Life of Lord Byron

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. I NOW believe that we have erred in regarding the poet's marriage as merely a manage de convenance, without affection. Miss Milbanke had a fortune of about .10,000, with a prospect of a little more when her father died, and some expectations from her uncle, Lord Wentworth. But the latter could...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. I NOW believe that we have erred in regarding the poet's marriage as merely a manage de convenance, without affection. Miss Milbanke had a fortune of about .10,000, with a prospect of a little more when her father died, and some expectations from her uncle, Lord Wentworth. But the latter could dispose of his wealth as he liked, and he had other nephews and nieces, besides natural children. The money, whatever it was, would first go to her mother, Lord Wentworth's sister, who was only sixty-one. So that Miss Milbanke was not a great catch for an embarrassed peer. Lord Broughton, who knew, always affirmed that his friend did not marry for money. Nor do his own expressions at the time of his engagement warrant the idea. The story, in Medwin's conversations, of his mistaking Miss Milbanke for a humble companion, when he first met her, seems to be pure fiction. Neither does the story Moore tells (from imperfect recollection of the destroyed Memoirs) appear much more probable. He says that Byron, by the advice of a female friend, made an offer to another lady between his first and second proposals to Miss Milbanke, and that, on receiving a refusal, he sent his second proposal to the latter, the friend having observed it was such a pretty letter, 'twas a pity it should not go. This is very likely a malrecollection of something in the Memoirs; but I fear we must admit, on a careful review of Byron's life, that when he once took a hatred to a person, he was, like some women, and like Shelley, predisposed readily to believe anything to his discredit; might even make statements to pain that person, which, if founded on fact, were certainly highly coloured in passing through the ardent medium of a hostile and injured imagination. That The Dream contains ...