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  On January 22, 1808, when Byron was twenty, his debts amounted to £5,000 (around £500,000 today). At that age he had no source of income other than what he received from his mother, who was herself usually strapped for cash. Instead of curbing his personal expenditure, Byron asked Hanson to raise the rents paid by tenants who lived in cottages in Newstead’s grounds. Byron also told Hanson to insist that the Newstead servants provide themselves with their own food rather than run up food bills for which Byron would be liable.

  Byron was well aware that the most sensible course of action to deal with his ever-escalating debts (they were soon starting to run towards £15,000) was to sell Newstead Abbey. The problem was, though, that Byron loved Newstead too much to sell it.

  Instead of making a definite decision about his ancestral home, Byron travelled to the Continent with Hobhouse and four servants to escape his increasingly persistent creditors. Byron’s Grand Tour, which took place in warm southern European countries, naturally included Greece, and it was in Greece that Byron started writing the great poem which was eventually to feature the daughter who was still close to seven years from being born: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

  When Byron returned to London in July 1811, he was depressed at being back in Britain and in serious debt. In addition, his mother died on August 1. Resuming his life of writing poetry, being poor and borrowing, socialising and snatching such sexual opportunities as he could, he made his maiden speech in the House of Lords in February 1812, opposing the harsh Tory measures against riotous Nottingham weavers.

  Byron’s life changed radically when, at the beginning of March 1812, the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage were published, soon in ten editions issued prior to the publication in 1816 of the third canto of the poem. When the fourth canto was published in 1818, by which time Ada was a toddler, the enthusiasm for the fourth canto led readers to ask that the whole poem be printed together as a single book. There is a reliable estimate that between 15,000 and 20,000 copies were printed.

  Byron, as he recalled in his memoirs, had awoken one morning and had found himself famous. It fanned his love life considerably. Soon he found himself – not entirely of his own volition – involved in a liaison with the passionate and fairly eccentric aristocrat and novelist Lady Caroline Lamb (she famously remarked of Byron that he was ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’). After their liaison collapsed, he began a relationship with Lady Oxford, who was a patron on the reform movement and about fourteen years older than Byron.

  Meanwhile, Byron appears to have entered into a sexual relationship with his half-sister Augusta, then married to a Colonel George Leigh, too. There remained, however, the small problem of Byron’s debts. While there is no doubt that his publisher, John Murray, earned a small fortune, Byron seems to have thought it vulgar to take money for his poetry. On at least one occasion, Byron asked his publisher, John Murray, to give away 1,000 guineas that Byron was owed as royalties for his poems (a guinea was one pound and one shilling, and was often used as the currency in genteel transactions). This sum, 1,000 guineas (that is, 1,000 pounds plus 1,000 shillings; and as there were 20 shillings in a pound, 1,000 guineas was in effect 1,050 pounds), was a vast amount indeed. What he needed rather more than another lover was a rich wife: Annabella Milbanke, for example.

  * Gray was Scottish and fond of discipline. Her sister Agnes had previously been Byron’s nursemaid. I haven’t been able to find out exactly how old May was when she looked after Byron, but judging from the fact that by 1798, a married Agnes was living in Woodside, a working-class district of Aberdeen, with two children of her own, it seems logical to assume that May was younger than Agnes and that Agnes was in her late teens or early twenties by 1798. This would mean that May was probably about seventeen or eighteen when she was Byron’s nursemaid.

  † From Trinity College (Cambridge) Archivist Jon Smith.

  3

  Annabella: Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

  Annabella Milbanke (she was christened Anne Isabella but was generally called Annabella) was the daughter of a wealthy family that dwelt at Seaham Hall in the small town of Seaham, about fifteen miles south of Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the coast of North East England. Annabella was born on May 17, 1792, and so she was about three years and eight months younger than Byron.

