A dashingly Byronic young man had formally joined Ada’s larger family circle in 1826, when Henry Trevanion married Byron’s niece and god-daughter, Georgiana Leigh. Three years later, impoverished and homeless, Georgiana and Henry were generously installed at Bifrons, Annabella’s rented country home near Canterbury. Ada, meanwhile, was brought away from Bifrons to live on the fringes of London, first at Notting Hill and then, during 1830, at The Limes, a large, pretty house standing above the Thames at Mortlake. Here, close to the best physicians that London could provide, no expense was spared in Lady Byron’s attempt to cure her daughter’s baffling condition.
Annabella had first heard about Henry Trevanion, a Cornish-born youth with Byronic connections (the poet’s grandfather, best known as Admiral Byron of the Wager, had married Sophia Trevanion of Caerhays), from Augusta Leigh. On 9 December 1825, Mrs Leigh had sent Lady Byron a gushing account of Sophia’s personable 21-year-old descendant as ‘the Hero of my present fate’. Penniless – his father had disinherited him – and on the make, Henry had recently presented himself as a suitor to Georgiana, the Leighs’ eldest daughter. Augusta’s widely reported role as her brother’s heir added pound signs to the attraction of marrying a slow-witted but exceptionally docile 17-year-old.* Unfortunately for Augusta’s wish to support the marriage, her husband detested Trevanion. Together with Henry’s father, Colonel Leigh refused to grant consent.
Henry remained assiduous and Augusta had a weakness for a handsome face: Henry’s reminded her of Byron’s own. Frantic to do something that might bind this solicitous youth to herself (Henry’s precise role in Augusta’s life remains murky, but it involved a strong sexual frisson), Mrs Leigh enlisted the aid of Annabella. Glad to assist Byron’s god-daughter along the road to happiness, Annabella provided a discreet loan of £200 via Louisa Chaloner. It was enough to ensure that a strangely low-key wedding was able to take place in London on 4 February 1826. The ceremony’s sole guests were Augusta, her friend Colonel Henry Wyndham (standing in for the absent and furious George Leigh) and 12-year-old Elizabeth (at this point known as ‘Libby’) Medora, the child whom both Byron and Augusta believed to be their own.
Mrs Leigh’s valiant endeavours to stay out of debt had never been helped by a wastrel husband and her own weak grasp of finance. Annabella, trained from her youth to act as her family’s lawyer and accountant, was an excellent businesswoman, one who always saw to it that she was well advised. Since her father’s death, she had added an inheritance of substantial coal-mining interests in the north to a portfolio that she managed with exceptional competence. In judgement of character, however, Annabella was often just as fallible as her sister-in-law. Both women were to be deceived by Henry Trevanion and by Elizabeth Medora Leigh in a saga that finally snapped the frail chain of duty by which Lord Byron sought to ensure the future security and comfort of his sister, Augusta.
‘Look after Augusta,’ Byron had insisted to Annabella, both during and after the couple’s separation. Annabella had kept her word, but the limited personal affection she retained for Mrs Leigh was already dwindling by 1828, when the first warning signs emerged of serious trouble ahead.
In 1828, Augusta casually announced that she had authorised her charming son-in-law to edit a selection of Byron’s letters, through which young Trevanion had already been trawling. Murray had sensibly steered clear of the negotiations, but Henry Colburn, one of the sharpest publishers in London, had offered £300. Augusta, delighted for her protégé, sought Annabella’s approval for a done deal.
A close perusal of Byron’s letters may have introduced Henry Trevanion to the possibility that Georgiana’s younger sister was the product of an incestuous relationship. It is not known whether any of Byron’s rashly intimate correspondence with Lady Melbourne was intended to form part of the published selection; certainly, the inclusion of such explosive material would explain Henry Colburn’s eagerness and Annabella’s dismay. Laying their own past differences aside, John Cam Hobhouse and Lady Byron united forces to scotch a project that they both believed would worsen Byron’s still badly damaged reputation. Augusta, whose only concern was to please the beguiling Henry, announced in April 1829 that she felt personally ‘very hurt’.
Annabella followed her blocking of the Colburn publication by refusing to give Augusta the thousand-pound sweetener she required as balm for her disappointment. Nevertheless, Augusta was a skilful piercer of Lady Byron’s tender conscience about the harm that had been caused both by the separation and by Annabella’s own meditated silence. Reputations had been damaged and the fault lay with Lady Byron. (‘My sin is ever before me’ ran the sad opening line of one of Annabella’s private poems.*) Now, however, while financial assistance was withheld, practical help might still be bestowed.
In April 1829, Annabella informed Augusta that she was willing to lend her own newly vacated house to Byron’s homeless godchild and her husband, a man whom she herself had never yet met. (She never did.) Sending thanks, Augusta neglected to mention that the couple would be accompanied to Bifrons by Georgiana’s sister. Tall, lively and high-spirited, the 15-year-old Libby would act as a companion to the pregnant Georgiana, while entertaining her charming Henry: this, so it seems, was the idea that Augusta had hatched. It remains unguessable whether Mrs Leigh fully recognised what a gift she was making to a bored and unprincipled young man. Perhaps, the answer is best summed up by Annabella, when she commented upon Mrs Leigh’s curious lack of any form of moral principle. Augusta simply didn’t register the rights and wrongs of such behaviour. Nevertheless, she guessed what Lady Byron’s views would be shrewdly enough to hold her tongue.
Eighteen-twenty-nine would prove to be an active and
