Lady Frances Webster

Lady Frances Caroline Wedderburn-Webster (née Annesley; 1793–1837) was an Anglo-Irish woman who became a figure of scandal of the Regency period, for her supposed affairs with the leading celebrities, Lord Byron and the Duke of Wellington. It may be that neither of those relationships went beyond flirtation.[1]

Lady Frances Wedderburn-Webster
Lady Frances Wedderburn-Webster, 1812 engraving
Born1793
Died1837 (aged 43–44)
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1810)​
Parent(s)Arthur Annesley, 1st Earl of Mountnorris
Sarah Cavendish

Background

She was the daughter of Arthur Annesley, 1st Earl of Mountnorris, and Sarah, daughter of Sir Henry Cavendish, 2nd Baronet.[2][3]

Relationship with Byron

Frances married James Webster (see below), a crony of Byron, and he introduced Byron to his young wife in 1811.[4] Byron, based on information from Webster's brother, considered that the Websters had a marriage of convenience. He coined the nickname "Phryne" for Frances.[5]

Invited to Aston Hall, Yorkshire, by the Websters in September 1813, Byron associated the house, but mistakenly, with the place to which his father John Byron took his lover Lady Carmarthen. That had been the rectory at nearby Aston, South Yorkshire, which William Mason as incumbent had leased to them. He wished his half-sister Augusta Leigh to come too, but she refused, despite the family connection that Aston Hall had been the property of Robert Darcy, 4th Earl of Holderness, her grandfather. Byron then planned to seduce Frances. In a position to do so, he did not, on his own account.[6]

House party at Aston Hall

There were other reasons for Byron to accept the invitation to a house party at Aston Hall. It was quite near Newstead Abbey, his family home, which he was trying to sell to Thomas Claughton in a deal that started stalling in spring 1813.[7] He was settling his servant Robert Rushton in the service of the Websters, which he joined 7 September.[8] The day before, Byron wrote to Webster about untenanted properties within ten miles of Aston Hall. He accepted the invitation on 15 September.[9]

This time at Aston Hall set the terms for the future relationship between Frances and Byron. One of the party was Lady Catherine Annesley, younger sister to Frances, at this time disappointed in her relationship with Viscount Bury (Augustus Keppel). James Webster had recently visited Newstead Abbey, and wished to return: Byron had reason to believe he was carrying on with one of the servant girls there.[10] Byron broke his visit after not much more than a week, but returned from London early in October. He found two more guests, William Westcombe and George Charles Agar, and Frances hankering after Viscount Petersham.[11]

In a letter to Lady Melbourne, Byron described how he was reluctant to make advances to Frances, who was not reciprocating enough for his taste; but he had tried a speech on Frances in the billiard room, and was being provoked by James Webster's boastful talk. Byron and James did, however, visit Newstead Abbey together, one or two days later. Byron and Frances exchanged notes and tokens, and there apparently the affair rested.[12]

Byron had learned that there was an affair of the heart between Frances and John Campbell, James's lawyer. The widowed Lady Sitwell arrived, Byron was required by Lady Catherine to give up his seat next to her, James calling Byron "ungallant" for his reluctance. Byron agreed to loan James £1000.[13] On 18 October, the day before Byron left, Frances wrote a letter in reply to a cutting note, declaring she was Byron's but would not be "guilty", and asking for a miniature portrait. The next day James and Byron travelled to London together, on the loan business.[14]

Literary aftermath

After the resolution of the affair with Frances Webster as "Platonic love", Byron in November wrote The Bride of Abydos. In December 1813 the affair descended from the emotional heights.[15] Jerome McGann, interpreting Byron's opaque hints, puts the inspiration for the poem down to Byron's recent affairs of 1813, with Augusta and Frances.[16] I Saw Thee Weep, from Byron's Hebrew Melodies, is also associated with Frances.[17]

Later, on hearing of the supposed affair between the Duke of Wellington and Frances, Byron wrote the poem When We Two Parted.[18][19] There is some uncertainty about when he wrote it, in the period 1815–16, and there is more than one version of the poem; but it was intended for Frances.[20]

Relationship with the Duke of Wellington

The Duke of Wellington wrote a letter to Frances Webster in the early hours of 18 June 1815, the day of the battle of Waterloo.[21] Frances and James Webster subsequently brought a libel action over allegations that she was having affair with the Duke. At the time of the letter, she was pregnant, thought to be in the third trimester.[22]

The St James Chronicle claimed that James Webster had demanded a large sum from the Duke, and that the Websters were divorcing.[22] The case came to court on 16 February 1816, with John Campbell as counsel for the Websters.[23] The editor of the St James Chronicle, Charles Baldwin, offered no defence, and the Websters were awarded £2,000.[22]

Later life

Frances Webster did then take as her lover the Regency dandy Scrope Berdmore Davies.[24]

Frances and Byron kept in touch, Frances sending "long, overwrought letters".[25] In 1823, when the Websters' marriage had broken down, and Byron was trying to raise some cash from the loan to James Webster from ten years before, she wrote to him at Genoa from Paris, as a friend.[26]

Family

On 10 October 1810 Frances married James Wedderburn-Webster,[27] known as "Bold" Webster. They had five children:

The Websters spent their later years in penury, due to the husband's extravagance. When Frances died in 1837 her husband was reportedly in a debtors' prison. He died in 1840.

