'An Egregious Blunder' and Byron's Clarissa Harlowe

"I Have Never Concealed a Single Thought that Tempted Me"

Byron shares his thoughts about Annabella Milbanke with Lady Melbourne...

She seems to have been spoiled - not as children usually are - but systematically Clarissa Harlowed into an awkward kind of correctness, with a dependence upon her own infallibility which will or may lead her into some egregious blunder...

I don't mean the usual error of young gentlewomen, but she will find exactly what she wants, and then discover that it is much more dignified than entertaining.

September 1813

The Lady and the Poet
The Story of Anne Isabella Lady Noel Byron

Sources Used:

Byronic Thoughts Maxims * Reflections * Portraits from the Prose and Verse of Lord Byron Ed: Peter Quennell (London: John Murray 1960)

'All I Have Suffered Can Never Be Known' A Poet Leaves for a Life in Exile...

“My own Sweet Sis – the deeds are signed – so that is over. – All I have now to beg or desire on the subject is – that you will never mention not allude to Lady Byron’s name again in any shape – or on any occasion – except indispensable business....”

This was to be one of Byron’s last letters to his “Dearest Augusta” as he made plans to leave his home and his life in England behind him.

 He had signed the deed of separation on the afternoon of Sunday April 21 1816 signifying the end of his brief year-long marriage to Annabella and from the fatherhood of his five-month old daughter Ada.

He left 13 Piccadilly Terrace on this very day Tuesday April 23 and bound for Dover, he finally departed from England on Thursday April 25 1816 and was never to see Augusta, Annabella or Ada again.

The Byron separation had been one of bitterness, legal wrangling, innuendo, veiled threats and finally a plea for a "private arrangement"

The winner undoubtedly was Annabella who in January 1816 had demanded:

“to pursue such measures as may be necessary to effect a secure & final separation between Lord Byron and myself”

 “I am more convinced of the escape I have had, and the impossibility of ever regretting the step I have taken.....

All I have suffered can never be known”

Not knowing precisely what Annabella had suffered during her marriage was to precipitate in scandalous rumour, vitriol and exile for Byron, the unfortunate loser.

This brings us to the fifth and final possible reason...

"I say it's really not my habit

To intrude

Furthermore, I hope my meaning

Won't be lost or misconstrued

But I'll repeat myself

At the risk of being crude

There really are five reasons

To leave my lover

Five reasons to leave my lover"

"5 Reasons to Leave My Lover" by Lady Byron © 1816

REASON FIVE:

Dereliction of Principle

Upon receiving the notice from Sir Ralph Milbanke that his daughter was insistent upon a separation from him, Byron had asked for confirmation of this from Annabella herself who was to reply with the following charge of:

 "that total dereliction of principle, which, since our marriage, you have professed and gloried in...”

  

Augusta was also to hint at this charge in a letter sent to Annabella about her concern for Byron's well-being as their separation was being increasingly played out in public and to Byron's disadvantage:

“There are reports abroad of a nature too horrible to repeat....Every other sinks into nothing before this MOST horrid one...

This MOST dreadful report! – who knows what it may urge him to do.

He said to me last night in an agony “Even to have such a thing said is utter destruction & ruin to a man & from which he can never recover

I am alas! but too well convinced you are acting from Duty - From Principle.......

Surely even the truth is better concealed if possible....”

 But what was this mysterious truth that led Byron to a total dereliction of principle?

His angry former mother-in-law was to say of him that it was "not fit such men should live", and the poet Thomas Campbell in his defence of Annabella was to say:

"It concerns morality and the most sacred rights of the sex that she be acquitted of any share in the blame, which was Byron's and Byron's alone".

Even Lady Caroline Lamb had something to say about Byron's "dereliction of principle" in this her "farewell" letter to him:

"I do not believe I never will believe you can have had the heart to suffer me to be so treated - what I have gone through - it is neither my wish or intention to repeat...

henceforward you are safe - the means you took to frighten me from your door are not in vain"

On February 22 1816 after a private interview with her legal advisor Dr Stephen Lushington, Annabella was to reveal something so shocking that separation from Byron was inevitable and that it must forever remain unknown to the rest of the world.

