Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy, and Sarah and
Speaker 1: I are solving a bit of a War's waldo today.
Speaker 1: We keep doing podcast research and coming across the same
Speaker 1: personage in places we never expected to find him. No,
Speaker 1: and that's George Gordon Lord Byron. And first he pops
Speaker 1: up in Frankenstein, which you know, that's obvious enough, he
Speaker 1: was there when Mary Shelley was writing it. But then
Speaker 1: he popped up in Lucrezia, Borgia, of all places, which
Speaker 1: they don't live in nearly the same century. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of an odd match. But perhaps it's not so
Speaker 1: strange that we find him in all of these unlikely places,
Speaker 1: because he had a variety of interests, from travel to
Speaker 1: his brilliant poetry to a menagerie of animals, and of
Speaker 1: course he was the most famous poet in Europe, as
Speaker 1: well as a fascinating public figure because of his utterly
Speaker 1: bizarre social life and romantic life, yes, scandalous affairs and
Speaker 1: cruel behavior towards variety of people. He was very good looking,
Speaker 1: he was a nobleman, but on his worst behavior for
Speaker 1: most of the time. And interestingly enough, while Byron is
Speaker 1: this world famous poet and obviously um a titan of
Speaker 1: poetry today, his literary contemporaries didn't really have much respect
Speaker 1: for him. Keats had a particularly skating quote. He called
Speaker 1: him a careless hectorer in proud bad verse. That's pretty cold, Keats.
Speaker 1: But today he's appreciated for what he did with his work,
Speaker 1: and Um, according to I pulled out my old romantic
Speaker 1: literature book. My professors would be so proud. Katie was saying,
Speaker 1: it's nice when you get to to use those the
Speaker 1: books that you couldn't sell back. But according to Miller Matlock,
Speaker 1: his unique expression of the consciousness and moods of early
Speaker 1: modernity is what we so appreciate today. And on that note,
Speaker 1: let's go back to his beginnings. He was the son
Speaker 1: of Captain John Byron, who was known as Mad Jack,
Speaker 1: which I think is pretty fabulous. He's a descendant of
Speaker 1: William the Conqueror too, and his second wife Katherine Gordon,
Speaker 1: who was a Scottish heiress and a descendant of James
Speaker 1: the First. I like this family treat thing. It's very helpful.
Speaker 1: Mad Jack liked to spend his money, so the Byron
Speaker 1: fortune was somewhat diminished by the time Little Byron came
Speaker 1: along January. He was born in London in a rented
Speaker 1: room because Catherine couldn't afford anything else and mad Jack
Speaker 1: had run off to France. And interestingly, he was born
Speaker 1: with a call over his head, which some people think
Speaker 1: that pretends second site or good luck or distinction. And
Speaker 1: the call the call is actually sold to a naval officer,
Speaker 1: which I just thought was so disgusting. Did it work
Speaker 1: for him? No, it's supposed to if you own a call,
Speaker 1: which if you buy it from a baby birthday, Um,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to prevent drowning. But the guy who bought
Speaker 1: it drowned twelve years later. So Byron's call not good luck,
Speaker 1: not very helpful. His mom took him to Aberdeen when
Speaker 1: he was young because that's where her people were, And interestingly,
Speaker 1: George had a club of foot and a withered leg
Speaker 1: when he was born, and for the rest of his
Speaker 1: life he blamed his mother for this because she wore
Speaker 1: a corset while she was pregnant. So we've got some
Speaker 1: early mother hatred going on, which is always nice and
Speaker 1: a grown man, and he's also he has a sort
Speaker 1: of tough childhood. Um he's sexually abused and beaten by
Speaker 1: his nanny who gives him these really strict Calvinist sermons
Speaker 1: and then brings home men from the town. So it's
Speaker 1: a very uncomfortable setting for Byron to grow up in
Speaker 1: a bizarre mix with those very strict morals and then
Speaker 1: the very lax behavior on the other hand. But he
Speaker 1: inherits a title at ten and becomes Baron Byron of Rothdale.
Speaker 1: And he inherits this, he's not in line for it.
