Authors: Dorothy Hoobler
O
ddly enough, Byron’s affair with Caroline Lamb brought him his closest female confidante: the mother of Caroline’s husband,
Lady Melbourne. Lady Melbourne had never liked her daughter-in-law. Known as “the Spider” for her deviousness, she provided
Byron an entrée into the highest ranks of society. In 1812, she was over sixty but still attractive with beautiful eyes and
a sharp mind, a grande dame of cynical charms. She kept her own counsel and enjoyed being the intimate of powerful men. “No
man is safe with another’s secrets, no woman with her own,” she once remarked. At nineteen, she had married a man for whom
she had little feeling and during their marriage she had a string of affairs, including one with the prince regent. It was
commonly believed that all six of her children were illegitimate.
Lady Melbourne felt that Byron should be married, and she knew a suitable woman: her niece, Annabella Milbanke. Annabella
was a pretty, level-headed, clever, but naive girl, the only child of doting parents. Well educated (as Caroline had not been),
Annabella had a talent for mathematics, having taught herself geometry by reading Euclid. The only problem was that Byron
did not like “blues”—short for bluestockings—as he called educated women. “I should like her more if she were less perfect,”
Byron wrote. Annabella first saw Byron at Lady Melbourne’s house, but did not speak to him. She noted to her mother that “all
the women were absurdly courting him and trying to deserve the lash of his Satire. I thought
inoffensiveness
was the most secure conduct, as I am not desirous of a place in his lays [songs] . . . I made no offering at the shrine of
Childe Harold, though I shall not refuse the acquaintance if it comes my way.”
Women who did not at once succumb to Byron’s charms were often irresistible to him, and he consciously tried to present the
“good angel” side of his personality to Annabella at their next meeting. When they did begin to converse, she confronted him
on equal terms and did not play the role of adoring fan. She talked of goodness and genius, and whether genius made one happy;
she in fact ventured to suggest that he was
not
happy. Seldom had anyone spoken to Byron in this vein, and he found her sincerity attractive. Though Byron did not love her,
he was touched by her character and wanted to settle down. In October 1812, he proposed, but she rejected him. When he saw
her again the following spring, he blushed furiously. This brought forth a long letter from Annabella, the start of a more
conventional courtship correspondence.
But another, deeper relationship was to destroy the possibility of Byron’s ever leading a “normal” life with Annabella. After
the death of his mother, Byron drew closer to his half-sister, Augusta. Now his only living relative, Augusta was married
to her cousin Captain George Leigh, who spent most of his time gambling and drinking. Four years older than Byron, Augusta,
with her chestnut hair and large eyes, was said to resemble a female version of him. Separated as children, they became closer
as they grew older, and Byron formed a deep attachment for her. In June of 1813, she arrived in London to ask him for help
because her husband’s gambling debts had put her home in danger of being seized by bailiffs.
Byron himself was in financial difficulty, and had been forced to put Newstead Abbey up for sale, Nonetheless, he was glad
to see Augusta and included her in his social rounds. He escorted her to a dinner given by Sir Humphry Davy’s wife in honor
of the famous French intellectual Madame de Staël. Byron was pleased to see Augusta blossom socially, but increasingly he
began to feel an unbrotherly desire for her. Augusta was unorthodox as well. She said of herself, “Of what consequence was
one’s behaviour, provided that it made nobody else unhappy?” Like Byron she was amoral. They shared the same wild family heritage;
to him the blood tie only made her more attractive. The two of them seemed to understand each other effortlessly, and with
her he could be as free as a child again, for he trusted her completely. By August 1813, they were deeply involved and Byron
planned to take her to Sicily where they could live together.
Byron told Lady Melbourne of his plans to elope, shocking even her. Eventually Augusta reconsidered, for she had a child,
and they gave up the idea of running off. Nevertheless, Byron told Lady Melbourne that he was more in love with Augusta than
ever. She warned him against his desires, predicting that the relationship would raise a scandal that would destroy him.
Byron explored his incestuous feelings in
The Bride of Abydos,
1,200 lines of poetry that he claimed to have written in four nights. Though set in Turkey, it told of a love between cousins
who had been raised together as brother and sister. (In his original draft, the lovers had actually been brother and sister.)