It had the desired effect.

Byron was forced into acquiescence and exile and as the "cause" of the separation was not revealed, rumour and innuendo was to prevail and very much to his discredit.

In Byron's time adultery was commonplace, his two closest female confidants, Lady Oxford and Lady Melbourne had given birth to children of questionable paternity and incest was more of a murkier issue for although morally wrong, it was not yet considered to be a crime.

However, homosexuality and the act of sodomy were certainly considered to be criminal behaviour.

The threat of the gallows was a very real one and suspected sodomites were frequently pilloried in front of a baying, angry crowd with dreadful consequences.

Could this have been the pivotal reason for Annabella's determination for a separation after a marriage of only a year?

Could this explain why she was almost unremitting in her campaign to ensure that Byron was and remained the "guilty party", the unsympathetic character forced into exile?

George Colman believed this to be so.

Colman was the theatrical manager at Drury Lane, a wonderful writer of comedy who considered Byron a friend and one whom he liked to get drunk with.

He was also to show an intuitive understanding of the complexities of the Byron marriage and the subsequent separation that offers us a tantalising hint of what happened all those years ago.

"Methinks 'twas yesterday as both in bed

We lay: her cheeks were pillowed on my breast,

Fondly my arms her snowy bosom pressed.

Love no denial found, desire no stay.

That night it was, when tired of amorous play,

She bade me speak of wonders I had seen.

"And thou, dear Anna, think'st thou I can see

Without longing all these charms in thee?

Then turn thee round, indulge a husband's wish,

And taste with me this truly classic dish"

Ah, fatal hour, that saw my prayer succeed,

And my fond bride enact the Ganymede....

'Tis true, that from her lips some murmurs fell -

In joy or anger, 'tis too late to tell;

But this I swear, that not a single sign

Proved that her pleasure did not equal mine."

Don Leon

Probably by George Colman the Younger

© The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York

'The Lady and the Poet'
The World of Lady Byron

Sources used:

Byron's Letters and Journals Vol 5 1816-1817, Ed: Leslie A. Marchand (London: John Murray 1976)

Lord Byron's Marriage The Evidence of Asterisks, G. Wilson Knight (Routledge and Kegan Paul 1957)

Lord Byron's Wife, Malcolm Elwin (London: John Murray 1974)

The Uninhibited Byron An Account of His Sexual Confusion, Bernard Grebanier (Peter Owen 1970)

The Whole Disgraceful Truth, Paul Douglass (Palgrave MacMillan 2006)

For Why Should We Mourn? 'Memento Mori' Lord Byron...

In Memoriam

George Gordon Noel Byron

Sixth Baron Byron

Born January 22 1788

Died April 19 1824

1

Bright be the place of thy soul!

No lovelier spirit than thine

E'er burst from its mortal control,

In the orbs of the blessed to shine.

On earth thou wert all but divine,

As thy soul shall immortality be;

And our sorrow may cease to repine

When we know that thy God is with thee.

11

Light be the turf of thy tomb!

May its verdue like emeralds be!

There should not be the shadow of gloom

In aught that reminds us of thee.

Young flowers and an evergreen tree

May spring from the spot of thy rest:

But nor cypress nor yew let us see;

For why should we mourn for the blest?

Stanzas for Music

(Occasional Pieces)

In Search of a Dead Poet's Society... The Ramblings of a 'Regency' Recondite!

When the actress Sarah Miles was asked for her opinion about the famous Regency doyenne Lady Caroline Lamb she replied that Caro “was a woman born out of her time and was forced to suffer hugely because of it.”

As I too was born ‘out of my time’; about two hundred years to be precise, I have a fond heart for Regency history and it is no secret that I also have a passionate interest in the life of the poet Lord Byron.

