Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.
Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron
January 22 1788 to April 19 1824
Just 36 when he died. Think of how much more he would have contributed if he had lived.
Byron was a poet, but he was so much more. His life supplies the drawing rooms of the Regency Era with ondits that can keep the Ton occupied for countless hours. At the age of 10, our Byron became the Baron of Byron of Rochdale, thus Lord Byron. As a youth, he had a problematic relation with his mother who drank excessively for which he berated her. She in turn called him the lame brat. Byron may have had a club foot, or this may have been from a bout of polio.
Sex and Byron seems to find its way as a theme for even at age eight the future poet was promiscuous. And, as a young child a male suitor of his mother made advances upon him. We know now that such actions to children take away some of childhood and have an effect on them as adults. It is probably no wonder the man had many liaisons as an adult. At this point, (DWW-And I think continued history will only muddle this more) the true sexual desires of Byron have been made for both men and women.
In 1801 Byron went to Harrow for his education. Then onto Trinity College, Cambridge. Even before he left college his poems had begun to be published. Byron went on his Grand Tour between 1809 and 1811. When he returned home, more of his poetry was published. By 1812 he was becoming famous.
In 1812 he also began his affair with Lady Caroline Lamb. She described him the same way that his heroic Corsair is described. “Mad, bad and dangerous to know.” Mad though describes best how Lady Caroline became when he separated from her. After Lady Caroline there were others such as Lady Oxford, then his half Sister Augusta Leigh, to whom he had a child, and last his marriage to Caroline’s cousin Anne Isabella Milbanke. Having with her, their daughter Augusta Ada (Lovelace.) Anne and Byron separated though in 1816.
From 1816 until his death, he did not return to England but was able to lead his life of sexual freedom abroad. Hence another Regency reality, of fleeing England if you were going to be exceedingly promiscuous, or indulge in sexual edification with more than one partner at a time, or partners of your same sex.
In 1816 he also visited Saint Lazarus Island in Venice and came in contact with Armenian culture. He learned the language and wrote a grammar on it. He also participated in the English Armenian dictionary.
His time abroad had him meet with the other great poet of his age, Percy Bysshe Shelley and even helping with the formation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein over a period when they were all shut in during incessant raining.
Whilst living in Greece in 1823 he became attached to the Greek movement for independence and spent £4000 of his own money to outfit the Greek fleet. Then in 1824, he fell ill and bloodletting did not help with his recovery. Catching a violent cold with more bloodletting, he developed a fever and died on the 19 of April. Some hold that if he had lived and the gone on to wrest Greece from the Ottomans, he could have been declared king of Greece.
He was a great poet, yet his lifestyle was hard for the British to swallow. He came to rest (except for perhaps his heart-remaining in Greece) in Westminster Abbey. But it took 145 years for a memorial to be placed in the Abbey. It took from 1907 to 1969 for the memorial to be actually be placed showing that his great gifts to literature were far outweighed by Victorian attitudes towards Sex and lifestyle choices.
Previous Notables (Click to see the Blog):
George III
George IV
William IV
Lady Hester Stanhope
Princess Charlotte
Queen Charlotte
Princess Caroline
Queen Adelaide
Dorothea Jordan
Maria Fitzherbert
There will be many other notables coming, a full and changing list can be found here on the blog as I keep adding to it. The list so far is:
Percy Bysshe Shelley
John Keats
Jane Austen
Lady Caroline Lamb
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
Charles James Fox
William Wilberforce
Thomas Clarkson
Hannah More
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Edmund Kean
John Phillip Kemble
John Burgoyne
Harriet Mellon
Mary Robinson
Wellington (the Military man)
Nelson
Howe
St. Vincent
Packenham
General Banastre Tarleton
Henry Paget
Stapleton Cotton
Thomas Picton
Constable
Lawrence
Cruikshank
Gillray
Reynolds
Rowlandson
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Marquis of Stafford George Leveson-Gower
George Stephenson
William Huskisson
Robert Stephenson
Fanny Kemble
Paul III Anton, Prince Esterházy
Charles Arbuthnot
Thomas Egerton, 2nd Earl of Wilton
Henry Herbert Southey
John Nash
Thomas Hope
William Beechey
Beau Brummell
William Arden, 2nd Baron Alvanley
Henry Mildmay
Henry Pierrepoint
Scrope Davies
Henry Holland
Sir Walter Scott
Lord Elgin
Jeffery Wyatville
Duke of Argyll, George William Campbell (1766-1839)
Lord Barrymore, Richard Barry (1769-1794)
Lord Bedford, Francis Russell (1765-1802)
Mr. G. Dawson Damer (1788-1856)
Duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish (1748-1811)
Lord Foley, Thomas Foley (1780-1833)
Colonel George Hanger (c.1751-1824)
Lord Hertford, Francis Seymour-Ingram (1743-1822)
Lord Yarmouth, Francis Charles Seymour-Ingram (1777-1842)
Edward “Golden Ball” Hughes (1798-1863)
Earl of Jersey, George Bussey Villiers (1735-1805)
Sir John , John Lade (1759-1838)
Duke of Norfolk, Charles Howard (1746-1815)
Duke of York , Frederick Augustus Hanover (1763-1827)
Louis Philippe Joseph, Duc de Chartres, acceded 1785 as Duc d’ Orleans (1747-1793)
Louis Philippe, Duc de Chartres, acceded 1793 as Duc d’ Orleans (1773-1850)
Captain John (Jack) Willett Payne (1752-1803)
Viscount Petersham, Charles Stanhope(1780-1851)
Duke of Queensberry, William Douglas (1724-1810)
Duke of Rutland, John Henry Manners(1778-1857)
Lord Sefton, William Philip Molyneux (1772-1838)
Admiral Lord Hugh Seymour (1759-1801)
Sir Lumley St. George Skeffington Baronet (1771 – 1850)
Lord Worcester, Henry Somerset (1766-1835)
Lord Worcester, Henry Somerset (1792-1853)
Hon. Frederick Gerald aka “Poodle” Byng
Edward Pellew
Thomas Cochrane
Warren Hastings
Patronesses of Almacks
Emily Lamb, Lady Cowper
Amelia Stewart, Viscountess Castlereagh
Sarah Villiers, Countess of Jersey
Maria Molyneux, Countess of Sefton
Mrs. Drummond Burrell
Dorothea Lieven, Countess de Lieven, wife of the Russian Ambassador
Countess Esterhazy, wife of the Austrian Ambassador
Wonderful vignette! Can you suggest a biography of him, a few biographies of him that are accurate but constructive?
