The Love Affairs of Lord Byron

by Francis Henry Gribble

“I could be very sentimental now, but I won’t. The truth is, that I have been all my life trying to harden my heart, and have not yet quite succeeded—though there are great hopes—and you do not know how it has sunk with your departure.”

Byron assuredly was not in love with Miss Milbanke when he wrote that; and he had no opportunity of falling in love with her in the course of the next three months, for he did not even see her. None the less he made up his mind to ask her to marry him—as an alternative to departing on a long foreign tour; and it is from Hobhouse’s lately published narrative that we can best see how he was led, or lured, to that decision.

Byron had first met Miss Milbanke at the time when Lady Caroline Lamb was throwing herself at his head. Lady Caroline had shown him some verses which Miss Milbanke had written, and he had said that he considered them rather good—possibly because he thought so, but more probably because he wished to be polite. Soon afterwards, he had been presented to her, and had made her a first proposal of marriage, which she had declined.

The reasons alike for his offer and for her refusal of it remain obscure. He must, at any rate, have liked her; he was almost certainly getting tired of Lady Caroline’s determination to monopolise and exploit him; perhaps he was also anxious to do anything in reason to oblige Lady Melbourne, who had the motives which we know of for desiring to bring about the match. Whether Miss Milbanke, on her part, preferred some other admirer or resented Lady Melbourne’s attempt to make a convenience of her is doubtful. Both motives may have operated simultaneously; and Byron, at any rate, accepted his refusal in a philosophic spirit. It had not, Hobhouse says, “sunk very deep into his heart or preyed upon his spirits.” He “did not pretend to regret Miss Milbanke’s refusal deeply.” Indeed “it might be said that he did not pretend to regret it at all.” And Hobhouse describes a “ludicrous scene” when some common friend related that he had been rejected by Miss Milbanke, and burst into tears over the catastrophe.

“Is that all?” said Lord Byron. “Perhaps then it will be some consolation for you to know that I also have been refused by Miss Milbanke.”

Perhaps it was—some unsuccessful suitors are quite capable of taking comfort from such reflections; but that need not concern us. What we have to note is that Byron’s rejection by Miss Milbanke resulted in his engaging in a long correspondence with her; and that the commencement of that correspondence was negotiated by Lady Melbourne. One infers that Lady Melbourne was a very clever woman, by no means innocent of “ulterior motives,” far less ready than Byron to take “no” for an answer from Miss Milbanke, and intuitively conscious that correspondences of this character are apt to weave entanglements for those who engage in them.

Some extracts from the correspondence are printed in Mr. Murray’s Collected Edition of Byron’s Works. There are references to it both in Byron’s Journal and in Hobhouse’s Account of the Separation. There is nothing in the text which it seems imperative to quote—nothing, that is to say, which perceptibly helps the story along. Byron’s own letters are rather high-flown and artificial. The impression which one gathers from them is that of a man elaborately keeping alive the double pretence that he is unworthy and that he is disappointed—but only keeping it alive out of politeness. The nature of Miss Milbanke’s letters can only be inferred from the one or two allusions which we find to them.

“Yesterday, a very pretty letter from Annabella, which I answered. What an odd situation and friendship is ours!—without one spark of love on either side, and produced by circumstances which in general lead to coldness on one side and aversion on the other. She is a very superior woman, and very little spoiled.... She is a poetess—a mathematician—a metaphysician, and yet withal, very kind, generous, and gentle, with very little pretension. Any other head would be turned with half her acquisitions, and a tenth of her advantages.”

That is what Byron says; but Hobhouse adds a little more. He says that Byron at first “believed that a certain eccentricity of education had produced this communication from a young woman otherwise notorious for the strictest propriety of conduct and demeanour.” He also says that the tone of the communications grew in warmth as the correspondence proceeded, and that Byron did not make up his mind to propose marriage a second time until “after certain expressions had been dropped by Miss Milbanke in her letters which might easily have encouraged a bolder man than his lordship.” He says finally, and this he says, in italics, that when Byron did propose for the second time, Miss Milbanke accepted him by return of post. To which piece of information Moore adds the statement that in order to make assurance doubly sure, she sent her acceptance in duplicate to his town and his country addresses.

It reached him at Hastings; and Miss Milbanke proceeded to impart her news to her friends. A passage from one of the letters—that to Miss Milner—shows not only that she was very happy in the prospect of her marriage, but also that she had woefully deceived herself as to the circumstances which had preceded and led up to the proposal: