Lord Byron's Marriage: The Bitter End

This is the last installment of the Lord Byron marriage saga. If you want to catch up on previous "episodes" starting with the first one, click HERE.

Annabella left 13 Piccadilly Square for good on January 15, 1816. Arguably, this was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. Later, she would later write that as she left that morning, it took every ounce of strength not to crumple at the foot of his door, where his dog normally lay, in the hopes they could start again.

As happens with so many couples in the midst of a split, the games now turned to finger pointing, accusations, and dismay. Byron’s already crumbling world virtually disintegrated.

Once Annabella and the newborn, Ada, were under her parents’ roof, all masks of deception she had worn during the one-year course of her marriage came off. With judicial precision, Annabella’s parents questioned her. They would know the true nature of her marriage with a man they had come to despise. There was to be no forgiveness, no negotiations, no reconciliation.

Byron: Public Domain

Annabella’s heart was in turmoil. In the beginning, she wrote letters to Byron that suggested her love for him was still strong. She was casual and offered nothing but news from home, signing her letters, “Ever thy most loving Pippin…Pip…Pip.” (Pip was Byron’s pet name for Annabella). Even so, once her mother had caught wind of some of Byron’s behavior, all control of the situation moved out of Annabella's hands. On January 20^th, Annabella’s mother, Lady Noel, set out for London determined to bring about a separation.

 
In the early days of this legal battle, letters circulated back and forth amongst Annabella, Byron, and Augusta, and finally between Lord Milbanke, Byron, and lawyers. Augusta was every bit as anxious as Byron to somehow stop the separation and wrote to Annabella that she please reconsider for Byron’s sake and for the sake of their child. Already rumors were flying, ones that involved Augusta as well as some involving Byron’s time in Greece several years before. "I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and private rancor." Byron claimed complete innocence and bemusement at the charges leveled against him. He had no recollection of treating his wife poorly, and he roundly denounced any suggestion of incest between himself and his half-sister.

By February, it was obvious to Augusta and Byron, that they would not persuade Annabella to return to him. Byron reported that her parents had turned her against him. By now, the separation proceedings had taken on a life of their own. Lady Caroline Lamb, one of Byron’s lovers and a cousin by marriage to Annabella, heaped fuel on the fire with her revelation that years before, Byron had told her of his love for a woman who carried his child: “…there is a woman I love so passionately—she is with child by me, and if a daughter it shall be called Medora.” Medora was the name of Augusta’s daughter, but it should be mentioned that these words came through Caroline (and she was hardly a reliable witness).

The time of social worship ended for Byron during the spring of 1816. He was publicly cut. None of the old invitations came his way, and when he did appear in public, he was shunned. All public support moved to Annabella’s court.

Lady Byron: Public Domain

In the end, Lord Byron and Annabella were legally separated by divortium a mensa et thoro. Literally, this Latin phrase means separation from table and bed. This process was used in the case of cruel and violent treatment or adultery on either side. All financial ties were released from either party and remarriage was never allowed.

 Byron’s reputation now ruined, he left England in the spring of that year to live abroad. He never returned to England. With his usual flair for dramatics, Byron would later write,

“I was unfit for England; if false, England was unfit for me. I withdrew; but this was not enough. In other countries—in Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by the blue depths of the lakes—I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight. I crossed the mountains, but it was the same; so I went a little farther, and settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like a stag at bay, who betakes him to the waters.”

As for Annabella, who went on to live a full life with many philanthropic endeavors, she was once asked by a friend how she had managed to survive her year of marriage to such a man. Annabella responded:
 

“I felt a responsibility for him as well as myself, and when my own interpretation of the natural law was clouded by my feelings, I referred to the Revealed will—in this sense, J[esus] Christ may indeed be said to have been my Saviour—I found in his precepts that ‘immutable morality’ which the reason of man is often incapable of discerning.”

Faith had always been Annabella’s cornerstone as much as self-damnation had been Byron’s. The inequality of their moral and spiritual philosophies may well have been the defeat of their marriage, as it has been for many others since.

Thanks for reading this exploration of the year of marriage between Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke. 

My first Regency novel, Dangerous to Know, a story inspired by their marriage, is slated to be released sometime this fall through Elk Lake Publishing.

Source:

Crane, David. The Kindness of Sisters: Annabella Milbanke and the Destruction of the Byrons. Alfred A. Knopf, New York: 2002.

Lord Byron's Marriage: Rage or Insanity?

Throughout January and February, I've been writing about Lord Byron's marriage to Annabella Milbanke. This is the next-to-the-last installment.

In October or November of 1815, just a few weeks before Annabella gave birth to their child, Byron took a lover. Her name was Susan Boyce, a hot-headed actress from Drury Lane Theatre, more noted for the girl-fights she started rather than any roles she played. By this point, Byron was severely depressed and drinking night and day. In fact, Susan Boyce enjoyed much of the same behavior that Byron had bestowed upon his wife. She would wait up for him, only to find that he didn't show, with no apology or excuse. He soon tired of her and got rid of her altogether when she asked him for money. She was inconsequential to Byron's life but served as a tool of torment for Annabella.

