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In 1798, George’s great-uncle, the so-called “Wicked Lord” Byron, died. Without any other heirs, the inheritance and title fell to George. He moved with his mother and May to Newstead, the family estate outside Sherwood Forest. There his mother contacted a man called Lavender, who professed to be a medical doctor and a linguistic genius. Although Byron did not believe Lavender’s claims and once proved that the “doctor” was making up his knowledge of languages, his mother still forced him to submit to Lavender’s ministrations. These “treatments” were more akin to tortures, and it was clear to everyone except Catherine that Lavender was doing more harm than good.
The next year, the family’s lawyer, John Hanson, took Byron to London to be educated. There he underwent examinations for his clubfoot, but found it to be impossible to remedy. He received orthopedic bracing shoes which were specially made to ease his limp, and went to study at Dulwich. In 1801 he moved to Harrow, a prestigious school for boys, and in 1802 he first met Augusta Leigh, his half-sister.
In 1805 Byron enrolled at Trinity College in Cambridge. He did very little real studying, but read prodigiously and engaged in a vivacious social life amongst the Cambridge boys. He was not impressed by college life, and in 1806 he published his first book of juvenile poetry, aptly entitled Hours of Idleness. He continued to study until 1808, when he graduated with a ceremonial nobleman’s M.A. and in 1809 he published English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. This same year he began a two-year series of travels. Byron began in Lisbon, then toured Spain, Malta, and Albania. Finally he visited Athens and Constantinople. There he developed a lifelong respect for the Greeks and their struggle against the Turks.
He returned to England in 1811, but before he could arrive at home, his mother had died. He lived at Newstead in great sorrow, comforting himself with love affairs and intellectual conversation until 1812, when he began an active interest in his House of Lords position. Also in 1812 he published Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a long semi-autobiographical poem which has become one of his most famous. Almost immediately Byron became a national figure, famous for his poetic talent. He used this newfound fame to catapult himself into several love affairs: he struck up relationships with Annabella Milbanke, who would be his future wife, Caroline Lamb, wife of future prime minister William Lamb and no relation to Mary and Charles Lamb, and his half-sister Augusta. He was widely vilified for his relationship with his half-sister, who in 1814 bore a daughter many consider to be Byron’s.
In 1815, Byron and Annabella were married. Byron did not at first take well to married life, and scathingly deprecated his honeymoon and potential for happy domestic life. However, he seemed to settle down over the single year he spent living with Annabella. In order to pay debts, Byron arranged to sell Newstead, but the buyer’s lack of funds caused creditors to move in on him. He fled to his publisher’s house to escape collection. His daughter, Ada, was born in December. Annabella left Byron in early 1816.
That same year, Byron began an affair with Claire Clairmont, the stepdaughter of William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft’s husband. She was close friends with Percy Bysshe Shelley and step-sister to Mary Godwin, who would later become Mary Shelley. After an evening with Claire, which he considered to be a free one-night stand, he was convinced to travel to Geneva. Once there, he found Claire pregnant, with Percy and Mary Shelley in tow. Their illegitimate child was born in 1817. During this stay in Switzerland, the Shelleys and Byron participated in a ghost story competition. Byron, who submitted a short vampire story, is considered to be in great measure an inspiration for Mary Shelley’s monster in Frankenstein: Byron, like the monster, lacks connection with other people and becomes a monstrous figure for Mary.
Following his Swiss residence, Byron lived in Italy for some time. He rented a home in Venice near the Shelleys, fell in love and began an affair with the married Countess Teresa Guiccioli, and began publishing his famous ottava rima poem, Don Juan. He was in Pisa when Shelley died in 1822, but traveled to the beach where Shelley had been buried and gave a passionate eulogy for his friend. The body was burned at a pyre, while Byron waded in the sea. In 1823 he decided to join the Greek struggle for independence, offering money to prepare the Greek navy, and taking command of a unit of Greek soldiers. Byron campaigned energetically until 1824, when he fell ill. Some historians have diagnosed Byron with epileptic fits, although others have claimed various other illnesses. As treatment, doctors bled him with leeches; weakened, he died in April 1824. His death, which was punctuated with a tremendous thunderstorm, is celebrated as a national day of mourning in Greece.
Byron’s influences spread throughout the literary world: he became symbolic of sexuality, genius, and hubris. His dark portraits of the world live on through echoes in Goethe, Pushkin, and French revolutionaries. His individualism and selfishness have become legendary, and his works are unequivocally considered to be great poetry. However, because of his lifestyle, he was denied a place in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner, and only recently has he been acknowledged, by a small plaque on the wall. He is buried in his family vault in Nottinghamshire.
- by John Minser
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold. George Gordon, Lord Byron. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.
Byron, George Gordon Byron, and Donald A. Low. Byron : Selected Poetry and Prose. London ; New York: Routledge, 1995.
Elwin, Malcolm. Lord Byron's Family : Annabella, Ada, and Augusta, 1816-1824. London: J. Murray, 1975.
Gilmour, Ian Hedworth and Little, John. The Making of the Poets : Byron and Shelley in their Time. London: Chatto & Windus, 2002.
Hay, Ashley. The Secret : The Strange Marriage of Annabella Milbanke and Lord Byron. London: Aurum Press, 2000.
Noel, Roden Berkeley Wriothesley and Anderson, John Parker. Life of Lord Byron. London: W. Scott, 1890.
Raphael, Frederic. Byron. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1982.
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