drawers, ‘with an emphasis perfectly unequivocal’. (See note to p. 74 above, ‘It is so like him’.)
Mrs Leigh ‘submitted to his [Byron’s] affection, but never appeared gratified by it’: AIB, Narrative S, confirmed in Narrative R (late 1816 to 1817). The narratives were reports, rather than legal statements. (See note to p. 74 above, ‘It is so like him’.)
she ‘did not wish to detain us’: ibid.
Chapter Seven: Unlucky for Some: 13 Piccadilly Terrace (1815–16)
‘Hey diddle! diddle’: I am indebted to Sammy Jay at Peter Harrington for a viewing of the violin and the poem (23 July 1815). The poem has never been published. The violin’s provenance and authenticity remains alluringly unproven, but the signature is in Byron’s hand. It is privately owned.
‘It was an instant of revenge . . . and her voice of kindness extinguished it’: Statement K, late 1816 (see Ch. 6, note to p. 74, ‘It is so like him’).
‘I believe he burnt it afterwards’: Narrative S, written as part of a sequel to Narrative Q, July 1816 (see Ch. 6, note to p. 74, ‘It is so like him’).
‘My Night Mare is my own personalty [sic]’: Byron to Douglas Kinnaird, 20 January 1817, BL&J, vol. 5.
‘I meant to marry a woman who would be my friend’: Statement F, March 1817 (see Ch. 6, note to p. 74, ‘It is so like him’).
‘unless there is a woman (and not any or every woman) in the way’: Byron’s journal, 26 November 1813, BL&J, vol. 3.
‘B has just found out an Etymology for Blücher’s name which is quite in your way’: AIB to RN, 15 August 1815, Dep. Lovelace Byron 29, fol. 109.
‘B said it was a memento left us by our honoured parent’: AIB to JN, 17 August 1815, Dep. Lovelace Byron 29, fols. 111–12.
‘gratefully acknowledged by B’s voracious stomach’: Ethel Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Charles Scribner, 1929), p. 184.
‘She is diffident – she is very young, not more, I think, than nineteen’: Anna Eliot Ticknor (ed.), Life, Letters & Journals of George Ticknor, 2 vols. (Houghton Mifflin, 1900), vol. 1, p. 53.
‘as if he were not to see her for a month’: Ticknor, op. cit., p. 50.
‘a good kind thing . . . the best little wife in the world’: Both tributes were cited by AIB in Narrative F, March 1817 (see Ch. 6, note to p. 74, ‘It is so like him’).
whether ‘there ever was a better or even brighter, a kinder or a more amiable & agreeable being: Byron to Thomas Moore, 8 March 1816, BL&J, vol. 5.
‘Annabella I am sure requires country air’: JN to Byron, 11 August 1815, NLS.
‘I always feel . . . as if I had more reasons to love you’: AIB to AL, n.d., Tuesday evening, early August 1815, in Rowland Prothero (ed.), The Works of Lord Byron, 6 vols. (John Murray, 1898–1902), vol. 3, pp. 210–12.
A coded ‘Not frac.’ signified ‘not fractious’: Byron to AIB, 31 August 1815, BL&J, vol. 4.
‘I was very ill,’ she later recalled: Statement G, 1816 (see Ch. 6, note to p. 74, ‘It is so like him’).
Byron’s own was signed, as Annabella’s had been, with the mysterious ‘–A—da’: Byron to AIB, 1 September 1815, BL&J, vol. 4.
amidst ‘the very distressing circumstance to which we must look forward’: AIB to JN, 7 October 1815, Dep. Lovelace Byron 29, fols. 134–5.
‘In short,’ w
rote Annabella, ‘they yelped and he snapped’: AIB to RN, 4 November 1815, Dep. Lovelace Byron 29.
‘God knows what he may do’: Statement by Mrs Clermont, 22 January 1816 (see Ch. 6, note to p. 74, ‘It is so like him’).
Annabella credited Augusta’s reassuring company with having prevented her from doing so: AIB to Lady Melbourne, 4 January 1816, Jonathan David Gross (ed.), Byron’s ‘Corbeau Blanc’: The Life and Letters of Lady Melbourne (Rice University Press, 1997), pp. 331–3.
‘for a considerable time before my confinement he [Byron] would not see me’: Statement B, added shortly afterwards to AIB’s first statement of 18 January 1816, to her mother. Underlinings probably indicate where Annabella’s mother felt that the record would carry most weight. (See Ch. 6, note to p. 74, ‘It is so like him’)
‘The impression . . . made upon my mind’: Mrs Clermont, see note to p. 97 above, ‘God knows what he may do’.
Byron had spoken out to him against marriage: ‘talking of going abroad’: Hobhouse’s Diary, 25 November 1815, see note on p. 487.
‘would probably say that she has seen Lord B appear personally fond of me’: AIB, Statement to JN at Kirkby, January 1816, and additional statement relating to the nurse, March 1816 (see Ch. 6, note to p. 74, ‘It is so like him’).
‘Amongst other unkind things said to me’: Additions to Statement made by AIB to her mother at Kirkby Mallory, 18 January 1816 (see Ch. 6, note to p. 74, ‘It is so like him’).
‘She [Annabella] cryed’: Mrs Clermont’s Statement, see note to p. 97 above, ‘God knows what he may do’.
According to her later statements, this was the only occasion upon which Lady Byron feared for her life: Statement U, ‘Desultory’, partly dictated by AIB to Mrs Clermont, March 1816 (see Ch. 6, note to p. 74, ‘It is so like him’).
Chapter Eight: The Separation (1816)
the expectation of Byron’s imminent arrival remained firmly in place: The 1816 separation correspondence between AIB and AL is given in Rowland Prothero (ed.), The Works of Lord Byron, 6 vols. (John Murray, 1898–1902), vol. 3, pp. 210–12. It is also in WP, Add MS 31037.
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