  The surviving portraits of Annabella don’t suggest she was a great beauty. She had an excellent figure but a rather snub face with pronounced, apple-like cheeks. While her considerable intelligence cannot be doubted, by nature she was reserved, pedantic and not especially good company. She was an only child and when she was born her mother was over forty. Her parents doted on her and gave her full encouragement to think highly of herself and her opinions. Up in the provincial north of England, Annabella was a proud and wealthy fish in a small pond, but when she ventured down to London she encountered many women who were more beautiful, wittier and considerably more sexually forthcoming than she was.

  On Sunday, March 15, 1812, Annabella was down from Seaham for her second London season. The ‘season’ was the period, usually from the spring to late summer, when eligible young women from wealthy families – the women were known as debutantes – spent time in London’s social scene, meeting new people and, hopefully, a prospective husband. The importance of the season had evolved in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and peaked in its traditional form in the early twentieth century. It was once usual for debutantes to be presented to the monarch as part of their season.

  That Sunday, March 15, Annabella wrote in her journal of a dinner she had with her relatives, the Melbournes. As she said: ‘Julius Caesar, Lord Byron’s new poem, and politics were the principal themes in conversation.’

  By March 24, Annabella had read the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Her praise of it in her journal was not – predictably, if you knew Annabella – unqualified. She conceded that Byron excelled in the ‘delineation of deep feeling, and in reflections relative to human nature’ but she also wrote that he was too much of a mannerist: a word she emphasised in her journal. It never seems to have occurred to Annabella that her analysis of him might be irrelevant to the chaotic and impulsively emotional way in which he lived his life.

  The first time she set eyes on Byron was at a waltzing party given by Lady Caroline Lamb on Wednesday, March 25, 1812. Annabella found the whole experience of being in London, and in the company of eminent and famous people, intoxicating. By now Byron was a celebrity, one of the most famous men in England. Annabella gave Byron close attention. She was naïve for her years, understandable perhaps since her parents were quite old. Also, her upbringing had been sheltered and she had had no siblings. It’s difficult not to conclude that she simply didn’t realise that Lady Caroline and Byron were having an affair. Instead what she saw, as she later wrote, was a man in a ‘desolate situation,’ surrounded by unworthy admirers and friends who didn’t care for him.

  Annabella’s father was already wealthy, but he was additionally the heir to an even greater fortune that could reasonably be expected to come to Annabella after his death. There’s no doubt that Annabella, the intelligent but awkward, judgmental and naïve wallflower, was extremely (albeit temporarily) attractive to Byron.

  Annabella confided to her journal her own thoughts on meeting him:

  I saw Lord Byron for the first time. His mouth continually betrays the acrimony of his spirit. I should judge him sincere and independent – sincere at least in society as far as he can be, while dissimulating the violence of his scorn. He very often hides his mouth with his hand when speaking.

  Annabella decided she had found a mind that matched her own:

  It appeared to me that he tried to control his natural sarcasm and vehemence as much as he could, in order not to offend, but at times his lips thickened with disdain and his eyes rolled impatiently.

  Annabella and Byron became friends, sort of. It’s not entirely clear how, but she was getting better known socially, and Byron got to know
her. That he felt any sudden intense attraction for her seems unlikely. Inasmuch as posterity can ever know how Byron felt at any moment of his life, his initial feelings for Annabella appear to have been a mixture of boredom and gloominess, though mingled with a flickering curiosity over whether at some point he might be able to get her into bed.

  Annabella seems to have continued to be oblivious to the fact that the literary hero she found so fascinating was having an affair with Lady Caroline Lamb, and Lady Caroline and Byron didn’t take any steps to disabuse her of this illusion. Except that in the summer of 1812, Caroline sent Annabella a drunken letter warning her against ‘fallen angels who are ever too happy to twine themselves round the young Saplings they can reach.’

  The letter very likely influenced her to reject a half-hearted marriage proposal Byron made to her in October 1812. It was a bizarre proposal, since Byron was close friends with Annabella’s aunt Lady Melbourne, and together they delighted in gossip about Annabella’s pedantry and moral rectitude. Lady Melbourne was cut from a different cloth. During her own heyday, she had been notorious for her liberal granting of sexual favours to a wide range of aristocrats: one of them was rumoured to have bought her off another for £13,000. She had had numerous children born in wedlock by different aristocrats. Though one of the most well known and influential society hostesses of the period, she was fifteen years older than Byron’s mother and theirs was a libertine friendship that remained pure.

