In Byron's Wake Read online

  Since everybody in London society was talking about Childe Harold’s author by the time that Annabella met him, it’s probable that she also knew that he, like herself, was an only child. (His half-sister Augusta was the daughter of Captain Byron’s first marriage to Lady Conyers, the once wealthy and – so shockingly – divorced wife of the Marquis of Camarthen.) She may not have known that young Byron and his own once wealthy Scottish mother, Catherine Gordon of Gight, had been subsequently abandoned by his philandering, financially reckless, and finally debt-ridden father. She would certainly have learned that he had returned from his two-year tour of Europe in the summer of 1811, just before the sudden death of his mother at Newstead Abbey, an appealingly derelict family mansion of precisely the kind that a romantic young poet ought to own. (Byron spent little time at Newstead, leaving it under the sporadic supervision of a cheerful young sailor cousin, his namesake and – at the present time – his heir.)

  This was mere background detail. Annabella was more interested to discover that Lord Byron’s scornful expression concealed a generous heart and a strong social conscience, clear evidence of which had already emerged in his first – and widely discussed – public speech.

  Byron was paying one of his occasional visits to Newstead in December 1811, when the tranquil surface of country life in Nottinghamshire was ruffled by an outbreak of rioting. The introduction of new mechanical looms threatened the livelihood of stocking-makers at a time when weaving provided the sole source of income for many poor families. A few bold rebels smashed the new frames that were intended to put them out of work. The punishment, at a time of vicious repression, was transportation and fourteen years of exile to a penal colony in Australia. In February 1812, a bill was introduced to change that penalty from deportation to death.

  The government’s brutal response to Nottinghamshire’s angry frame-breakers was the subject that Byron picked for his maiden speech in the House of Lords.* Parliamentary speeches during that period tended to be stupefyingly dull. Byron’s, delivered on 27 February, was inflammatory: ‘Will you erect a gibbet in every field, and hang up men like scarecrows?’ he demanded of a largely admiring House. A week later, his angry poem on ‘Framers of the Frame Bill’ (‘Who, when asked for a remedy, sent down a rope’) was printed in the Morning Chronicle. The poem appeared anonymously, but Byron’s distinctive voice was easily identified.

  Scores of the young ladies who panted after Byron in 1812 were attracted by the mad, bad and dangerous aspect of his volatile personality. Annabella saw a man who – like herself – sought to be of service to the world. Had he not proved it, during their very first conversations, by the concern he evinced for the orphan of her former protégé, Joseph Blacket? (Annabella was unaware that Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, written before his departure for the Continent, had poked fun at the former cobbler for his high-flown poetry.)

  Besieged by admirers during that happy spring of 1812 as she had never been before, Annabella’s letters home dwelt increasingly upon one subject. Lord Byron was ‘without exception of young or old more agreeable in conversation than any person I know . . . a very bad, very good man,’ she informed her mother on 16 April. Byron, so Sir Ralph learned on the following day, was ‘deeply repentant’ for his youthful sins; by 26 April, Annabella was ready to proclaim it as her ‘Christian duty’ to offer him spiritual guidance. Was this really a mission to redeem Lord Byron’s soul, her nervous mother wondered, or had Annabella fallen in love with a hardened reprobate? Writing to Lady Melbourne, never her favourite member of the Milbanke family, Judith confessed her fears and solicited – for the first time in her life – that worldly lady’s personal intervention.

  Judith’s appeal fell into outstretched hands. ‘My cousins cannot live without me,’ Annabella had innocently boasted to her parents on 15 April, during a month in which she spent almost as much time at Melbourne House as under Mary Gosford’s roof. Flattered by the smooth courtesies of Lady Melbourne and her daughter, Emily (Lady Cowper), Annabella remained blissfully unconscious of her value as a pawn in their scheme to sabotage Byron’s increasingly public relationship with Lady Melbourne’s daughter-in-law, the lovesick, married and scandal-prone Caroline Lamb.

  Judith’s information was swiftly put to use. Hints of Byron’s growing interest in William Lamb’s starchy little cousin were intended to discourage Lady Caroline; instead, they spurred a jealous mistress into action. Towards the end of April, Annabella was persuaded – without much difficulty – to hand over a selection of her own poems, in order – so Caroline sweetly declared – that she might obtain Lord Byron’s sincere opinion of their merit.

  Lord Byron did not, as Caroline must have hoped, jeer at Annabella’s high-minded verses: if anything, he rated them too highly. A poem about a cave at Seaham was singled out for its pleasing turn of thought – albeit of a somewhat different turn from his own – while favourable comparisons were made to the works of Joseph Blacket, Annabella’s verses being ‘better much better’.

  But these are all, has she no others? She certainly is a very extraordinary girl, who would imagine so much strength & variety of thought under that placid countenance? . . . You will say as much of this to Miss M. as you think proper. I say all this very sincerely. I have no desire to be better acquainted with Miss Milbank [sic]; she is too good for a fallen spirit to know, and I should like her more if she were less perfect.

  Although hardly the missive that Caroline had hoped for, Byron’s response offered enough fuel to serve her purpose. On 2 May, Annabella received a morning summons to visit her cousin’s wife in the suite of upper rooms at Melbourne House which Caroline shared with her husband and their lovable, mentally handicapped young son, Augustus.

  Caroline kept no record of the encounter; Annabella, with uncharacteristic terseness, noted that she had received Lord Byron’s written opinion of her verses, answered Cousin Caroline’s questions with ‘a painful acknowledgement’ and that she had then – this was most unlike her – returned home to dine alone.

  Annabella’s handwritten copy of the letter with which Lady Caroline presented her visitor (it survives within the Lovelace Byron Papers) omitted that final sentence about her own discouraging perfection. There can be little doubt, however, that the letter in its entirety was read aloud to the guest – and taken to heart. Over the next two years, the single fear consistently expressed by Annabella was that Byron would be disillusioned when he discovered her flaws.

  And the ‘painful acknowledgement’? An admission that Annabella had already refused George Eden – he remained her most regular escort – is ruled out by Caroline’s insistent assertions, from May on, that Mr Eden was Miss Milbanke’s preferred suitor and that Byron himself stood no chance. More probably, Caroline extracted and then mocked her young cousin’s wistful dream of reforming Byron. Either way, Annabella left Melbourne House in low spirits.

  Caroline’s own obsession with Byron found its way into one of Annabella’s rare attempts at comic verse. In ‘Byromania’, an undated satirical poem that seemingly emerged from that spring, she poked fun at her cousin’s wife for ‘smiling, sighing o’er his face’. Fortunately for her own peace of mind, Annabella remained unaware of the extremes to which Caroline was prepared to go in pursuit of the desired object (snippets of her pubic hair were hand-delivered to Byron’s rooms towards the end of the summer) or of the easy duplicity with which Byron himself – while assuring Lady Melbourne that he was doing everything to escape from Caroline’s clutches – continued to dally with a woman he fondly addressed as ‘the cleverest most agreeable, absurd, amiable, perplexing dangerous fascinating little being that lives’.

  While Byron never presumed to call Annabella ‘a fascinating little being’, observers noted his interest and evident respect. Byron liked the idea of Miss Milbanke, Augustus Foster’s mother shrewdly informed her absent son during the summer of 1812, not as a mistress, but as a wife. Caroline, meanwhile, despatched a warning to Annabella to forg
et all about the salvation of ‘Falling Angels’. Filing this letter of 22 May away for future reference, Annabella pencilled a terse underlined comment on the envelope: ‘Very remarkable’.

  By 22 May, Annabella’s parents had been in town for three weeks. It was the mother, so Byron convinced himself, who was responsible for an unwelcome alteration in Miss Milbanke’s manner. Friends with a vested interest hastened to produce other reasons for her coolness: ‘C[aroline] told me she was engaged to Eden, so did several others. Mrs [George] L[amb] her great friend, was of opinion (& upon my honour I believed her) that she neither did could nor ought to like me . . . was I to hazard my heart with a woman I was very much inclined to like, but at the same time sure could be nothing to me . . .?’