The Ramblings of a ‘Regency’ Recondite is the tale of this ‘Polite Tourist’ who has set herself the task of following in the footsteps of Byron as he lived, loved and ‘scribbled’ from the cobbled streets of Aberdeen to the elegant colonnade of Melbourne House in London until his exile from our shores in April 1816.

Although Caro Lamb is remembered for her glorious and difficult life; I confess that all I have been ‘forced to suffer’ has been the windswept train stations, the occasional motorway queue, the inclement weather and the inability to read a map correctly!

Yet despite the frustrations of transport delays, weariness and a frequent diet of suspect food that is probably familiar to most travellers; I have relished the opportunities to visit the wonderful places that are tinged with the history of Byron and also the kindness of those I have met along the way.

I look forward to you stopping by! 

Tee Bylo

'Books of Travel are Expensive and I Don't Want Them'

Lord Byron

The Ramblings of a 'Regency' Recondite

The Polite Tourist Goes in Search of a Dead Poet's Society

A Lady's Eye is On Childe Harold...

Thus Harold deemed, as on that Lady's eye

He looked, and met its beam without a thought,

Save Admiration glancing harmless by:

Love kept aloof, albeit not far remote,

Who knew his Votary often lost and caught,

But knew him as his Worshipper no more,

And ne'er again the Boy his bosom sought:

Since now he vainly urged him to adore,

Well deemed the little God his ancient sway was o'er

XXXI.

Childe Harold

I have read your Book & cannot refrain from telling you that I think & that all those whom I live with & whose opinions are far more worth having - think it beautiful.

You deserve to be and you shall be happy...

In early 1812, Lady Caroline Lamb having managed to "wrangle" an advance copy of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage from the Poet Samuel Rogers was to pen an anonymous letter to its author on this very day in 1812...

This momentous poem would soon launch the former hitherto unknown Sixth Baron Byron into London society as the celebrity and who would soon find himself alternatively adored and pursued throughout the most fashionable drawing rooms of the Capital.

Pray take no trouble to find out who now writes to you - it is one very little worth your notice & with whom you are unacquainted but who from the first has admired your great & promising Genius & who is now so delighted with what you have written that it would be difficult for me to refrain from telling you what I think...

Lady Caroline had always believed in forthrightness. 

"I am frank... I can quite quarrel" she had written in reply to a reproof by her good friend Lady Holland in June 1811.

In the aftermath of Caroline's affair with Sir Godfrey Vassel Webster, Lady Holland had upbraided her for her troublesome behaviour in public and of the embarrassment that she was heaping upon her husband and the Melbourne family. 

I have had no wish to excite any emotion in any one - I have just followd the impulse of the moment as I generally do - made myself a great fool - & vexd those who cared about me...

History accords that the identity of Byron's first admirer would soon become known to him and as their torrid and public affair gathered apace, one can't help wondering what would have happened if only Caroline had heeded the words she had written in reply to Lady Holland a mere nine months earlier.

I will profit by the lesson I have had & my future life shall be dedicated to Wm & my family & my future efforts to conquering every feeling that ought not to exist in a well regulated mind...

Little knew she that seeming marble heart,

Now masked in silence or withheld by Pride,

Was not unskilful in the spoiler's art,

And spread its snares licentious far and wide:

Nor from the base pursuit had turned aside,

As long as aught was worthy to pursue:

But Harold on such arts no more relied;

And had he doted on those eyes so blue,

Yet never would he join the lover's whining crew.

XXX111

Sources Used:

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage A Romaunt Lord Byron (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2009)

The Whole Disgraceful Truth Selected Letters of Lady Caroline Lamb Paul Douglass (Palgrave Macmillan 2006)

A Little Fame for February!

Although today is my birthday, it also happens to have been rather a momentous day in the life of our poet for it was on this day Thursday February 27 1812 that he was make to his maiden speech in the House of Lords.

