‘I am in boundless respect of her,’ Lushington would write years later of his favourite client: ‘. . . of her heart, intellect and governed mind.’ Back in 1816, however, Lushington chafed against the way in which, while determined to achieve a dignified separation from her husband while retaining custody of her daughter, Annabella continued to defend her adversaries. She had no wish to slander Byron. She actively sought to protect Augusta Leigh from being engulfed by a scandal that was reaching uncontainable proportions.
Shortly after visiting Lushington, Annabella sent a confidential letter to Mrs Leigh’s aunt, Sophia Byron. On 29 February, that spirited sexagenarian confirmed that she herself had attempted to persuade Augusta to leave Byron’s house: ‘Le Sposo [Colonel Leigh] and her friends have been equally anxious for it,’ Sophia wrote. There was no need to spell out the reason why. On 26 February, Annabella reassured Augusta’s friend, Mrs Villiers, that she had never personally sanctioned the ugly tales that were beginning to taint the name of Mrs Leigh. On 5 March, Annabella held a private interview with Augusta. It was the first time the two women had met since Lady Byron’s departure on 15 January from Piccadilly Terrace.
The meeting had been requested by Lord Byron and it is unclear what Annabella expected to achieve by it. Possibly, she hoped to plead against Byron’s reported plan to abduct her baby daughter and place the little girl under Aunt Augusta’s guardianship. (Frank Doyle warned Lady Noel on 4 March to defend the child ‘with every possible vigilance’ against ‘a coup de main’.) Possibly, Annabella hoped Augusta might persuade Byron to sign the preliminary deed of separation which had been delivered to Piccadilly Terrace on 2 March. But Augusta, while horrified by Annabella’s gaunt appearance (‘positively reduced to a skeleton – pale as ashes’, she lamented to Francis Hodgson on the day of the meeting), was pursuing her own agenda. Once more, while delivering a letter in which her brother begged Annabella to accept his regret for ‘unknown faults’ and to respect her high position as his wife (‘Oh – Bell – to see you thus stifling and destroying all feeling, all affections – all duties’), Augusta entreated Annabella to come back. Byron, she averred, remained bewildered by his wife’s protracted absence. What unforgivable injuries had he committed? What were these awful charges that Bell refused to name? Why would she not return home and grant her remorseful husband a second chance?
A return was not on the cards. Following the meeting with Augusta, Annabella instantly wrote to tell Byron that she had no intention of rejoining him. Contrary to his fixed belief that her parents, abetted by Mrs Clermont, were controlling her actions, the decision to leave him was hers and hers alone: ‘for the consequences I alone am responsible’. Byron was unconvinced. ‘Her nearest relatives are a ***** [sic],’ he angrily informed an inquisitive Thomas Moore on 8 March. Nevertheless, while eager to remove his child ‘from the contagion of its grandmother’s society’, Byron had nothing but good to say to Moore about his wife. None could be more agreeable. Never once in their time together had Annabella given him the least cause for reproach.
It is possible that Byron’s affectionate words were fuelled by a sincere relief. On the evening of 9 March, a rejoicing Augusta told Francis Hodgson that ‘L[ad]y Byron has given a written contradiction of the 2 principal and most horrible reports into Mr Wilmot’s hands.’ Robert Wilmot – a country cousin of Byron’s who sympathised with Annabella’s decision to leave him – had delivered this document to her husband. Byron promptly agreed to the separation.
Drawn up by Lushington and revised by Annabella, the document of retraction had not said quite what Augusta supposed. The ‘horrible reports’ (incest and sodomy) had neither been contradicted nor denied. A promise had, however, been made that these particular accusations would not be included in Lady Byron’s formal charges if matters should ever come to court.*
On 11 March, primed by John Hanson with warnings about the need to protect his claim upon Annabella’s expected fortune, Byron reneged on the deal. Wilmot was so angry that he considered challenging his cousin to a duel. As the alarming possibility of a public court case began to loom, Annabella once again took steps to protect the reputation of Augusta Leigh.
Lushington’s respect for Annabella was constantly tested by her loyalty to Augusta, a woman whom the lawyer himself regarded as not only unprincipled but immoral. On 10 March, Annabella suggested that a personal commitment from Augusta to stay away from the baby girl would prevent ‘the cruel necessity of stigmatising [her] either directly or indirectly’. When Lushington disagreed, Annabella composed a statement by which she intended to protect from further harm Augusta’s already damaged reputation.
Annabella’s handwritten defence of her sister-in-law was both warm and generous. Reshaped by the super-cautious Stephen Lushington, it became a nebulous web of conditionals and hypotheses. Tribute was still paid to Mrs Leigh’s attempts to protect Lady Byron from her husband’s ‘violence & cruelty’. (These claims of abuse were crucial to Lushington’s case.) Regarding the ‘suspicion’ of incest, Annabella was allowed only to say, amidst a web of ‘mays’ and ‘mights’, that the offence might – just possibly – not have taken place during her own marriage to Lord Byron.
Annabella’s fears for Augusta were heightened by the growing likelihood of a public trial. On 14 March, she told her mother that Byron’s sudden backtracking upon their agreement had been ‘a dirty job’, and one for which she blamed his advisors (meaning Hanson and Hobhouse).
It was at this point that a new and yet more explosive report was first mentioned.
The precise nature of this mysterious accusation has never been established, but the charge seems to have frightened Byron almost out of his wits. The most likely possibility
