I’ve been reading the “Life and Letters of Lady Byron”. That’s the person who married Lord Byron, who is the poet we all learned about in school. He’s the one who they told us was very, very romantic and went off to Greece to fight in their independence war and died. He wrote the poem:
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods
There is a rapture on the lonely shore.
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
So I think he was a pretty popular poet amongst us students in English class for us to study.
So how did I end up reading about his wife? Well, “The Life and Letters of Lady Byron” is a book that Lucy Maud Montgomery mentions reading in her journals, so that’s how I learned about it. The book was written in 1929 … and I am reading a copy that was published in that very same year. Crazy, right? The book is almost a hundred years old, and it discusses events that occurred 100 years prior to that. I predicted going into the book that Lady Byron must have been a very stuffy, old-fashioned person (given that she’s one of Lord and Lady Byron), and I supposed I was going to read a lot about the balls that she went to and the frilly dresses she wore and the company she entertained for tea.
As I started reading the book, it almost immediately touched on the fact that Lady and Lord Byron separated at some point in their marriage — so I realized, oh, there’s actually going to be some sort of a scandal here. And then I went back to my 12th grade English literature book and read the biography they gave us about Lord Byron. It said:
The shocking aspects of Byron’s private life have become legendary as a result of his literary fame, not the reverse. But they are shocking nevertheless — and sometimes rather sad. Scandal concerning Byron’s unhappy marriage, and some of his radical political views, made life in England uncomfortable and he left for the Continent in 1816. He was never to return to England.
The “shocking aspects” of his private life I took to mean as referring to the fact that he was so full of revolutionary spirit and ran off to Greece and died. And the “scandal” of his “unhappy marriage” I took to meaning that Byron was a charming womanizer, and kept having affairs, and his wife was mad about this.
My oh my was I far off the mark!
They definitely did not teach us about Lord Byron’s actual private life in 12th grade English class. This is what really happened. First, Lord Byron sees a girl called Anne Isabella Milbanke at a ball or a tea or something (so yes, there are balls in the book!) This is in 1812, and Byron had just become extremely famous because he had just published some long long poem and it was all the rage. It sounds like in the days before TV and internet scrolling, what people did instead was to read the latest published poem. Not only was he famous, he was also apparently extremely handsome, and several aristocratic women, including married ones, started throwing themselves at him. (Isn’t that funny, given how proper and strict they tell us things were back in the day. I guess not really).
Anne Isabella was not one of the woman throwing herself at Byron. She was just a wee thing of 20 years old at that time. And apparently because she was acting with reserve and propriety, she stood out. Byron saw her at two separate balls or something, and talked to her for 5 minutes total, and then he sends her a letter proposing marriage!
Anne Isabella, being a very serious and thoughtful person, rejected him. She said that she didn’t think they were suited to each other. Too bad she didn’t just stick with that! But I guess at 20 years old, the flattery of being proposed to by apparently the most sought-after man in Britain was too much! Anne Isabella starts writing Byron letters now. Her letters all go like this (except in way way more elegant language): “I just wanted to check in with you. I totally still don’t have any feelings for you, BUT I am just so so worried and cut up that YOU maybe still have feelings for ME! And if so, that would be so so awkward! And if so, I would have to stop writing you letters because I wouldn’t want to encourage a useless hope! So please please, tell me if you’re still in love with me!And also, by the way, just so you know, because I like to be 100% truthful and honest, I am not currently in love with anyone else! I’m unattached! I thought maybe you thought I was attached, but I’m NOT! But just keep in mind that I am definitely not in love with you!
Yes, so Anne Isabella sends a series of letters like this, like five of them, each increasingly cringey, and Byron reads between the lines and eventually sends her a second letter of proposal, and this time, Anne Isabella accepts right away. In quite a moving letter, actually!
Also, just notice that they still haven’t met each other since those two initial times they met at the London balls, which is like a year or two ago by now.
As soon as she accepts, all the innate atrociousness of Byron’s personality rises to the surface! First of all, he only proposes to Anne Isabella again because he had been flirting and having affairs with two or three other women at this same time, and they had ended in rejection of him. So he mostly proposed, assured of a “yes”, out of ego. From this point on, his letters to Anne Isabella are not very nice at all, and she keeps begging him to come so they can get married, and Byron keeps coming up with excuses for dragging him feet.
He comes for just a visit (first time meeting her parents) and Anne Isabella apparently keeps asking him, “but do you really love me?” and Byron keeps saying something mean in response, which leads to Anne Isabella dissolved in tears, until the visit is cut short and Byron leaves. They probably should have cut off the engagement then, too. But that would have been a scandal (much smaller compared to the scandals to come), especially for Anne Isabella, since she’s a young innocent girl who now will have a stained reputation, blah blah blah.
