Annabella’s mission began with a visit to Matthew Baillie, an eminent London doctor (Baillie’s uncle was the great Scottish surgeon John Hunter) and brother to Annabella’s revered older friends, Joanna and Agnes. Dr Baillie may have imagined that his visitor had come to seek his advice; his role, as he rapidly discovered, was to act as audience and professional guarantor of a theory that had already been formed.
Annabella wrote up her account of the interview on that same day, 8 January 1816. The impression deliberately conveyed was that Baillie – not she – had presented the case for Byron as a madman. ‘The principal insane ideas are – that he must be wicked – is foredoomed to evil – and compelled by some irresistible power to follow this destiny, doing violence all the time to his feelings.’
In fact, after listening carefully, Baillie had refused to become involved, suggesting that Lady Byron would do better to obtain written evidence from Francis Le Mann, who had treated the ‘patient’ with calomel for his chronic irritability (ascribed to a ‘torpid’ liver). But here, Annabella’s quest once again had fallen short of her hopes. Le Mann would not commit his thoughts on insanity to paper, preferring to fob Lady Byron off with an article about hydrocephalus, a condition in which excess fluid puts pressure on the brain. Passages that seemed relevant to Byron’s case were highlighted. Le Mann did, however, promise to remain watchful and to send a report of his more fully considered view.
On 12 January, Annabella took a step too far. Armed with Le Mann’s marked-up paper, she went to the office of John Hanson, Byron’s lawyer, to present her case. That hasty action betrayed poor judgement. Although it had not yet been proved that Lord Portsmouth was insane at the time of his marriage to Miss Hanson, the last thing Byron’s lawyer needed was to have his chief witness declared a lunatic. Hanson declared that he saw nothing mad at all in Lord Byron’s behaviour. Shortly after Annabella left his house, the alarmed lawyer reported her visit to her husband.
The following day, an enraged Byron spoke to Annabella in a manner that caused her real terror. According to her later statements, this was the only occasion upon which Lady Byron feared for her life.
The final step was probably taken on 14 January. Entering her husband’s dressing room, Annabella searched it for evidence to support her theory of Byron’s madness. (Later, she fiercely denied having picked the locks of her husband’s letter trunks in order to carry off a marked-up copy of de Sade’s notorious Justine. If she did so, she chose not to preserve such a controversial book.)
Armed with Dr Le Mann’s instructions upon how best to proceed with the salvation of a husband whom she still adored, Annabella left 13 Piccadilly Terrace in the cold dawn of 15 January 1816. Some kind of parting ceremony took place on the previous evening. Annabella had – or so her romantic memory later recalled – entered the drawing room in which Byron stood talking to Augusta by the fireplace. Asked by him (with a mocking nod to Macbeth’s three witches) when she thought the three of them might next meet, Annabella responded with the pious wish that it might be in heaven, before fleeing the room – this motif was a regular feature of her recollections – in order to conceal her tears.
Leaving at last, Annabella paused – or so she remembered the scene – outside her sleeping husband’s door. Looking down at his mastiff’s empty mat, she felt an urge to curl up on it and stay. Instead, Lady Byron hurried downstairs and out to the carriage where Nurse Grimes and baby Ada awaited her, together with her maid, the newly married Susan Fletcher, and a young footman. Nobody wished her farewell. Nobody knew of her departure.
Halting for a night at Woburn along the road to her parents’ new Leicestershire home, Annabella wrote two letters. The first, despatched to Mrs Clermont, explained that she intended to comply with the advice given by Augusta Leigh (whom Mrs Clermont then held in high regard) and Dr Le Mann. She would immediately write to Byron with affection and without reproach. Her plan was to lull any suspicion, preparing the way for a country reunion with the troubled and violent man whom she hoped to nurse back to his senses.
Annabella’s letter from Woburn was the first of two by her that would later contribute more than anything else to the view that Byron’s young wife was either a liar or a hypocrite. Both letters are given here in full, just as Byron himself first saw them.
Woburn, January 15 1816
Dearest B –
The Child is quite well, and the best of Travellers, and quite well. I hope you are good, and remember my medical prayers & injunctions. Don’t give yourself up to the abominable trade of versifying – nor to brandy – nor to anything nor any body that is not lawful & right.
Though I disobey in writing to you, let me hear of your obedience to Kirkby.
Ada’s love with mine – Pip
The second letter was seemingly written on the following day, shortly after Annabella had settled into her parents’ home.
Kirkby Mallory, January 16 1816
Dearest Duck
We got here quite well last night, and were ushered into the kitchen instead of drawing-room, by a mistake that might have been agreeable enough to hungry people. Of this and other incidents Dad wants to write you a jocose account, & both he & Mam long to have the family party completed. Such a W.C. and such a sitting-room or sulking-room all to yourself. If I were not always looking about for B. I should be a great deal better already for country air. Miss finds her provisions increased, & fattens thereon. It is
