In Byron's Wake Read online

  Lady Melbourne may have been at work behind the scenes to promote an alternative match for her uppish little niece. In this new instance, however, the courtship was kept well out of view. The first public reference to Sir Augustus Foster’s wistful pursuit of Annabella Milbanke was not made until almost eighty years later, when Foster’s third son, Vere, published a family correspondence that included many of his father’s personal letters.

  Tall, florid and – to judge from the official portrait of him painted in diplomatic attire – justly proud of his shapely legs, Sir Augustus was still holding down his post at the British embassy in Sweden when Annabella first arrived in London. Banished from Stockholm by Napoleon, Foster reached London in May 1810 and rapidly – he was notoriously susceptible – fell in love with the latest novelty on the marriage market: a girl possessed of rare intelligence and fiercely independent mind.

  The Milbankes, eager for what sounded a most suitable match, expressed cautious enthusiasm. Annabella kept her distance. Foster’s mother, Lady Elizabeth, newly married to the Duke of Devonshire after twenty-four years of living with him and his wife in London’s most notorious ménage à trois, did not disguise her impatience with an obsession that she regarded as a waste of time. The duchess was on excellent terms with the Prince of Wales; discreet arrangements were made to scupper Augustus’s plans. When a lovesick Augustus actually declined to exchange Stockholm for a royal appointment to Washington, on the other side of the Atlantic, his mother lost her temper. Was he mad? Would he refuse the opportunity of a lifetime in order to engage upon – the angry duchess could not even bring herself to identify Miss Milbanke by name – ‘an unfounded pursuit of other objects?’

  Augustus gave in, but he did not give up. In the spring of 1812, the now widowed duchess was still being entreated to soften her view. ‘I see you don’t like Annabella much,’ the disconsolate diplomat wrote from Washington on 26 May. Wistfully, Foster defended his chosen one (‘she has good eyes, is fair, has right ideas, and sense, and mildness’) while bewailing his misfortune in being so far away: ‘No Minister ever had such temptation to break up a negotiation and come home. I would give the world to go back for six months . . .’

  Either the spectacle of such devotion softened his steely mother’s heart or a shrewd woman had realised that Annabella would never be won. Throughout the summer of Annabella’s third season in London, the dowager duchess made a dutiful effort to promote her son’s cause. Augustus was informed that his mother now liked Annabella’s countenance and manners and that she was getting to know her much better. On 4 July, shortly before dining at Portland Place with Lady Milbanke and ‘Old twaddle Ralph’, the duchess passed on a further crumb of comfort to her son. Judith (‘la madre’) had enquired after Augustus ‘most kindly’. Perhaps Annabella’s strange indifference was a mask. ‘I shall live in hope for you,’ the duchess wrote with a conspicuous effort at goodwill.

  It was always the sisters who benefited most from their brother’s courtship of Annabella; close female confidantes were of intense importance to this only child of an ageing couple. By the springtime of 1812, a strong mutual friendship had already sprung up between Miss Milbanke and Augustus Foster’s clever sister, Caroline. (Mrs George Lamb, like Mary Gosford, belonged to the same age group as Annabella’s adored cousin, Sophy Tamworth.)

  In April 1812, following a brief visit to George Eden’s agreeable home near Beckenham in Kent, Annabella spent three days with the Lambs at Brocket Hall, Lord and Lady Melbourne’s house in Hertfordshire. On 9 April, she finally told a disappointed Sir Ralph that Caro George (as Mrs George Lamb was often named to distinguish her from that other, wilder Caroline Lamb, her sister-in-law) had promised to transmit her refusal to Lord Augustus. But nothing was said. Possibly, Caro George feared, as she confided to Annabella, that a despairing Augustus would plunge into marriage with – unimaginable horror! – an American. Possibly, she hoped that Miss Milbanke (for whom she was developing a great affection) might yet change her mind. Exiled to Washington, out of sight of Annabella during the most flirtatious summer of her young life, Augustus continued to take hope from his mother’s softening view and words of reassurance.