Speaker 1: He never thinks he's going to inherit this. He gets
Speaker 1: it from a great uncle, the fifth Baron Byron, who's
Speaker 1: known as William the Wicked Lord Byron. Um. He was
Speaker 1: expecting his son to inherit it, of course, and disliked
Speaker 1: his son so much that he trashes his estate, basically
Speaker 1: chops down lots of trees. Um. His son dies before him, though,
Speaker 1: and his grandson, and so it goes to this obscure relative,
Speaker 1: Lord Byron. And because of this title, Byron also gets
Speaker 1: an estate called Newstead Abbey, which is used to be
Speaker 1: grand but at this point, as practically in ruins, and
Speaker 1: of course they don't have the fortune to repair it,
Speaker 1: and nor does the other Byron's estate. It's near Sherwood Forest,
Speaker 1: to which I thought was so perfectly romantic. Um. So
Speaker 1: Byron sent to school in London in eighteen o one,
Speaker 1: and a little bit after that he has his for love. Um.
Speaker 1: He falls in love with a cousin, Mary Chaworth, who
Speaker 1: lives on an estate near near his own, and he's
Speaker 1: so in love with her that he refuses to go
Speaker 1: back to school at first. Um. And she's older than him,
Speaker 1: she's a few years older, she's already engaged or about
Speaker 1: to be, and um, he just he sets her up
Speaker 1: as his ideal of unattainable love. This is where the
Speaker 1: romantic streak environ begins to show itself. But also kind
Speaker 1: of sad because he only gets over her when he
Speaker 1: overhears her mocking his his lameness, of his foot, cruelty
Speaker 1: and your children. It's also about the time when he
Speaker 1: starts his homosexual love affairs, which for a long time
Speaker 1: throughout history were somewhat suppressed. It's reported he has sexual
Speaker 1: relationships with Newstead servants of both sexes. At this time,
Speaker 1: he has a servant named William Fletcher who's by his
Speaker 1: side from the age of sixteen until almost his death.
Speaker 1: And William is a very good looking man. And he
Speaker 1: also strikes up a this is his quote, violent though
Speaker 1: pure love and passion for a guy named John Eddleston
Speaker 1: who's a chorister, and Edelston gives him a Cornelian as
Speaker 1: a present, and Byron wrote lots of poems about him.
Speaker 1: And that's the person most people think of when they
Speaker 1: think of Byron's bisexual reputation. That started with John and
Speaker 1: also further fueling Byron's reputation. When he's a teenager, he
Speaker 1: meets his half sister, Augusta Byron. They didn't know each
Speaker 1: other's children at all. Um, they meet when he's about fifteen,
Speaker 1: and it suggested that they later have their own sexual relationship.
Speaker 1: So yes, Augusta will come back up. Yeah, we'll hear
Speaker 1: about her some more. So you can see everything starting
Speaker 1: starting to come together to make Byron this rascally character
Speaker 1: he ends up being. When some of it's confusing, You
Speaker 1: had mentioned something about the guy who was leasing new Stead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Lord Gray, who was leasing new Stead until Byron reached
Speaker 1: his majority. Um, it's thought to have made some sort
Speaker 1: of sexual advance at the young Byron that so shocked
Speaker 1: him that the two break and don't don't talk to
Speaker 1: each other again. Even though Byron's mother is very much
Speaker 1: a fan of Lord Gray and tries to reconcile them,
Speaker 1: Byron wants nothing to do with him. Well, and since
Speaker 1: Byron sort of hates his mother and that would actually
Speaker 1: make more sons, so at this point he's gonna mother.
Speaker 1: He doesn't like a father who's abandoned him. Abusive relationships
Speaker 1: and who commit suicide right, and some other confusing personal relationships.
Speaker 1: But in eighteen oh five he's off to Trinity College
Speaker 1: in Cambridge, where he seems to have a pretty good
Speaker 1: time racking up lots of debt. He had what twelve
Speaker 1: thousand pounds in debt before he even reached i't even know,
Speaker 1: which I think is twenty one, So that's I mean,
Speaker 1: there aren't credit cards. I don't know what Byron would
Speaker 1: have done on a modern college campus. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: But this is actually where he met John Edelston that
Speaker 1: I mentioned, that I mentioned before, And this is also
Speaker 1: when he starts writing his poetry. Yeah, he writes some
Speaker 1: early poems and prints them in a volume called Fugitive Pieces.
