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CHAPTER 11.
AN EXPERIMENT.
1814—1816.
His manner of life during the last two years had provided him with some distraction. Excitement and gaiety had proved to be in some degree an antidote to those haunting memories from which he had sought escape, but he came to realise that he was paying too high a price for relief. And so, while he was still in the whirl of his reckless life, he conceived the idea of marriage as a possible means of redemption. “A wife would be my salvation,” he wrote. Others thought so, too. Lady Melbourne wrote to him and urged him to consider seriously the question of matrimony. He replied that he believed that to marry would be his wisest step, but he candidly admitted that he had no heart to spare. His heart was elsewhere. Try as he might he could not withdraw it and give it to another. But if he could not offer love, he could offer companionship, and there was no reason why he and the lady who might consent to marry him should not be “a very comfortable couple!” Being convinced that marriage was the only “way out,” he set himself the task of making a choice. There were three whom he had under consideration—Lady Catherine Annesley, the younger sister of Lady Frances Webster—Lady Adelaide Forbes, who was Augusta’s friend, and whose claim she pressed—and Lady Charlotte Leveson-Gower. But these were all eventually turned down in favour of Anne Isabella, or Annabella as she was called, the only child of Sir Ralph and Lady Milbanke. She was an heiress, a young lady of great ability, and of marked strength of character; in fact, a most excellent woman in every way, but one more hopelessly unsuitable as a wife for Byron it would have been impossible to find.
They had already met at Melbourne House, and there is no doubt that Lady Melbourne had for a long time been planning a match between the two. Now that Byron was in a mind to marry, she pressed the claims of her niece all the stronger.
At last Byron determined to make a proposal. Early in August, 1814, he wrote to Miss Milbanke: —
The whole letter was couched in the most modest terms.
Her reply annoyed him intensely. It was to the effect that she wondered if he were really “the person she ought to select as her guide, her support, her example: on earth, with a view to immortality.”
He determined to look elsewhere for a wife. Augusta was asked to find out if her friend, Lady Charlotte Leveson-Gower, would favourably consider a proposal of marriage. When her parents replied in the negative, his thoughts turned again to Annabella. On September 9, he wrote another letter to her .... “are the objections to which you allude insuperable? or is there any line or change of conduct which could possibly remove them?” Alas for them both! she did not think the objections insuperable. “If I can make you happy,” she replied, “I have no other consideration. I will trust you for all I should look up to—all I can love.”
Relatives and friends had to be informed of their betrothal. Byron communicated the news to Moore, Hobhouse, and Scrope Davies. Annabella to her father, mother and aunt. In one of her letters she wrote: “It is not in the great world that Lord Byron’s true character must be sought; but ask of those nearest to him—of the unhappy whom he has consoled, of the poor whom he has blessed, of the dependents to whom he is the best of masters. For his despondency, I fear I am but too answerable for the last two years.” It was pathetic— her ignorance of the real cause of his despondency. If only she had known that his heart was not hers but another’s!
Although he could not give her his love, he was quite sincere in his desire to make her happy in so far as marriage without love could be happy. He certainly did not marry her for money, for by the marriage settlements he was only to have a thousand pounds a year, out of which he was to make Annabella an annual allowance of three hundred pounds. On his part he settled on her a capital sum of sixty thousand pounds, secured on the Newstead estate.
The wedding was to take place at Seaham, and January 2, 1815, was the date fixed for the ceremony. Byron had asked Hobhouse to be his best man, and on December 26, 1814, the two set out from London on their journey north. Byron contrived to spend Christmas Day with his sister Augusta at Six Mile Bottom. On the testimony of Hobhouse, his companion was in no hurry to reach Seaham. He took four days over a journey which might have been completed in two.
When Byron awoke on January 2, the sight of his wedding clothes laid out by his valet, caused him much misgiving. After breakfast, he went for a stroll in the garden, and waited until he was summoned. The drawing room of Seaham House had been made ready for the ceremony, which was to be taken by the Rev. Thomas Noel, Rector of Kirkby Mallory. When the hour of the service arrived, he entered the room and took his place by the side of his bride. The service began, but he seemed lost to all that was taking place; his thoughts were iar away. He was thinking of Mary Chaworth, of the room at Annesley Hall where he had spent so many happy hours as she played and sang to him, and of the long terrace where they had so often walked together arm in arm.
