I read this book because Lucy Maud Montgomery mentions reading it in her journals, and I’m very glad I did. The author is Ethelind Colburn Mayne. It’s a very elegant name, is it not? Perfect for an extremely elegantly written book. This is the first line:
The village of Kirkby Mallory, which stands ten miles west of Leicester and four from the site of the Battle of Bosworth Field, was once the home of the ancient family of Mallory.
Now, I don’t know where Leicester is on map, nor what the Battle of Bosworth Field was, but even I was impressed by the grandeur of the village of Kirkby Mallory being home to the ancient family of Mallory.
I wrote a bit about this book in my previous post, but there, I focused more on Lord Byron. You can read all about what a nasty scumbag he was. Here I turn the attention rightly to Lady Byron herself.
Now, to be honest, it took me like two or three hours to read 25 pages at a time in this book, and it’s about 445 pages, not counting the appendices. The copy I read was an original 1929 version, which is the year the book was published. It can be very, very hard to follow what is going on. What’s funny is that Ethelind Mayne, as she includes and introduces long excerpts from Lady Byron’s letters, accuses her of always reaching for the dictionary and of being very wordy and of not saying anything clearly. However, I found that Lady Byron was usually extremely clear. She had a way of using the exact right words to bring perfect clarity of topics that in another person’s hands would be woolly and clumsy. The only exception is when Lady Byron (still Miss Milbanke then) kept writing letters to Lord Byron telling him she wasn’t in love with him when she clearly was.
In fact, I find it is Ethelind Mayne herself who isn’t clear. She could have taken her own advice when she lectured poor Lady Byron of having reached for the dictionary all the time. There’s three key problems with Ethelind’s narration:
- She thinks that everyone knows every single detail of all the scandals involving Lord Byron and Lady Byron. Well, I for one definitely did not. All of this was a revelation for me. That made it confusing in places, because Ethelind alludes to things and skates right over them, and then I can’t figure why it’s significant or what the actual story is. Maybe Ethelind the author didn’t expect anyone to read her book 100 years after it was published. Or maybe she thought we would all still know every atom of Byron’s travesties (we don’t). And honestly, in 1929 the events she was writing about were already 100 years old. Did even her audience in 1929 know all the ins and outs of things? She could have done much more to walk us through and guide us. Just for example, at one point she talks about Anne Isabella’s reaction to Walter Scott’s review of one of Byron’s new works, without ever saying if the review was positive or negative. After reading the passage several times, I seemed to grasp from context clues that Scott’s review had been positive, and because the new work seemed to denigrate Anne Isabella, all of Anne Isabella’s friends were mad about it. But again, I had to read and re-read to figure this out.
- This second point was extremely annoying. She would be writing about two women, like Anne Isabella and her sister-in-law Augusta. And instead of using the pronoun, she’d just keep using “she”. And mind you, she’d use “she” after she’d just talked about Anne Isabella, so I’d assume it was her, but “she”, I find out five pages later, was actually referring to Augusta. I mean, it was very hard to keep track. Also, in all their letters, Anne Isabella and Augusta refer to each other as just “A”. So sometimes, Ethelind also just referred to them as “A”, and I didn’t always know what “A” she was referring to. Sometimes, she clarified by writing “the Other A.” Nope, still don’t know who that is.
- When Ethelind the author stuck to narrating the events, it was mostly fine. But every once in a while, she would undertake to do a deep character analysis of Anne Isabella, oh, and then I was really in trouble! Talk about reaching for the dictionary and being obtuse and wordy. She worded things so convolutedly I really didn’t know what about Anne Isabella’s character I was supposed to take away.
- The place where all this becomes most apparent is during the epilogue, which was written by the lady, Mary, who married Anne Isabella’s grandson. Mary, at least, writes in plain English. The epilogue didn’t take me 2 hours to read 25 pages, no, it went by fast, because there was no waving hands and wizardly to obscure all the meaning.
But still, it’s an elegant book, and the letters of Anne Isabella (Lady Byron) included in the book are extremely elegant. Heck, even the letters of Augusta, the sister-in-law who’s supposed to be a floozy always off to a ball, were very elegantly written, although she used too many italics. If I discovered anything in reading this book, it was that 200 years ago they over-used italics in a way that we find very cringy and silly today. Some of the letters almost came across as parody due to all the italics. They all did this, but Augusta was the worst of all.
