Blest Her! The Angel Suffers No More…
However, Lady Noel was QUITE mistaken in her distraught prediction about her ‘poor child’s’ imminent demise.
However, Lady Noel was QUITE mistaken in her distraught prediction about her ‘poor child’s’ imminent demise.
On the first day of February 1814 -the publication of ‘The Corsair’ became a “thing perfectly unprecedented” according to His Lordship’s proud and increasingly successful publisher, John Murray.
As we know that no one lives forever and seven months after Lord B’s most facetious letter – his Mamma-At-Law died on Monday January 28 in 1822.
The Fifth Baron Byron was NOT the grandfather of our poet as purported by Alexander Larman in his sloppily researched tome Byron’s Women which was published to enormous fanfare in 2016 but rather THE great-uncle and it was upon his demise that Byron became a Lord and inherited land and titles which included the glorious ancestral abode of Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire.
January 25 is the celebration of Burns Night and having enjoyed a fabulous supper of Haggis – I had to refuse the ‘wee dram’ of fine Scotch whiskey on offer.
However, had I done so, I could have raised a glass in honour of the character in this post – Lady Caroline Lamb who died on this day in 1828 at the age of forty two
AND it’s probably fair to say that even with the passage of time, opinion remains as divided about her in death, as it was in life!
Byron was noted for his open manner and of his tendency to admit his feelings of despondency, sorrow or his word of choice – melancholy. For his poetry is noted for it, his private journals speak of it and he was often candid about his ‘constitutional depression of Spirits’ in letters to his friends.
Byron’s second proposal of marriage in September 1814 would lay the foundation stone for his eventual exile.
In the hagiography which often passes for the writing of Byron’s life, Catherine Gordon Byron is somewhat of a ‘Marmite’ figure for you will either love OR hate her!
And one glorious afternoon in October I took a stroll through this fabulous cemetery to the grave of Byron’s spouse…
More than 228 years have now passed since that ‘involuntary Act of coming into the World’ for May 17 is the birthday of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron, the Poet’s ‘Princess of Parallelograms’ and the woman he later said was ‘born for my destruction.’
Born on Ascension Day in 1792 in County Durham, she was the cherished only child of Sir Ralph and the Hon. Judith Milbanke who had lived through a marriage of over 15 years, childlessness and hope in anticipation of the arrival of their ‘’little angel’…
I will trust to YOU for ALL I should look up to – ALL I can love?
Marry Me?
I confess that my attention wandered to the alluring and haughty figure of Mr Darcy in conversation with a certain Miss Bennet…
Born ‘out of my time’ and with a fond heart for Regency history – it is no secret that I also have a passionate interest in the life of the poet Lord Byron!
I have been reading the book by Ghislaine McDayter which places Byron and the heady years of stardom as the patriarch of all of our modern celebrities and so in addition to being a brilliant and irreverent poet, and despite his own cynicism on the matter – Byron is also honoured as the first ever celebrity…