Speaker 1: And um. He also makes his best friend at Cambridge,
Speaker 1: John cam Hobhouse, who gets him into politics, something that
Speaker 1: as a future lord um he'll play a role in.
Speaker 1: And hob House is his best friend for life truly
Speaker 1: b FF. He's the best man at his wedding. He
Speaker 1: travels with him all around the world and I have
Speaker 1: a falling out for a while that he ends up
Speaker 1: being loyal to the end and his diaries are part
Speaker 1: of the reason we know so much about Byron. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and my favorite Byron at Cambridge story that just shows
Speaker 1: how how bad he was, but in kind of a
Speaker 1: funny way. At this point at least um Cambridge bar
Speaker 1: students from having dogs on on campus, and so Byron
Speaker 1: chooses to have a tame bear as his pet, and
Speaker 1: Cambridge can't do anything about it because they don't have
Speaker 1: any rules about it. And um he even suggests in
Speaker 1: a letter to a friend that his bear companion should
Speaker 1: sit for a fellowship. So Byron has a has a
Speaker 1: long love for animals. He really likes dogs. He keeps
Speaker 1: his bear with him when he moves back to Newstead.
Speaker 1: Um he actually has dogs companions almost until his death.
Speaker 1: I really want to bear now, but I have a
Speaker 1: feeling our boss did not go for that. No, as
Speaker 1: come a little bit later. This is also around the
Speaker 1: time his first volume of poetry gets published, House of Idleness,
Speaker 1: in eighteen oh seven. Yeah, and this is obviously a
Speaker 1: deeper work than the fugitive pieces that were published earlier.
Speaker 1: This is actually a complete volume. And uh, we probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't know much about the House of Idleness except that
Speaker 1: he's mocked for them in the Edinburgh Review. And he
Speaker 1: writes a comeback couplet satire called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,
Speaker 1: which guests him his first recognition. Oh the cutthroat world
Speaker 1: of poetry. In eighteen o nine, Byron reaches his majority
Speaker 1: and takes his seat in the House of Lords. And
Speaker 1: then he and Hobhouse go on their Grand tour. And again,
Speaker 1: I have been deprived of my own grand tour, so
Speaker 1: if someone would like to send me on one, please
Speaker 1: let me know. But they go traveling all over the place.
Speaker 1: They start in Portugal and moved to Spain, Greece and Albania.
Speaker 1: And on their grand tour, Byron and Hobhouse get involved
Speaker 1: in a little bit of political intrigue. The Ionian Islands
Speaker 1: had been restored to the French, but the English wanted them,
Speaker 1: and so did Ali Pasha, who was not known as
Speaker 1: the greatest guy in Greek history. So Byron and Hobhouse
Speaker 1: get used by a guy named Spirittian Forresty. He entertains
Speaker 1: them and then mentions, you know, why don't you go
Speaker 1: to Albania and see Ali Pasha. That would be lovely
Speaker 1: because he wants to sweeten his own deal. So as
Speaker 1: Byron and Hobhouse go off towards Albania, the English come
Speaker 1: toward the Ionian Islands, and they were really upset I
Speaker 1: think when they both realized that they were as they
Speaker 1: thought they had done. You can just imagine them like
Speaker 1: finishing Cambridge and thinking they're pretty pretty clever. Yeah, publish
Speaker 1: their poetry satire and then go and get used by
Speaker 1: some guy named Spiridion. And around the same time Byron
Speaker 1: starts child Harold's Pilgrimage, which is one of the works
Speaker 1: he's best known for. His UM, his Oriental Odyssey. UM
Speaker 1: that's very much semi autobiographical. And I would like to interject,
Speaker 1: with no segue whatsoever, that at this time he also
Speaker 1: shoots an eagle, which is one of my favorite facts
Speaker 1: I found, and there are so many of these we
Speaker 1: could have researched him for that doesn't gell with my
Speaker 1: animal lover point from earlier, Katie. He also decapitated a
Speaker 1: goose at around this same time, so he loves them
Speaker 1: with sometimes he kills them. Sometimes you do kill the
Speaker 1: things you love. And during this trip Byron also has many,
Speaker 1: many more affairs with both men and women, and he
Speaker 1: meets Niccolo Giroux, who he later mentioned in a will
Speaker 1: of his leaving his money, but it ends up being revoked,
Speaker 1: and while they're gone, their friends back home are writing
Speaker 1: both of them letters in code about what's happening to
Speaker 1: gay men in England at the time. You could be
Speaker 1: hanged for the quote unquote crime of homosexual behavior. So
Speaker 1: it's possible that he and Hobhouse also had some sort
Speaker 1: of intimate relationship, but whatever was going on, they were
Speaker 1: kept abreast of the news in England. And this will
Speaker 1: become important a little bit later with Byron's marriage, but
Speaker 1: for now we'll head back to England. Yeah, So they
Speaker 1: go back to London in July of eighteen eleven and
Speaker 1: Byron just misses his mother's death. Um, but quickly gets
Speaker 1: to work in the House of Lords and gives his
Speaker 1: first speech in eighteen twelve, which was urging tolerance against
Speaker 1: riotous nodding him weavers, um, you could get the death
Speaker 1: penalty at the time for breaking your frames basically, And
Speaker 1: his second speech is about Irish Catholic rights. So he's
Speaker 1: got these very rowl sort of idea social reform and um.