  It is not necessary to suppose that Byron was being devious in this letter, addressed to Lady Melbourne on 28 September. (She had asked about his intentions towards her niece.) While passion was the keynote of his affair with the married Lady Caroline, an entirely different quality emerged in his search for a perfect wife. The Byron whom Annabella was getting to know was thoughtful, kind, friendly and courteous. ‘I have met with much evidence of his goodness,’ she had informed her mother on 13 April, after only two meetings with Byron. If only – as she continued to wish without results – her new friend would not show quite such respect, and even awe. A pedestal offered a lonely perch for a young lady with a romantic heart.

  Outwardly calm, Annabella betrayed her growing feelings for Byron to her journal. On 20 June, she sat near enough to him at a lecture to see that what discomforted him was not Thomas Campbell’s allusion to religion, but the way the audience turned to watch Lord Byron’s reaction. (He was, she was beginning to perceive, intensely shy.) On 14 July, a week after enjoying a friendly chat with Byron at an evening hosted by Sarah Siddons, Annabella met him again at a party given by vivacious old Lady Cork. At this encounter, however, Byron wanted only to know whether she shared his high opinion of Miss Bessy Rawdon, the likeable and well-travelled niece of Lord Moira (later Lord Hastings).

  Annabella’s discomfort was increased by her rigorous sense of fair play. Much though she wished it, she could not find a single bad word to say about the admirable Miss Rawdon. Going on from Lady Cork’s soirée to a party given that same night by Lady Melbourne’s married daughter, she felt puzzled by her own unhappiness. Cousin Emily’s evenings were always lively, and yet, alone with her journal, Annabella confessed that she had returned home ‘wearied with want of tranquillity and found no pleasure!’ More revealingly still, Annabella actually confided her jealous fears of the engaging Miss Rawdon to a mother whom she knew for an inveterate chatterbox. Judith, as Annabella had guessed would be the case, took the information directly to her sister-in-law. Who better than Lady Melbourne, so closely involved in all Byron’s affairs, would know where his affections truly lay?

  Judith herself, or so she would proudly declare to Lady Melbourne at a later date, had known from the start that Annabella was interested only in one man. Chaperoning her niece around London during late August (the Milbankes had decamped from the sultry city to savour Richmond’s fresher air), Lady Melbourne swiftly reached the same opinion. Plainly, Annabella adored Byron. Far more surprising was the news from Lord Holland’s home at Cheltenham that Byron not only liked her niece, but that he actually wanted to marry her.

  Byron’s declarative letter was written in the early autumn, when Caroline Lamb had been whisked away to Ireland and her lover had settled into Lord Holland’s Gloucestershire retreat to work on The Giaour, the first in a series of immensely successful romantic poems featuring an eastern setting. Lady Melbourne had asked what he meant to do about Caroline. Uneasy in the face of such directness, Byron mumbled that writing friendly letters helped to keep her under control. He then, writing on 13 September, sprang his surprise.

  Now my dear Ly M. You are all out as to my real sentiments. I was, am & shall be I fear attached to another . . . one whom I wished to marry . . . had not some occurrances rather discouraged me . . . As I have said so much I may as well say all – the woman I mean is Miss Milbank [sic]. I know nothing of her fortune, & am told that her father is ruin’d . . . I never saw a woman whom I esteemed so much. But that chance is gone and there’s an end.

  Now – my dear Ly M. I am completely in your power . . . If through your means, or any means, I can be free, or at least change my fetters, my regard & admiration could not be increased, but my gratitude would.

  Lady Melbourne had become Byron’s cherished confidante during the course of his hectic six-month affair with Lady Caroline Lamb. No friend had a better understanding than she of the emotional volatility that was deployed with such lethal effect upon the women Byron loved – or thought he loved. But Lady Melbourne had also become quite attached to her strong-willed little niece during a summer in which Annabella had confided some of her own feelings about Byron. Noting that the suitor appeared both to believe that his cause was hopeless and yet to invite her help, Lady Melbourne answered with care. Love had not been mentioned in Byron’s letter; might she learn what he proposed to offer in its stead?

  Directness produced as candid an answer as could have been expected from a man who was notoriously capable of changing his affections within the space of a few lines. Was Byron sure of himself? Frankly: ‘no’. Nevertheless, praising Annabella as ‘a clever woman, an amiable woman & of high blood’, Lord Byron believed that she would make him an excellent wife, one who would always find out the best in him.

