10 Drummond, “Lord Byron, 19th-century Bad Boy”
Born in London in 1788, the poet George Gordon Byron, or Lord Byron as we know him, spent his life collecting sensations and courting controversy. While a student at Cambridge, for example, he kept a tame bear as a pet, taking it for walks as one would a dog. During his acrimonious and very public divorce in 1816, Byron was rumoured to be having a sexual relationship with his half-sister, an allegation he denied in public but less adamantly in his private letters. His passionate support for the freedom of the Greeks in their War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire was likewise a ‘keenly felt pursuit’ that ultimately proved deadly. Suffering from a fever and infection contracted while awaiting battle in Greece, Byron died in 1824 at the age of 36.
Although in his letters Byron confessed to having no interest in society – ‘I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone,’ – his exploits and writings drew attention, at times adoring and at others deeply critical. It was in 1812 after the publication of the first part of his long narrative poem about a young aristocrat’s travels, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, that Byron became widely known, a celebrity in fashionable circles. With a noticeable limp due to a club-foot – a disability he had suffered with from birth – and a striking face, Byron’s physical presence also commanded attention. His fellow English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge commented in a letter on 10 April 1816 that Byron’s face was ‘so beautiful, a countenance I scarcely ever saw’ and ‘his eyes the open portals of the sun—things of light, and for light’. During his lifetime, Byron was notoriously protective of his image and directed his publisher John Murray to destroy any engravings of himself that he disliked. One portrait he endorsed was completed in 1813 by the artist Thomas Phillips.
Portrait of Lord Byron in Albanian Dress
A portrait of Lord Byron in Albanian dress, 1813. The portrait alludes to the poet’s travels and adventurous spirit while presenting the face of a calm and pensive Byron.
Don Juan, cantos 1-2
Byron’s dedication to Don Juan, not included in the first edition, attacked poets such as Wordsworth and Southey, and political figures such as Lord Castlereagh, who was responsible for repressive measures in the UK.
Politics
From a young age, Byron wished for a career in Parliament with poetry initially being only a secondary interest. He entered the House of Lords, his privilege for being born into British nobility, and in 1812 gave his first speech opposing the Frame Work Bill, which made the destruction of stocking frames, mechanical looms used in the textile industry, a crime punishable by death.
Speech by Lord Byron about the frame-breakers
Manuscript of Byron’s first speech in the House of Lords, given in 1812. Byron called attention to the fact that new technology was taking away the jobs of textile workers.
The controversy over the bill had provoked riots