So even though it’s obviously the worst decision in the world, after lots of begging, Byron shows back up and they get married.
As soon as they get married and they’re out the door getting into the carriage for their honeymoon, he starts telling her that his marriage is the worst thing he’s ever done, and he hates her for having married him, and on and on. See, I thought that Byron must have been a womanizer, but that he was at least superficially charming and chivalrous to his wife to her face. But he wasn’t. He was a big jerk. Every thing he could think of to say to make her sad, he did. Or, he went days without speaking to her at all. Apparently when their daughter was born, he said, “oh, it’s not dead?” or something like that. “Three hours before her labor began, he told her that he hoped she would perish in it, that the child would not live; and that if it did, he cursed it.” And apparently he’d walked around at night with a knife, and he’d tell Anne Isabella that if he killed himself, it would be her fault. And to the end of their marriage (which lasted a year) when she was heavily pregnant and had just given birth, the servants in the house were so scared that he was going to harm his wife that they never left her alone.
He had a way with words, for sure. Anne Isabella would tiptoe into his study and ask, “Am I in your way?” And he would answer “Damnably.” Short and to-the-point.
He also said, “I believe you will go on loving me till I beat you.” He realized his wife was in love with him and took advantage. Though I doubt she was actually in love at this point. She was just deluding herself most likely. She had to keep on believing she loved him so that she could be the perfect, saintly wife that was required then. After all, she also said to Lord Byron, on the matter of him being unfaithful: “I have been taught to believe that a wife had better not notice deviations which are more likely to be repented of, if her own conduct continues kind and constant.”
So here we have the true character of Lord Byron! Oh, dreamy romantic poet who went off to fight in Greece, my foot.
But all this isn’t anywhere near the most scandalous of Byron’s doings. When this book was published in 1929, perhaps the public still remembered all of Byron’s scandals, because the book doesn’t always do a great job explaining things. It assumes you know it all. I guess also the author may dance around things partly because it’s so scandalous and improper to say things outright. The author would say, “it was so scandalous when Byron’s sister came to visit,” and I’d think, huh? How is that scandalous? I had to read and re-read certain passages to understand what was going on, and then, because I couldn’t believe it, I had to go onto wikipedia and see if all this was for real. Well, it is.
So while Byron was married, his half-sister Augusta Leigh came to stay with Lord and Lady Byron (Anne Isabella became ‘Lady Byron’ once she married). Byron keeps telling his wife things like, hehe, don’t you think my sister is really pretty? Hehe, don’t you think her daughter looks like me? Hehe, you have no idea the sorts of things I’ve done! Hehe, it’s all your fault that I can’t be with the true love of my life!
It turns out that Byron and his half-sister had an incestuous relationship, and this was going on even though Augusta Leigh was married herself and already had kids. Her husband just buried his head in the sand, I guess. In fact, Augusta Leigh had four kids at this time, and the fourth kid, Elizabeth “Libby” Medora Leigh, is suspected to actually be fathered by Byron. How’s this for a scandal? The biggest scandal of our time, I think, was Brad and Angelina (if we’re not counting things like Epstein), and that’s nothing compared to this. Then all throughout the year of his marriage to Anne Isabella, Byron kept begging his sister Augusta for more! But she refused him, she felt it was improper now because he was married. The rumors started getting out, and when Anne Isabella separated from Byron (he locked himself in his room and refused to say goodbye), he was considered a blackguard. All the fashionable people refused to greet him in the streets or invite him to their balls and teas and things anymore.
This is what Anne Isabella has to say of Byron and his sister: “It was not Passion nor Circumstance that occasioned the worst aberrations. There was a deliberate purpose to set God’s will and human law at defiance. Transgression was desired as such. Vice in itself was spoken of as insipid, as deriving its zest from its unlawfulness …. “How I should have loved you if you had been another man’s wife!””
Lord and Lady Byron separated in 1816. Byron dies eight years later during his grandiloquent journey in Greece. Before that, he published more very famous, very popular poems, in which he trashes his wife (Anne Isabella was still his wife, they were separated, not divorced) and trashes her servants and is just a jerk overall. He described his wife as cold and calculating and without sympathy. Yes! Most people won’t have sympathy if you keep yelling at them, and if you keep telling them you prefer to be married to your sister! But public opinion didn’t take her side and was very sour towards Anne Isabella, while for Byron, it seems like his reputation improved as he kept publishing poems. And then, when he died in Greece, he became forever the romantic dashing poetic hero, and Anne Isabella was forever the clunker.