  Back in Seaham, on a lonely Sunday, August 22, 1813, however, Annabella was staying with her parents and was obviously missing the excitement of London and her conquest of sorts: Lord Byron, the man whose name had been on everyone’s lips. She sought to resuscitate her friendship with him by letter after sounding out her aunt, Lady Melbourne. After the failed marriage proposal and presumably declaration of his love, she appeared unsure of their relationship and the letter has no salutation, though it is signed formally ‘Yours faithfully, A. Milbanke.’ As she wrote:

  You have remarked the serenity of my countenance, but mine is not the serenity of one who is a stranger to care, nor are the prospects of my future years untroubled. It is my nature to feel long, deeply and secretly, and the strangest affections of my heart are without hope. I disclose to you what I conceal even from those who have most claim to my confidence because it will be the surest basis of that unreserved friendship which I wish to establish between us – because you will not reject my admirations as the result of cold calculation when you know that I can suffer as you have suffered.

  With little to do in Seaham and hearing no fresh news about him, she laid out an ambitious plan for Byron’s wellbeing. She offered him the following pedantic and patronizing guidance:

  No longer suffer yourself to be the slave of the moment, nor trust your noble impulses to the chances of life. Have an object that will permanently occupy your feelings and exercise your reason. Be good.

  Feel benevolence and you will inspire it. You will do good.

  Annabella’s letter to Byron started a strange correspondence in which they deepened their intimacy without actually meeting, rather like two people who first get in touch via an internet dating site.

  For Annabella, who delighted in writing pedantic criticism of people she knew in Seaham, the medium of correspondence was perfect. She could continue to pursue her fond theory about Byron: that he was misunderstood by most people and was really a sensitive and admirable person who would respond to the doting love of a cautious and prudent individual such as her.

  As 1813 progressed into the autumn, Annabella began to fancy herself in love. In early October 1813 she sent her aunt Lady Melbourne (with whom she warily ‘felt little sympathy’ in summer) her reactions to Byron’s poem The Giaour. As Annabella wrote:

  The description of Love almost makes me in love. Certainly he excels in the language of passion … I consider his acquaintance as so desirable that I would risk being called a Flirt for the sake of enjoying it, provided I may do so without detriment to myself – for you know that his welfare has been as much the object of my consideration as if it were connected with his own.

  Byron, at this time, was writing at Augusta’s home at the small village of Six Mile Bottom near Newmarket in Cambridgeshire. In response to Lady Melbourne’s attempts to caution him against an affair with Augusta, Byron wrote to Lady Melbourne that he thought the risk he ran was ‘worth while,’ but said ‘I can’t tell you why – and it is not an ‘Ape’ and if it is – that must be my fault.’ What exactly he meant by Ape is not clear; he might have meant the common idea that the child of incest would be an ape.

  Nonetheless, on November 10, 1813, Byron wrote to Annabella that he was writing another poem, also set in Turkey, and that he would like to send her a copy. This poem was The Bride of Abydos. In the same letter he enquired when she was likely to be in town and flirtatiously added: ‘I imagine I am about to add to your thousand and one pretendants’ and ‘I have taken exquisite care to prevent the possibility of that.’

  While Annabella remained on Byron’s short list, he by no means saw her as his only candidate. On March 22, 1814, Byron noted in his journal that he might marry Lady Charlotte Leveson-Gower, apparently because (as Byron put it) ‘she is a friend of Augusta, and whatever she loves, I can’t help liking.’

  Fanned by Lady Melbourne – who no doubt had also provided Byron with an informed view of Annabella’s financial future – Annabella was now deeply in love. ‘Pray write to me,’ she begged Byron on June 19, 1814, ‘for I have been rendered uneasy by your long silence, & you cannot wish me so.’ And on August 6, 1814, Annabella wrote coquettishly to Byron to question whether he should come to Seaham as there might be a danger that he felt ‘more than friendship’ towards her.

