Dr Fenwick, to his young visitor’s dismay, thought nothing of the kind. Instead, writing in loco parentis (‘except your parents, there is not a friend of yours who loves you more sincerely than myself’), he advised Annabella to stay quietly up at Seaham and stop picking quarrels with a mother who, for all her faults, loved nothing in the world so much as her cherished child.
If she sometimes is mistaken as to the best method of securing your comfort, she is so truly affectionate, her confidence in you is so liberal, so entire & honourable to both; in short her feelings as a Mother occupy so large a portion of her existence, that you cannot be too studious to make a suitable return.
Fenwick, writing to Annabella in early February 1812, a day or two after her visit to his home, flattered himself that he understood her personality. In fact, he was oblivious to one of Miss Milbanke’s greatest flaws. Intensely critical of others, Annabella could never bear to be at fault herself. To be advised to mend her ways was as painful as the realisation that Dr Fenwick had no intention of championing her proposed return to London. There was no help here. Another strategy must be devised.
On 9 or 10 February, shortly after her visit to Fenwick’s house, Annabella retired to her own room at Seaham in order to justify her intentions to her parents. (Since they all lived under the same roof, her painstaking, elaborate letter was presumably slipped under their bedroom door.) Beginning with Dr Fenwick’s homily ringing in her ears, she apologised for the ‘irritable humours’ by which she had recently caused hurt to her dear ‘Mam’ when Sir Ralph was seriously ill. Perhaps, she conceded, it was possible that Miss Montgomery’s weakening health might be the product of her own anxious wonderings? Nevertheless – this was a difficult leap in the argument, but a determined Annabella bridged it without a blink – did she have the right to distress beloved parents with the spectacle of an anguish that no truthful daughter would wish to conceal? (Truth was a weapon that Annabella was learning to wield with inventive skill.) Or should she – by going to London – where it was conceivable that Mary would prove to be less ill than her loving friend imagined – allow them to rejoice at her own restored peace of mind?
This amazingly tortuous letter ended with a concessionary flourish. She would, after all, leave Seaham only when her father’s health showed signs of being on the mend. ‘I therefore propose not to be in London till this day fortnight . . .’
Annabella proved resolute. By 24 February 1812, she was snugly ensconced at Lady Gosford’s London home and – so the Milbankes learned – bestowing happiness upon all who saw her, including the poor invalid, so lit up with joy that ‘for a time [it] gave her the appearance of blooming health.’
As often with Annabella, truth and wishful thinking were inextricably entwined. Miss Montgomery was indeed less blooming than when she visited Seaham the previous autumn. Death, however, was a long way off. By mid-March, Mary was able to chaperone Annabella to the London studio at which, for a price of twenty guineas, Judith’s barley-sugar daughter was having her portrait painted by George Hayter. Within two years, Mary was travelling to Granada, followed by the first of many long sojourns in Italy. Nearly forty years later, when Annabella herself lay close to death, her old – and still beloved – friend Miss Montgomery was presiding over supper parties at her home in Hampstead.
Annabella can easily be condemned (several of her parents’ friends voiced their disapproval at the time) for behaving like a heartless humbug, but six lonely and often fogbound months at Seaham might have rendered any lively young woman desperate for escape. Plainly, the jubilant tone of her first letter from London had far more to do with her sense of regained freedom than with the discovery that Mary Montgomery was not yet upon her deathbed.
On 23 March 1812, George Hayter put the finishing touches to his portrait of a smilingly confident Annabella, her head tossed back, her hair unpinned and loosely curled.
Two days later, she met Lord Byron.
CHAPTER FOUR
E
NTERING THE
L
ISTS
(1812–13)
‘Childe Harold . . . is on every table, and himself courted, visited, flattered and praised whenever he appears. He has a pale, sickly, but handsome countenance, a bad figure, animated and amusing conversation and in short, he is really the only topic of almost every conversation – the men jealous of him, the women of each other . . .’
ELIZABETH, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE TO HER SON, SIR AUGUSTUS FOSTER, IN WASHINGTON, 1812
Annabella’s first encounter with Byron took place at Lady Caroline Lamb’s morning waltzing party, held in the glorious entrance hall of Melbourne House. Byron – as he later recalled – was intrigued by Miss Milbanke’s reserved manner and air of ‘quiet contempt’. The curiosity was mutual. Writing up her journal that evening at Lady Gosford’s home, Annabella noted that Lord Byron’s disdainful expression – she drew near enough to notice his restless eyes and the frequency with which he masked the impatient twitch of full lips with his hand – suggested a proper degree of scorn for the frivolity that surrounded him. Lord Byron, lame since birth and always conscious of the halt in his step – he wore loose pantaloons to conceal the defect – declared his preference for boxing to waltzing; Annabella, an enthusiastic dancer, now decided that she, too, despised such trivial amusements.
Writing to her mother the following day with a careful account of Lord Byron’s appearance and manner, Annabella reported that his opinions were both eloquent and sincere. Byron, meanwhile, baffled a captivated Caroline