There’s also letters of Lord Byron in the book. Now, he was a giant jerk, but I will say his letters are the more vigorous ones. The main ones that have humor and dash to them. His were the easiest to read.
Starting off in the book, I really liked it because of all the elegance. There’s a part, though, about 100 pages in or so, where Anne Isabella and Lord Byron are engaged, and they write the most boring series of letters back and forth to each other, and it takes up like a whole chapter. I kept having to flip forward and think, how much more of this can I take! But once you get through that section, the rest of the book keeps pace and is pretty interesting, although still with the three drawbacks I mentioned above. It still took two hours at least, I really think it was closer to three, to read 25 pages the whole way through. Even in the interesting parts, it’s very easy to just lose track and lose focus. The sentences are so elegant, and refer to so many things I don’t know about, and then, Ethelind the author loves to say, “and this was just like what we already talked about in reference to this obscure quote”, and that obscure quote probably came 200 pages previously and I have no memory of what the context or meaning was. So yes, very easy to not be able to follow everything happening in the book.
Even things like, when they tell us that Augusta’s nickname was “Goose”, I think it was said in such a round-about and elegant way, that I missed it and for the next several letters I thought “Goose” was referring to Anne Isabella, and that is a big mistake.
However, as I have now mentioned about 70 times, this book is so extremely elegant I want to remember forever some of its elegance. First, here is Anne Isabella’s letter when she accepts Lord Byron’s marriage proposal:
I have your second letter—and am almost too agitated to write—but you will understand. It would be absurd to suppress anything—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. I will trust to you for all I should look up to—all I can love. The fear of not realizing your expectations is the only one I now feel. Convince me—it is all I wish—that my affection may supply what is wanting in my character to form your happiness. This is a moment of joy which I have too much despaired of ever experiencing—I dared not believe it possible, and I have painfully supported a determination founded in fact on the belief that you did not wish it removed—that its removal would not be for your good. There has in reality been scarcely a change in my sentiments. More of this I will defer. I wrote by last post—with what different feelings! Let me be grateful for those with which I now acknowledge myself
Most affectly yours.
Here’s what Anne Isabella wrote after she was still married to Byron, and the theatre was opening down the street and he kept hinting to her that he was going to go have affairs with all the women there. Anne Isabella was trying to figure out what she should do. Look out wisely she reflects:
The more one sees of this world, the more difficult it must appear to judge what is really best, when there are in everything such pros and cons as Reason can hardly balance.
Then this is when Anne Isabella was pregnant, and Byron was making her miserable. I think what she says here is a good lesson in, don’t ever waste your life trying to make a scumbag happy, like what’s the point, don’t be like Anne Isabella in this point. But still, she says this very elegantly, and with so much restraint! (about if she should leave Byron, and having postponed the decision till after the baby is born):
I might die, and be spared having to make it.
Then sometimes, the author Ethelind got very elegantly sarcastic. While Anne Isabella was married to Byron (and also before and after), there were several women throwing themselves at him, among them Caroline Lamb and Claire Clairmont (part of the scandal talked about at the bottom of this post). At this point in the book, Claire is writing Byron “quasi-anonymous love-letters.”
To make a foolish and familiar story short, the writer of both these letters was soon revealed as Claire Clairmont, Mary Godwin’s step-sister, later to be Shelley’s sister-in-law, and later still the mother of Byron’s acknowledged daughter, Allegra. Her importunities far transcended Caroline Lamb’s comparative refinements in the sort. Byron resister, but she had her way in the end — a mistress accepted through sheer inability to withstand bombardment.
Here is the very proper, restrained, and oh so elegant way that Anne Isabella’s mother describes when she finally finds out about Byron and his sister:
I now know what was the report said to be so shocking — it was that the Brother and Sister forgot that they were so ….”
This is Anne Isabella complaining of Augusta (Byron’s sister, lover, etc) in a letter:
… has pursued a line of conduct very detrimental to me, countenancing the accusation of ‘unforgiving.’ … and giving me the unmeaning praise of ‘perfection’, which never creates sympathy; representing him with all the interest of repentant error and blighted affection …. I had rather she had openly attacked me.”