Byron portrays Zuleika’s passionate love for her cousin Selim in words that shocked his readers.
Thy cheek, thine eyes, thy lips to kiss,
Like this—and this—no more than this,
For, Allah! sure thy lips are flame,
What fever in thy veins is flushing?
My own have nearly caught the same,
At least I feel my cheek, too, blushing.
In the winter of January 1814, Byron and Augusta traveled together to Newstead Abbey, spending three weeks there alone. It
was the harshest winter in a generation and they were snowbound, sharing the cold stone rooms with only the ghosts of mad
and wicked Byrons of the past. They celebrated Byron’s twenty-sixth birthday together, “a very pretty age if it would always
last,” he wrote. He confided in a letter to Lady Melbourne: “I am much afraid that that perverse passion was my deepest after
all.”
Despite his passion for Augusta, Byron still sporadically wrote to Annabella. After she had turned down his proposal, Annabella
had had a change of heart. She started to believe that her love could change the dark side of Byron. He seems to have tried
to give Annabella warnings about his true nature. “The great object of life is sensation,” he wrote, “to feel that we exist,
even though in pain. It is the ‘craving void’ which drives us to Gaming, to Battle, to Travel—to intemperate but keenly felt
pursuits of every description whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment.” But while
she was said to be level-headed, Annabella was as susceptible as anyone to the blindness caused by love.
Despite inner qualms, Byron proposed a second time in September 1814. Perhaps he felt it was the only way to avoid the doom
of his relationship with Augusta. This time Annabella accepted.
They were married on January 2, 1815, in a small ceremony at the home of the bride’s parents at Durham in the north of England.
Byron had arrived only the day before, after keeping his bride and her relatives waiting for two weeks, during which time
he found excuses to delay. John Cam Hobhouse, the best man, recalled that after he saw the newlyweds off in a coach, “I felt
as if I had buried a friend.” Byron wrote to Lady Melbourne: “We were married yesterday . . . so there’s an end of that matter
and the beginning of many others . . . the kneeling was rather tedious—and the cushions hard—but upon the whole it did vastly
well.” These words are hardly those of a smitten man.
Byron and his bride spent their honeymoon in the Milbankes’ Yorkshire estate of Halnaby, a dark and dreary place. The setting
matched Byron’s lack of romantic feelings. “[H]ad Lady B on the sofa before dinner,” was the inelegant way that he described
his wedding night. Returning from the honeymoon, he took his bride to visit Augusta. The thinly veiled joking between the
half-siblings led Annabella to suspect what their real relationship was. Byron wrote to his friend Thomas Moore that “the
treaclemoon is over.”
The relationship went from bad to worse. Byron quarreled with Annabella’s parents and refused to attend her birthday party.
He also made clear his disappointment that Annabella did not seem to have as much money as he had hoped. Annabella, on her
part, thought her husband’s sometimes violent behavior was a sign of insanity. Worst of all, Augusta spent a great deal of
time in their flat in London, ostensibly to assist now that Annabella was pregnant. Annabella studied medical journals to
try to understand the man she had married, for she deeply wanted to help. But nothing could save their marriage, for Byron
and Augusta were unable to keep their secret while living in such close proximity. Byron, now drinking heavily, apparently
also confessed his homosexual escapades to Annabella.
In January 1816, a month after giving birth to Byron’s daughter, significantly named Augusta Ada, Annabella left him and returned
to her parents’ house. (The daughter, always called Ada by her mother’s family, would grow up to be a mathematics prodigy
who helped develop an early form of the computer; she also lost a fortune gambling on horses, convinced she could devise a
foolproof system of betting.) Byron professed to be shocked when his wife left him, even though he had been openly hostile
to her for some time. Byron wrote to his half-sister: “She—or rather—the separation—has broken my heart—I feel as if an Elephant
has trodden on it—I am convinced I shall never get over it—but I try.” He added, “I breathe lead.”
Despite the chaos in his personal life, he still managed to write. In 1815 he published
Hebrew Melodies,
which contains what are perhaps his most famous lines: “She walks in beauty . . .”
