[BYRON] The Hon. Augusta Mary Leigh: autograph letter signed, re. a dinner invitation. St. James’s Palace, 5 August 1833.

Autograph letter, manuscript on ink, 2 pp. written on the first two sides of an octavo bifolium (185 x 115 mm); signed and dated at the foot of the second side ‘Augusta Leigh, St. James’s Palace, Apl. 5th 1833’, the letter is addressed simply ‘My dear Sir’ – who inner references inform us is a Mr. Givan (or Girvan?) – and would have been delivered via a private messenger, as the outer panel (fourth side) has no address or postal markings but is annotated in another nineteenth-century hand: ‘perhaps Wm. (?)Givan Joyce, 27 Upper Baker St.’; the fourth side also bears Augusta Leigh’s green wax seal (the crest is indistinct) and is annotated in yet another early hand ‘Hon. Mrs. Leigh, Ld. Byron’s sister’; original folds, small marginal loss at one corner and a few remnants of old hinges on the blank third side where the letter was once mounted in an album, otherwise extremely well preserved.

‘My dear Sir,

I am much vexed at having missed seeing you today when you were so kind as to call upon me, and hope that I may be able to accept your & Mrs [?]Givan’s kind invitation for Weds. the 10th if I should not be out of Town, of which there is a possibility one day next week. Pray present my best remembrances to Mrs [?]Givan & yr. daughter & believe me … Augusta Leigh ‘.

The Hon Augusta Mary Leigh (Byron) (1783-1851) was the half-sister and presumed lover of the Romantic poet Lord Byron. She is the subject of Byron’s Epistle to Augusta (1816) and Stanzas to Augusta.

Augusta was the only surviving 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). She married her cousin, Lt. Colonel George Leigh (1771-1850), son of General Charles Leigh (1748-1815) and his wife, Frances Byron (1749-1823), her paternal aunt. She had seven children with Col. Leigh, but there is some evidence to support the claim that it was Lord Byron fathered her third daughter, Elizabeth Medora, born in 1814.

After serving as a maid-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte in her final years, Augusta was granted a grace-and-favour apartment at Flag Court in St James’s Palace in April 1818, which shielded her family from poverty following the financial ruin of her irresponsible husband Col. Leigh. She resided there under royal patronage up until her death in 1851.

Assuming it is correct, the 27 Upper Baker Street address annotated on the outer side of the letter is interesting: from 1817 up until her death in 1831 this was the residence of the great tragic actress Sarah Siddons.

Major holdings of Augusta Leigh’s correspondence are preserved in the collections of the New York Public Library, The Morgan Library & Museum, National Library of Scotland and the British Library.

Provenance: Autograph album belonging to Jane Emma Murphy (Balcombe) (1845-1924), “The Briars”, Mornington, Victoria; à Beckett family, Melbourne (by descent).