  All this time, Byron had continued wooing Lady Charlotte Leveson-Gower, his main prospect – marrying rather than writing for gain being the more noble pursuit. But in a major setback, on September 8 or 9, 1814, Lady Charlotte wrote to Byron to tell him that her family had other plans for her romantically.

  Byron, confronted with this news, panicked. ‘I could not exist without some object of attachment,’ he often acknowledged during this time and scrambled to get one and decided it would be Annabella. He showed the draft of his proposal to Augusta, who said: ‘Well, this is a very pretty letter; it is a pity it shall not go. I never read a prettier one.’ ‘Then it shall go,’ said Byron.

  Annabella, overjoyed, accepted at once. Byron, busy with literary business and with telling his friends about his forthcoming marriage, was in no hurry, however, to visit his prospective wife.

  It was only when Annabella wrote to him on October 22, 1814, to tell him that a wealthy childless uncle of hers, Lord Wentworth, had journeyed some three days to the Milbanke home at Seaham from Leicestershire expressly to meet Byron and had been most disappointed not to find him there. She added, ‘It is odd that my task should be to pacify the old ones, and teach them patience. They are growing quite ungovernable, and I must have your assistance to manage them.’

  On the way to his betrothed, Byron stopped off to see Augusta and her husband Colonel Leigh who was staying with his wife, as he sometimes did. The colonel was not at all happy to learn of Byron’s impending marriage, as the colonel had hoped Augusta would be Byron’s only heir.

  There was a more welcoming reception at Seaham. Byron was buoyed by his meeting with Lord Wentworth, who had announced he now intended to make Annabella his heiress by his will. Then there was Annabella’s family who said they would be providing a dowry of £20,000 (about £2 million today). This would be immediate help to alleviate his debts, which had mounted to a monumental £30,000 at the time, nowadays worth about £3 million.

  On the morning of his wedding, Monday, January 2, 1815, Byron awoke in gloomy spirits, but with a determination to go ahead with the deed. By eleven o’clock in the morning Byron and Annabella were man and wife. At Six Mile Bottom, at that very hour when Augusta knew the vows would have been completed, s
he felt, as she put it, ‘as the sea trembles when the earth quakes.’

  ‘Had Lady Byron on the sofa before dinner,’ Byron laconically reported on his marriage day in his memoirs which were partly remembered by various friends who had seen some of the memoirs prior to their destruction.

  The newlywed couple had arranged to spend the first few days of their wedded bliss at a Yorkshire country house, Halnaby, that belonged to the Milbanke family. Arriving at Halnaby, the ground was covered in deep snow. The servants and tenants of the Milbankes were waiting in the wintry weather to greet Annabella and Byron. A reliable source testifies that when the carriage stopped, Byron at once jumped out and walked away, not bothering to help Lady Byron down from the carriage.

  As to Annabella’s demeanour on arrival at Halnaby, there is conflicting evidence about this. An old butler who was there among the welcoming party remembered that Annabella came up the steps of Halnaby alone ‘with a countenance and frame agonised and listless with evident horror and despair.’

  A maid who had accompanied them on the journey, however, recalled her mistress as being as ‘buoyant and cheerful as a bride can be.’ In any event, that very same night, Annabella later recalled, Byron enquired ‘with an appearance of aversion, if I meant to sleep in the same bed with him.’ He often complained to Annabella, during the marriage, ‘it’s done,’ ‘it’s too late now,’ and, ‘it cannot be undone.’

  Byron grew a little calmer as the weeks wore on, but when living with Annabella he was always prone to terrible moods. Byron took Annabella to Six Mile Bottom and introduced her to Augusta. It was torture. Byron and Augusta often left Annabella alone, even all night, and sometimes Byron even taunted his wife that he and Augusta had ‘no need’ of her.