Byron never saw either Anne Isabella or his beloved sister Augusta again, for the last eight years of his life. But he wrote them a bunch of letters — especially to Augusta, and every now and again to Anne Isabella, when they were on speaking terms. This is what Byron wrote to his half-sister, of Anne Isabella: “One day or another her conduct will recoil on her own head; not through me, for my feelings towards her are not those of Vengeance, but — mark — if she does not end miserably tot ou tard (sooner or later, in French). She may think — talk — or act as she will, and by any process of cold reasoning and a jargon of “duty and acting for the best” etc etc impose upon her own feelings and those of others for a time — but woe unto her — the wretchedness she has brought upon the man to whom she has been everything evil will flow back to its fountain … I do not think a human being could endure more mental torture than that woman has directly and indirectly inflicted upon me …”
Seriously? Anne Isabella didn’t do anything to Byron. This is what she wrote when she accepted his marriage proposal: “I am and have long been pledged to myself to make your happiness my first object in life. If I can make you happy, I have no other consideration.” Come on! She tried to be super nice to him when he was just figuratively kicking her around; she said she would stay and be a dutiful wife in spite of everything; she only left when she came to believe her presence made him worse; she asked him before she left if he wanted her to stay and he wouldn’t see her. She never spoke badly of him publicly, and never tried to fan the rumors of his affairs with his sister, of which just the rumors were so damaging. So what exactly does he mean by her being the fount of all evil …
He later wrote of her, also to his sister: “No consideration on earth shall now prevail on me to look upon her as otherwise than my worst enemy. I curse her from the bottom of my heart, and in the bitterness of my Soul; and I only hope she may one day feel what she had made me suffer. They will break my heart or drive me mad, one day or the other; but she is a Wretch and will end ill. She was born to be my destruction and has become so. Ten thousand be upon her and her father’s and mother’s family now and forever.”
This man does not know how to look in the mirror!
Here’s another line he wrote about Anne Isabella: “… that infernal fiend, whose destruction I shall yet see. Do you suppose I will turn aside till they are trodden under foot? Do you suppose that I can breathe until they are uprooted? Do you believe that time will alter them or me? that I have suffered in vain — that I am reconciled to the sting of the scorpion and the venom of the serpent which stung me in my slumber? — If I did not believe — that Time and Nemesis — and circumstances would requite me for the delay — I would ere this have righted myself. But “let them look to their bond ” —
Well, he ended up dying way before her.
Then here’s a letter he wrote to Anne Isabella directly:
“Yours has been a bitter connection to me in every sense. It would have been better for me never to have been born than to have ever seen you. This sounds harsh, but is it not true? and recollect that I do not mean that you were my intentional evil Genius but an Instrument for my destruction — and you yourself have suffered too (poor thing) in the agency, as the lightning perishes in the instant with the Oak which it strikes.”
Okay, so at least he tells her at this point that she was not an intentional evil Genius.
You know something else? I didn’t quite understand this part, because they used words like “jointure” and “personalty” and I know nothing of the law from that era, but it sounds like Anne Isabella gave Lord Byron 60,000 pounds when they got married. Like, just gave it to him! And it was his forever after that. She didn’t get it back after they separated, and in his will, he left everything to the sister, Augusta, and her kids! It wasn’t a super big disaster, because Anne Isabella’s family was rich so she was getting her money from her parents and estates and things, but still. She was quite generous with her money. Again, I don’t know how it all worked, but when Lord Byron the poet died, some other young guy became the current “Lord Byron”; and I had assumed that meant he gets estates and property and things. But in this case, it did not, because of Lord Byron leaving everything to his sister. I thought, from Pride and Prejudice, that property back in those days was “entailed” or whatever, it had to stay in the family and the next Lord got it all. But that didn’t happen for the next Lord Byron, and he now had no money at all. So Anne Isabella gave him an income of like 2000 pounds a year. She gave money to lots of people, and to schools and things. She came across as a very earnest, serious, thoughtful, and good-hearted person. But none of this availed her a jot with the public opinion. It says that at the time of Lord Byron’s death, when Anne Isabella provided the income for the new Lord Byron by giving up her “jointure” for him, this was the reaction: “The newspapers were full of lies about her; even the surrender of her jointure was unfavorably interpreted. She took no public notice; but the misery of it all broke her down at last, and she was ill for many weeks…. Silence was again her chosen attitude, while her generosity was misinterpreted, her past and present raked up in every newspaper.”
Just look at that — sounds like there were brutal tabloids even back then.