Whether or not some of the things he told her were true, Annabella believed them. Byron told her that he gave Susan Boyce jewelry, expensive gifts of his affection. When he arrived home late, he told his wife that he'd just come from his mistress's bed. Annabella was not allowed to sit in Byron's box seats at the theatre, lest he desire to attend with Susan. Finally, he encouraged her to relay all of the sordid details of his affair to his half-sister, Augusta--undoubtedly, the real target for his cruel arrows of psychological torture.

Even in light of all Byron's ridiculous behavior outside of his home, it was inside the walls of 13 Piccadilly Terrace where the most bizarre goings-on took place. Despite all that had previously transpired between the trio, as Annabella's confinement approached, she requested Augusta's presence. Annabella could not ask her mother to come. If Lady Noel were to see her son-in-law's behavior toward her daughter and soon-to-be grandchild, it would have killed her.

Augusta arrived to find Byron in a drunken rage, the servants hiding in fright, and Annabella barricaded in her room. Byron suggested that both Annabella and the baby should die during childbirth--it would be better for them all. Then he took to firing off his pistols...inside the house...just below Annabella's rooms. He also smashed furniture and anything glass (he was notably fond of removing the necks of brandy decanters with a poker stick). Augusta realized very quickly that this was far more than she could handle on her own. She summoned other relatives to come and help get him under control.

Both Augusta and Annabella questioned Byron's sanity. When Augusta confronted him regarding his tantrums, Byron responded, "I am determined to fling Misery around me & upon all those with whom I concerned." Byron went on to tell several of his friends that he must separate from Annabella--she and the child must go and live with her parents--else he might divorce her or worse.

Annabella's labor began on December 9th and with it, Byron's mind games. According to Annabella's maid, Byron locked himself in her rooms and attempted to rape her. The maid came in during the physical struggle and intervened. When a friend of the family suggested Annabella leave the house to have the baby, Byron heard of the plan, and immediately confronted his wife, violently demanding whether or not she would continue to live with him. Ultimately, Annabella decided to stay and Byron spent the evening at the theatre.

Annabella's daughter, Augusta Ada, was born December 10th at one o'clock in the afternoon. She was named after her godmother and a family member on her father's side. During her life she would be called Ada, and she would go on to become a mathematician who would help Charles Babbage create the analytical engine (one of the first computers). When Byron first saw his daughter, he immediately checked her feet to make sure they did not share his deformity, and then he allegedly pronounced, "Oh! What an implement of torture I have acquired in you!" 

(Ada Byron, aged 4. Public Domain)

Later, Byron would deny all of these accusations. Whether it truly was a season of madness or just the rage of losing control over his life, it is hard to say. Annabella requested that he be examined by a doctor for signs of insanity, but she didn't stick around to find out the verdict. After a violent exchange with her husband on January 3rd, Annabella made plans to leave London...and Byron.

Next Week: The Bitter End

Source:
Eisler, Benita. Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame. Alfred A. Knopf. New York, 1999.

Lord Byron's Marriage: Money Miseries

During the month of February, I am writing about Lord Byron’s marriage to Annabella Milbanke.

(public domain via Wikipedia Commons)

In the summer of 1815, following the departure of Byron’s half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and despite Annabella’s progressing pregnancy, Byron sank into another depression. He was drinking heavily and not producing poetry. When invited to join the Sub-Management Committee of Drury Lane Theatre, he was delighted.

Byron had always been passionate about the theater and this opportunity offered him a reprieve from what he now saw as his sentence to a life of domesticity. Unfortunately, this opportunity also allowed him a return to his old ways of scouting new flesh with which to amuse himself. As he told Annabella one evening, torturing her with his barely veiled threats to choose one of the actresses from Drury Lane, “I am looking out to see who will suit me best.”

There was no doubt that any affection he’d once held for Annabella was waning fast. Perhaps familiarity had given birth to contempt (before Byron took on this position at Drury Lane, the couple was rarely ever apart). Perhaps too much time was spent in his half-sister Augusta’s company, encouraging his long-held and highly inappropriate attraction for her instead of his wife. Most likely, the passing months of their marriage had served only to solidify the truth of their unequally yoked state. Annabella, serious, sincere, and desperate to attain the love of her husband, could not comprehend Byron's self-indulgence and lack of emotional discipline.   

Byron had attempted to sell his childhood home, Newstead Abbey, in the hopes of paying off some of his many debts. Previous attempts to sell the place had fallen through and when it was put it up for auction in July of 1815, it failed to meet the reserve. At this time, Byron constructed his final will—most of his estate would be left to his half-sister, Augusta.

Always willing to see people in their best light, Annabella did not view this as a mean-spirited decision. She chose to believe that this signified Byron’s generosity, as his half-sister’s finances were worse than their own.

During that summer, Byron embarked on a journey to Six Mile Bottom to help the Leighs sort out their financial ruin. He left in a foul temper, and Lady Byron later told her maid that she feared, “she would never see him again and that he was going abroad.” Letters passed between Annabella and Augusta, in which Augusta expressed concern that her husband, Colonel Leigh, might try to extract money from Byron. In the end, it was not Colonel Leigh who requested the money, but Augusta herself who accepted some seven hundred pounds from Byron.