  As to Love, that is done in a week (provided the Lady has a reasonable share) besides marriage goes on better with esteem & confidence than romance, and she is quite pretty enough to be loved by her husband, without being so glaringly beautiful as to attract too many rivals.

  Intent on gathering documentary evidence of the sincerity of his feelings for her niece, Lady Melbourne persisted in her quest. Wriggling on the hook that remained firmly in place, Byron displayed a bewildering variety of impulses (sudden enthusiasm for a black-eyed married lady; a dislike of Lady Milbanke; impatience with the time involved in courtship of such a virtuous girl; an ardent wish to address Lady Melbourne as his aunt). On 28 September, in what seems to have been his final letter on the subject, he began by denying his queried interest in Bessy Rawdon, before enquiring whether Annabella intended to marry George Eden. He was halfway through writing it when a frantic letter from the tenacious Lady Caroline galvanised her hounded lover into flight.

  I see nothing but a marriage and a speedy one can save me; if your Niece is attainable I should prefer her . . . I wish somebody would say at once that I wish to propose to her – but I have great doubts of her; it rests with her entirely.

  The letter was hardly reassuring: Byron had preceded the above announcement by frivolously announcing that everything depended upon whether Annabella waltzed or not. Nevertheless, Lady Melbourne had already decided upon her course of action. On 29 September, in a letter which crossed with Byron’s own to her, she offered hardheaded advice that tallied with the suitor’s own current line of thought: ‘the result of all this seems to me that ye best thing you can do, is to marry & that in fact you can get out of this Scrape by no other means’. At the beginning of October, she sent news to her niece of Byron’s offer to make her his wife.

  Curiously, Byron’s proposal by proxy arrived on Annabella’s breakfast table almost simultaneously with a declaration from one of his friends. William Bankes had been courting Annabella since the spring. Having wished Bankes a brisk farewell on his imminent journey to Granada, Annabella (in her journal entry for 6 October 1812) reveals how coolly she dismissed unwelcome suitors. Bankes had already been deemed ‘odious’ for preventing her from talking with Byron at a dinner party; now, he was dismissed as a pathetic waverer, incapable of defending himself. ‘In short he is a feeble character – a good heart without Judgment, Wit & Ingenuity without common sense.’

  So much for poor Bankes. Byron, upon whose more thoughtful ‘Character Sket
ch’ Annabella embarked two days later, was assessed with a shrewder understanding and more forbearance. On the minus side (for which she blamed an indulgent mother), she identified pride, inability to control his passions and a disturbing volatility of temperament: ‘his mind is constantly making the most sudden transitions, from good to evil, from evil to good . . .’ On the plus side (far outweighing the faults listed in her careful appraisal of his personality), she saw chivalrous generosity and kindness: ‘In secret he is the zealous friend of all the human feelings.’ Evidently recalling the tenor of their earliest conversations, she remarked upon his uncommon candour: ‘He is inclined to open his heart unreservedly to those whom he believes good, even without the preparation of much acquaintance. He is extremely humble towards persons whose characters he respects & to them he would penitently confess his errors.’

  The choice of words is revealing. Clearly, Annabella relished the prospect of becoming the confessor and saviour of a celebrated rake. Marriage was quite another matter.

  On 13 October, Lady Melbourne summoned her niece for an overnight stay at Melbourne House. Together, they attended a performance of Much Ado About Nothing, and heard an actor deliver Byron’s speech in honour of the reopening of Drury Lane (a theatrical project with which Byron had become closely involved). The following morning, Annabella addressed herself to Lady Gosford, while using the letter to clarify her own thoughts.

  Annabella, by any reading of the elaborate screed she wrote to Mary Gosford, was flattered both by Byron’s proposal and by the careful selection of his letters through which her Machiavellian aunt had chosen to transmit it. Clearly, it was not his fault that friends had misled him about her relationship with George Eden. Equally apparent was the inherent goodness which would always triumph over his passions. He loved her. Proudly, she quoted Byron’s words about having always wished to marry her, no matter what the future might hold. Complacently, she cited his account of her superiority to all other women.