The life of Byron by Thomas Moore gives the life as understood by one who was a friend. — and competitior. Moore was one who burned Byron’s autobiography which has led to all sorts of reports. The trouble is that ever since Lady Byron, through Harriet Beecher Stowe, accused Lord Byron of committing incest with his sister, the biographers have usually been looking to find something more scandalous about his sex life to report.
Read Byron’s letters, ignore the gloss and footnotes that take the incest for granted and make up your own mind.
PS I notice my previous comments are not shown.
Byron seems to stir up controversy. Perhaps because for so many years since his death his hedonistic and libertine lifestyle was not culturally acceptable. His contributions to poetry and literature now, with such a lifestyle, except for sex with minors might actually be acceptable. But the mores of most of the last 200 years have not been condoning of sex with married women, or much of the other activities that it is alleged that Byron participated in.
The mini-biographies presented here are not meant to stir up anything new, and it is doubtful that the cloud over Byron will ever go away. It is a shame his own autobiography was destroyed by Moore. Moore though is probably a good place to start and should you wish to look for additional on this, there is a great deal that make him less of an explorer, and work that makes him more so. I think it best to present all views on this.
That he felt the need to leave England and not return seems to give credence that the laws of the land were too restrictive for the lifestyle he wished to pursue.
Byron didn’t leave England because if his sex life. He had been planning in returning to Italy or Greece ever since he returned in 1811, His sex life was no worse than that of Shelley or the Prince of Wales?Regent or of Lord Hervey.
Some speculate that he had a form of seasonal affect disorder which causes emotional etc. problems when devoid of sunlight in the winter. There is no doubt that his years in Italy were his most productive and that part of this was due to the climate, and part due to the domestic life he had with Theresa. Contemporary critics were much harder on Byron because of the perceived immorality of his poetry rather than that of his person life.
Actually, I do not champion Byron on the question of incest so much as I do Augusta. Augusta would never have had sex with her brother. The baby was born in March and not April as people claim and it was all a canard set about by Lady Caroline Lamb and Lady Byron. Lady Caroline Lamb even lied about her own biography.
Augusta’s mother might have been a flighty nimcompoop who gave up being a Duchess to run off with a rake and a wastrel but Augusta was brought up to eschew that sort of behaviour. People who knew her called her a religious woman who looked in Byron as her baby brother and who tried to keep him from scandal. Augusta married unwisely. People blame her for much even though they know the power a husband had over a wife and the family finances, I think people are unfair to Augusta.
I should have written about Byron more before. I think I had a great deal of commentary when I addressed Lady Caroline as wife of the Prime Minister, William Lamb
https://thethingsthatcatchmyeye.wordpress.com/2012/07/12/regency-era-prime-ministers-william-lamb/
I do intend to have a mini-biography for the Personalities series of Lady Caroline shortly and we shall refer again to Byron.
I tend to see Byron as a sexual experimenter. I see him as the Corsair. I see him living a fast life. His Art side of the Brain leading towards a stereotype of an Artist. I can see where he might not have slept with his sister Augusta, but I also can envision him having seduced her.
In my writing he will just be the author of the Corsair, and referred to as the Corsair. An ondit (if the time is right) for his affair with Lady Caroline and all that comes of only that. And then of his time away in Europe, and maybe the Greek adventure. I don’t foresee ever having him enter one of my drawing rooms directly for a scene on camera, so to speak.
The thing was Byron wasn’t a seducer. He was more likely to be seduced than to seduce. At least among the ladies of the Ton. Claire Godwiin, Mary Godwin’s step sister took a leaf from Lady Caroline’s book and waited for Byron in his bed–this was after the separation. The affaire the newspapers publicized was with an actress at the theatre where Byron was on the management committee. When he left England, (which he had been planning to do since 1814) all the cartoons were of him embracing an actress while Lady Byron stood in the shore with a baby in her arms.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, many people believed that a rake/roue would be reformed when he saw his virtuous wife with a babe in arms.
Any man who failed to be reformed by that sight had to be bad clear through.
That was the moral of the story of Leonora by Edgeworth. The rake of a husband–leaves a pregnant wife to run off with another woman to Russia. Later when he is disillusioned with his lover he returns to his wife, sees her with a babe at breast and repents. He also says that if his wife had scolded him, nagged him, or taken him to task he would not have reformed. No one ever asked if lady Byron had scolded, nagged or taken her husband to task.
I admit to prejudice against Lady Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb. Lady Caroline had no grounds for complaints as she was married at the time.
Lady Byron treated Augusta appallingly.
Well, later today I am going to write up Shelley for he series. We’ll see how that turns up. Just got to do some more NaNoWriMo writing for the day first.
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