Encyclopedia
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron was an
Anglo-Scottish poet and a leading figure in
Romanticism. Among his best-known works are the narrative poems
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem [i] by the English poet George Gordon, Lord Byron [i] ...
and
Don Juan. The latter remained incomplete on his death. He was regarded as one of the greatest European poets, and is still widely read.
Byron's fame rests not only on his writings, but also on his life, which featured extravagant living, numerous love affairs, debts, separation, and allegations of
incest and
sodomy; he was famously described by
Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." Byron served as a regional leader of Italy's revolutionary organization the Carbonari in its struggle against Austria, and later travelled to fight against the Turks in the
Greek War of Independence, for which the Greeks consider him a national hero. He died from
fever in Missolonghi.
His daughter
Ada Lovelace, notable in her own right, collaborated with
Charles Babbage on the analytical engine, a predecessor to modern computers.
Name
Byron had two last names ; but only one at any given time. He was born
George Gordon Byron; at age ten, he inherited the family title, becoming
George Gordon , Baron of Rochdale. When his mother-in-law died, her will required that he change his surname to
Noel in order to inherit half her estate. He was thereafter
George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron. He then signed himself "Noel Byron", and boasted of having the same initials as
Napoleon Bonaparte.
Gordon was a baptismal name, not a surname ;
Wentworth was Lady Byron's eventual title, not a surname .
Early life
Byron was born in
London, the son of Captain John "Mad Jack" Byron and of John's second wife Lady Catherine Gordon, heiress of Gight,
Aberdeenshire. His paternal grandfather was
Vice-Admiral John "Foulweather Jack" Byron, who had circumnavigated the globe, and was younger brother of William Byron, 5th Baron Byron, known as "the Wicked Lord". He is one of the descendents of
King Edward III of
England.
From Byron's birth he suffered from a malformation of the right foot, causing a slight lameness, which resulted in lifelong misery for him, aggravated by the knowledge that with proper care it might have been cured. He was christened George Gordon after his maternal grandfather, George Gordon, 12th Laird of Gight, a descendant of
James I. This grandfather committed suicide in 1779. Byron's mother Catherine had to sell her land and title to pay her father's debts. John Byron may have married Catherine for her money and, after squandering it, deserted her. Byron's parents separated before his birth. Lady Catherine moved back to
Scotland shortly afterwards, where she raised her son in
Aberdeen until May 21, 1798, when the death of his great-uncle made him the sixth Baron Byron, inheriting
Newstead Abbey, rented to Henry Edward Yelverton, 19th Baron Grey de Ruthyn during Byron's adolescence.
He received his formal education at
Aberdeen Grammar School. In 1801 he was sent to
Harrow, where he remained until 1805, when he proceeded to
Trinity College,
Cambridge. There he met and shortly fell deeply in love with a fifteen year old choirboy by the name of John Edleston. About his "protégé" he wrote, " He has been my almost constant associate since October, 1805, when I entered Trinity College. His voice first attracted my attention, his countenance fixed it, and his manners attached me to him for ever." Later, upon learning of his friend's death, he wrote, "I have heard of a death the other day that shocked me more than any, of one whom I loved more than any, of one whom I loved more than I ever loved a living thing, and one who, I believe, loved me to the last." In his memory Byron composed
Thyrza, a series of elegies, in which he changed the pronouns from masculine to feminine so as not to offend sensibilities.
Travels to the East
From 1809 to 1811, Byron went on the
Grand Tour then customary for a young nobleman. The
Napoleonic Wars forced him to avoid most of
Europe, and he instead turned to the Orient, which had fascinated him from a young age anyway. Correspondence among his circle of Cambridge friends also makes clear that a key motive was the hope of homosexual experience. He travelled from
England over
Spain to
Albania and spent a lot of time there and in
Athens. While in Athens he had a torrid love affair with Nicolò Giraud, a boy of fifteen or sixteen who taught him Italian. In gratitude for the boy's love Byron sent him to school at a monastery in
Malta and bequeathed him seven thousand pounds sterling – almost double what he was later to spend refitting the Greek fleet. For most of the trip, he had a travelling companion in his friend John Cam Hobhouse. On this tour, the first two cantos of his epic poem
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage were written.
