The Poetical Philanderings of the Aristocratic Anti-Hero

n                           When John Byron distinguishednhimself at the First Battle of Newbury (1643), during the English Civil War,nKing Charles I created him Baron Byron of Rochdale in the county Palatine ofnLancashire. His son, Sir Richard, succeeded to the title after the death of hisnfather, who was succeeded in turn by his son, William. After his death, hisnson, also called William, became the fourth Baron Byron, and the title passednto another William, his fourteen year old son, in 1736. This William, the fifthnBaron Byron, was known as the ‘Wicked Lord’ or ‘the Devil Byron’, who ran hisncousin, William Chaworth, through with his sword in a tavern brawl about whonhad the most game on his estate. He was charged with manslaughter and paid ansmall fine, but soon descended in the madness that the English aristocracynprefer to call eccentricity. 

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nHis son, another William, eloped with his firstncousin, Juliana Byron (daughter of the 5^th Baron’s brother, Johnn‘Foul Weather’ Byron, a naval Admiral), an act the ‘Wicked Lord’ believed would result innthe madness of any resulting children, but when the son defied him, he setnabout deliberately ruining the estate, intending to leave his son nothing but ruins andndebt, allowing the house to fall into disrepair, cutting down the forests andnkilling over 2,000 deer. His malicious plan was foiled when his son died inn1776, and his grandson died in 1794, during a battle on Corsica, so when Williamndied in 1798, the title passed to his ten year old great-nephew, George GordonnByron. 

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nGeorge’s father, John ‘Mad Jack’ Byron, was the son of ‘Foul Weather’nByron; ‘Mad Jack’ had seduced and eloped with Amelia Osborne, Marchioness ofnCaermarthen, whom he married a month after she divorced her husband. They hadntwo daughters, one of whom, Augusta, survived into adulthood. His treatment ofnhis wife was ‘brutal and vicious’ and when she died, in 1784, he marriednanother heiress, Catherine Gordon, whom he abandoned after spending her fortune. 

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nTheir son, Lord George Gordon Byron, the Sixth Baron Byron, was born with andeformed foot which caused him to limp; he was self-consciously aware of thendisability throughout his life, and took to sports to compensate for it – henwas a very good boxer and horseman, and an exceptional swimmer (in 1810, henswam the Hellespont (now called the Dardanelles), a strait that separatesnEurope from Asia Minor, famous for the legendary swim of Leander in his trystnwith the priestess Hero). 

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nThe young Byron attended Harrow school and thennTrinity College, Cambridge where, in response to college regulations banning studentsnfrom keeping dogs, he kept a pet bear, (an animal not included in thenstatutes). In 1809, he began the customary Grand Tour, although much of Europenwas out of bounds due to the Napoleonic Wars, so he was limited largely to thenMediterranean. 

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nHis Tour began in Portugal, followed by Spain, Gibraltar, Maltanand Greece, during which he wrote poetry – in 1812, the first two cantos of hisnnarrative epic Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage were published, and as Byronnwrote, “I awoke to find myself famous.” He was the first Europeann‘celebrity’ and the adjective ‘Byronic’ began to be applied to anynaristocratic, troubled, Romantic, jaded, cynical anti-hero of the sort found innChilde Harold. 

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nIn March 1812, he began an affair with Lady CarolinenLamb, who described him as ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know.’ She wasnmarried to William Lamb, 2^nd Viscount Melbourne (later to be mentornto the young Queen Victoria and Prime Minister, and after whom the Australianncity is named). The affair scandalised Georgian society, not least when itnended in the following August, after which Lady Caroline started to obsessivelyn‘stalk’ Byron in increasingly public attempts to be with him, causing even morenscandal. Lamb took her to Ireland but she would not relent and continuouslynbombarded Byron with letters, but he spurned her attentions, and she started tondrink and use laudanum. The severely damaged Lady Caroline died in 1828. 

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nItnseems likely that Augusta Leigh, Byron’s half-sister, bore his child, ElizabethnMedora, in 1813, and the accusations of incest were probably at least onenreason he left England for the Continent. In January 1815, he married AnnanIsabella (Annabella) Milbanke (a cousin of Lady Caroline Lamb) and theirndaughter, Augusta Ada, was born in December, but Byron treated his wife verynbadly and in January 1816, she left him – they were legally separated in thenApril. Byron left England for good and in June 1816 he was at the Villa Diodoti, Switzerland, with Shelley, Mary Godwin, John Polidori and ClairenClairmont. 

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nByron had an affair with Clairmont, and in 1817, their child ClaranAllegra was born, although she died from a fever aged five; Byron had countlessnother affairs, and very probably with men as well as women. In 1816-17, whilstnliving in Italy, he became interested in the Armenian language and culture andnparticipated in the writing of an English-Armenian dictionary (1821). 

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nThisninterest led him to espouse Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire, and inn1823, he left Italy for Greece, landing at Kefalonia in August. He paid £4,000nto refit the Greek fleet, and in December he sailed for Missolonghi, where henjoined the Greek politician Alexandros Mavrokordatos. They planned an assaultnon the Turkish-held port of Lepanto, on the Gulf of Corinth, but in Februaryn1824, Byron fell ill with a fever. He was bled, as was the medical custom atnthe time, and this weakened him further. In April the fever became much worse,nand doctors prescribed more blood-letting, which again weakened him, and thenunsterilised instruments gave him blood-poisoning. The sepsis weakened him evennfurther, and on April 19^th 1824, Lord Byron died at Missolonghi. 

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nHisnloss was mourned in England and Greece, where he remains a national heron(Βύρων, the Greek rendering of ‘Byron’ is still a popular boy’s name), but thenauthorities in England refused to inter his embalmed body at Westminster Abbeynfor reasons of his ‘morality’. The Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral, the BritishnMuseum and the National Gallery all refused a memorial statue; it wasneventually placed in the library at Trinity, his old college in Cambridge. Anmemorial was finally placed in the Abbey in 1969. 

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nHis reputation as a poetnremains high, and there are world-wide Byron societies; his works can stillnshock with their insight and venom, and are extremely easy (and entertaining)nto read (I highly recommend Don Juan). One of my favourites in the Epitaphnhe wrote for the politician Castlereagh : –  

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nAnd, of course, the marvellousnWarren Zevon wrote Lord Byron’snLuggage. It doesn’t get any better.

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