Annabella frantically attempted to stave off creditors. She educated herself on financial matters, including mortgages and lenders and how to raise money. Her parents had tried to help. They had sold property and attempted to finagle extra funds through collateral and complex money-lending plans. Annabella knew it was only a matter of time before the bailiffs came knocking. “For positively, the Execution cannot be suspended beyond the 6^th of November,” she wrote to her parents. “Do you know of any means by which a week could be gained?”

In the fall, Annabella approached her confinement, and Byron expressed a wish to have all financial matters settled before the birth of their child. He did not want the bailiffs in the house as Annabella gave birth. Nevertheless, on November 8, the bailiffs arrived with the intent to execute the sale of any and all valuables in order to satisfy the debt.

Byron was mortified. He had known this was coming, but now that it was here the humiliation was more than he could bear. Annabella later wrote to Augusta, “…he seems to regard [this subject] as if no mortal had ever experienced anything so shocking.” Even so, Byron still refused to take any money for his poetry. It was his publisher who finally sent Byron fifteen hundred pounds in order to save his library from seizure.

Next week: Preparing for the Final Descent

Lord Byron's Marriage: Locked to a Lord for Life

Throughout the month of January and February, I'm writing about Lord Byron's marriage to Annabella Milbanke. You can catch up on the other installments, starting HERE.

Once Lord and Lady Byron left Augusta Leigh's home at the end of March 1815, some of Byron's anxiety decreased. For a few short weeks, the newlyweds were able to settle in to their lives at 13 Piccadilly Terrace in London. But as was usual with Byron, the peace did not last.

Their finances were bad. Byron had debts in excess of thirty thousand pounds and no way to settle them. Their house at Piccadilly Terrace was large and required substantial staff; the rent was seven hundred pounds a year; they require a coach and coachmen. To live in the expected manner of the nobility was an expensive task. Byron's poetry might have been lucrative enough to pay for many of these niceties, but as a gentleman, Byron refused all monetary profits from his work.

The ton was all aflutter to see the new couple. Had Lady Byron managed to tame her wild lord, or was he as unruly as ever? Invitations poured in from all corners of Society. The Byrons were in demand for parties and dining engagements. No one at these events ever reported Byron's behavior as anything but gentlemanly and attentive to Annabella. Possibly he was settling into his new life, learning to accept it along with his husbandly role. Or perhaps he was on his best behavior because he knew people were watching... 

Another turn of the screw came with the discovery of Annabella's pregnancy. Byron was in two minds on this. On the one hand, he would have an heir; on the other hand, it was another mouth to feed. Byron wrote to his friend that he was "not particularly anxious" to have a child. Even so, reports of his affectionate concern and treatment of Annabella during this time reveal a more tender-hearted Byron, perhaps a man growing fond of the idea of fatherhood.

Not two weeks after the Byrons had moved into their new home, on April 12, Augusta Leigh arrived. Augusta had been appointed as one of Queen Charlotte's ladies-in-waiting. Consequently, Annabella had invited her to stay with them in Piccadilly Terrace while she sorted out and furnished rooms of her own at St. James's Palace. Perhaps Annabella wished to attempt a deeper relationship with her sister-in-law, to win her over to her side of the battle. Annabella would later write, "It was hopeless to keep them apart. It was not hopeless, in my opinion, to keep them innocent."

Annabella's intentions may have been pure, but the results were predictable. Augusta's visit produced the same sort distress within Lord Byron as when they had visited her at Six Mile Bottom. It was not long after her arrival that Byron told his wife, "You were a fool to let her come--You will find it will make a good deal of difference to you in all ways." No doubt Annabella had hoped for a different outcome for their marriage once they were settled in London and she was carrying his child, but she was again disappointed when Byron and Augusta took up exactly where they'd left off at Six Mile Bottom. Now, with the money woes as an additional stress, Byron taunted Annabella about her uncle's refusal to die and pass on the promised inheritance, as well as her father's promised marriage settlement of twenty thousand pounds, which had yet to be received.

Augusta's stay at Piccadilly Terrace stretched into a month, and then another. Although there were moments when her presence helped to buffer Byron's black moods, and she faithfully defended Annabella whenever he chose to treat her poorly, the late nights when Augusta and Byron sat up talking, laughing, and who knew what else, drove Annabella mad. One time in particular, Annabella wrote that "the thought of the dagger lying in the next room ... crossed my mind--I wished it in her heart." Obviously, a breaking point had been reached.

In June, Annabella finally sent Augusta packing. Again, there was the briefest of respites from Byron's black moods.

Was Byron prone to violent mood swings? Most likely, he was. By his own account, he was cursed and doomed, marred with the mark of Cain in the form of his lame leg. But did Annabella embellish these tales in any way? Some scholars say this, too, is a distinct probability. Much of what we hear about the horrors of their marriage come from Annabella's letters and legal statements from years later. Is it possible she had a different recollection of the way things unfolded?

