96 — To the Hon. Augusta Leigh
[Six Mile Bottom, Newmarket, Cambridge.]
Dorant's, [Tuesday], April 26th, 1808.
My dear Augusta, — I regret being compelled to trouble you again, but it is necessary I should request you will inform Col. Leigh, if the P's consent is not obtained in a few days, it will be of little service to Mr. Wallace, who is ordered to join the 17th in ten days, the Regiment is stationed in the East Indies, and, as he has already served there nine years, he is unwilling to return. I shall feel particularly obliged by Col. Leigh's interference, as I think from his influence the Prince's consent might be obtained. I am not much in the habit of asking favours, or pressing exertion, but, on this occasion, my wish to save Wallace must plead my excuse.
I
have been introduced to Julia Byron
by Trevannion at the Opera; she is pretty, but I do not admire her; there is too much Byron in her countenance, I hear she is clever, a very great defect in a woman, who becomes conceited in course; altogether I have not much inclination to improve the acquaintance.
I have seen my old friend George
, who will prove the best of the family, and will one day be Lord B. I do not much care how soon.
Pray name my nephew after his uncle; it must be a nephew, (I
won't
have a
niece
,) I will make him my
heir,
for I shall never marry, unless I am ruined, and then his
inheritance
would not be great.
George will have the title and his
laurels;
my property, (if any is left in five years time,) I can leave to whom I please, and your son shall be the legatee. Adieu.
Yours ever,
Byron
.
Footnote 1:
George Anson Byron, R.N. (1758-1793), second son of Admiral the Hon. John Byron, by his wife Sophia Trevanion, and brother of Byron's father, married Henrietta Charlotte Dallas, by whom he had a son, George, who was at this time in the Royal Navy, and in 1824 succeeded as seventh Lord Byron; and a daughter, Julia Byron, who married, in 1817, the Rev. Robert Heath. Of his cousin George, Byron writes in his
Journal
for November 30, 1813 (
Life
, p. 209):
"I like George much more than most people like their heirs. He is a fine fellow, and every inch a sailor."
Again on December 1, 1813, he says,
"I hope he will be an admiral, and, perhaps, Lord Byron into the bargain. If he would but marry, I would engage never to marry myself, or cut him out of the heirship."
George Anson Byron and his wife both died in 1793.
