"I Have Never Concealed a Single Thought that Tempted Me"
Byron shares his thoughts about Annabella Milbanke with Lady Melbourne...
She seems to have been spoiled - not as children usually are - but systematically Clarissa Harlowed into an awkward kind of correctness, with a dependence upon her own infallibility which will or may lead her into some egregious blunder...
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I don't mean the usual error of young gentlewomen, but she will find exactly what she wants, and then discover that it is much more dignified than entertaining.
September 1813
The Lady and the Poet
The Story of Anne Isabella Lady Noel Byron
She seems to have been spoiled - not as children usually are - but systematically Clarissa Harlowed into an awkward kind of correctness, with a dependence upon her own infallibility which will or may lead her into some egregious blunder...
I don't mean the usual error of young gentlewomen, but she will find exactly what she wants, and then discover that it is much more dignified than entertaining.
September 1813
The Lady and the Poet
The Story of Anne Isabella Lady Noel Byron
Sources Used:
Byronic Thoughts Maxims * Reflections * Portraits from the Prose and Verse of Lord Byron Ed: Peter Quennell (London: John Murray 1960)