In August of the year of their marriage, the Byrons received a young visitor from Boston, a Mr. George Ticknor, who came to meet and "worship at the shrine" of Byron. He was very surprised, however, to find that Byron was not at all the man he expected, nothing like the "the characters of his own Childe Harold & Giaour...either of his early follies or his present eccentricities." Instead, the visitor described Byron as "gentle...natural and unaffected." He went on to say that Byron was modest about his own works, but talked "of his rivals, or rather contemporaries, with justice, generosity, and discriminating praise."

Perhaps the most interesting observation made by Ticknor was in regard to Annabella. Byron, he said, acted in an "affectionate manner" with his wife. Once, he observed, as she prepared to depart for an outing, Byron "followed her to the door, and shook hands with her, as if he were not to see her for a month."

Byron could not have been wholly wicked to his wife all of the time, but a selfish and self-destructive streak in the poet drove him to discontent and a propensity toward behavior that split the couple apart. Perhaps if Byron had married another woman or if Annabella had married another man, they would have had the opportunity for happiness. But opposites attract. The unequal insist on being yoked. But fire and ice cannot coexist, and ultimately, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Next week: Debt and Desperation

Sources:
MacCarthy, Fiona. Byron: Life and Legend. Farar, Straus and Giroux. New York: 2002.

Eisler, Benita. Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame. Alfred A. Knopf. New York: 1999.

Lord Byron's Marriage: The Love Triangle

During the month of January, I am writing installments regarding the marriage of Lord Byron to Annabella Milbanke in January of 1815. This was a marriage equal in status, but woefully unequal in all other respects.

After a miserable first honeymoon week at Halnaby House in Yorkshire, Byron and Annabella settled into a reasonably happy time around or after January 7. On that date, Byron wrote to his friend and confidante, Lady Melbourne: "Bell and I go on extremely well so far without any other company than our own selves as yet." To others he wrote, "I have great hopes this match will turn out well--I have found nothing as yet that I could wish changed for the better--but Time does wonders--so I won't be too hasty in my happiness."

In fact, the peaceful and happy weeks of their remaining honeymoon were predictably interrupted by Byron's constant mentions of his half-sister, Augusta. Even so, he did not write to "Guss" after they left Halnaby. Lord and Lady Byron traveled once more to visit Annabella's parents in Seaham, where they stayed for three pleasant weeks. This time, it was Augusta who wrote to Annabella and scolded Byron for his silence. "Poor dear B! He must have So many occupations, walking, dining, playing at Drafts with 'Mama' &c. &c. &c. & no time to scribble to 'Guss.' I am vain enough to think he does not forget her--& so--never mind."

Most likely feeling the pressure to show how happy they were (and to stake her claim), Annabella returned Augusta's note and hinted that she and Byron were spending much time enjoying the physical benefits of marriage. Augusta replied simply, "I am glad B's spirits do not decrease with the Moon. I rather suspect he rejoices at the discovery of your 'ruling passion' for mischief in private."

Having never met Augusta in person, Annabella's freely offered information about bedroom matters must be seen as an attempt to draw boundaries. He is mine, not yours. It seems clear that she suspected something untoward may have passed between her husband and her new sister-in-law at some point and was eager to let it be known that such behavior would not be repeated, if she could help it.

Augusta Byron (1783-1851), later The Honourable Augusta Leigh, was the half-sister of Lord Byron. Public Domain.

Within a few weeks, Augusta countered with an invitation to her home at Six Mile Bottom. Her husband, Colonel Leigh, would not be at home for a time, and on March 9, the couple ended their honeymoon and headed south.

Arguably, this interlude between Halnaby, Seaham, and their eventual home in London, was a terrible mistake. If Byron had managed to avoid seeing Augusta for a little while longer, the couple's marriage might have stood a chance. But in Annabella's mind, the worst was over. She was learning how to deal with Byron, to make light of his comments that she would be better off alone. In fact, during one rare moment of ease, Byron said to Annabella, "You married me to make me happy, didn't you? Well, then, you do make me happy."

The black violence had passed, and Byron seemed content. "He was not content if I was away from him except on the black days when he would shut himself up in frenzied gloom." Presumably, Annabella took comfort in this and the idea of better days to come. Sadly for her, these were some of the better days of her marriage.

As the carriage pulled into Six Mile Bottom, Byron at first insisted upon meeting his sister alone and darted headlong into the house. When Annabella joined him, he was upset, nearly frantic. Augusta was not there to greet them. A few moments later, Augusta did appear and greeted Annabella guardedly. Annabella was disappointed. How could she not be? After the enthusiastic and intimate letters the two women had shared over the past two months, she was now to be greeted with such stiff regard. Even so, brother and sister warmly clasped one another, and Annabella left them for a time, knowing they had much catching up to do. At least, that was what she told herself. In truth, she couldn't have stayed another moment. She couldn't have watched their connection and heartfelt emotion. It would have broken her heart.

Later that night, Annabella lay in bed above the room in which her husband and his half-sister laughed and talked until all hours. And every evening thereafter, Annabella had to endure the subtle suggestions that she leave them and go to bed. And then there were the blatant taunts from Byron: "We can amuse ourselves without you, my charmer."

Annabella was deeply hurt and confused. "He never spent a moment with me that could be avoided, & even got up early in the morning (contrary to his general habit) to leave me and to go to her."

