Even Passion blush’d to plead for more.
The tone, that taught me to rejoice,
When prone, unlike thee, to repine;
The song, celestial from thy voice,
But sweet to me from none but thine;
The pledge we wore—I wear it still,
But where is thine?—Ah! where art thou?
Oft have I borne the weight of ill,
But never bent beneath till now!
In early 1812, Byron made his maiden speech in the House of Lords, in defense of clothworkers who had received death sentences for destroying spinning machines in factories. Nottingham, Byron’s home, was a center of the Luddite movement, named for a man who had been thrown out of work by the mechanization of the cloth trade and who began smashing the machines in response. British soldiers used bayonets to control the Nottingham weavers who had broken into local factories. Despite the inherent drama of the clash, Byron’s speech, though heartfelt, was not very impressive and he realized that he would probably be bored in a political career. He was spared that very soon.
Byron had turned the manuscript of Childe Harold over to a friend, who found a publisher for it: John Murray, who would publish all of the poet’s work from then on. Byron did not want his name on the book, but he was persuaded to allow it to be sold as the work of “the author of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,” which was sufficient for anyone in the British literary world to know the poet’s true identity. Against Byron’s wishes, the publisher lined up good advance notices from critics, and the first printing of five hundred copies was sold out on the day of publication, March 10, 1812. The work was an immediate success. As Byron later recalled, “I awoke one morning and found myself famous.”
The title character Childe Harold (a “childe” is a candidate for knighthood) was the first Byronic hero, establishing a pattern of fatal melancholy that provided an irresistible appeal for women. The Childe was “the gloomy wanderer,” “the cold stranger,” who carried his darkness and his secrets wherever he goes. The distinctive exoticism of the places where he wanders fascinated the public, who knew little about eastern Europeans and Turks. Particularly intriguing to women was the idea that the character was in fact Byron’s alter ego. Byron always denied that, saying that Harold was the “child of imagination,” but people would not be convinced.
Childe Harold, with its sometimes shocking subject matter, fit well the spirit of the time. King George III had been declared mad and his son appointed regent. The Regency era (1811-20) would be marked by scandals both high and low, and the misadventures of the prince regent, known as “Prinnie,” and his wife, Caroline, provided fodder for savage cartoons and columns of irreverent gossip in London’s sixteen daily newspapers.
Scandals at home contrasted with significant international and political events. In 1812, Napoleon unwisely invaded Russia and British forces scored important victories against French armies in Spain. The tide was turning against England’s archenemy after a dozen years of French successes. Across the Atlantic, Britain’s relations with the United States were deteriorating, and the British would go to war there as well. Internally Britain was seething with discontent over the new machines that threatened the livelihood of many artisans. In that same year, the prime minister, Spencer Perceval, was assassinated, the only time in English history this has ever happened. Yet even with all this to discuss, the two most notable events of the year, from the point of view of London society, were Byron’s sudden fame and the introduction of a shocking new dance—the waltz.
Byron discovered that he was in demand among women of all ages and classes. Morals in Regency society were nonexistent, as long as one managed to be discreet. However, Byron became the target of one of the most indiscreet women in London: Lady Caroline Lamb, wife of William Lamb, a future prime minister of Britain. Their affair was notable even among the scandals of the day. Lady Caroline, three years older than Byron, was a moody woman with a hot temper, used to getting whatever she wanted. Her family had suspected she was mad when she was a child, but she grew up virtually unsupervised. She loved to shock people with her unconventional ways. When she first was introduced to Byron at a party, she turned her back on him, knowing that would pique his interest. But that night she wrote in her journal her now-famous words: that he was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”
Once Lady Caroline caught Byron’s attention, she pursued him openly, writing love letters, offering herself to him. They had a brief, very intense affair. Samuel Rogers, a poet and banker as well as an inveterate gossip, wrote:
She absolutely besieged him. He showed me the first letter he received from her; in which she assured him that, if he was in any want of money, “all her jewels were at his service.” They frequently had quarrels; and more than once, on coming home, I have found Lady C. walking in the garden, and waiting for me, to beg that I would reconcile them.—When she met Byron at a party, she would always, if possible, return home from it in his carriage, and accompanied by him . . . But such was the insanity of her passion for Byron, that sometimes, when not invited to a party where he was to be, she would wait for him in the street till it was over! One night, after a great party at Devonshire House, to which Lady Caroline had not been invited, I saw her—yes, saw her—talking to Byron, with half of her body thrust into the carriage which he had just entered.
