Augusta Leigh’s continuing fears for the physical safety of her sister-in-law would form one of the sturdiest pillars in Annabella’s legal case for a marital separation. Two days after the birth of Augusta Ada (named in honour of her chosen godmother), Mrs Leigh confided in Francis Hodgson, the only male friend of Byron’s with whom she had established a close personal friendship. She wanted to meet him urgently, and in private. No direct mention of this request must be made in Hodgson’s response, since Byron was sure to recognise his friend’s handwriting and enquire what was going on. As a future clergyman – and as a man who had observed the siblings’ intimacy during their 1814 summer holiday at Hastings – Hodgson feared the nature of Augusta’s confidences and declined to comply. Instead, acting with Annabella’s approval, Augusta turned to her own aunt.
Miss Sophia Byron was an imperturbable old lady of forthright views. (She often scolded a dieting Byron about his bouts of starvation.) The advice received from this familial quarter was unequivocal. Her nephew’s symptoms suggested insanity, a trait with which Miss Byron had gained first-hand experience from observing the mental instability of her brother, aptly nicknamed ‘Mad Jack’. The best thing Annabella could do, according to this authoritative source, was to have her husband closely observed and then take medical counsel upon the wisest course of action.
Aunt Sophia’s brisk advice stiffened Annabella’s resolve. Derangement required treatment: who better to assist in Lord Byron’s restoration to sanity than a devoted wife? It was at this point that Annabella first formulated a plan by which the patient might be temporarily confined within her parents’ secluded country home and nursed back to health by herself.
Christmas passed unmarked at Piccadilly Terrace. At some stage before the end of December, Annabella wrote a cautious letter to her parents, preparing them for the possibility of a family visit of an unspecified duration. Judith, having consulted Augusta in advance, sent a friendly invitation to her son-in-law, assuring Byron of all the space, peace and freedom that he could possibly wish for either at Seaham, or at Kirkby Mallory. All she asked in return was that ‘a poor Grand-mama’ might be granted the pleasure of wee Augusta’s company. (The Noel family’s use of the name ‘Ada’ emerged only after the Byrons’ separation.) Tactful for once, Judith forbore to mention that the imminent difficulty of renewing an unpaid annual lease on 13 Piccadilly Terrace might make such an offer particularly welcome.
On 3 January 1816, Byron paid one of his rare daytime visits to the room in which Annabella was breastfeeding their daughter. It was a spectacle that gave him no pleasure. (One of Byron’s rare early allusions to Ada, in a letter sent two days later to Tom Moore, noted that the infant ‘squalls and sucks incessantly’.) Still, the visit began agreeably. In March 1816, Annabella stated that Mrs Grimes, the attending nurse, ‘would probably say that she has seen Lord B appear personally fond of me during the few minutes she has seen us together’.
Swiftly, the visitor’s mood changed. It was during this same visit that Byron apparently intimated that he meant ‘to do every thing wicked’ [Annabella’s emphasis] and to begin by resuming his affair with Miss Boyce. He spoke of bringing his mistress to live in the house. And he said more, as if he dreaded what she herself might reveal.
Amongst other unkind things said to me on Jan 3rd was this declaration ‘A woman has no right to complain if her husband does not beat or confine her – and you will remember I have neither beaten nor confined you. I have never done an Act that would bring me under the Law – at least on this side of the Water.’
Byron’s reported declaration was one which would prompt widespread and prurient speculation – it still does – about just what that mysterious act might have been been. Did Byron mean that he had never committed sodomy (a criminal offence in England) in his own country? Or did he mean that he had committed incest (which was a criminal offence only abroad)? How well did Byron himself know the law? And what did Annabella, the woman her husband paid sincere tribute to as ‘Truth herself’, understand by the words that she so carefully set down? These words were not idly recalled. Strikingly, they were added to Annabella’s original statement only after she had decided that for her there could be no going back.
The gravity of Byron’s outburst is underlined by the fact that he avoided his wife for the following three days. On 6 January, however, Augusta was sent upstairs by her brother with a curt note requesting Lady Byron to prepare herself for a visit to her parents’ home at the earliest possible date. The reasons Byron gave were rational enough: bailiffs were closing in on him; the lease was almost up; the time had come to begin dismissing the household.
Byron’s note mentioned that the child and her nurse would ‘of course’ accompany his wife on her journey. He proposed that they should all travel in his personal (and at that time, his only) carriage. There is no indication that Byron was contemplating a permanent break when he dashed off his brusque note. This, however, was the interpretation that Annabella placed upon his letter – or so Mrs Clermont recalled: ‘She [Annabella] cryed & said although I expected it I cannot help feeling this – to think that I have lived to be hated by my husband.’ On the following day, 7 January, Annabella confirmed that she was prepared to leave, as instructed, on the earliest day ‘that circumstances will admit’.
‘Circumstances’ might suggest that Annabella desired time to recover from the shock of childbirth. She meant no such thing.
