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Biography of Anne Isabella Noel (wife of the poet Lord Byron)

Anne Isabella Noel (nee Milbanke)

Wife of the poet Lord Byron

1792 – 1860

 

 

Anne Isabella Noel [née Milbanke], , suo jure Baroness Wentworth, and Lady Byron (1792–1860), philanthropist and wife of the poet Lord Byron, was born at Elemore Hall, Pittington, Durham, on 17 May 1792, the only child of Sir Ralph Milbanke (afterwards Noel), sixth baronet (1747–1825), and his wife, Judith Noel (1751–1822), eldest daughter of the first Viscount Wentworth. Her father, the eldest son of Sir Ralph Milbanke of Halnaby Hall, Yorkshire, was the whig MP for Co. Durham and was renowned for his work for the poor and his support for the abolition of slavery. Both parents were enlightened, and Annabella and her adopted sister, Sophie Curzon, were among the first to be inoculated. She was brought up to be concerned for the workers and tenants of the estate and helped establish a school in Seaham. An early reader, Annabella Milbanke was especially interested in mathematics and astronomy, which she studied with a Cambridge tutor; new ideas on magnetism and phrenology fascinated her.

In 1810 Annabella Milbanke attended her first London season: she loved dancing and attracted many eligible suitors. She met
George Gordon Noel Byron, sixth Baron Byron (1788–1824), in 1812, the year he became famous, and soon after rejected his first marriage proposal. They communicated during 1813, often discussing literature in their letters, and he visited her at Seaham. She accepted Byron's second proposal in 1814 and they were married on 2 January 1815, spending their honeymoon at Halnaby Hall. On the first day Byron received a love letter from his half-sister Augusta Leigh, which he showed to his wife, saying he had married her out of revenge for her previous refusal.

Augusta came to stay with them in London. Both women were concerned about Byron's mental condition, and his aunt and a cousin came to protect the pregnant Lady Byron from his threats. The baby, (Augusta) Ada, [see
Byron, (Augusta) Ada, countess of Lovelace], was born on 10 December. On 15 January 1816 Lady Byron, at Byron's request, took the baby to her parents' home in Leicestershire, promising to return if his doctor advised it. Byron did not accept her parents' invitation to join his wife and they never met again.

Eventually Lady Byron's parents discovered the cause of their daughter's distress and consulted an eminent lawyer. Rumours about Byron and his half-sister, prevalent before his marriage, resurfaced and they were ostracized from society. Byron decided to leave the country; he departed on 25 April 1816 and never returned. In 1824 he died helping in the Greek War of Independence. On his deathbed he talked urgently to his faithful servant Fletcher, telling him to go to Lady Byron and say he was ‘friends with her’. There was much more but Fletcher could not understand him. Lady Byron was devastated when Fletcher visited her and could impart little of Byron's last words to her.

Lady Byron supervised the education of her daughter, Ada, who proved to be a very intelligent child. She persuaded the mathematician Augustus de Morgan that her daughter should not give up mathematics on her marriage in 1835 to Lord King (later earl of Lovelace). Letters from her daughter to Lady Byron suggest that their relationship was a close one, until Ada fell into the hands of bookmakers, shortly before her premature death from cancer in November 1852. Lady Byron found it impossible to forgive her son-in-law for failing to prevent Ada's association with gamblers; she was similarly disillusioned with her close friend Anna Jameson, who had secretly lent her daughter money.

Meanwhile, Lady Byron had returned to her early ambitions to help the poor and ignorant. She tried to investigate and understand problems and offered not only money but practical suggestions. A supporter of the Brighton Co-operative Society, she helped pioneer a branch in Hastings. She also lent the ground floor of her house in Brighton to the mechanics' institute for educational purposes.