Caroline quickly lost all sense of caution, at one point demanding to elope with Byron. Byron, with his many lovers, soon tired of her, but she refused to accept rejection. She sent him a clipping of her blond pubic hair, telling how she cut herself while trimming it and cautioning him not to hold the scissors too close when he returned the favor. When Byron ordered that she not be admitted to his house, Lady Caroline appeared disguised as a pageboy and Byron had to take a knife away from her, uncertain if she was threatening him or herself. Trying to convince her that her love was futile, Byron confided his homosexual feelings, an exciting piece of gossip that she later vengefully spread around London. Finally accepting defeat, she burned Byron in effigy and parodied his family motto by inscribing Ne Crede Byron (“Don’t trust Byron”) on her servants’ buttons. Yet when she died in 1828, a rose and a carnation that Byron had given her were found dried and carefully preserved among her possessions.
Byron was the best-known poet of his time, achieving a celebrity that crossed boundaries and even continents. He possessed the kind of fame that only certain entertainment stars do today. Claire Clairmont, one of the many women who offered themselves to Byron—and one of those few who were accepted—recalled many years later, “In 1815, when I was a very young girl, Byron was the rage. When I say the rage, I mean what you people nowadays can perhaps hardly conceive. I suppose no man who ever lived has had the extraordinary celebrity of Lord Byron in such an intense, haunting, almost maddening degree. And this celebrity extended all over the Continent to as great an extent as in England; and remember, in those days there were no railways or telegraphs.”
Much of Byron’s fame came from his status as a Romantic hero—the product of his careful calculation and the conflation of his imagined characters with himself. The protagonists of his poems followed the Romantic ideal, expressed by painter Caspar David Friedrich: “Follow without hesitation the voice of your inner self.” Readers entranced by the adventurous and tragic figures of Byron’s poetry imagined that he was writing about himself—and he tried to live up to that image.
Byron had imbibed a sense of sin from the Scottish Calvinism in which he was raised. He sometimes saw himself as a fallen angel and became obsessed with the question of why evil exists. The most popular Byronic heroes were the cosmic rebels and fallen angels. Particularly appealing to women was the rogue who displayed his dark side, but who could be tamed by love and tenderness. In Jane Austen’s novel Persuasion, written in 1818 when Byron was at the height of his fame, a group of young women discusses how to pronounce The Giaour, the title of Byron’s poem about a Venetian nobleman who seeks to avenge the de
ath of his lover, a slave executed by her Muslim master. That was thrilling stuff for the young women of the quiet English villages where Jane Austen and many other avid readers of Byron’s poetry spent their lives.
Men too found Byron appealing—for his adventurous exploits and his sense of style. Byron’s boxing skills and his feats as a swimmer added to his legend. Trying to find the secret of Byron’s appeal for women, many young men imitated him in dress and grooming. Byron made his curly hair glisten with a preparation called “Macassar oil.” When countless male swains did likewise, it became necessary for housewives to cover the upholstered backs of couches and chairs with a cloth, so that the oil didn’t leave a stain. This was the origin of the “antimacassar,” a decorative item in homes that survived long after the fad for Macassar oil faded.
The early 1800s had seen a revolution in men’s fashion, in which eighteenth-century knee breeches were discarded, and long pants adopted. The brightly colored silk suits of the past, along with powdered wigs, became unfashionable. The renowned dandy Beau Brummel, the fashion arbiter of the time, called for simplicity and elegance, with an emphasis on restraint rather than flamboyance. He popularized wearing black evening clothes. Byron’s obsession with his weight meshed perfectly with this new style, which emphasized a smooth line from top to bottom. Here too he set the mode that was ardently imitated throughout much of Europe and America. Before his time, a slim figure was regarded as a sign of ill health or poverty; since then, it has remained the ideal.