Byron was speaking out against the proposed Bill for the implementation of capital punishment for the stocking weavers convicted of deliberately breaking the machinery that had deprived them of their livelihood.

In a letter written several days later to his good friend Francis Hodgson, he was to say of his speech:

"I spoke very violent sentences with a sort of modest impudence, abused every thing & every body, & put the Ld. Chancellor very much out of humour, & if I may believe what I hear, have not lost any character by the experiment...

As to my delivery, loud & fluent enough, perhaps a little theatrical.

I could not recognize myself or any one else in the Newspapers..."

It had been a very different scenario four years previously for although he was boasting to his friend Hobhouse that he was 'buried in an abyss of Sensuality' at the fashionable Dorant's Hotel while living in a 'state of Concubinage' and under prescription for a 'debility occasioned by too frequent Connection'; he was also licking his wounds after his collection of poems, Hours of Idleness had been ridiculed by the Edinburgh Review:

"As an author, I am cut to atoms by the E Review, it is just out, and has completely demolished my little fabric of fame, this is rather scurvy treatment from a Whig review, but politics and poetry are different things, & I am no adept in either, I therefore submit in Silence..."

February 27 1808

As history would indicate, Byron was not to submit in silence for very long!

It's My Birthday and Lord Byron is Raging... 

A Writer in Embyro!

Sources Used:

Byron's Letters and Journals Vol 1 (1798-1810) Ed: Leslie A. Marchand (London: John Murray 1973)

Byron's Letters and Journals Vol 2 (1810-1812) Ed: Leslie A. Marchand (London: John Murray 1973)

'As He is Dead' Byron Pays Tribute to John Keats...

"I Have Never Concealed a Single Thought that Tempted Me"

Byron on the Poet John Keats

Is it true - what Shelley writes me that poor John Keats died at Rome of the Quarterly Review?

I am very sorry for it - though I think he took the wrong line as a poet - and was spoilt by Cockneyfying and Surburbing - and versifying Tooke's Pantheon and Lampriere's Dictionary...

I know by experience that a savage review is Hemlock to a sucking author - and the one on me - (which produced the English Bards &c.) knocked me down - but I got up again...

Instead of bursting a blood-vessel - I drank three bottles of Claret - and began an answer...

I am very sorry to hear what you say of Keats - is it actually true?

I did not think criticism had been so killing.

Though I differ from you essentially in your estimate of his performances, I so much abhor all unnecessary pain, that I would rather he had been seated on the highest peak of Parnassus than have perished in such a manner. Poor fellow!

The John Keats Community

Had I known that Keats was dead - or that he was alive and so sensitive - I should have omitted some remarks upon his poetry, to which I was provoked by his attack upon Pope, and my disapprobation of his own style of writing...

You know very well that I did not approve of Keat's poetry or principles of poetry - or of his abuse of Pope - but as he is dead - omit all that is said abut him in any M.S.S. of mine - or publication.

His Hyperion is a fine monument & will keep his name...

Sources Used:

Byron's Letters and Journals Volume 8 (1821) Ed: Leslie A. Marchand (London: John Murray 1978)

'Still Let Me Love!'

On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year

'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,

Since others it hath ceased to move:

Yet though I cannot be beloved,

Still let me love!

My days are in the yellow leaf;

The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;

The worm - the canker, and the grief

Are mine alone!

The fire that on my bosom preys

Is lone as some Volcanic Isle;

No torch is kindled at its blaze

A funeral pile!

The hope, the fear, the jealous care,

The exalted portion of the pain

And power of Love I cannot share,

But wear the chain.

But 'tis not thus - and 'tis not here

Such thoughts should shake my Soul, nor now

Where Glory decks the hero's bier

Or binds his brow.

The Sword, and the Banner, and the Field,

Glory and Greece around us see!

The Spartan borne upon his shield

Was not more free!

Awake (not Greece - she is awake)

Awake, my Spirit! think through whom

Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake

And then strike home!