  On 31 August, Caro George finally delivered her report to Augustus of the discussion she had held with Annabella at Brocket in April. Asked directly about her intentions, Miss Milbanke had fidgeted, reddened and done all she could to change the subject. Clearly, it was one that was not to her taste: ‘she was much embarrassed’, Mrs Lamb wrote; worse, she ‘has never mentioned you since’.

  And that was that. Back in Sweden by 1816 and married to a congenial Danish bride, Augustus would read about the sensational break-up of Miss Milbanke’s short-lived marriage and feel smugly consoled. The problem had been that he, like the admirable George Eden, was just too good for a young lady whose heart – from the moment she placed one pretty foot in a London drawing room – had been obstinately set upon the reformation of a rake. Now, the ‘icicle’ – as she was privately referred to by Augustus’s mother – had got what she deserved.

  Foster was being wise with hindsight. In part, Annabella did sincerely believe in her duty to marry a good and wealthy man, one who could both secure the future of Seaham and Halnaby and ensure her parents’ peace of mind. A virtuous intention did not preclude enjoyment along the way. While it would be improper to suggest that she put herself about during her three seasons in London, Miss Milbanke certainly showed a smiling face to an impressive number of gentlemen.

  That number, by the summer of 1812, had burgeoned to six or seven. Up in Durham, Annabella won the heart of a bewitched young clergyman named William Darnell; in London, she turned down Lord Longford’s brother, General Edward Pakenham, and reduced William Bankes, the wealthy heir to Kingston Lacy, to disappointed tears. The Irish Earl of Roden’s attractively ugly son, Lord Jocelyn, seems never to have become more than a dancing partner, but Lord Seaforth’s heir, Frederick Mackenzie, liked Annabella enough to pay a visit of his own to Seaham (where an absent daughter requested her father to be sure to bestow ‘paternal tenderness’). It sounds as though the young man intended to offer his hand, and Sir Ralph would have been delighted by the union. No proposal was made, however – and no tears were shed. ‘I do not believe that Mac[kenzie] has any thoughts of me though I am sure Lady Seaforth has,’ Annabella wrote cheerfully home in April 1812.

  Annabella’s parents could – and did – worry about the future of a clever and increasingly independent daughter who seemed to have outgrown an elderly couple of provincials. Often out dancing until sunrise and merrily conscious that she had become one of the most courted girls in London, Annabella set thoughts of Frederick Mackenzie aside as she began planning to hold a splendid dinner party at Portland Place. The guest list would prove demanding, she informed her dazed parents on 9 April, for she intended only to ask men who could not possibly be in love with her. Such gentlemen had become difficult to find. ‘I am much the fashion this year. Mankind bow before me, and womankind think me somebody.’

  Life was full of interest and the fact would seem to be that Annabella, in the summer of 1812, and having reached the ripe old age of twenty, had no great wish to get married. One reason for this lack of impatience was that she relished the freedom to do as she pleased and see whom she wished, liberties that she had never experienced during her years at Seaham. Another reason was the example offered by her friends.

  It is striking how many of Annabella’s older women friends had chosen not to marry. Mary Montgomery had the excuse of invalidship. For Selina Doyle, as for the much older Joanna Baillie and her sister Agnes, there was no reason other than the strong wish of these three intelligent women to remain independent. Looking around her in London, Annabella could understand why. Lady Gosford made no secret of the relief she felt whenever her grouchy husband left home. William Lamb put as good a face as he could on what appeared to be a wretched home life with the giddiest of wives. The examples of such unblushingly scandalous spou
ses as Augustus Foster’s mother and her own Aunt Melbourne were hardly appealing. Why, seeing the misery that a supposedly good marriage could make of a woman’s life, should a strong-willed young female relinquish her newly gained independence?

