Byron, at the time he answered Annabella’s timid request, had just learned of the birth (on 15 April) of Augusta Leigh’s fourth child, christened Elizabeth Medora and always known to her family as Elizabeth or Libby. Conception had taken place in July 1813, the month during which Augusta and Byron had first consummated their love. Never supposing that his half-sister might also still be sleeping with her husband (as was the case), the guilty lover assumed from the start that the child was his.
Incapable of keeping a secret, Byron allowed his pen to betray what his lips were forbidden to utter. The Bride of Abydos (November 1813) approached a public confession of his passion, close enough for Byron to hesitate about sending an early copy of his poem to Annabella, while almost begging Lady Melbourne to connect its narrative to his earlier hints of an incestuous love. (The poem’s original version presented the besotted and garrulous Selim as Zuleika’s brother, rather than as her cousin.)
Lady Melbourne remained, as Annabella had become aware, her suitor’s closest confidante. While Annabella herself was writing wistful letters to her aunt throughout the spring of 1814 about a life of studious isolation, Byron was confessing to the unshockable Lady M that he was embarked upon the most enjoyable love affair of his life. ‘However I will positively reform,’ he told her on 25 April:
– you must however allow – that it is utterly impossible I can ever be half as well liked elsewhere – and I have been all my life trying to make someone love me – & never got the sort that I preferred before. – But positively she & I will grow good – & all that – & so we are now and shall be these three weeks & more too . . .*
Byron did not reserve his shocking tales for Lady Melbourne alone. ‘Frightful suspicions’, noted his friend John Cam Hobhouse after visiting the Drury Lane Theatre with Byron on 19 May. Horrors ‘not to be conceived’ were revealed on 24 June to a suddenly prudish Caroline Lamb. Lady Melbourne, however, was not only his confidante but his mentor. In between swaggering about his dreadful wickedness, Byron sought her views about the wisdom of his going to Seaham. By 24 April, the date on which Annabella disclosed that she had herself informed Aunt Melbourne of his proposed visit (of which ‘I think she will be very glad to learn’), Lady Melbourne had thrown icy water upon the project. ‘Credo di No!’ Byron scrawled to the side of Annabella’s words, before underlining his negation. Miss Milbanke’s letter went unanswered.
Hopeful and oblivious, Annabella sailed on towards her destiny. On 29 April, she reminded Byron that her parents still awaited confirmation of his visit. No confirmation arrived.
On 30 April, however, while pleading for Augusta (‘not aware of her own peril – till it was too late’) to Lady Melbourne, Byron began to wonder if marriage to a quietly respectable woman like Annabella might encourage him ‘to sever all other pursuits’. Lady Melbourne, advising him on that same day, had independently reached the same conclusion, but from a more cynical motive. Such a respectable young woman could provide the perfect camouflage for the adulterous siblings, and dear Annabella was far too naive to be suspicious of what was going on: ‘she will understandably make a friend (a female one) of any person you may point out – & all friends is very much to be wished . . .’
Up at Seaham, time crawled. Temporarily deprived of her favourite confidante – Mary Montgomery had gone abroad for her health – Annabella had nobody with whom to share the anxiety she felt about her dismayingly reticent correspondent. She wrote to praise Byron’s ‘Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte’. (In Seaham village, a bonfire had been lit to celebrate the emperor’s abdication.) Its author did not respond. Lady Melbourne, writing to Miss Milbanke on 25 May as if Byron was a perfect stranger to her niece, airily declared that Annabella was certain to enjoy the poet’s company when he visited her parents’ northern home. Byron himself said nothing at all.
On 19 June, while Judith Milbanke went to Kirkby Mallory to visit her heartbroken brother – comforting him through Lady Wentworth’s final days – Annabella plucked up the courage to make one final appeal. ‘Pray write to me,’ she pleaded, pathetically adding that she knew Lord Byron would never mean to hurt her. ‘Prim and pretty as usual’ comprised Byron’s tart comment to her aunt. Three days later, writing to Annabella on 24 June, he explained that he was still trying to fix a date for his visit. His sign-off was a little warmer than before: ‘ever yrs most sincerely’ had progressed into ‘very affectly & truly yrs’. From this, Annabella could take her crumb of comfort.
Byron wrote nothing more to Annabella until 1 August. Between times, he had been asking Augusta to scout out his chances for marrying her pretty young friend, Lady Charlotte Leveson-Gower. By August, he, Augusta, her children, Byron’s college friend Francis Hodgson and his naval cousin George Byron were all off enjoying a beachside summer holiday at Hastings. Colonel Leigh, as usual, was absent from the party.
Later, after they became close friends, Captain Byron would tell Annabella that Augusta made use of the Hastings summer vacation to urge her brother to press for a marriage to Miss Milbanke. If she did so, it was without success. Annabella had written to Byron at the end of July to hint once more at her availability, while entreating a fixed date for his long-promised visit to Seaham. Responding from Hastings, Byron wilfully misunderstood her. Of course, he knew that she remained committed to another man, he wrote. No need, then, for her to worry that he – blessed with an excellent memory of that unfortunate fact – would intrude upon their happy trysts. Trapped,
