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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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