Did you know that the scandal doesn’t even end here? There’s another huge scandal involving Elizabeth “Libby” Medora Leigh (the daughter of the incest). I was going to put in all the details here, but I guess this is already too long. Oh, what the heck. Georgiana is Medora’s oldest sister, and she gets married to a guy called Henry. Henry is not nice to Georgiana at all, and while she keeps getting pregnant, he actually has eyes for Medora. Georgiana, hating Henry and his cruelties, wants to get rid of him and I guess divines that he likes her younger sister and sees in her a path to escape. So she invites Medora to live with them. Medora promptly gets pregnant by Henry. This is a scandal, so Georgiana, Medora, and Henry all quietly go hide in France, without telling their parents about what’s happened. Medora gives birth, and they just leave the poor baby and return to England as though nothing happened. Poor baby dies after a few months 😦
Well, you’d think Henry and Medora would’ve learned a lesson, but no. Medora winds up pregnant again. Keep in mind she’s 15 years old, at least during her first pregnancy she was. I guess they don’t have money this time to hide in France, so they go to the sea-side city of Bath (the one that comes up in all the Jane Austen books) instead. Well, Georgiana and Medora’s parents finally find out. The dad, Col. Leigh (well, except he’s not actually Medora’s biological dad!) goes to rout them out from Bath, and places Medora secluded in a house with a lady until she can give birth and have the whole unpleasant situation behind them. The plan fails when the lady helps Medora escape, and she and Henry flee to France! Leaving of course Georgiana a pauper with three kids to support by herself. I guess Georgiana wanted this, though? She wanted to be rid of Henry. She lived off her mother’s support for the rest of her life.
Regarding Medora’s second pregnancy, she has a miscarriage, either before or after they go to France. In France, Medora decides she’s going to reform and join a convent as a nun. She does, but after a few weeks she finds out she’s pregnant (again by Henry). So she gets kicked out of the nunnery, but the head nun is very nice and pays for Medora’s lodgings. This third child lives, it’s a girl I think called Violetta. So Henry and Medora (not married) and the baby are living in France and they have no money. They write home, please help us! And live off their parents for a few years, until Henry gets tired of Medora and leaves her and the baby and returns to England (not to support his actual wife Georgiana, but just to goof off by himself). Now Medora is alone with the baby, gets stricken with consumption, and has no money and is starving to death. There was some deed or other that she could have gotten 3000 pounds from (I didn’t understand these technical terms) but her mother, Augusta (the one who had the affair with her brother Lord Byron) does some trickery so that her daughter can’t get the money. Now that was not nice. So guess who shows up to save the day? Anne Isabella! Yes, Lord Byron’s wife is the one who came to rescue the daughter of her husband’s affair. Anne Isabella’s daughter Ada comes along, too, and Anne Isabella explains that Ada and Medora are actually half-sisters. Cause both have Lord Byron as a dad. And I think for the rest of her life (short life, she dies at 35), Medora and her daughter were supported by Anne Isabella and Ada. And Medora was really nasty about it, she kept saying that actually Anne Isabella had ruined her (about the same way her dad Lord Byron had talked about Anne Isabella, too!)
And you know what else? The Ada I’ve been mentioning, who is Anne Isabella and Lord Byron’s child, the one child Lord Byron had as a wedded man with his wife. I was halfway through the book before I realized who Ada actually is. This is Ada Lovelace. I felt I had heard the name before, and when I was wikipedia trying to figure out the ins and outs of all the scandals, I found out Ada was a famous mathematician. I’ve heard the name before. I feel like every few months we get a new flash of headlines about how such-and-such was the first woman computer programmer or the first woman to discover climate change, and Ada is one of them. She’s apparently the first woman computer programmer, back in the 1830s (I guess before there were computers as we know them today, but I think they mean they were developing the theory, or they were doing it with rows of rotating spokes or something).
Oh, and I forgot yet another huge wing to this scandal! You know how they like to talk about Mary Shelley, the lady who wrote “Frankenstein”, about how she and a group of highly talented young writers all got together in Switzerland one summer and told ghost stories at night and from those nights a ton of great literature emerged? I think there was a movie about it a few years ago. Well, that’s all connected with this same story, too! When Byron and his wife separated in 1816, and he left England, that is what he went to do. He wound up in Switzerland at the house with the poet Percy Byshe Shelley, and Mary Shelley. I think Mary Shelley was actually Mary Godwin at that time. Percy was actually married to a teenager called Harriet, and then he abandons her to run off with Mary, who was also like 17 at the time (old enough to know better). Lord Byron, in the middle of his messy separation and the rumors of incest, couldn’t let Percy outdo him; Mary had brought along her step-sister Claire, and before the summer is out, Claire is pregnant with Byron’s daughter. And in fact, Claire comes up in “The Life and Letters of Lady Byron” because when they were all still in England, Claire had been one of the women throwing herself at Byron. And Byron apparently rebuffed her and thought of her with contempt. But I guess in Switzerland he couldn’t let Percy outdo him. This means that Byron had three daughters within the space of 3 years: Medora born to his half-sister Augusta, Ada born to his wife Anne Isabella, and Allegra born to his lover Claire. When they all returned to England, Harriet committed suicide, and someone else committed suicide as well, and not just Byron but Percy Shelley also died young.
And now, Anne Isabella is forgotten and Lord Byron and his poems are all we remember. This scandal must have eaten all the gossips alive for days and weeks and years; and now it’s all forgotten.
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