However Lady Byron's main interest was developing education for the underprivileged, and her greatest achievement was to establish Ealing Grove School. She had visited and written about Emanuel de Fellenberg's school at Hofwyl in Switzerland and used his principles in establishing the Ealing School. Its aim was practical as well as idealistic, and lessons included allotment schemes, carpentry, masonry, and the commercial principles of marketing garden produce, and Ada regularly helped by giving lessons. An agricultural school was also set up on the Leicestershire estate. Many notable people visited Ealing Grove, including the writer Joanna Baillie, Seymour Tremenheere of the council of education in London, and her son-in-law, the earl of Lovelace, who started a school with similar aims at Ockham in Surrey.

In 1840 Lady Byron attended the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Convention and became involved in improving slum conditions and discussing rights for women. She shared with Mary Carpenter (1807–1877), the pioneer worker in reformatories for girls, the belief that society should undertake the education and care of orphans. In 1852 she bought Red Lodge in Bristol, which Mary Carpenter administered as a reformatory for girls.

On the death of her mother in 1822 Lady Byron took the name Noel but continued to be known as Lady Byron. By the death of her cousin, Nathaniel Curzon, Baron Scarsdale, in 1856, the abeyance of the barony of Wentworth terminated, and she became Baroness Wentworth. She died on 16 May 1860 at home in 11 St George's Terrace, Regent's Park, London. She was buried in Kensal Green cemetery, London.

Many people who knew Lady Byron well would have been surprised to read the hostile judgements made about her by notable twentieth-century writers; none more so than Lord Byron, who wrote as early as March 1816: ‘I do not believe—that there ever was a better, or even a brighter, a kinder or a more amiable and agreeable being than Lady B’ (Byron's Letters and Journals, 5.44). He told William Parry eight years later that ‘The prospect of retirement in England with my wife and Ada gives me an idea of happiness I have never experienced before’ (Parry, 122). Amelia Matilda Murray said that she was ‘one of those pure spirits, little valued by the world, though worshipped by those who knew her well’ (A. M. Murray, Recollections of Amelia Matilda Murray, 1868, 72).

Oxford Dictionary of National Biographies

Sources

R. G. King-Milbanke, second earl of Lovelace, Lady Noel Byron and the Leighs (1887) · R. G. N. Milbanke, second earl of Lovelace, Astarte, a fragment of truth concerning George Gordon Byron (1905) · Lovelace MSS, Bodl. Oxf. · Byron's letters and journals, ed. L. A. Marchand, 12 vols. (1973–82) · The life and letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron, ed. E. C. Mayne (1929) · D. L. Moore, Ada, countess of Lovelace (1977) · W. Parry, The last days of Lord Byron (1825) · M. Elwin, Lord Byron’s wife (1962) · M. Strickland, The Byron women (1974) · P. Gunn, My dearest Augusta (1968) · H. B. Stowe, History of the Byron controversy (1870) · M. Gardiner, countess of Blessington, A journal of conversations of Lord Byron, new edn (1893) · J. Pierson, The real Lady Byron (1992) · d. cert.

Archives

BL, family corresp., Add. MS 31037 · Bodl. Oxf., corresp. and papers · Boston PL, letters and papers · Ransom HRC, corresp. and papers | BL, corresp. with Lord Holland, Add. MS 51639 · BL, corresp. with Lady Melbourne, Add. MS 45547 · Bodl. Oxf., letters to Mary Somerville and her family · CKS, letters to Mary Duppa (later Faunce) · U. Birm. L., corresp. with Harriet Martineau · University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, corresp. with George Macdonald

 

Likenesses

C. Hayter, portrait, 1812 · M. A. Knight, portrait, c.1820, Castle Museum, Nottingham · Freeman, steel engraving, 1833 · J. Hoppner, portrait (aged about 8), Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston upon Hull · photograph, NPG [see illus.]

Wealth at death

under £70,000: resworn probate, July 1861, CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1860)

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Joan Pierson, ‘Noel , Anne Isabella , suo jure Baroness Wentworth, and Lady Byron (1792–1860)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/45789, accessed 24 Nov 2011]

Anne Isabella Noel (1792–1860): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/45789