Lord Byron’s Brutality to His Wife

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 738, 10 August 1929, Page 22

Lord Byron’s Brutality to His Wife

A Century-Old Secret Revealed . . . Amazing Tales of Cruelty . . . New Volume Indicts Poet and “Don Juan”

HY did Lady Byron sepa- 1 rate from Lord Byron, j the famous poet, after a i year of married life, and I refuse to divulge to her friends the reason for

h r action? In a book just published, ‘ The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron,” by Ethel Uolburn-Mayne, the ugly secret is at last completely disclosed. Nothing now remains hid. Letters and documents, buried for a century or more in strongrooms, are given to the world, justifying all the most damning charges which in the past were brought against Lord Byron. The separation of these two notable people has been the subject of endless controversy. But of this book r can be said that it finally settles all the matters in dispute. It is in a sense official, as it is written at the request of Mary, Countess of Lovelace, who married Byron’s grandson, and has supplied family papers and letters which have never been printed before. Not the faintest doubt is left as to the offence which Byron committed, and which his wife could never forgive. It was, as Lady Melbourne (who was Lady Byron’s aunt and Lord Byron’s intimate and indulgent friend) wrote to Byron, “a crime for which there is no salvation In this world, whatever there may be in the next.'* What aggravated it, if such a thing is possible, was the deplorable treatment of Lady Byron by her husband. To her, a mere girl of 22, on the honeymoon, he behaved as only a scoundrel and a blackguard could do. A Great Match Lady Byron, or Annabella. to give her the name by which she was usually known, was the writer of the dreariest letters, and she must have been something of a bore. Hobhouse, Byron's best man, described her thus just before the wedding:

Rather dowdy-looking, and wears a long and high dress, though her feet and ankles are excellent. The lower part of her face is bad, the upper expressive but not handsome, yet she gains by inspection . . . Of my friend she seemed dotingly fond.

The portraits of her do not show her to any advantage. Yet she was a great match for him, of high family, and with large expectations as her parents’ heiress.

That lie ever cared for her is not probable. He wrote to Lady Melbourne. his female confessor, of another woman:—‘‘Do you know I am much afraid that perverse passion was my deepest, after all.” He seems to have married her for her money, since at the time of the wedding, though he had large estates himself, he was in financial difficulties.

Honeymoon Ferocity As they left her father’s house, after the wedding, In their travelling carriage,

ing.” . . . Soon he turned on her ferociously (she wrote afterward of the ferocity she recognised too well from the wedding journey;:—'‘It must come to a separation. You should have married me when I first proposed.” . . . He went on to tell her how he detested her mother, how discontented he was with the settlements and her small fortune, ”speakiug of me as if I were a beggar.”

When they arrived at the house lent for the honeymoon, he treated her with brutality:—

The bride got out of the carriage “with a face and attitude of despair. The bridegroom did not hand her out, but walked away. She came up the steps with a countenance and frame agonised and listless.” ■

That night she listened . . . between the fire-lit crimson curtains to his cry:—“Good God! 1 am surely in hell.”

He inflicted on her every kind of insult, and repeatedly threatened her life, so that it is difficult to believe he was quite sane. On one occasion she asked an innocent question of Byron, who

said angrily:—“Where did you hear that?” X looked up (she wrote), and saw that he was holding over me the dagger which he usually wore. I replied, “Oh, ouly from this book.” I was not afraid —X was persuaded he only did it to terrify me.

Her lady’s maid, however, was* so alarmed by Byron's savage behaviour that she implored Annabelle to write to her father. The wife even contemplated returning to Iter parents, but changed her mind . . . and made Iter maid promise not to say a word on the subject. ‘‘l bitterly reproached myself,” she said, “for betrhying a husband’s confidence.” Tliis refers to a day on which she had broken down in the maid’s presence, and cried:—“l am sure there has been something dreadful between him and his sister.” Sinister Figure It was at this point that the sinister figure of Augusta, Byron’s halfsister, married to a Colonel Leigh, and one of Queen Charlotte's ladies-in-waiting, appears on the scene. Lady Melbourne, who knew all about her, summed up her character in the words “very clever and very wicked.” Byron dragged off his young wife to this sister’s home, and daily insulted Lady Byron in his sister’s presence, sometimes using the foulest language. Thence he took her to No. 13 Piccadilly Terrace, a house with an unlucky number, where his treatment of her was even worse:

For days he would not speak to his wife. The well-known anecdote of her asking, on entering his study, “Am I in your way?” and his replying ••Damnably,” was only one of many such sayings.

There were money troubles; duns were constantly in the house, and executions were threatened, while Annabella was about to be confined:

The servants were so alarmed for their mistress’s personal safety that Fletcher (Byron's valet) and the nurse now installed for the confinement used without orders to take steps for her protection every night. . . .

the silence was broken, not by any word from him, but by “a wild sort of sing-

A daughter was born on Sunday, December 10, amid the flinging about of furniture and soda-water bottles in the room immediately below by the expectant father. . . . He sent her a (false) message to say that Lady Noel (her mother), who was dangerously ill, had died —an event to which in the earlier hours of labour be had said that he was eagerly looking forward. Then he was summoned to the mother’s room. He entered saying:—“The child was born dead, wasn’t it?”

As a matter of fact, the child was born alive and vigorous, though Byron had done his best to kill his little daughter. During the confinement Augusta was in the house, and, whatever her wickedness, did her best to control the savage outbreaks of her brother. Boasts of Misdeeds But Lady Byron could stand this perpetual hell with her husband no longer. He had boasted to her —to wound her and insult her —of his misdeeds. She no longer had the slightest doubt of his abominable conduct. Hobhouse called on Lady Melbourne, who was full of alarm, urgently advising that her letters to Byron should he burned (they were preserved, and published shortly after the war, and confirm all the charges). . . At last he confided to his diary:—“lt appears to me he has made some confession. I am still, however, in the dark entirely.” Dr. Lushington, Lady Byron’s legal adviser, long years afterward told the surviving’ trustee of Lady Noel Byron's sealed papers that the “real cause" (of the separation) was “Byron’s brutally indecent conduct and language to her." . . . As soon as Lushington learnt all the facts, he made his declaration that reunion was impossible. Reports of Byron’s gross misconduct were current in the society of that day: Lady Jersey, the great social leader, had given the famous party at which Augusta was cut by some people, and Byron was cut by everyone except Miss Mercer Elphinstone. After that he gave up the fight, consented to sign the deed of separation, and made arrangements for leaving England.

He had the grace to leave this statement:

I do not believe . . .that there ever was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder, a more amiable and agreeable being than Lady Byron. I never had nor can have any reproach to make her while with me. Where there is, blame, it belongs to myself.