“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.”