'
to Lady Byron (Annabella Milbanke),
February 8, 1816
***All I can say seems useless - and all I could say might be no less
unavailing - yet I still cling to the wreck of my hopes, before they sink for
ever. Were you, then, never happy with me? Did you never at any time
or times express yourself so? Have no marks of affection of the warmest
and most reciprocal attachment passed between us? or did in fact hardly a day go
down without some such on one side, and generally on both? Do not mistake
me: I have not denied my state of mind - but you know its causes - and
were those deviations from calmness never followed by acknowledgements and
repentance? Was not the last that recurred more particularly so? and had I
not - had we not the days before and on the day we parted - every reason to
believe that we loved each other? that we were to meet again? Were not
your letters kind? Had I not acknowledged to you all my faults and follies
- and assured you that some had not and could not be repeated? I do not
require these questions to be answered to me, but to your own heart. ***It
is torture to correspond thus, and there are things to be settled and said which
cannot be written.
You say it is my disposition to deem
what I have worthless? Did I deem you so? Did I ever so
express myself to you, or of you to others? You are much changed within
these twenty days or you would never have thus poisoned your own better feelings
and trampled on mine.
Ever your most truly and affectly.
B.
portrait of Byron's 'Princess of Parallelograms', his wife, Lady Annabella Milbanke