Poet, adventurer, fashion leader—Byron was all these, but that was not enough for his ambitions. His travels had inspired him to side with the nationalistic struggles of such people as the Italians and Greeks, who were ruled by outsiders. As one of the first “citizens of the world,” Byron spoke out against tyranny wherever he saw it. In an age that recalled the initial enthusiasm inspired by the French Revolution, Byron seemed to be one of the few who still carried the torch for freedom. Such advocacy got attention for the cause, and for Byron.
The Romantics espoused the “great man” theory of history, admiring both the great man of politics and the genius of art and literature for their own sake—they were above national or political allegiances. Byron, whose greatest poems seemed to be about himself, or at least the public persona he cultivated, saw himself as the literary version of the emperor, living up to his soubriquet, “the Napoleon of rhyme.” Byron and Napoleon shared world-conquering dreams. Lady Blessington, who spoke to the poet in the last years of his life, wrote: “Byron had two points of ambition—the one to be thought the greatest poet of his day, and the other a nobleman and man of fashion, who could have arrived at distinction without the aid of his poetical genius.”
Oddly enough, Byron’s affair with Caroline Lamb brought him his closest female confidante: the mother of Caroline’s husband, Lady Melbourne. Lady Melbourne had never liked her daughter-in-law. Known as “the Spider” for her deviousness, she provided Byron an entrée into the highest ranks of society. In 1812, she was over sixty but still attractive with beautiful eyes and a sharp mind, a grande dame of cynical charms. She kept her own counsel and enjoyed being the intimate of powerful men. “No man is safe with another’s secrets, no woman with her own,” she once remarked. At nineteen, she had married a man for whom she had little feeling and during their marriage she had a string of affairs, including one with the prince regent. It was commonly believed that all six of her children were illegitimate.
Lady Melbourne felt that Byron should be married, and she knew a suitable woman: her niece, Annabella Milbanke. Annabella was a pretty, level-headed, clever, but naive girl, the only child of doting parents. Well educated (as Caroline had not been), Annabella had a talent for mathematics, having taught herself geometry by reading Euclid. The only problem was that Byron did not like “blues”—short for bluestockings—as he called educated women. “I should like her more if she were less perfect,” Byron wrote. Annabella first saw Byron at Lady Melbourne’s house, but did not speak to him. She noted to her mother that “all the women were absurdly courting him and trying to deserve the lash of his Satire. I thought inoffensiveness was the most secure conduct, as I am not desirous of a place in his lays [songs] . . . I made no offering at the shrine of Childe Harold, though I shall not refuse the acquaintance if it comes my way.”
Women who did not at once succumb to Byron’s charms were often irresistible to him, and he consciously tried to present the “good angel” side of his personality to Annabella at their next meeting. When they did begin to converse, she confronted him on equal terms and did not play the role of adoring fan. She talked of goodness and genius, and whether genius made one happy; she in fact ventured to suggest that he was not happy. Seldom had anyone spoken to Byron in this vein, and he found her sincerity attractive. Though Byron did not love her, he was touched by her character and wanted to settle down. In October 1812, he proposed, but she rejected him. When he saw her again the following spring, he blushed furiously. This brought forth a long letter from Annabella, the start of a more conventional courtship correspondence.
But another, deeper relationship was to destroy the possibility of Byron’s ever leading a “normal” life with Annabella. After the death of his mother, Byron drew closer to his half-sister, Augusta. Now his only living relative, Augusta was married to her cousin Captain George Leigh, who spent most of his time gambling and drinking. Four years older than Byron, Augusta, with her chestnut hair and large eyes, was said to resemble a female version of him. Separated as children, they became closer as they grew older, and Byron formed a deep attachment for her. In June of 1813, she arrived in London to ask him for help because her husband’s gambling debts had put her home in danger of being seized by bailiffs.
