"Mad, bad and dangerous to know"
George Gordon (Lord) Byron ... British romanticist, literary giant and world class scoundrel
Brilliant … romantic … beautiful … aristocratic … libertine … flamboyant … scoundrel … revolutionary … bisexual … adventurer … profligate — the descriptors for poet George Gordon (Lord) Byron span the language he so skillfully mastered.
The words are fitting. Even today, almost 200 years after his death, Byron is still lionized worldwide by the marvelously wicked epithet … “mad, bad and dangerous to know.”
Not many can live up to such a larger-than-life reputation; Byron did, and then some. The British romanticist was a literary giant whose style and passion made an indelible mark on an entire genre. But everlasting verse aside, he assumed immortality as an eponymous philanderer and irresistible bad boy.
“Mad, bad and dangerous to know.”
— Lady Caroline Lamb
Lord Byron as we know him spent his life seeking adventure and generating scandals. He was Europe’s first “rock star” poet and sex symbol, leaving behind a legacy of delicious lyricism and a body count (sexual partners) unmatched in any epoch.
It is said many artistic savants are defined by contradictions and touched by madness (i.e. Van Gogh, Mozart). Byron was undoubtedly that; he was a mass of contrariety — divine and decadent, hero and anti-hero, bon vivant and debaucher. The overarching beauty of his face, words and spirit masked his alter ego as a high-handed rogue.
Backstory: From obscurity to superstar
Byron rocketed to superstardom upon the publication of the first two cantos of the epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in 1812, prompting the phrase “Byronmania.” (more on that later)
The boy who would become the sixth Baron Byron was born in London in 1788. His adolescence was marked by abuse, turmoil and rebellion. His father, John (“Mad Jack”) Byron, was a military officer and shameful womanizer and gambler. After divorcing his first wife he married Scottish heiress Catherine Gordon and squandered her fortune before the two separated. “Mad Jack” died in France, at age 34, when George was three.
Young George Byron was marked at birth with a club foot and lived with his mother in genteel poverty in rural Scotland for a decade. Catherine Byron was prone to depression and bouts of rage that she sometimes directed at her son and his deformity. Both would cause him physical and mental agony throughout his life.
Everything changed when, at age 10, young George became the sixth Baron Byron at the passing of his great uncle, whose son and grandson both died before they could inherit the title. Suddenly there was money and privilege. He would abuse both for the next 26 years.
Byron was sent to Harrow, an elite boarding school in London, at age 13. There he excelled at swimming, boxing, cricket, gambling and shagging. He had frequent liaisons with male classmates but at age 15 fell desperately in love for the first time with his distant cousin, Mary Chaworth. Mary spurned him, producing a mental scar that he vowed never would be repeated. He also demonstrated a promising literary gift, publishing a book of verse at age 17. From Harrow, he entered Trinity College (Cambridge) in 1805.
Over the next four years at Trinity, the young lord drank to excess and chased women while racking up enormous debts to pay for it all. He also took to the pen in letters and verse and would generate tremendous volumes of both during his lifetime.
When he turned 21, he left it all behind with his Grand Tour of Europe and the Mediterranean.
Once again, everything changed for the precocious youth.
The Grand Tour (1809-11)
In April 1809, Byron departed England for a two-year Grand Tour amidst the Napoleonic wars, carefully avoiding the many combat zones. He traveled through Portugal, Spain, Gibraltar, Malta, the Mediterranean islands, Albania and Greece before finally reaching Turkey and Constantinople.
Such coming-of-age journeys were customary among young nobles in the 19th century. For Byron, it was life-transforming. He took in the aura and spectacle of classic ancient and historical sites — Saville, Cádiz, Malta, Delphi, Thebes, Athens, Marathon, the Hellespont (modern-day Dardanelles) and the site of the city of Troy.
He began writing the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage — the narrative-travelogue poem which would make him wildly famous — in Epirus (not yet a Greek state) and continued on in Turkey. Of all destinations, Greece made the most lasting impression. The Greeks’ tolerance and bohemian spirit contrasted with English reserve and hypocrisy and served to broaden his views of men and manners.
He left England with friend John Hobhouse at 21 as a relatively unknown itinerant, and returned at 23 as 'Byron,’ with all that it implies — the brand, the baggage and the brio.
“Byronmania”
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was a smash hit when published in England and as Byron returned in 1811 he rocketed into superstardom.
The semi-autobiographical poem describes the travels and reflections of a young man (Harold, but really Byron) who, disillusioned with his licentious and troubling past, looks for distraction in foreign lands. It also expresses the melancholy and restlessness felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras.
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage wistful tone struck a powerful emotional chord, especially among women within London’s Social Register. He was the toast of Regency England’s aristocracy — invited to the poshest social gatherings, elected to exclusive clubs, and frequented the most fashionable drawing rooms.
“I awoke one morning and found myself famous.” — Lord Byron
His very presence made aristocratic women swoon. Enchanted by his words and dashing good looks, they (often brazenly) competed for his attention. Byron also had a keen sense of image, which he carefully procured in dress and manner. He relished the public role of male diva and took full advantage; in private, he lamented.**
Between trysts, Byron wrote … a lot, mostly correspondence and poetry. The uproar surrounding his affairs and an ironic sense of both exultation and guilt are reflected in the series of remorseful poems: The Giaour (1813); The Bride of Abydos (1813); The Corsair (1814), which sold 10,000 copies on the day of publication; Lara (1814) and She Walks in Beauty (1814).
(** Byron was raised as a Calvinist, and though he never professed his faith in public, he often acknowledged a sense of guilt in his poetry and letters.)