Tread those reviving passions down

Unworthy Manhood - unto thee

Indifferent should be the smile or frown

Of Beauty be.

If thou regret'st thy Youth, why live?

The land of honourable Death

Is here: - up to the Field, and give

Away thy Breath'

Seek out - less often sought than found -

A Soldier's Grave, for thee the best;

Then look around, and choose thy Ground,

And take thy Rest!

Missolonghi

January 22, 1824

"Byron's final entry in his last journal"

Sources used:

Byron's Letters and Journals, Ed. Leslie A. Marchand (London: John Murray, 1973-97)

I Think That We Have Done Him Proud Today!

 "That is an interesting subject Amy, especially as the Scots appear to have made no claim on him and the English probably wish they could 'unclaim' him. 

Thank God that the Greeks love him!"

Tee

"His Grecian heart is something no Briton can tarnish"

Amy

"I think the ambiguity of his ethnic/cultural identity and citizenship is all part of the Byronic myth. That's part of what makes Byron, Byron. He is difficult to define. Difficult to grasp.

Everything about Byron is: neither this nor that.

His blood was Scottish. His heart was English. His soul was Greek. His legend is universal"

Viv G

 "And just how he liked it... a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma..."

Tee

 "I wonder if he himself knew who and what he was... He may have been as baffled with himself as we are 

with him.

 *sigh* Oh... Byron...."

Viv G

"Didn't he say that he was "such a mixture of good and evil"?"

Tee

 "I think he felt haunted by the evil deeds and mental instability of preceding family members -- that these traits were sure to be passed on to him...."

Viv G

"Gosh! He'd make such a fascinating patient on the 'black couch'...

Yes, his genetic make up was certainly fascinating!"

Tee

"Byron was too much in debt to be able to pay for visits on the black couch."

Viv G

"True, but he could probably have charmed a female therapist to treat him for gratis!"

Tee

"And maybe still, he was perfectly stable, and everything we think we know about him is slander from Caroline Lamb.

Conversations about Lord Byron seem to go in circles..."

Viv G

"No beginning or end and probably just the way he would have liked it!

I think that we have done him proud today..."

Tee

"Yes, we did. We spent the entire morning/night speaking about him!"

Viv G

"And on that note Good Even or Good Morn! 

I'll probably dream about him now!"

Tee

'I'll Never See Him as A Scottish Poet...'

Out of curiosity, what to people think about 'Byron as a Scot'? 

Byron's own views on the matter are quite odd: he hated being referred to as Scottish, yet has very fond memories of his childhood. 

I am, as it happens, an Aberdonian, and have been fortunate enough to have the chance to visit many different Byron 'hotspots' in and around the city. 

Yet, I'll never see him as a Scottish poet. It just doesn't suit.

Amy

What Have These Years Left to Me?

It is three minutes past twelve. - "'Tis the middle of the night by the castle clock," and I am now thirty-three!

"Eheu, fugaces, Posthume, Posthume,

Labuntur anni;"

but I don't regret them so much for what I have done, as for what I might have done.

Though life's road, so dim and dirty,

I have dragg'd to three-and-thirty.

What have these years left to me?

Nothing - except thirty-three.

Sources used:

Byron's Letters and Journals Vol 8 (1821) Ed: Leslie A. Marchand (London: John Murray 1978)

His Excellencies Are Universally Acknowledged!

"His excellencies will now be universally acknowledged, and his faults (let us hope and believe) not remembered in his epitaph. 

There has been no reposing under the shade of his laurels. 

Although his own gigantic renown increased the difficulty of the struggle, since he could produce nothing which exceeded the public estimates of his genius; yet he advanced to the honourable contest again, and again, almost always with complete triumph. 

Neither Childe Harold, nor any of the most beautiful of Byron's earlier tales, contain more exquisite morsels of poetry than are to be found scattered through the cantos of Don Juan, amidst verses which the author appears to have thrown off with an effort as spontaneous as that of a tree resigning its leaves to the wind. 

