“It appears to me that Lady Byron sets about making him happy in quite the right way. It is true I judge at a distance, and we generally hope as we wish; but I assure you I don’t conclude hastily on this subject, and will own to you, what I would not scarcely to any other person, that I had many fears and much anxiety founded upon many causes and circumstances of which I cannot write. Thank God! that they do not appear likely to be realised.”
On March 18, 1815: “Byron is looking remarkably well, and of Lady B. I hardly know how to write, for I have a sad trick of being struck dumb when I am most happy and pleased. The expectations I had formed could not be exceeded, but at least they are fully answered.
“I think I never saw or heard of a more perfect being in mortal mould than she appears to be, and scarcely dared flatter myself such a one would fall to the lot of my dear B. He seems quite sensible of her value.”
On March 31, 1815: “Byron and Lady B. left me on Tuesday for London.... The more I see of her the more I love and esteem her, and feel how grateful I am, and ought to be, for the blessing of such a wife for my dear, darling Byron.”
On September 4, 1815: “My brother has just left me, having been here since last Wednesday, when he arrived very unexpectedly. I never saw him so well, and he is in the best spirits.”
This is evidence not extorted by questions but spontaneously volunteered. If it proves nothing else, at least it proves that appearances were kept up, and that Augusta was deceived. But appearances, none the less, gave a false impression; and there were other friends, more keen sighted than Augusta, who saw through them. Hobhouse, in particular, did so. He too had had his anxieties, and had been watching; and the notes in his Diary—some of them contemporaneous with, but others subsequent to, Augusta’s letters—are not unlike the rumblings of a coming thunderstorm.
On March 25, 1815: “I went to bed out of spirits from indeterminate but chiefly low apprehensions about Byron.”
On April 1, 1815: “He advises me ‘not to marry,’ though he has the best of wives.”
On April 2, 1815: “Lady Oxford walks about Naples with Byron’s picture on her girdle in front.”
On July 31, 1815: “Byron is not more happy than before marriage. D. Kinnaird is also melancholy. This is the state of man.”