Name Augusta Leigh Children Elizabeth Medora Leigh | Siblings George Gordon Byron | |
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Role John "Mad Jack" Byron's daughter Died October 12, 1851, Little Wilbraham, United Kingdom Parents Amelia Osborne, Marchioness of Carmarthen, John "Mad Jack" Byron Grandparents John Byron, Robert Darcy, 4th Earl of Holderness Similar People George Gordon Byron, Elizabeth Medora Leigh, Anne Isabella Byron - Ba, Ada Lovelace, John "Mad Jack" Byron | ||
Augusta leigh
Augusta Maria Leigh (née Byron; 26 January 1783 – 12 October 1851) was the only daughter of John "Mad Jack" Byron, the poet Lord Byron's father, by his first wife Amelia, née Darcy (Lady Conyers in her own right and the divorced wife of Francis, Marquis of Carmarthen).
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Early life
Augusta's mother died soon after her birth. Her grandmother, Lady Holderness, raised Augusta for a few years, but died when Augusta was still a young girl, and the child divided her time among relatives and friends.
Marriage
Augusta later married her cousin, Lt. Colonel George Leigh (1771–1850), son of General Charles Leigh (1748–1815) and his wife Frances Byron, her paternal aunt. She had seven children by him. Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, noted the wedding with disdain in his diary: "Poor Augusta Leigh marries today! Poor thing! I pity her connecting herself with such a Family, and such a fool! However she has nobody to blame but herself." The marriage turned out unhappily, because he fell into dissolution and gambled away all his money. At the end, he left his wife and children nothing but debts.
There was personal unhappiness too, when Henry Trevanion, husband of one daughter Georgiana left her in 1829–30 (after four years of marriage) for her younger sister Elizabeth Medora (allegedly fathered by Lord Byron). Medora and Henry Trevanion remained together for several years in France, before finally separating. The deserted Georgiana, doubly betrayed, lacked the funds to apply for a Parliamentary divorce unlike another similarly wronged wife Louisa Turton (Turton vs Turton).
Byron
Augusta's half-brother, George Lord Byron, didn't meet her until he went to Harrow School and even then only very rarely. From 1804 onwards, however, she wrote to him regularly and became his confidante especially in his quarrels with his mother. Their correspondence ceased for two years after Byron had gone abroad, and was not resumed until she sent him a letter expressing her sympathy on the death of his mother, Catherine.
Not having been brought up together they were almost like strangers to each other. But they got on well together and appear to have fallen in love with each other. When Byron's marriage collapsed and he sailed away from England never to return, rumours of incest, a very serious and scandalous offence, were rife. Some say it was because of his fear of prosecution that Byron abandoned his country.
There is some evidence to support the incest accusation. Augusta Leigh's third daughter, born in spring of 1814, was christened Elizabeth Medora Leigh. A few days after the birth, Byron went to his sister's house Swynford Paddocks in Cambridgeshire to see the child, and wrote, in a letter to Lady Melbourne, his confidante: "Oh, but it is not an ape, and it is worth while" (a child of an incestuous relationship was thought likely to be deformed).