  A BARLEY-SUGAR DAUGHTER

  No tears had been shed in the summer of 1811 when an exhausted Lady Milbanke retreated to take the waters at Tunbridge Wells, leaving her daughter in the gentle care of Lady Gosford. Annabella had not enjoyed being escorted through her first season in London by a mother whose rouged cheeks were always a touch too bright, whose wigs seemed always to slide askew, and who talked with too noisy an insistence about the marvellous achievements of her brilliant daughter. It was not pleasant to detect how mischievously Lady Melbourne patronised her sister-in-law, nor to observe how Judith, rising to the bait, innocently resumed her hymns of praise, never noticing the fan-masked yawns and stifled sniggers of her captive audience. The ladies who ruled London society were easily bored. They found garrulous Lady Milbanke only a shade more diverting than her beloved ‘Ralpho’, an equally loquacious husband who regularly drank a bottle a night.

  But now Judith had gone to Tunbridge, and her daughter rejoiced.

  Farewell old Woman – make yourself merry with thinking how merry I am. I shall write to you tomorrow on a subject which I have not now time to discuss. This I declare now because I like to excite your curiosity, and to delay gratifying it. I am a sweet chicken!!! You ought to think me the most barley-sugar daughter in the creation. I am tired of paying myself compliments but you may pay me as many as you like.

  Seaham, for the moment, had lost its lonely charm. A long, dank autumn of estrangement from friends in London was briefly enlivened by the agreeable company of Mary Montgomery; alone again, Annabella contemplated the prospect of a glum family Christmas with a nagging mother and no kind father on hand to defend her. (Sir Ralph had developed an illness which would keep him in bed for most of the winter.) When an invitation to join the Tower family at nearby Elemore Hall arrived, Annabella jumped at the chance to escape.

  Still at Elemore in January 1812 and only mildly diverted by the compliments of her new local admirer, William Darnell, Annabella began plotting for a speedy return to London. Grave concerns were expressed as to the health of that invaluable invalid, Mary Montgomery. When Judith proved unresponsive, Annabella took herself off to see old Dr Fenwick at Durham. Fenwick had personally examined poor, ailing Mary during his summer visit to London; surely, he would agree that a conscientious Annabella should rush back to London and care for her sick friend?

  Dr Fenwick, to his young visitor’s dismay, thought nothing of the kind. Instead, writing in loco parentis (‘except your parents, there is not a friend of yours who loves you more sincerely than myself’), he advised Annabella to stay quietly up at Seaham and stop picking quarrels with a mother who, for all her faults, loved nothing in the world so much as her cherished child.

  If she sometimes is mistaken as to the best method of securing your comfort, she is so truly affectionate, her confidence in you is so liberal, so entire & honourable to both; in short her feelings as a Mother occupy so large a portion of her existence, that you cannot be too studious to make a suitable return.

  Fenwick, writing to Annabella in early February 1812, a day or two after her visit to his home, flattered himself that he understood her personality. In fact, he was oblivious to one of Miss Milbanke’s greatest flaws. Intensely critical of others, Annabella could never bear to be at fault herself. To be advised to mend her ways was as painful as the realisation that Dr Fenwick had no intention of championing her proposed return to London. There was no help here. Another strategy must be devised.

  On 9 or 10 February, shortly after her visit to Fenwick’s house, Annabella retired to her own room at Seaham in order to justify her intentions to her parents. (Since they all lived under the same roof, her painstaking, elaborate letter was presumably slipped under their bedroom door.) Beginning with Dr Fenwick’s homily ringing in her ears, she apologised for the ‘irritable humours’ by which she had recently caused hurt to her dear ‘Mam’ when Sir Ralph was seriously ill. Perhaps, she conceded, it was possible that Miss Montgomery’s weakening health might be the product of her own anxious wonderings? Nevertheless – this was a difficult leap in the argument, but a determined Annabella bridged it without a blink – did she have the right to distress beloved parents with the spectacle of an anguish that no truthful daughter would wish to conceal? (Truth was a weapon that Annabella was learning to wield with inventive skill.) Or should she – by going to London – where it was conceivable that Mary would prove to be less ill than her loving friend imagined – allow them to rejoice at her own restored peace of mind?