He did not come to himself until he was called upon to speak. The service ended, and Byron awoke, as out of a dream, to the realisation that he was married.
When they left the house on the journey to Halnaby, where they were to spend their honeymoon, Hobhouse remarked that he felt as if he had buried a friend.
The accounts which we have of the drive and of their stay at Halnaby contain so many discrepancies that it is impossible to attach very much importance to them. A great many of the strange and seemingly cruel remarks, which Byron is stated to have made, were probably only said playfully. Annabella herself admitted that he laughed over his remarks when he saw that she appeared to be hurt. None the less, the honeymoon could not be described as a happy one, and no doubt both bride and bridegroom were very much relieved when it came to an end.
From Halnaby they returned to Seaham, where they stayed six weeks. Byron, in a letter to Moore, makes reference to this visit to his parents-in-law: “I am in such a state of sameness and stagnation and so totally occupied in consuming the fruits—and yawning—and trying to read old annual registers and the daily papers— and gathering shells on the shore—and watching the growth of stunted gooseberry bushes in the garden—that I have not the time nor sense to say more. Swift says, no wise man ever married, but, for a fool, I think it the most ambrosial of all future states. I still think one ought to marry upon lease; but am very sure that I should renew mine at the expiration, though the next term were for nine hundred and ninety nine years.”
After their stay at Seaham, they paid a short visit to Augusta at Six Mile Bottom on their way to London.
At first things were not too bad at 13, Piccadilly Terrace, which was their home during the short time that they were together. Annabella helped Byron in the copying out of his poems. The Seige of Corinth and Parisina were both sent to Murray in her handwriting. Augusta is assured that all will turn out very happily. She believes that Annabella is as near perfection as possible, and that Byron is properly sensible to her value. There is nothing in Byron’s correspondence of this time to lead us to anticipate a tragedy. Whenever he mentions his wife, he always refers to her with affection and solicitude. In a letter to Moore just before Annabella’s confinement, his expression of anxiety is perfectly natural.
Augusta Ada was bom on December 10, 1815. He announces her birth with pride, and expresses satisfaction that mother and child were doing well.
We can only conjecture what was responsible for the domestic upheaval which so shortly followed.
Incompatability of temperament undoubtedly lay at the root of it. They irritated one another. They got on one another’s nerves. From the very first it must have been obvious that sooner or later a separation would inevitably follow. After the first few months spent in Piccadilly Terrace, life for them both was one of steadily increasing misery.
Circumstances helped to bring things to a crisis. Money troubles were very much in evidence, and in nine months there were no fewer than nine executions in the house. A bailiff slept under their roof, and his presence must have been an annoyance to them both. Byron laid all his misfortunes at the door of his wife, and she laid all the blame on him, whilst she displayed an air of virtue which was offensive and which irritated him beyond measure. Moreover, she made no secret of the fact that she resented his connection with the management of the Drury Lane Theatre. In society gossip, his name was connected with that of an actress who at the time was coming to the fore, and Annabella showed her displeasure. Byron had evidence by which he might have easily refuted these idle stories, but he refused to use it. “I would not stir a step out of my way to prevent them from indulging their favourite theme; slander will find its own level.”
It was at this time that Lady Byron met Mrs. Musters. She was not at all favourably impressed, and in a letter to Augusta said that she never had seen such a wicked-looking cat! If she communicated this impression to Byron—and it is more than likely that she did— she must in his eyes have committed an unpardonable sin.
Relations between husband and wife were becoming more and more strained. Byron, sick, unhappy and haunted by early memories, took to laudanum-drinking to ease his sufferings, and no doubt this was largely responsible for strong doubts being entertained of his sanity.
Annabella turned to Augusta in her anxiety, and invited her to come again to Piccadilly Terrace and stay until after her confinement. When she arrived she was shocked by the change in her half-brother. Byron seemed, hardly responsible for his words and actions. He was cruelly inconsiderate both to her and to Annabella.
Byron conceived the idea that Annabella was using her governess, Miss Clermont, to spy upon him, and his suspicions were confirmed by his finding his desk broken open and his letters disturbed.
All these circumstances combined to hasten the separation. On January 6, 1816, he wrote a note to Annabella:
To this note Byron received the following reply: “I shall obey your wishes, and fix the earliest day that circumstances will admit of leaving London.”
On January 15, after a very cold good-bye on the part of Byron, on the previous evening, Annabella and Augusta Ada left London, and Byron never saw them again.