The bliss of Halnaby and Seaham was all but forgotten.

Next Week: Locked to a Lord for Life

Source:
Eisler, Benita. Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame. Alfred A. Knopf. New York: 1999.

Lord Byron's Marriage: The "Treacle" Moon

During the month of January, I will be writing about the first days of Lord Byron’s marriage to Annabella Milbanke.

Over the course of his life, Byron suffered many things. Born with a clubbed foot, he was often victimized by bullies, who ridiculed him. His father abandoned him at a young age, and Byron and his mother had a fractious relationship. He loved his half-sister, Augusta, and when they were reunited as adults, his attachment to her became one of an inappropriate nature. All of these wounds played into his self-proclaimed cursed state.

Annabella Milbanke knew some of these things about her husband before entering into the marriage; some of them she didn’t. After all, before their marriage, the couple hadn’t spent much time together—a day here, a day there. The majority of their courtship had been via letter.

Now, Annabella would meet the real Byron.

Lord and Lady Byron set out for their honeymoon on the second day of January, 1815. With his usual wit and sarcasm, Byron called it their “treacle moon” … in truth, it was less sweet than it was sour. Although there were some moments of promise within those weeks, the couple’s first day of marriage was nothing less than a disaster.

As their carriage pulled away from Annabella’s hometown of Seaham, Byron transformed. Annabella later said that his “countenance changed to gloom and defiance.” Byron began to sing “in a wild manner”—a coping mechanism he would employ throughout their marriage whenever he was enraged or defeated. But on this first occasion, Annabella was frightened. She scarcely recognized the man sitting next to her, who suddenly filled the carriage with a loud, raucous voice. Even so, Annabella was a quiet, highly disciplined woman, who most likely endured the bad behavior with no reaction.

Perhaps to further distress his new bride, Byron verbally attacked Annabella. “You had better married [another], he would have made you a better husband.” In written accounts of this event, Annabella omitted the name of the person Byron suggested. In fact, she’d had ample opportunity to marry other men. She’d had plenty of suitors, but Byron had been her choice. According to Byron, she would suffer for her choice. She should never have married him. He was a Byron and cursed, and now she would feel the effects of it. He chastised her for not marrying him sooner; if she had, he argued, he might not have committed some of his more grievous sins.

Each of these taunting, vindictive words, like slaps, made Annabella heartsick. When the couple reached a resting point, the Inn at Rushford, Byron turned on her again. “I wonder how much longer I shall be able to keep up the part I have been playing.” When they reached the spot for their honeymoon (one of the Milbanke’s houses, Halnaby Hall near Darlington), servants noticed the pained expression on Annabella’s face as she emerged from the carriage. Her husband disembarked and limped away. He did not look back at her, and he certainly did not hand her down from the carriage.

Undoubtedly, the reality of his own choices dawned on him during that carriage ride. He had really done it. He’d married her. Whether out of convenience, spite, or revenge, he’d gone through with the nuptials. Now he was trapped. And on top of it all, he had caught a cold.

Byron’s memoir (later burned by his friends) recounted that he “had Lady Byron on the sofa before dinner on the day of their marriage.” Later that night, he agreed to allow his wife to sleep in the bed with him. He didn’t like to share a bed with his lovers, and he was vexed by the idea of having to do so now, but he finally relented. Even so, he cruelly reminded Annabella that “one animal of the kind was as good to him as another”--another attempt to insult her and divulge that their union had little meaning to him.

There are a few different versions of their first night finale. One account was that Byron awoke, and glimpsing a burning candle through the red curtains around the bed, he shouted, “Good God! I am in hell!” In another version, Byron imagined himself as Orpheus in hell with Prosperpine, prompting the same response and waking Annabella.

These first days of marriage were far from harmonious ones for the Byrons, but they were only the beginning. There was more to come as the snow fell around Halnaby, trapping the less-than-happy couple inside.

Next week: The honeymoon drags on…

Sources:

Crane, David. The Kindness of Sisters: Annabella Milbanke and the Destruction of the Byrons. Alfred A. Knopf, New York: 2002.

MacCarthy, Fiona. Byron: Life and Legend. Farar, Straus and Giroux, New York: 2002.

Marrying Byron: The Day of the Ceremony

Most young women dream about their wedding day. It’s not always a perfect day (in fact, rarely so), but it’s usually one of the most exciting in a woman’s life.

("Bridal dress'"Ackermann's Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashion and Politics, June 1816.) 

Annabella Milbanke had been waiting several months for her wedding day with Lord George Gordon Byron. He had delayed his journey to her parent’s home several times, but two months later than she’d anticipated, in January of 1815, the event finally took place.

A day that should have been marked by anticipation and excitement was marred by nervous apprehension and anxiety. Byron’s last visit to Seaham had been in November when he’d stayed two weeks. During that time, Annabella succumbed to a shyness that rendered her quiet and skittish. Most likely, the long absence between their meeting and their engagement (they had only seen each other a few times in London and the engagement had been arranged through letters) had given her time to build him up in her mind. Indeed, by the day of their marriage it would seem Annabella had allowed the term she coined for other women’s wild idolization of Byron, “Byromania,” to manifest as reality in her own heart. Despite her natural practicality and staid disposition, Annabella adored her fiancé.