Beginning of poetic career
Some early verses which he had published in 1806 were suppressed. He followed those in 1807 with
Hours of Idleness, which the Edinburgh Review, a Whig periodical, savagely attacked. In reply, Byron sent forth
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers , which created considerable stir and shortly went through five editions. While some authors resented being satirized in its first edition, over time in subsequent editions it became a mark of prestige to be the target of Byron's pen.
After his return from his travels, the first two cantos of
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage were published in 1812, and were received with acclamation. In his own words, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous." He followed up his success with the poem's last two cantos, as well as four equally celebrated Oriental Tales,
The Giaour,
The Bride of Abydos,
The Corsair, and
Lara, which established the Byronic hero. About the same time began his intimacy with his future biographer,
Thomas Moore.
Political career
Byron eventually took his seat at the
House of Lords in 1811, shortly after his return from the Levant, and made his first speech there on February 27, 1812. A strong advocate of social reform, he received particular praise as one of the few
Parliamentary defenders of the Luddites. He also spoke in defence of the rights of
Roman Catholics. These experiences inspired Byron to write political poems such as "Song for the Luddites" and "The Landlords' Interest" . Examples of poems where he attacked his political opponents include "
Wellington: The Best of the Cut-Throats" and "The Intellectual Eunuch
Castlereagh" .
Affairs and scandals
Lord Byron cut a sexual swathe that still astonishes by its sheer brazenness and multiplicity - he once bragged that he had sex with 250 women in Venice over the course of a single year. He was all-inclusive - boys, siblings, women of all classes. Ultimately he was to live abroad to escape the censure of British society, where men could be forgiven for sexual misbehaviour only up to a point, one which Byron far surpassed.
In an early scandal, Byron embarked in 1812 on a well-publicised affair with
Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron eventually broke off the relationship, and Lamb never entirely recovered.
As a child, Byron had seen little of his half-sister Augusta Leigh; in adulthood, he formed a close relationship with her that has widely been interpreted as
incestuous. Augusta had been separated from her husband since 1811 when she gave birth on April 15, 1814 to a daughter, Medora. The extent of Byron's joy over the birth has been construed as evidence that he was Medora's father, a theory reinforced by the many passionate poems he wrote to Augusta.
Eventually Byron began to court Caroline Lamb's cousin
Anne Isabella Milbanke , who refused his first proposal of marriage but later relented. They married at Seaham Hall,
County Durham on January 2, 1815. The marriage proved unhappy. He treated her poorly and showed disappointment at the birth of a daughter , rather than a son. On January 16, 1816, Lady Byron left George, taking Ada with her. On April 21, Byron signed the Deed of Separation. Rumours of marital violence, adultery with actresses, incest with Augusta, and sodomy were circulated, assisted by a jealous Lady Caroline. In a letter, Augusta quoted him as saying: "Even to have such a thing said is utter destruction & ruin to a man from which he can never recover."
After this break-up of his domestic life, Byron again left England, as it turned out, forever. Byron passed through Belgium and up the Rhine; in the summer of 1816 Lord Byron and his personal physician, John William Polidori settled in
Switzerland, at the Villa Diodati by
Lake Geneva. There he became friends with the poet
Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Shelley's wife-to-be
Mary Godwin. He was also joined by Mary's step-sister,
Claire Clairmont, with whom he had had an affair in London. Byron initially refused to have anything to do with Claire, and would only agree to remain in her presence with the Shelleys, who eventually persuaded Byron to accept and provide for Allegra, the child she bore him in January 1817.
At the Villa Diodati, kept indoors by the "incessant rain" of that "wet, ungenial summer", over three days in June the five turned to reading fantastical stories, including "Fantasmagoriana" , and then devising their own tales. Mary Shelley produced what would become
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus is a novel [i] by Mary Shelley [i]. ...
and Polidori was inspired by a fragmentary story of Byron's to produce
The Vampyre, the progenitor of the
romantic vampire genre. Byron's story fragment was published as a postscript to
Mazeppa; he also wrote the third canto of
Childe Harold. Byron wintered in Venice, but in 1817 he journeyed to Rome, whence returning to Venice he wrote the fourth canto of
Childe Harold. About the same time he sold Newstead and published
Manfred,
Cain, and
The Deformed Transformed. The first five cantos of
Don Juan were written between 1818 and 1820, during which period he made the acquaintance of the Countess Guiccioli, who soon separated from her husband. It was about this time that he received a visit from Moore, to whom he confided his autobiography, which Moore, in the exercise of the discretion left to him, burned in 1824.
