Foster was being wise with hindsight. In part, Annabella did sincerely believe in her duty to marry a good and wealthy man, one who could both secure the future of Seaham and Halnaby and ensure her parents’ peace of mind. A virtuous intention did not preclude enjoyment along the way. While it would be improper to suggest that she put herself about during her three seasons in London, Miss Milbanke certainly showed a smiling face to an impressive number of gentlemen.
That number, by the summer of 1812, had burgeoned to six or seven. Up in Durham, Annabella won the heart of a bewitched young clergyman named William Darnell; in London, she turned down Lord Longford’s brother, General Edward Pakenham, and reduced William Bankes, the wealthy heir to Kingston Lacy, to disappointed tears. The Irish Earl of Roden’s attractively ugly son, Lord Jocelyn, seems never to have become more than a dancing partner, but Lord Seaforth’s heir, Frederick Mackenzie, liked Annabella enough to pay a visit of his own to Seaham (where an absent daughter requested her father to be sure to bestow ‘paternal tenderness’). It sounds as though the young man intended to offer his hand, and Sir Ralph would have been delighted by the union. No proposal was made, however – and no tears were shed. ‘I do not believe that Mac[kenzie] has any thoughts of me though I am sure Lady Seaforth has,’ Annabella wrote cheerfully home in April 1812.
Annabella’s parents could – and did – worry about the future of a clever and increasingly independent daughter who seemed to have outgrown an elderly couple of provincials. Often out dancing until sunrise and merrily conscious that she had become one of the most courted girls in London, Annabella set thoughts of Frederick Mackenzie aside as she began planning to hold a splendid dinner party at Portland Place. The guest list would prove demanding, she informed her dazed parents on 9 April, for she intended only to ask men who could not possibly be in love with her. Such gentlemen had become difficult to find. ‘I am much the fashion this year. Mankind bow before me, and womankind think me somebody.’
Life was full of interest and the fact would seem to be that Annabella, in the summer of 1812, and having reached the ripe old age of twenty, had no great wish to get married. One reason for this lack of impatience was that she relished the freedom to do as she pleased and see whom she wished, liberties that she had never experienced during her years at Seaham. Another reason was the example offered by her friends.
It is striking how many of Annabella’s older women friends had chosen not to marry. Mary Montgomery had the excuse of invalidship. For Selina Doyle, as for the much older Joanna Baillie and her sister Agnes, there was no reason other than the strong wish of these three intelligent women to remain independent. Looking around her in London, Annabella could understand why. Lady Gosford made no secret of the relief she felt whenever her grouchy husband left home. William Lamb put as good a face as he could on what appeared to be a wretched home life with the giddiest of wives. The examples of such unblushingly scandalous spouses as Augustus Foster’s mother and her own Aunt Melbourne were hardly appealing. Why, seeing the misery that a supposedly good marriage could make of a woman’s life, should a strong-willed young female relinquish her newly gained independence?
A BARLEY-SUGAR DAUGHTER
No tears had been shed in the summer of 1811 when an exhausted Lady Milbanke retreated to take the waters at Tunbridge Wells, leaving her daughter in the gentle care of Lady Gosford. Annabella had not enjoyed being escorted through her first season in London by a mother whose rouged cheeks were always a touch too bright, whose wigs seemed always to slide askew, and who talked with too noisy an insistence about the marvellous achievements of her brilliant daughter. It was not pleasant to detect how mischievously Lady Melbourne patronised her sister-in-law, nor to observe how Judith, rising to the bait, innocently resumed her hymns of praise, never noticing the fan-masked yawns and stifled sniggers of her captive audience. The ladies who ruled London society were easily bored. They found garrulous Lady Milbanke only a shade more diverting than her beloved ‘Ralpho’, an equally loquacious husband who regularly drank a bottle a night.
But now Judith had gone to Tunbridge, and her daughter rejoiced.
Farewell old Woman – make yourself merry with thinking how merry I am. I shall write to you tomorrow on a subject which I have not now time to discuss. This I declare now because I like to excite your curiosity, and to delay gratifying it. I am a sweet chicken!!! You ought to think me the most barley-sugar daughter in the creation. I am tired of paying myself compliments but you may pay me as many as you like.
Seaham, for the moment, had lost its lonely charm. A long, dank autumn of estrangement from friends in London was briefly enlivened by the agreeable company of Mary Montgomery; alone again, Annabella contemplated the prospect of a glum family Christmas with a nagging mother and no kind father on hand to defend her. (Sir Ralph had developed an illness which would keep him in bed for most of the winter.) When an invitation to join the Tower family at nearby Elemore Hall arrived, Annabella jumped at the chance to escape.
Still at Elemore in January 1812 and only mildly diverted by the compliments of her new local admirer, William Darnell, Annabella began plotting for a speedy return to London. Grave concerns were expressed as to the health of that invaluable invalid, Mary Montgomery. When Judith proved unresponsive, Annabella took herself off
