Lord Byron a Husband.
As we left him—you will remember—there was a jangle of marriage-bells; and a wearisome jangle it proved. Indeed Byron’s marriage-bells were so preposterously out of tune, and lent their discord in such disturbing manner to the whole current of his life, that it may be worth our while to examine briefly the conditions under which the discord began. It is certain that all the gossips of London had been making prey of this match of the poetic hero of the hour for much time before its consummation.
Was he seeking a fortune? Not the least in the world; for though the burden of debt upon his estates was pressing him sorely, and his extravagances were reckless, yet large sums accruing from his swift-written tales of the “Corsair,” “Lara,” and “Bride of Abydos” were left untouched, or lavishly bestowed upon old or new friends; his liberality in those days was most exceptional; nor does it appear that he had any very definite notion of the pecuniary aid which his bride might bring to him. She had, indeed, in her own right, what was a small sum measured by their standards of living; and her expectancies, that might have justified the title of heiress (which he sometimes gives to her in his journal), were then quite remote.
As for social position, there could be by such marriage no gain to him, for whom already the doors of England were flung wide open. Did he seek the reposeful dignity of a home? There may have been such fancies drifting by starts through his mind; but what crude fancies they must have been with a man who had scarcely lived at peace with his own mother, and whose only notion of enjoyment in the house of his ancestors was in the transport to Newstead of a roistering company of boon companions—followed by such boisterous revels there, and such unearthly din and ghostly frolics, as astounded the neighborhood!
The truth is, he marched into that noose of matrimony as he would have ordered a new suit from his tailor. When this whim had first seized him, he had written off formal proposals to Miss Milbanke—whom he knew at that time only slightly; and she, with very proper prudence, was non-committal in her reply—though suggesting friendly correspondence. In his journal of a little later date we have this entry:
“November 30, 1813 [some fourteen months before the marriage]. Yesterday a very pretty letter from Annabella [the full name was Anna Isabella], which I answered. What an odd situation and friendship is ours! Without one spark of love on either side. She is a very superior woman, and very little spoiled … a girl of twenty, an only child and a savante, who has always had her own way.”
This evidently does not promise a very ardent correspondence. Nay, it is quite possible that the quiet reserve he encounters here, does offer a refreshing contrast to the heated gush of which he is the subject in that Babel of London; maybe, too, there is something in the reserve and the assured dignity which reminds him of that earlier idol of his worship—Miss Chaworth of Annesley.
However, three months after this last allusion to Miss Milbanke, we have another entry in his journal, running thus:
“January 16, 1814. A wife would be my salvation. I am getting rather into an admiration for C——, youngest sister of F——. [This is not Miss Milbanke—observe.] That she won’t love me is very probable, nor shall I love her. The business would probably be arranged between the papa and me.”
Perhaps it was in allusion to this new caprice that he writes to Moore, a few months later:
“Had Lady —— appeared to wish it, or even not to oppose it, I would have gone on, and very possibly married, with the same indifference which has frozen over the Black Sea of almost all my passions.… Obstacles the slightest even, stop me.” (Moore’s Byron, p. 255.)
And it is in face of some such obstacle, lifting suddenly, that he flashes up, and over, into new proposals to Miss Milbanke; these are quietly accepted—very likely to his wonderment; for he says, in a quick ensuing letter to Moore:
“I certainly did not dream that she was attached to me, which it seems she has been for some time. I also thought her of a very cold disposition, in which I was also mistaken; it is a long story, and I won’t trouble you with it. As to her virtues, and so on, you will hear enough of them (for she is a kind of pattern in the north) without my running into a display on the subject.”
A little over two months after the date of this they were married, and he writes to Murray in the same week:
“The marriage took place on the 2d inst., so pray make haste and congratulate away.” [And to Moore, a few days later.] “I was married this day week. The parson has pronounced it; Perry has announced it, and the Morning Post, also, under head of ‘Lord Byron’s marriage’—as if it were a fabrication and the puff direct of a new stay-maker.”
A month and a half later, in another Moore letter, alluding to the death of the Duke of Dorset (an old friend of his), he says:
“There was a time in my life when this event would have broken my heart; and all I can say for it now is—that it isn’t worth breaking.”
Two more citations, and I shall have done with this extraordinary record. In March, 1815 (the marriage having occurred in January), he writes to Moore from the house of his father-in-law, Sir Ralph Milbanke—a little northward of the Tees, in County Durham:
“I am in such a state of sameness and stagnation, and so totally occupied in consuming the fruits, and sauntering, and playing dull games at cards, and yawning, and trying to read old Annual Registers and the daily papers, and gathering shells on the shore, and watching the growth of stunted gooseberries in the garden, that I have neither time nor sense to say more than yours ever—B.”