(portrait of Lord Byron by Richard Westall)

Byron had viewed Annabella’s silence as prudishness and told his lawyer, John Hanson, that he “never liked prudes,” but he quickly added that he found Annabella “clever,” and the fact she knew Greek and Latin was a bonus. Sadly, Byron was not in love with Annabella. She had been a willing participant in an arrangement of necessary arrangement—marriage—in order to satisfy Society and stave off anymore crazy antics of his stalker, Lady Caroline Lamb.

The wedding took place January 2, 1815, in the drawing room of the Milbanke’s home in Seaham. There were only a few people present besides the couple and the minister: Annabella’s parents, Byron’s best friend John Hobhouse, and Annabella’s former governess, Mrs. Clermont. Annabella took time with her vows, pronouncing them with great care and staring adoringly at Byron as she spoke them. Byron stumbled over his, but took a moment to cast a frown in Hobhouse’s direction when he came to the vow that required him to say, “With all my worldly goods I thee endow.” Byron was deeply in debt by that time and counted on Annabella’s worldy goods to help with his creditors.

After the ceremony had ended, the couple had signed the registry, and congratulations had circulated, the scene turned somber.  Annabella emerged teary-eyed in her going-away attire. She would be leaving her parents for good to live in London. Byron’s countenance must have been dire, for Hobhouse later noted that he felt as though he had “buried a friend.”

As Annabella was handed into the carriage, Hobhouse wished her great joy in her marriage. “If I am not happy it will be my own fault.” Her words suggested a hopefulness that her marriage would be a success and an understanding that it was she who had wanted this marriage to happen, regardless of her own misgivings, her family’s warnings, and Byron’s waffling right up to the hour of the event. Annabella was in love with him and still under the delusion that he loved her too.  

As the carriage pulled away, Seaham’s church bells rang and six men fired muskets to celebrate their marriage. Byron clutched his friend’s hand so tightly through the open carriage window that Hobhouse finally had to pull away.

According to letters Annabella later penned, their harmony in marriage lasted approximately five minutes. In fact, it did not extend beyond their journey through Annabella’s hometown of Seaham.

Next time: The honeymoon

Source: MacCarthy, Fiona. Byron: Life and Legend. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. New York: 2002.

The Beginning of Lord Byron's Marital Nightmare

Sometime this coming year, my first Regency novel will be released. Dangerous to Know is the first in a trilogy and loosely based upon the disastrous marriage of Lord Byron to Annabella Milbanke. I thought it might be fun for the next month to discuss days leading up to their marriage and the ones that followed it. The couple was married in January of 1815, and much of Lord and Lady Byron’s marriage was dramatic and unhappy, a cautionary tale of why two such types should never marry.

(By Thomas Phillips - NPG, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=374342)

Annabella was devout in her faith and sadly deluded in the notion that she could tame Byron’s dark, agnostic, and brooding soul. Although there was a physical attraction on both sides, the unequal spiritual state of the couple was profound. Their childhood experiences were vastly different. Byron’s father was an abhorrent character who showed no real affection for his wife or his child and abandoned them when Byron was just a little boy. Byron suffered physical and sexual abuse at the hands of his nurse, and although well-born, his mother was a foul-mouthed glutton who did nothing for Byron’s opinion of women. Annabella had grown up, sheltered, in a small coastal town. She was a deeply loved only child raised by parents who were thankful to have any offspring at all.  In short, these young people's very different expectations of marriage and love were completely lost in a world where social status and financial viability were revered above the importance of compatible temperaments.  

(By Creator: Charles Hayter - National Portrait Gallery, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5086529)

It should also be mentioned that Lord Byron was unnaturally attached to his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and most scholars agree that the pair were involved in a scandalous union. This was most likely part of the reason why Byron moved slowly toward his marriage ceremony, several days’ travel north in the county of Durham.

“Never was a lover in less haste,” said his friend John Hobhouse, who traveled north with him. In fact, the Milbankes had expected Byron by Christmas, and when he finally arrived several days later on December 30^th, Lady Milbanke was so distraught that she promptly took to her bed chambers. Assumedly, she thought her future son-in-law’s delay signaled that her daughter might be spared the dubious nuptials.

Annabella had so anxiously awaited her beloved’s arrival that when she saw him, she threw her arms around him and sobbed. While looking on, John Hobhouse could only conclude that Annabella was “fond” of her betrothed as she gazed “with delight upon his animated bust.”

In the next few days, one last ditch effort was made to end the engagement. Apparently at Byron’s request, Hobhouse pulled aside the clergyman set to marry them and begged that he might call it off on the grounds that the Milbanke’s didn’t really understand they were marrying their daughter to a man who harbored the potential for violence. The attempt did not work, and the clergyman said it was too late for such words. In fact, Byron had tried to wriggle out of the engagement before, but now as the day and hour approached, it would seem his apprehension grew into a near panic. When it seemed the efforts were hopeless, however, Byron apparently resigned himself.