Byron himself was in financial difficulty, and had been forced to put Newstead Abbey up for sale, Nonetheless, he was glad to see Augusta and included her in his social rounds. He escorted her to a dinner given by Sir Humphry Davy’s wife in honor of the famous French intellectual Madame de Staël. Byron was pleased to see Augusta blossom socially, but increasingly he began to feel an unbrotherly desire for her. Augusta was unorthodox as well. She said of herself, “Of what consequence was one’s behaviour, provided that it made nobody else unhappy?” Like Byron she was amoral. They shared the same wild family heritage; to him the blood tie only made her more attractive. The two of them seemed to understand each other effortlessly, and with her he could be as free as a child again, for he trusted her completely. By August 1813, they were deeply involved and Byron planned to take her to Sicily where they could live together.
Byron told Lady Melbourne of his plans to elope, shocking even her. Eventually Augusta reconsidered, for she had a child, and they gave up the idea of running off. Nevertheless, Byron told Lady Melbourne that he was more in love with Augusta than ever. She warned him against his desires, predicting that the relationship would raise a scandal that would destroy him.
Byron explored his incestuous feelings in The Bride of Abydos, 1,200 lines of poetry that he claimed to have written in four nights. Though set in Turkey, it told of a love between cousins who had been raised together as brother and sister. (In his original draft, the lovers had actually been brother and sister.) Byron portrays Zuleika’s passionate love for her cousin Selim in words that shocked his readers.
Thy cheek, thine eyes, thy lips to kiss,
Like this—and this—no more than this,
For, Allah! sure thy lips are flame,
What fever in thy veins is flushing?
My own have nearly caught the same,
At least I feel my cheek, too, blushing.
In the winter of January 1814, Byron and Augusta traveled together to Newstead Abbey, spending three weeks there alone. It was the harshest winter in a generation and they were snowbound, sharing the cold stone rooms with only the ghosts of mad and wicked Byrons of the past. They celebrated Byron’s twenty-sixth birthday together, “a very pretty age if it would always last,” he wro
te. He confided in a letter to Lady Melbourne: “I am much afraid that that perverse passion was my deepest after all.”
Despite his passion for Augusta, Byron still sporadically wrote to Annabella. After she had turned down his proposal, Annabella had had a change of heart. She started to believe that her love could change the dark side of Byron. He seems to have tried to give Annabella warnings about his true nature. “The great object of life is sensation,” he wrote, “to feel that we exist, even though in pain. It is the ‘craving void’ which drives us to Gaming, to Battle, to Travel—to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment.” But while she was said to be level-headed, Annabella was as susceptible as anyone to the blindness caused by love.
Despite inner qualms, Byron proposed a second time in September 1814. Perhaps he felt it was the only way to avoid the doom of his relationship with Augusta. This time Annabella accepted.
They were married on January 2, 1815, in a small ceremony at the home of the bride’s parents at Durham in the north of England. Byron had arrived only the day before, after keeping his bride and her relatives waiting for two weeks, during which time he found excuses to delay. John Cam Hobhouse, the best man, recalled that after he saw the newlyweds off in a coach, “I felt as if I had buried a friend.” Byron wrote to Lady Melbourne: “We were married yesterday . . . so there’s an end of that matter and the beginning of many others . . . the kneeling was rather tedious—and the cushions hard—but upon the whole it did vastly well.” These words are hardly those of a smitten man.
Byron and his bride spent their honeymoon in the Milbankes’ Yorkshire estate of Halnaby, a dark and dreary place. The setting matched Byron’s lack of romantic feelings. “[H]ad Lady B on the sofa before dinner,” was the inelegant way that he described his wedding night. Returning from the honeymoon, he took his bride to visit Augusta. The thinly veiled joking between the half-siblings led Annabella to suspect what their real relationship was. Byron wrote to his friend Thomas Moore that “the treaclemoon is over.”
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