The Bride of Abydos
was snapped up by the reading public because no one could miss the parallel between its tale of the doomed love between two
cousins and the gossip about Byron and his sister that was starting to make the rounds. Annabella never publicly gave her
reasons for leaving Byron. Her father had no such scruples, and he spread the news of the young lord’s scandalous relationship
with his half-sister. Byron, who had been the toast of the town only a little while before, was now universally reviled. He
appeared at a reception given by Lady Jersey—astonishingly, bringing Augusta along as his companion—where most of the guests
turned their backs on him. (Not all his sex appeal had evaporated, however; one former admirer stepped forward to tell him,
“You had better have married
me
.”) Socially, Byron became virtually a pariah. Now just a curiosity, when he went out in public, people followed him with
telescopes and opera glasses. His debts were piling up as well. Byron agreed to a legal separation from Annabella and decided
to leave England.
T
his, then, was the man to whom Claire Clairmont, seventeen and inexperienced, wrote a letter asking him to accept her love.
Claire, having only recently returned to London from her “exile,” wanted to make a conquest that could surpass Mary’s. In
Claire’s eyes, there could be no bigger catch than Byron. So it was that she sent him this appeal:
An utter stranger takes the liberty of addressing you. It is earnestly requested that for one moment you pardon the intrusion,
& laying aside every remembrance of who & what you are, listen with a friendly ear. . . . It may seem a strange assertion,
but it is not the less true that I place my happiness in your hands. . . .
If you feel . . . tempted to read no more, or to cast with levity into the fire, what has been written by me with so much
fearful inquietude, check your hand: my folly may be great, but the Creator ought not to destroy his Creature. If you shall
condescend to answer the following question you will at least be rewarded by the gratitude I shall feel.
If a woman, whose reputation has yet remained unstained, if without either guardian or husband to control she should throw
herself upon your mercy, if with a beating heart she should confess the love she has borne you many years, if she should secure
to you secrisy [
sic
] & safety, if she should return your kindness with fond affection & unbounded devotion could you betray her, or would you
be silent as the grave?
The message was signed with a false name, though Claire soon revealed her true one.
Byron did not respond. He received many such requests from young women, though few as determined as Claire. She wrote him
several more such letters, including one that informed him, “I have called twice on you but your Servants declare you to be
out of town.” She claimed to need his advice: “I am now wavering between the adoption of a literary life or of a theatrical
career.” She tried to impress him by quoting Dante in the original Italian, “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate” [abandon
all hope, ye who enter here],” and commenting, “I think it is a most admirable description of marriage.”
Only the letters she wrote him still exist, but it is evident from them that at some point he began to write her back. Why
he did so is unclear. Her sheer persistence may have impressed him—she says he called her “a little fiend” (a name that he
also used for Caroline Lamb). In one letter, Claire sent him some of Shelley’s poems, her way of letting Byron know that she
was Shelley’s companion. Claire asked Byron to give Shelley advice: “If you think ill of his compositions I hope you will
speak—he may improve by your remarks.” As it happened, Shelley himself had earlier sent Byron a copy of
Queen Mab,
and Byron had been impressed.
The Shelley reference may have been Claire’s trump card, for Byron had heard of Shelley’s running away with “the daughters
of Godwin,” and Byron too was known as an admirer of Godwin. At any rate, he agreed to meet Claire, not at his home, but at
a room at the Drury Lane Theatre, where he was a “literary advisor.” Dante’s warning should have been on her mind, because
she was entering the world of the man whose charm and beauty made him, as mothers warned their daughters, “the most dangerous
man in Europe.”
Claire used the meeting to expand the relationship. Now she sent him requests to come to his house. Byron apparently expressed
some interest in meeting Mary, and Claire responded, “I will bring her to you whenever you shall appoint.” In a later letter,
however, she started to set down conditions: “Will you be so good as to prepare your servants for the visit, for she [Mary]
is accustomed to be surrounded by her own circle who treat her with the greatest politeness.” The meeting went well, and Claire
wrote to Byron afterward, slipping in a request that indicates she knew of his plans to leave England: “Mary is delighted
with you as I knew she would be; she entreats me in private to obtain your address abroad that we may, if possible, have again
the pleasure of seeing you. She perpetually exclaims, ‘How mild he is! how gentle! So different from what I expected.’”