  This amazingly tortuous letter ended with a concessionary flourish. She would, after all, leave Seaham only when her father’s health showed signs of being on the mend. ‘I therefore propose not to be in London till this day fortnight . . .’

  Annabella proved resolute. By 24 February 1812, she was snugly ensconced at Lady Gosford’s London home and – so the Milbankes learned – bestowing happiness upon all who saw her, including the poor invalid, so lit up with joy that ‘for a time [it] gave her the appearance of blooming health.’

  As often with Annabella, truth and wishful thinking were inextricably entwined. Miss Montgomery was indeed less blooming than when she visited Seaham the previous autumn. Death, however, was a long way off. By mid-March, Mary was able to chaperone Annabella to the London studio at which, for a price of twenty guineas, Judith’s barley-sugar daughter was having her portrait painted by George Hayter. Within two years, Mary was travelling to Granada, followed by the first of many long sojourns in Italy. Nearly forty years later, when Annabella herself lay close to death, her old – and still beloved – friend Miss Montgomery was presiding over supper parties at her home in Hampstead.

  Annabella can easily be condemned (several of her parents’ friends voiced their disapproval at the time) for behaving like a heartless humbug, but six lonely and often fogbound months at Seaham might have rendered any lively young woman desperate for escape. Plainly, the jubilant tone of her first letter from London had far more to do with her sense of regained freedom than with the discovery that Mary Montgomery was not yet upon her deathbed.

  On 23 March 1812, George Hayter put the finishing touches to his portrait of a smilingly confident Annabella, her head tossed back, her hair unpinned and loosely curled.

  Two days later, she met Lord Byron.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ENTERING THE LISTS

  (1812–13)

  ‘Childe Harold . . . is on every table, and himself courted, visited, flattered and praised whenever he appears. He has a pale, sickly, but handsome countenance, a bad figure, animated and amusing conversation and in short, he is really the only topic of almost every conversation – the men jealous of him, the women of each other . . .’

  ELIZABETH, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE TO HER SON, SIR AUGUSTUS FOSTER, IN WASHINGTON, 1812

  Annabella’s first encounter with Byron took place at Lady Caroline Lamb’s morning waltzing party, held in the glorious entrance hall of Melbourne House. Byron – as he later recalled – was intrigued by Miss Milbanke’s reserved manner and air of ‘quiet contempt’. The curiosity was mutual. Writing up her journal that evening at Lady Gosford’s home, Annabella noted that Lord Byron’s disdainful expression – she drew near enough to notice his restless eyes and the frequency with which he masked the impatient twitch of full lips with his hand – suggested a proper degree of scorn for the frivolity that surrounded him. Lord Byron, lame since birth and always conscious of the halt in his step – he wore loose pantaloons to conceal the defect – declared his preference for boxing to waltzing; Annabella, an enthusiastic dancer, now decided that she, too, despised such trivial amusements.

  Writing to her mother the following day with a careful account of Lord Byron’s appearance and manner, Annabella reported that his opinions were bo
th eloquent and sincere. Byron, meanwhile, baffled a captivated Caroline Lamb by the keen interest he displayed in her husband William’s young cousin from the north: ‘the first words you ever spoke to me in confidence were concerning Annabella,’ Caroline later reminded him, before adding with more frankness than tact: ‘I was astonished – overpowered – I could not believe it.’

  How much did Annabella already know about the young man whose small, proud head and aloof manner she studied with such eager interest on 25 March?

  Reading the Edinburgh Review’s advance puff of Childe Harold and its author in February 1812, Annabella had learned from Francis Jeffrey’s unsigned and influential review that the poem’s author could stand comparison with Dryden and (he was one of Annabella’s particular favourites) George Crabbe. Thrillingly, she learned that there was an evident and powerful connection between the young poet and his poem’s eponymous Childe, a ‘sated epicure . . . his heart burdened by a long course of sensual indulgence’, who wanders through Europe’s loveliest scenery with the restless displeasure of Milton’s Lucifer, ‘hating and despising himself most of all for beholding it with so little emotion’.