B.
This letter refers to the future Lady Byron, the "Miss Monmouth" of
Glenarvon
(see vol. iii. p. 100), who was first brought to Byron's notice by Lady Caroline Lamb. Anna Isabella (often shortened into Annabella) Milbanke (born May 17, 1792; died May 16, 1860) was the only child of Sir Ralph Milbanke, Bart., and the Hon. Judith Noel, daughter of Lord Wentworth. Her childhood was passed at Halnaby, or at Seaham, where her father had "a pretty villa on the cliff." In 1808 Seaham
"was the most primitive hamlet ever met with—a dozen or so of cottages, no trade, no manufacture, no business doing that we could see; the owners were mostly servants of Sir Ralph Milbanke's."
(
Memoirs of a Highland Lady
, p. 71). It was here that Blacket the poet (see