Is that not the most elegant way ever of protesting, and giving such clear reasons as to why, someone calling you perfect?!
And this is when Anne Isabella writes to Augusta and tells her they can no longer correspond. I wish I could write like this when someone has made me mad:
Before you confinement (Augusta had just been pregnant — but at least with her husband’s kid, not her brother’s) I would not risk agitating you, but having the satisfaction of knowing you are recovered, i will no longer conceal from yourself that there are reasons founded on such circumstances in your conduct as (though thoroughly convinced they have existed) I am most anxious to bury in silence, which indispensably impose on me the duty of limiting my intercourse with you.
I should more deeply lament this … if your feelings towards me could give me the power of doing you any good — but you have not disguised your resentment against those who have befriended me, and have countenanced the arts which have been employed to injure me—Can I then longer believe those professions of affection, and even of exclusive zeal for my welfare, which I have been most reluctant to mistrust?—And on this ground my conduct, if known, would be amply & obviously justified to the world. I shall still not regret having loved and trusted you so entirely—May the blessing of a merciful God be with you & those nearest you—I am truly interested in the welfare of your children, and should your present unhappy dispositions be seriously changed, you will not then be deceived in considering me as one who will afford every service and consolation of your most faithful friend——
I also wanted to make a note that the book discusses Schadenfreude — so even back in this time, that German idea of “pleasure in another’s wretchedness” was in the common vocabulary, just as it remains with us.
Then, sometimes Anne Isabella, even though she on and off was mad at Augusta, still did correspond and visit with her. This is what she wrote of her (Mrs. L here refers to Augusta, who was married to Col. Leigh):
Some necessary intercourse which I have had with Mrs. L since i came to town has doubtless been employed disadvantageously to me by Lord Byron’s friends, as a mark of intended reconciliation; but the ends I have in view were too important to be sacrificed to any transient and false impressions.
Again, so elegant, so clear, said with such restraint and perfection!
Then this is a little note Anne Isabella wrote to herself, about how she should deal with Byron (after their separation:
To arm myself against him in every possible manner, so as to obtain a perfect sense of Security … the necessity of caution producing, on the contrary, a temper of Suspicion which injures the perfection of Forgiveness, and prevents a comprehensive wisdom, by making little things too important.
Again, so perfectly and elegantly said! Haven’t we all had this dilemma with someone we feel has mistreated us, but then we sometimes wonder if our angry response is proportionate or too far. Here did Anne Isabella express this perfectly 200 years ago.
Here is Anne Isabella again discussing Augusta, in a letter to someone else:
I believe she never takes a step towards evil without making a pseudo-conscience the authority for it. The true conscience and the false one are as like as twins.
Anne Isabella talking about feeling numb:
To feel that we can feel has its charm, when we have sometimes thought that all the surface of the heart was torpid — and that sorrow had come down upon us with the ice, as well as the weight, of the avalanche.
This is what Byron wrote to his sister Augusta, when she broke off their affair after he got married. So sarcastically and inventively stated:
I can neither forget nor quite forgive you for that precious piece of reformation —
Here Lady Byron writes in a letter about attending a long meeting on the Prison System reform, and all the speakers prattled on and on and praised themselves and others, and the meeting was all a waste of time (sounds like work meetings of today, no?):
I thought the practice of complimenting either the preceding or the expected speakers, somewhat ridiculous. Every one said that his own exertions were rendered superfluous — yet this consideration did not arrest the premeditated discourse.