She Walks in Beauty
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies. -- Lord Byron (1814)
Three Women
To Byron, flings were implicit with his lifestyle, and when he grew tired of an affair it quickly would be cast aside, often with heartless callousness. He knew the rules and didn’t care, at least publicly. His paramours knew he was a cad, yet they didn’t seem to care.
A quick look at three of them...
Lady Caroline Lamb: Lady Caroline was smitten by Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Byron’s magnetic presence. They began a stormy affair in 1812, and though she was already married (to nobleman William Lamb) Lady Caroline became more or less a Byronic Groupie. She threw public fits before him, once even cutting herself with a wine glass at a ball for the Duke of Wellington. She continued the pursuit well after he cut off the affair. She wrote countless heated fan letters, including in one a snippet of her pubic hair. Lady Caroline is credited with the Byron epithet “mad, bad and dangerous to know.”
Augusta Leigh: Augusta was Byron’s half-sister (from “Mad Jack’s” first marriage) and they reunited in 1813 after four years of separation. Rumors of incest quickly surrounded the pair; Augusta's daughter Medora (born 1814) was suspected to have been Byron's child. His obsession with Augusta continued through his only marriage, to Annabella Milbanke, and beyond.
Annabella Milbanke: (aka Anne Isabella Noel Byron, 11th Baroness Wentworth and Baroness Byron). Though wildly famous, Byron was hamstrung by persistent debt. He sought a “suitable” marriage (meaning for money) and wed heiress Annabella Millbanke. A highly educated and religious woman, Annabella was an unlikely match for the amoral poet, and their marriage in 1815 ended in acrimony after only one year. The couple did produce one child — daughter Ada Lovelace — who worked as a mathematician with Charles Babbage, the pioneer of computer science.
Exile: Geneva, Italy
Byron’s ongoing scandals caused controversy and social backlash in England. In a short 3 1/2 years, his fall from grace was as swift as his ascent. Debts mounted, nasty rumors of incest and threats from jealous husbands forced Byron to leave his homeland. He would never return.
In the summer of 1816, he settled at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva, Switzerland, with his personal physician, John William Polidori. There Byron befriended poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and Shelley's future wife, Mary Godwin. They also were joined by Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with whom Byron had an affair in London.
His friendship with the Shelleys would continue for several years. He and Percy were kindred spirits ... they drank together, wrote together and shared a common thirst for a carpe diem spirit of exploration.
Literary Epiphany: Frankenstein and The Vampyre
The largest volcanic eruption in recorded history at Indonesia’s Mt. Tambora in 1815 caused an extended, worldwide extreme climate event in 1816 known as the “year without a summer.” It also inspired the creation of two famous Gothic Romance hallmarks.
Isolated inside Villa Diodati by incessant rain and chill over three days in June 1816, the five turned to exchanging fantastical stories and then devising their own tales. Mary Godwin (Shelley), only 18 at the time, produced what would become Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, widely considered the first science fiction novel. Polidori wrote The Vampyre, the progenitor of the Romantic vampire genre. The Vampyre later became the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and more recently the Twilight saga.
Italy and Don Juan (Joo-wahn)
Tired and bored of Geneva, Byron landed in Venice the following Spring. There he enjoyed the relaxed morals of the Italians and carried on a love affair with Marianna Segati, his landlord’s wife. In May he visited Rome, gathering impressions that he recorded in a fourth canto of Childe Harold (1818). He also wrote Beppo, a poem that satirically contrasts Italian with English manners in the story of a Venetian menage-à-trois.
Beppo represented a departure in style for Byron, who previously held fast to the forlorn stylings of the Romantic wanderer. It was wickedly sarcastic and funny, and foreshadowed the masterwork that was to come.
Don Juan, written between 1819 to 1824, was Byron’s tour de force. The satirical, self-styled epic poem portrays the Spanish folk legend of Don Juan (Byron’s flippant articulation Don Joo-wahn), not as a womanizer as the character is historically portrayed, but as a victim easily seduced by women. The hero embarks on a series of colorful misadventures in Spain, Turkey and Russia.
The true ‘hero’ of the piece is actually its cynical, sarcastic narrator. Byron’s poem ridicules prominent literary, political and religious figures, and its irreverent humor and bawdiness triggered both applause and outrage.
Heroic Revolutionary … and death
Byron was living in Genoa in 1823, when, growing bored with his life there, accepted overtures for his support from the Greek independence movement from the Ottoman Empire. In July he left Genoa for Cephalonia and took personal command of a brigade of Greek soldiers. But a serious illness in February 1824 weakened him, and in April he contracted a high fever and died at Missolonghi on April 19.
He never saw combat.
Word of Byron’s death shocked Britain and Europe. The Greeks mourned Byron deeply, and he became a national hero. The national poet of Greece, Dionysios Solomos, wrote a poem about the unexpected loss, To the Death of Lord Byron. Βύρων, the Greek form of "Byron," continues in popularity as a masculine name in Greece.
Legacy
Byron showed only that facet of his many-sided nature that was most congenial to his friends. To Hobhouse, he was the intrepid companion, humorous, cynical, and realistic, while to most women, he was tender, melancholy, and idealistic.
But his weakness was also Byron’s strength. His chameleon-like character was engendered not by sanctimony but more by sympathy and adaptability, for the side he showed was the true revelation of his flawed self. And this mobility of character permitted him to savor and record the mood and thought of the Romantic moment with a sensitivity contrary to those tied to the conventions of consistency.
(Link: Nine short fascinating facts about Lord Byron: “mad, bad and dangerous to know.”)
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Jim Geschke was inducted into the prestigious Marquis Who’s Who Registry in 2021.
Interesting connections. The link to Shelley is cool. A lot of serendipity in such a short life.