He shared one last evening alone with his friend Hobhouse, stating the obvious in the most morose language: “This is our last night. Tomorrow I shall be Annabella’s.”

The next day would mark the beginning of Byron’s and Annabella’s marital nightmare.

To be continued…

Source:

MacCarthy, Fiona. Byron: Life and Legend. Farar, Straus and Giroux. New York: 2002

Wild Women of the Regency: Jane Elizabeth Harley, Countess of Oxford

This is my last posting for the Wild Women of the Regency series. Today, I’m featuring Jane Elizabeth Harley, Countess of Oxford (1772–1824).

Jane Elizabeth Scott was born in Southhampton, England to Reverend James Scott. As a vicar’s daughter, she was afforded more education than most and was schooled in French Revolutionary ideology.

At twenty-two she was forced into a marriage with a man she did not love, Edward Harley, 5^th Earl of Oxford. There is even some suggestion that she was somehow blackmailed or sold into this marriage at the hands of her own brother (the particulars are sketchy).

 Lady Oxford moved among the radical Whig circles and was a close friend of the Lady Caroline Lamb (disgraced by her obsessive affair with Lord Byron) and Princess of Wales (shamed and turned out by the prince after one a year of marriage).

Notorious for having numerous lovers throughout her marriage, Lady Oxford’s first was a handsome, charming, radical reformist politician and baronet, Francis Burdett. Apparently, this well-known indiscretion occurred when Lady Oxford’s husband left her in the house alone with Burdett for over a week while he traveled for business. She later confessed her affair, and the Earl of Oxford’s response was that her “candour and frank confession were so amiable” that he could do no less than forgive her.

Her subsequent affairs were hardly surprising after such a reaction. In fact, all of her future lovers were in some way connected with Burdett. In 1812, she was Lord Byron’s lover (surprise, surprise) even though she was fourteen years older and already the mother of five children (she had six in all—all with dubious paternities). The family was often referred to by the ton as the “Harleian Miscellany” for the miscellaneous fathers who were responsible for the children’s existence. 

Byron stayed with Lord and Lady Oxford in Hertfordshire after his debacle with Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron described her as a woman “sacrificed, almost before she was a woman, to one whose mind and body were equally contemptible in the scale of creation; and on whom she bestowed a numerous family to which the law gave him the right to be called father.”* She was forty when their affair began, and Byron (always one attracted to older women) described her as “a landscape by Claude Lorraine with a setting sun, her beauties enhanced by the knowledge they were shedding their dying beams.”* She had other lovers even while she was with Byron.

As per usual with Byron, after many months he grew tired of her and did not follow the Harleys in their travels abroad. Jane was disappointed and angry, and it signaled the end of their affair.

Jane Elizabeth Harley was considered to have been intellectually brilliant, highly literate, and well-informed about political and religious issues. But she was uniformly hated by Society because of her sexual behaviors. Members of Society were not above extra-marital behaviors themselves, but her open and prolific activities were too much even for them.

Indeed, Jane Harley seems to have been in search of love that she had not received from either her father or her husband. Had she lived today, she might have been labeled a sex addict, unable to ever have enough lovers as she sought refuge from whatever plagued her mind and heart. Perhaps a loveless marriage and a romanticized and idealistic education coupled with the permissiveness allowed by the nobility contributed to her weaknesses.

I have enjoyed blogging about wild women of the Regency this month, and I hope you have enjoyed reading about them. You may have noticed that most of these ladies have some connection with Lord Byron. In my novel coming out next year, Dangerous to Know—based on the marriage of Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke—I have included several of them. More information about that soon.

In many ways, people have not changed from the 1800s. Everyone still suffers from heartbreak, mental illness, and loneliness.

Do you think people were all that different in the 1800s from now? Did they have it easier? Or was their life harder?  

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*Eisler, Benita. Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame. Knopf. 1999.

By John Hoppner - http://theromanticqueryletter.blogspot.com/2009/11/still-more-ladies-of-regency.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9100548

Wild Women of the Regency: Lady Caroline Lamb

Throughout the month of October, I will be featuring women of the Regency era who were a little … shall we say, nonconventional.

(picture from Wikipedia.com)

By today’s standards, Lady Caroline Lamb would have been labeled a stalker.

When Lord George Gordon Byron was in the throes of fame following the publication of his hit poem, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”, Lady Caroline set her sights upon meeting him. “If he was as ugly as Aesop I must know him.” At the time she had been married for almost ten years to William Lamb (later the 2^nd Viscount of Melbourne and Prime Minister).

Born Caroline Posonby, Lady Caroline was always a little off kilter. Even before she married Lamb, her wild temper tantrums and hysterics were well documented. According to family claims, doctors had been called in to calm her on more than one occasion.

When she met the famous, talented, and enigmatical Lord Byron, her first response was to turn away from him. This spurred his interest (since every other female in London was throwing herself at him and fainting in his presence). Later she wrote him a fan letter, and he visited her and brought her a rose. Byron’s initial impressions of Caroline were that she was “the cleverest most agreeable, absurd, amiable, perplexing, dangerous fascinating little being that lives now or ought to have lived 2000 years ago.”[i]

Byron was intrigued by Caroline’s eccentric nonconformity to the aristocratic society in which she lived. She often dressed in the clothing of a page boy, and in fact, that was how she sneaked out to visit Byron on several occasions. One occasion in particular, she arrived at his rooms in St. James’s Place under the impression that they were going to elope that night. Byron had left her with some sense of this being the case, but once she showed up he either had a change of heart or was convinced by his good friend John Hobhouse that this was a mistake.