Now we get to a letter by Augusta, replete with italics. She’s writing to Anne Isabella, and I love her way of giving herself noble impulses and contradicting them in her elegant way in the next line. This is in regards to Byron’s memoirs. He had written them and sold them to his publisher for 2000 British pounds or something. Well, when he died, Augusta (the sister-lover) and some others of his friends and lawyers were afraid he’d written embarrassing things in them, like having had a kid with his sister. I mean, they read the memoirs, so I guess there was enough stuff in there that they were worried. So they burned them. But that meant the publisher now wanted his 2000 pounds back. Augusta claimed she didn’t have money, so went running to Anne Isabella (the wife who’d watched her husband have a kid with his sister) for help. Anne Isabella herself had not been involved with the decision to burn the memoirs. So writes Augusta:
I answered, “IF I DO ACCEPT THEM (she’s referring to the memoirs here), THEY SHALL BE DESTROYED,” and that answer closed the whole business! it is really almost incredible that after that, he can say you did it — and I feel so strongly that it was my sole act and deed that nothing but absolute inability to pay all should induce me to hear of your paying one farthing — and I must say it has vexed me and does vex me more than I can describe to think that you are to be so taxed for any act of mine.
Did you like her splashing italics all over the place? Later in the same letter Augusta writes:
We should understand each other. It is the more desirable, as it appears from your account that there exists somewhere or other the same amiable anxiety to set us by the ears that I have had before to encounter — perhaps it may be as well not to conjecture on the subject for fear of becoming as amiable oneself! I am very sure from my indolence and hatred of such intricacies and want of suspicion (by nature) I am the very best subject for such malice. I don’t mean to make myself out as amiable; all these become faults if indulged to excess.
Then, I loved Ethelind the author’s description of a man who was blackmailing Augusta, a certain Washington Fleming. Remember above when I mentioned about Caroline Lamb? She was one of the early woman who had an affair with Byron, before he even got married. She actually was also Anne Isabella’s cousin, and she was the one who introduced them. I guess Caroline Lamb wasn’t happy when Byron went after Anne Isabella instead (though it was extremely unlucky for Anne Isabella, too). In fact, (and this is another episode Ethelind the author doesn’t explain well because she assumes we know it all) apparently Caroline was so heart-broken that Lord Byron was rejecting her that she got up in the middle of a ball, broke a wine glass, begged Byron to love her (while her husband was right there, too), and then slashed her wrists with the broken wine glass. Crazy, huh?! Caroline Lamb also was a famous author of the time, she published several novels. Well, apparently Byron had told Caroline about his incest with his sister, Augusta, and Caroline wrote about it in her journal. Then this is what happened, which I think Ethelind explains so very elegantly:
Augusta had received a letter from a person named Washington Fleming, telling her that Caroline Lamb had some time ago taken an interest in him ‘as a literary man’, had flattered and encouraged him, deceived him by false promises, treated him ‘most ungenerously’; but had also given him the possession of her private journal and confessions relative to Lord Byron “and his Lady”. From this he had copied the most interesting passages — quite single-heartedly at the time … but now he was perishing, had a mother dependent on him …. In short, what would Mrs. Leigh pay? The alternative was publication an immediate reply was demanded.
Because of this blackmail, Augusta dies in poverty. (She tried, by the way, to get the money from Anne Isabella, but in this case Anne Isabella refused — because they thought Washington Fleming would just be spurred on to more blackmail. But I think that Augusta herself scraped every farthing she had to give him. Then later her kids asked, after Augusta died, but where did all the money go?!)
Now I just have two last things. These both concern Anne Isabella and the prevailing thoughts at the time, and in these case, they are in perfect harmony with what still happens today. First, here is Anne Isabella talking about the poor people her charity is trying to help, and the Cooperative Society she had set up to help them:
A simple and effectual mode of bettering the state of the working-classes directly, and of the inferior (commonly called the upper) classes indirectly.
She’s doing that thing where even today, we say that the upper classes are actually the ones poorer in happiness and morals. Ethelind the author clocks Anne Isabella and says:
She did not really mean this — no one of her nature does; but she really believed she meant it. Hers was the frequent paradox of pride in noble birth and disparagement of the privileges belonging to it.
Finally, here is the passage which discusses Anne Isabella turning 40 years old. Ethelind the author writes:
On her fortieth birthday in 1832 — “40 years of age,” as she headed the paper, with a solemnity which for modern minds has been postponed by two decades — Annabella Byron wrote an analytic retrospective of herself.
Would you look at that?! In 1929, when Ethelind Maybe published this, apparently 60 was already the new 40!
So that brings me to the end of the quotes that I pulled from this amazing book! I don’t deny it bored me to tears in places, but the fascinating parts made up for it.
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