Judith herself, or so she would proudly declare to Lady Melbourne at a later date, had known from the start that Annabella was interested only in one man. Chaperoning her niece around London during late August (the Milbankes had decamped from the sultry city to savour Richmond’s fresher air), Lady Melbourne swiftly reached the same opinion. Plainly, Annabella adored Byron. Far more surprising was the news from Lord Holland’s home at Cheltenham that Byron not only liked her niece, but that he actually wanted to marry her.
Byron’s declarative letter was written in the early autumn, when Caroline Lamb had been whisked away to Ireland and her lover had settled into Lord Holland’s Gloucestershire retreat to work on The Giaour, the first in a series of immensely successful romantic poems featuring an eastern setting. Lady Melbourne had asked what he meant to do about Caroline. Uneasy in the face of such directness, Byron mumbled that writing friendly letters helped to keep her under control. He then, writing on 13 September, sprang his surprise.
Now my dear Ly M. You are all out as to my real sentiments. I was, am & shall be I fear attached to another . . . one whom I wished to marry . . . had not some occurrances rather discouraged me . . . As I have said so much I may as well say all – the woman I mean is Miss Milbank [sic]. I know nothing of her fortune, & am told that her father is ruin’d . . . I never saw a woman whom I esteemed so much. But that chance is gone and there’s an end.
Now – my dear Ly M. I am completely in your power . . . If through your means, or any means, I can be free, or at least change my fetters, my regard & admiration could not be increased, but my gratitude would.
Lady Melbourne had become Byron’s cherished confidante during the course of his hectic six-month affair with Lady Caroline Lamb. No friend had a better understanding than she of the emotional volatility that was deployed with such lethal effect upon the women Byron loved – or thought he loved. But Lady Melbourne had also become quite attached to her strong-willed little niece during a summer in which Annabella had confided some of her own feelings about Byron. Noting that the suitor appeared both to believe that his cause was hopeless and yet to invite her help, Lady Melbourne answered with care. Love had not been mentioned in Byron’s letter; might she learn what he proposed to offer in its stead?
Directness produced as candid an answer as could have been expected from a man who was notoriously capable of changing his affections within the space of a few lines. Was Byron sure of himself? Frankly: ‘no’. Nevertheless, praising Annabella as ‘a clever woman, an amiable woman & of high blood’, Lord Byron believed that she would make him an excellent wife, one who would always find out the best in him.
As to Love, that is done in a week (provided the Lady has a reasonable share) besides marriage goes on better with esteem & confidence than romance, and she is quite pretty enough to be loved by her husband, without being so glaringly beautiful as to attract too many rivals.
Intent on gathering documentary evidence of the sincerity of his feelings for her niece, Lady Melbourne persisted in her quest. Wriggling on the hook that remained firmly in place, Byron displayed a bewildering variety of impulses (sudden enthusiasm for a black-eyed married lady; a dislike of Lady Milbanke; impatience with the time involved in courtship of such a virtuous girl; an ardent wish to address Lady Melbourne as his aunt). On 28 September, in what seems to have been his final letter on the subject, he began by denying his queried interest in Bessy Rawdon, before enquiring whether Annabella intended to marry George Eden. He was halfway through writing it when a frantic letter from the tenacious Lady Caroline galvanised her hounded lover into flight.
I see nothing but a marriage and a speedy one can save me; if your Niece is attainable I should prefer her . . . I wish somebody would say at once that I wish to propose to her – but I have great doubts of her; it rests with her entirely.
The letter was hardly reassuring: Byron had preceded the above announcement by frivolously announcing that everything depended upon whether Annabella waltzed or not. Nevertheless, Lady Melbourne had already decided upon her course of action. On 29 September, in a letter which crossed with Byron’s own to her, she offered hardheaded advice that tallied with the suitor’s own current line of thought: ‘the result of all this seems to me that ye best thing you can do, is to marry & that in fact you can get out of this Scrape by no other means’. At the beginning of October, she sent news to her niece of Byron’s offer to make her his wife.
Curiously, Byron’s proposal by proxy arrived on Annabella’s breakfast table almost simultaneously with a declaration from one of his friends. William Bankes had been courting Annabella since the spring. Having wished Bankes a brisk farewell on his imminent journey to Granada, Annabella (in her journal entry for 6 October 1812) reveals how coolly she dismissed unwelcome suitors. Bankes had already been deemed ‘odious’ for preventing her from talking with Byron at a dinner party; now, he was dismissed as a pathetic waverer, incapable of defending himself. ‘In short he is a feeble character – a