Realizing that the elopement was not going to take place, Caroline rushed to grab Byron’s dress sword (one can only assume to threaten stabbing herself) and a struggle ensued between the trio. Amidst worry that the servants would spread rumors and great consternation as to how to remove her from the premises unseen, the men concocted a plan that involved Byron accompanying Caroline a little way down the road (to appease her). Byron would then leap from the carriage and run through Hobhouse’s open door as though he’d meant to go there all along. The plan worked.

But Caroline’s pursuit of him continued. She showed up at parties he attended and threatened to kill herself (and as the stories tell it, she did stab herself but no real harm was done). She wrote him letter upon letter, forcing him to write a scathing, insulting rejection, asking her to cease and desist with all correspondence. By this time, her reputation was ruined. She was diagnosed insane, straitjackets were considered for some of her wilder fits, and her family sent her away to Ireland where she could recover would not have access to him.

Their affair lasted a few months between 1812 and 1813, but even after that, Caroline Lamb maintained a certain level of obsession. She wrote a novel entitled Glenarvon in which the main character, Lord Ruthven, a vampire, was obviously fashioned after Byron. When this novel was published in 1816, its release galvanized her descent. People were shocked and appalled, and Caroline was shunned from all good society.

Much has been written about Lady Caroline over the years. Some stories are legend and hard to confirm, but her obsessive stalking of Byron is well chronicled. As for her writing, Glenarvon received mixed reviews--mostly ones that said the novel was melodramatic--but today it makes for an entertaining read, especially when one considers the inspiration for the main character.

Have you read Glenarvon? If so, what were your thoughts about it?

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[i] Douglass,Paul. Caro: The Lady Caroline Lamb’s Website. San Jose State University.

"Lady Caroline Lamb." Wikipedia.

MacCarthy, Fiona. Byron: Life and Legend. Farar, Straus and Giraux. New York: 2002. 

Bad Boys and the Brain

“Mad, bad, and dangerous to know” is how Lady Caroline Lamb described her object of obsession, Lord Byron, in 1812. In a way, Lord Byron was the originator of the bad boy hysteria. “Byromania” was the word his future wife used to describe the scene of women fainting when he walked into the room, clamoring to be in his presence, and committing stalkerish acts to meet with him. Yet Byron was well known to be a misanthrope and a flagrant womanizer, an abuser of alcohol and laudanum. Did it matter? No. Women—and men as well—loved him. His thoughts on marrying Annabella Milbanke were telling: “I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all.”  

Two hundred years later, people are really not all that different. Women are still overwhelmingly attracted to the dark and dangerous male with the aloof demeanor and the devastatingly intense stare. But WHY?

Suburban Dangers, my YA novel dealing with sex trafficking will be released in May of 2017. In that story, my main character, Katherine, is lured into gang-controlled prostitution by a “bad boy.” My most recently finished Regency novel, Dangerous to Know (working title only) is also actually based on Lord Byron and his relationship with Annabella Milbanke (his future wife), and my two current works-in-progress also deal with bad boy attraction, so this topic interests me at present.

Turns out there’s a psychological and physiological reason why we’re attracted to bad boys at large. Apparently it’s about what happens in your brain when you meet someone mysterious, dark, and unpredictable. The brain sends out pleasure responses—so in a way, we’re rewarded for our illogical desires. Kind of like a drug.

Studies show that women may become attracted to a potential partner when they have to work for them, suffer for them, even. Check out this article in the New York Times about Professor Berns and his experiment on unpredictability. When people were administered orange juice versus water in an unpredictable manner, their brain chemistry was more reactive. When the reward was predictable, not so much. It’s all about that dopamine.

So are we sick or what? Ultimately, I think it comes back to desiring what is withheld or denied us. Bad boys tend to be elusive and not quite obtainable. We never know exactly what they’re thinking or what their next move will be. That’s attractive to our brains, which become so easily bored with the usual and mundane.

How do we get over it? Well, maturity and age helps. In my forties, the bad boy may be somewhat attractive from a safely removed place (like, watching them on TV), but I’ve had enough turmoil in my life. Upheaval and chaos is not what God intended for us. A peaceful relationship is really where it’s at. It’s how we grow in our abilities to compromise and sacrifice and work through relational difficulties. Annabella Milbanke found that out the hard way. Byron may have been attractive in that dark, mysterious, brain-synapses-firing sort of way, but in the end, their marriage lasted a year (and this was no small thing since separation and divorce were nearly unheard of in the Regency era).

Bad boys are considered bad for a reason, and we would do well to remember it. They may have learned pretty words and charming come-ons, but actions always speak louder. As Shakespeare so aptly put it, “Sigh no more ladies, sigh no more, men were deceivers ever; one foot on sea and one on shore, to one thing constant never.”