Letter from Lord Balcarres, Haigh Hall, to W. E. Henley, 1897 October 17 : autograph manuscript signed.

Concerning Lady Anne Lindsay's memoirs and her friendship with Lord Byron; saying "I have spent an hour reading Lady Anne Lindsay's memoirs where she talks about Byron. I am afraid they don't give any hints which could be of use to you. The memoirs seem to have been written after Lady Anne's friendship with L'y Byron & I can't find any notices of the poet in the memoirs written during the period when his letter were sent. Anyhow they are pretty strongly anti Byron. Still there are some interesting things, notably Lady B's accounts of their conversations beginning from the one in the coach when they were away honeymooning. There is a long account of how 'Fare thee well' came to be written. It appears that at the same time he wrote some abusive lines about the servant - girl-governess wh. were suppressed. Do you know wh. these can be? Then there are accounts of L'd B's pursuits & practices, & letters form his wife in wh. one rather good passage comes where she says that 'he is the absolute monarch of words, using them as Buonaparte did lives...'Why then, you will say, does he not employ them to give a better colour to his own character? because he is too good an actor to overact or to assume a moral garb wh. it w'd be easy to strip off.' Lady B. made my gr't gr't gr't aunt promise that she w'd never publish her letters & conversations. I tumbled across one of Lady Anne's visits to the D'k & 'Dutchess' of Kent, at one of which she saw the little Victoria, 'a fair handsome Rosy child who held out its little hand to be kissed in a manner that contained a sybeline prophecy of future greatness.' British critic available / 1st 6 months 1804 / & complete 1805-6-7.8"