Mrs Byron, Briefly (NZ351442)

Anne Isabella Milbanke, as has already been related on this blog, was the all-too-brief wife of the very famous and very unpredictable Lord Byron. This short-lived affair brought a singular and very talented child into this world, namely one Ada Lovelace, perhaps the world’s first computer programmer. But of this strange and swift affair, the North-East of England can not only claim the venue of the famous wedding (Seaham Hall, in 1815), but it can also bag Milbanke herself as a daughter of the region. For Anne was born at Elemore Hall, two or three miles south of Hetton-le-Hole in Co.Durham.

The stately pile we see there now (as then) was built in the mid-eighteenth century by George Baker (the then owner) to replace an earlier manor house. It stayed in the family for its entire existence as a private residence, until the mid-twentieth century.

Sir Ralph Milbanke and his wife, Judith, who were otherwise based at Seaham Hall, found themselves staying at Elemore in May 1792, where young Anne was born on 17^th May – the couple’s only child. She was educated to a high standard and became a formidable (and perhaps prudish) intellectual and moral figure – quite the wrong sort for the likes of her half-mad future husband.

Byron (if you’ve read my related post) described Anne as “a very superior woman, and very little spoiled, which is strange in an heiress … an only child, and a savante … a poetess, a mathematician, a metaphysician … there was never … a more amiable being.” After a long, drawn-out courtship, he finally did the decent thing in 1815 – then almost immediately abandoned his pregnant wife for good. She saw out a still comfortable existence thanks to her well-to-do connections and an inheritance which saw her, eventually, become Baroness Wentworth by a circuitous route. Along the way, she devoted herself to social causes, including, notably, the abolition of slavery. She died in 1860 (outliving her talented daughter) and was buried in London.

During the course of the twentieth century, Elemore Hall passed out of the hands of the Baker family, through the hands of the local council and National Coal Board, and has for many years been known as Elemore Hall School – an institution for children with social, emotional and behavioural problems. It still sits in wonderful isolation in its woodland setting, and has enjoyed a recent bout of remedial work to its decaying fabric.

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know (NZ420505)

 

This most famous of phrases was once used to describe the flamboyant English poet, Lord Byron, remembered chiefly here in the North-East for his short-lived marriage to local heiress Anne Isabella Milbanke – the ceremony of which took place at Seaham Hall in 1815.

The moody, broody Byron and the prudish Miss Milbanke first met in London, and when the great poet deemed it necessary to rescue his perilous financial state by way of an advantageous marriage, his attention fell upon Anne Isabella, whom he considered “a very superior woman, and very little spoiled, which is strange in an heiress … an only child, and a savante … a poetess, a mathematician, a metaphysician … there was never … a more amiable being.”  And so they were married, in the Drawing Room of Seaham Hall on 2^nd January 1815.

Within days they were bickering.  During their three-week honeymoon at her father’s estate at Halnaby in Yorkshire, the new Lady Byron was said to be “greatly distressed” by the “irregularities of her husband.”  Byron himself found day-to-day life at Seaham dreary – or more accurately, perhaps, the husbandly and social duties so.  A great quarrel occurred in the sixth week of their marriage, after which they lived separate lives, before they eventually formally separated on 16^th January 1816, little more a year after their marriage.  Byron soon left England for ever – leaving his ex-wife and their baby daughter behind.

Note:  The Byrons’ daughter, Ada, is generally recognised as the world’s first “computer programmer”, thanks to her work with the famous Charles Babbage – see here.