But that noble tree will never more bear fruit or blossom. 

It has been cut down in its strength, and the past is all that remains to us of Byron."

Sir Walter Scott

The Character of Lord Byron

June 12 1824

The Guardian Archives 

(Originally Published in the Manchester Guardian)

A Most Melancholy Wretch!

Nothing, indeed, could be more amusing and delightful than the contrast which his manner afterwards, when we were alone, presented to his proud reserve in the brilliant circle we had just left.

It was like the bursting gaiety of a boy let loose from school, and seemed as if there was no extent of fun or tricks of which he was not capable.

Finding him invariably thus lively when we were together, I often rallied him on the gloomy tone of his poetry, as assumed; but his constant answer was (and I soon ceased to doubt of its truth), that, though thus merry and full of laughter with those he liked, he was, at heart, one of the most melancholy wretches in existence.

Thomas Moore

His Very Self and Voice

Collected Conversations with Lord Byron

Ed: Ernest J. Lovell, JR.

(New York: The Macmillan Company 1954)

'An Ill Spent Life...'

Here lies interred in the Eternity of the Past, from whence there is no Resurrection for the Days - whatever there may be for the Dust - the Thirty-Third Year of an ill spent Life...

...which, after a lingering disease of many months sunk into a lethargy, and expired, January 22d, 1821, A.D. leaving a successor Inconsolable for the very loss which occasioned its Existence.

Lord Byron

January 22 1822

Ravenna Journal

The Polite Tourist Goes in Search of the Byron Plaque...

"And so - you want to come to London - it is a damned place to be sure - but the only place in the world for fun"

Lord Byron

In October 2012 the Polite Tourist paid another visit to the "damned place" in search of the Byron Westminster Green Plaque...

I would like to tell you that it was easy to locate this newly unveiled and wonderful new plaque - however, when was anything easy with Byron?

As I walked up and down Holles Street in search of the damned thing that was displayed on the wall of the John Lewis store, I became increasingly aware that during the course of my futile search, I was also now attracting the suspicious glances of my fellow pedestrians.

Perhaps they thought I was casing the joint! 

Eventually, a bus inspector took pity on me and after reassuring himself that I meant him no harm, he became  my 'search buddy' and so off we walked - again!

As we continued our search in Holles Street, he told me that he had been aware that there had been "some sort of ceremony" there earlier that month but he confessed to having witnessed nothing of any significance and "any ways, who was this Byron?"

And so with the daylight vanishing as fast as my hope; I thanked him for his help and excused myself, quickly! 

Salvation appeared in the form of a John Lewis window designer who literally crashed into me as I continued my futile walk along Holles Street and having graciously accepted her sincere apologies and although she didn't know where the plaque was situated; she was delighted to take a break from designing the sparkly scenes of festivity and promptly marched me inside the store.

As I crossed the threshold of the store I felt as if I had walked into one of the circles of Dante's Inferno. 

Imagine the scene if you will of a confined space that is heaving with people who are all jostling about. Their  baskets are piled dangerously high with shopping and as the inane Christmas music blares out, their faces grow increasingly red from the excessive heat and the long queues and I should add that there is also a total absence of the spirit of goodwill.

The window dresser having brought me into this hell then promptly disappeared in search of someone who would definitely know where the Byron plaque was.

By now I could care less...

As I stood rooted on the spot afraid to move less I become a victim or more likely, a perpetrator of 'store rage', I waited as patiently as I could with the assistance of the odd minute or two of transcendental meditation.

Eventually, the window dresser reappeared with a look of relief on her face and for the first time in my life I was delighted to find myself being marched out of a store.

We came upon Holles Street, a few steps to my left and voilà, there it was!

As I photographed the elusive plaque in the fading light, I had to laugh at the appropriateness of the quotation used...

And as was with Catherine Gordon Byron in the year 1788, I was also rather pleased to leave Holles Street behind...

Adieu!

Tee Bylo