Seaham Hall (October 23 1814)
‘One believes every word which Mr. Hobhouse writes, because there is not a word too much….
The prospect of so early an introduction to him gives me pleasure.
Is he determined to wait till the ceremony?
We (for we are monstrously harmonic) should be gratified by a visit from him before the fatal day, if he would accept the invitation of your future wife, and be her guest before he is yours also.
This I must leave to your persuasive powers.
So I wrote to you in the fit of melancholy recalled by association with less happy moments? I might as well not have sent the “blue devils” to the post though, as they evaporated by that channel, you will not wish them to have remained with the right owner.
No more “heroic” visitors – nor “heroic epistles.’
You will be entertained with many of my congratulatory addresses…
I am afraid that my Uncle must go on Thursday – he has business in the South.
That he is not angry with you for his disappointment you will believe when I tell you the object of his visit to Durham this morning – to exact a “solemn promise” from Mr. Hoar that he would not delay our Settlements a single moment beyond what the business positively required.
He says his whole heart is in the “consummation devoutly to be wished.”
P.S. – I have heard more of Bankes at Granada – he is living there in a beggarly, eccentric fashion.
My news had not reached Miss M., for whose glad answer I am rather impatient, as she has uniformly, decidedly, and singly maintained that you and I were the persons in the world best suited to each other.
I used to laugh at the opinion, with a very ill grace.‘
Sources Used:
The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella Lady Noel Byron Ethel Colburn Mayne (London: Constable & Co Ltd 1929)
The Regency Recondite 