Byron in Italy and Greece
In 1821-22 he finished cantos 6-12 of
Don Juan at Pisa, and in the same year he joined with
Leigh Hunt and
Percy Bysshe Shelley in starting a short-lived newspaper,
The Liberal, in the first number of which appeared The Vision of Judgment. His last Italian home was Genoa, where he was still accompanied by the Countess, and where he lived until 1823, when he offered himself as an ally to the Greek insurgents. By 1823 Byron had grown bored with his life in
Genoa and with his mistress, the Contessa Guiccioli. When the representatives of the movement for
Greek independence from the
Ottoman Empire contacted him to ask for his support, he accepted. On July 16, Byron left Genoa on the
Hercules, arriving at
Kefalonia in the
Ionian Islands on August 4. He spent £4000 of his own money to refit the Greek fleet, then sailed for Messolonghi in western Greece, arriving on December 29 to join Prince
Alexandros Mavrokordatos, leader of the Greek rebel forces.
Mavrokordatos and Byron planned to attack the Turkish-held fortress of
Lepanto, at the mouth of the
Gulf of Corinth. Byron employed a fire-master to prepare artillery and took part of the rebel army under his own command and pay, despite his lack of military experience, but before the expedition could sail, on February 15 1824, he fell ill, and the usual remedy of bleeding weakened him further. He made a partial recovery, but in early April he caught a violent cold which the bleeding -- insisted on by his doctors -- aggravated. The cold became a violent fever, and he died on April 19.
Post-mortem
The Greeks mourned Lord Byron deeply, and he became a national hero.
????? , the Greek form of "Byron", continues in popularity as a masculine name in Greece, and a suburb of Athens is called Vironas in his honour. His body was embalmed and his heart buried under a tree in Messolonghi. His remains were sent to England for burial in
Westminster Abbey, but the Abbey refused. He is buried at the
Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall,
Nottingham. At her request, Ada, the child he never knew, was buried next to him. In later years, the Abbey allowed a duplicate of a marble slab given by the King of Greece, which is laid directly above Byron's grave. In 1969, 145 years after Byron's death, a memorial to him was finally placed in Westminster Abbey.
Upon his death, the barony passed to a cousin, George Anson Byron , a career military officer and Byron's polar opposite in temperament and lifestyle.
Poetic works
Byron wrote prolifically. In 1833 his publisher, John Murray, released the complete works in 17 octavo volumes, including a life by
Thomas Moore. His magnum opus,
Don Juan, a poem spanning 17 cantos, ranks as one of the most important long poems published in England since
Milton's
Paradise Lost.
Don Juan, Byron's masterpiece, often called the epic of its time, has roots deep in literary tradition and, although regarded by early
Victorians as somewhat shocking, equally involves itself with its own contemporary world at all levels – social, political, literary and ideological.
The Byronic hero pervades much of Byron's work. Scholars have traced the literary history of the Byronic hero from
Milton, and many authors and artists of the
Romantic movement show Byron's influence -- during the
19th century and beyond. The Byronic hero presents an idealised but flawed character whose attributes include:
- having great talent
- exhibiting great passion
- having a distaste for society and social institutions
- expressing a lack of respect for rank and privilege
- thwarted in love by social constraint or death
- rebelling
- suffering exile
- hiding an unsavoury past
- ultimately, acting in a self-destructive manner
Character
Lord Byron, by all accounts, had a particularly magnetic personality – one may say astonishingly so. He obtained a reputation as being unconventional, eccentric, flamboyant and controversial. He was given to extremes of temper. Byron had a great fondness for animals, most famously for a
Newfoundland dog named Boatswain; when Boatswain contracted
rabies, Byron reportedly nursed him without any fear of becoming bitten and infected. Boatswain lies buried at Newstead Abbey and has a monument larger than his master's. The inscription, Byron's "Epitaph to a dog", has become one of his best-known works, reading in part:
Near this Spot
are deposited the Remains of one
who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferosity,
and all the Virtues of Man without his Vices.
This praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery
if inscribed over human Ashes,
is but a just tribute to the Memory of
BOATSWAIN, a DOG,
who was born in Newfoundland May 1803,
and died at Newstead Nov.
r 18
th, 1808.
Byron also kept a bear while he was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge . At other times in his life, Byron kept a
fox,
monkeys, a
parrot, cats, an
eagle, a
crow, a
falcon,
peacocks,
guinea hens, an
Egyptian crane, a
badger,
geese, and a
heron.
Lasting influence
The re-founding of the Byron Society in 1971 reflects the fascination that many people have for Byron and his work. This society has become very active, publishing a learned annual journal. Today some 36 International Byron Societies function throughout the world, and an International Conference takes place annually. Hardly a year passes without a new book about the poet appearing. In the last 20 years two new feature films about him have screened, and a television play has been broadcast.
Byron exercised a marked influence on Continental literature and art, and his reputation as poet is higher in many European countries than in England or America, although not as high as in his time. He has also appeared as a character in popular fiction, a testament to his influence. John Crowley's novel
Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land involves the rediscovery of a lost manuscript by Lord Byron, as does Frederick Prokosch's
The Missolonghi Manuscript . Byron appears as a character in
Tim Powers'
The Stress of Her Regard and Walter Jon Williams' novella
Wall, Stone Craft , as also in
Susanna Clarke's
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the debut novel by British writer Susanna Clarke [i]....
.
The Black Drama by Manly Wade Wellman involves the rediscovery and production of a lost play by Byron by a man who purports to be a descendant of the poet. In the 1995 novel
The Vampyre, Tom Holland romantically describes how Lord Byron became a vampire during his first visit to Greece - a fictional transformation that explains a lot of his subsequent behaviour towards family and friends, and finds support in quotes from Byron poems and the diaries of John Cam Hobhouse...
Tom Stoppard's play
Arcadia revolves around a modern researcher's attempts to find out what made Byron leave the country.
Television portrayals include a major 2003 BBC drama on Byron's life, and minor appearances in
,
Blackadder is the generic name that encompasses four series of an acclaimed BBC [i] historical sitcom [i] ...
Series III and
The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, created by Maxwell Atoms [i], is an American [i] ...
.
A complete picture of Byron's character has only been possible in recent years with the freeing up of the archive of Murray, Byron's original publishers, who had formerly withheld compromising letters and instructed at least one major biographer to censor details of his
bisexuality.
Musical settings of poems by Byron
- Germaine Tailleferre "Two Poems of Lord Byron" 1. Sometimes in moments... 2. 'Tis Done I heard it in my dreams... for Voice and Piano
- Arnold Schoenberg "Ode to Napoleon" for Voice and String Quartet
Bibliography
Major works
- Hours of Idleness
- English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
- Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem [i] by the English poet George Gordon, Lord Byron [i] ...
- The Giaour
- The Bride of Abydos
- The Corsair
- Lara
- Hebrew Melodies
- The Siege of Corinth
- Parisina
- The Prisoner Of Chillon
- The Dream
- Prometheus
- Darkness
- Manfred
- The Lament of Tasso
- Beppo
- Mazeppa
- The Prophecy of Dante
- Marino Faliero
- Sardanapalus
- The Two Foscari
- Cain
- The Vision of Judgement
- Heaven and Earth
- Werner
- The Deformed Transformed
- The Age of Bronze
- The Island
- Don Juan
Minor works
- So, we'll go no more a roving
- The First Kiss of Love
- Thoughts Suggested by a College Examination
- To a Beautiful Quaker
- The Cornelian *Lines Addressed to a Young Lady
- Lachin y Garr
- Epitaph to a dog
- She Walks in Beauty
- When We Two Parted
See also
- Lord Byron
- Bridge of Sighs
- Asteroid 3306 Byron
- Henry Edward Yelverton, 19th Baron Grey de Ruthyn
References
External links
- *
- The biography by John Nichol
- BBC