Notes
  1. Frances was heavily pregnant with a child, who was christened Charles Byron, when she attended the Duchess of Richmond's ball and sat next to the Duke of Wellington.
  1. Byron & Marchand 1976, p. 28.
  2. Mosley 2003, p. 3976
  3. Mosley 2003, p. 4095
  4. Eisler, Benita (2011). Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 290. ISBN 978-0-307-77327-2.
  5. Melbourne, Viscountess Elizabeth Milbanke Lamb (1998). Byron's "Corbeau Blanc": The Life and Letters of Lady Melbourne. Texas A&M University Press. p. 155 note 97. ISBN 978-0-89096-672-3.
  6. Bakewell, Michael; Bakewell, Melissa (2002). Augusta Leigh: Byron's Half-sister : a Biography. Pimlico. pp. 112-3. ISBN 978-0-7126-6560-5.
  7. Beckett, J. V.; Aley, Sheila (2001). Byron and Newstead: The Aristocrat and the Abbey. University of Delaware Press. p. 169. ISBN 978-0-87413-751-4.
  8. Lloyd-Jones, Ralph. "Rushton, Robert". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/74133. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  9. Stewart, John (2014). Byron and the Websters: The Letters and Entangled Lives of the Poet, Sir James Webster and Lady Frances Webster. McFarland. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-7864-8437-9.
  10. Stewart, John (2014). Byron and the Websters: The Letters and Entangled Lives of the Poet, Sir James Webster and Lady Frances Webster. McFarland. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-7864-8437-9.
  11. Stewart, John (2014). Byron and the Websters: The Letters and Entangled Lives of the Poet, Sir James Webster and Lady Frances Webster. McFarland. pp. 43–45. ISBN 978-0-7864-8437-9.
  12. Stewart, John (2014). Byron and the Websters: The Letters and Entangled Lives of the Poet, Sir James Webster and Lady Frances Webster. McFarland. pp. 43–45. ISBN 978-0-7864-8437-9.
  13. Stewart, John (2014). Byron and the Websters: The Letters and Entangled Lives of the Poet, Sir James Webster and Lady Frances Webster. McFarland. pp. 50–51. ISBN 978-0-7864-8437-9.
  14. Stewart, John (2014). Byron and the Websters: The Letters and Entangled Lives of the Poet, Sir James Webster and Lady Frances Webster. McFarland. pp. 53–55. ISBN 978-0-7864-8437-9.
  15. Byron, George Gordon Byron Baron (1974). "Alas! the Love of Women": 1813–1814. Harvard University Press. p. xiii. ISBN 978-0-674-08942-6.
  16. Beatty, Bernard G.; Robinson, Charles; Howe, Tony; Robinson, Charles E. (2008). Liberty and Poetic Licence: New Essays on Byron. Liverpool University Press. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-85323-589-7.
  17. Garrett, M. (2010). The Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Byron. Springer. p. 146. ISBN 978-0-230-24541-9.
  18. MacCarthy 2014, pp. 327.
  19. Brinkley & Hanley 1992, pp. 191–192.
  20. Stewart, John (2014). Byron and the Websters: The Letters and Entangled Lives of the Poet, Sir James Webster and Lady Frances Webster. McFarland. pp. 171–2. ISBN 978-0-7864-8437-9.
  21. Muir, Rory (2015). Wellington: Waterloo and the Fortunes of Peace 1814–1852. Yale University Press. p. 56. ISBN 978-0-300-21404-8.
  22. Muir, Rory (2015). Wellington: Waterloo and the Fortunes of Peace 1814–1852. Yale University Press. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-300-21404-8.
  23. Proceedings on the Trial of a Special Action on the Case, by James Webster Wedderburn Webster, Esq., and Lady Frances Caroline Webster Wedderburn Webster, his Wife, against Charles Baldwin, for a Libel; in the Court of Common Pleas, at Westminster, on Friday, the 16th of February 1816. Taken in short-hand by Mr. W. B. Gurney. 1816.
  24. Peach, Annette (23 September 2004). "Davies, Scrope Berdmore (1782–1852), dandy and friend of Lord Byron". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/59368. ISBN 9780198614128. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  25. Janice Cavell, Lady Lucy Barry and Evangelical Reading on the First Franklin Expedition, Arctic Vol. 63, No. 2 (June 2010), pp. 131–140, at p. 133. Published by: Arctic Institute of North America JSTOR 27821958
  26. Stewart, John (2014). Byron and the Websters: The Letters and Entangled Lives of the Poet, Sir James Webster and Lady Frances Webster. McFarland. p. 167. ISBN 978-0-7864-8437-9.
  27. Lodge 1839, p. 358.
  28. Wedderburn 1898, p. 335.
  29. Wedderburn 1898, p. 334.

References
  • Brinkley, Robert; Hanley, Keith (1992), Romantic Revisions, Cambridge University Press, p. 191, ISBN 978-0-521-38074-4
  • Byron, George Gordon Byron Baron; Marchand, Leslie Alexis (1976), "So Late into the Night": 1816-1817, Harvard University Press, p. 28, ISBN 978-0-674-08945-7
  • Lodge, Edmund (1839), The Peerage of the British Empire as at Present Existing: Arranged and Printed from the Personal Communications of the Nobility, Saunders and Otley, p. 358
  • MacCarthy, Fiona (2014), Byron: Life and Legend, Hodder & Stoughton, p. 327, ISBN 978-1-4447-9987-3
  • Mosley, Charles, ed. (2003), Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage (107th in 3 volumes ed.), Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.: Burke's Peerage, pp. 3976, 4095
  • Wedderburn, Alexander Dundas Ogilvy (1898), The Wedderburn book: a history of the Wedderburns in the counties of Berwick, and Forfar, Printed for private circulation
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