Speaker 1: One month after this first speech, the first two cantos
Speaker 1: of Child Harold's Pilgrimage, which he was working on on
Speaker 1: the Grand Tour, are published, and Byron later writes that
Speaker 1: I awoke one morning and found myself famous, and that
Speaker 1: is one of his most famous quotes about how one
Speaker 1: day everything can just change. And after this he begins
Speaker 1: an affair with a married woman named Lady Caroline Lamb
Speaker 1: who is red Child Harold and decides she has to
Speaker 1: meet this guy, and she writes some of this ultimate Yes,
Speaker 1: she adores him, and he meets her, and he's not
Speaker 1: too impressed by what he sees. She's really not his type,
Speaker 1: but they end up carrying on this scandalous, torrid, passionate
Speaker 1: affair and she almost leaves her husband for him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Byron's friend, John Hobhouse encourages him to not elope with
Speaker 1: her and sort of narrowly prevents this enormous scandal, which
Speaker 1: is probably a good idea because things were a little
Speaker 1: too hot, heavy down toward the insane side. Yeah. When
Speaker 1: he breaks it off with her, Lady Caroline organizes a
Speaker 1: bonfire where the village girls congregate and burn an effigy
Speaker 1: of Byron, and then they dance around the fire and
Speaker 1: toss in copies of his letters to her and his
Speaker 1: gifts little gold trinkets. And she's so worried that this
Speaker 1: is going to make people think she's crazy, and even
Speaker 1: writes some stuff about it. But I mean it kind
Speaker 1: of does. I don't know, if you wanted to throw
Speaker 1: a bonfire, I would probably come. I would even burn
Speaker 1: people in effigy of Accessary ends up not looking very good,
Speaker 1: but they continue a correspondence interestingly enough that turns increasingly literary,
Speaker 1: and she even publishes a book, this real kiss and
Speaker 1: tell novel called Glenn arvon Um, which just exposes the
Speaker 1: character of Byron to the world. Well, and she's still
Speaker 1: keeping up her crazy antics. She completely weeks out to
Speaker 1: use scientific terminology, and she creates these really public scenes.
Speaker 1: She suddenly shows up at his house, often in disguise,
Speaker 1: and creates scenes there. She writes some crazy letters Hobhouse
Speaker 1: rights and his diaries that once she came in disguise
Speaker 1: to the house and then tried to grab a sword
Speaker 1: and stab herself and they managed to stop her. And
Speaker 1: she also is said to have sent her pubic hair
Speaker 1: to him in a letter, which I don't reman something
Speaker 1: I would want from an X in case any of
Speaker 1: you were listening. She lost a bunch of weight, and
Speaker 1: he had had a really mean quote about how he
Speaker 1: was being haunted by a skeleton because she'd become very
Speaker 1: emaciated by this time. And I kind of feel bad
Speaker 1: for miss Lamb. And she's the one who had labeled
Speaker 1: him mad, bad and dangerous to know, which is probably
Speaker 1: the most famous description of him. So she really kicks
Speaker 1: off the string of sort of unfortunate lovers he has
Speaker 1: before his marriage. Though he takes up with Lady Oxford,
Speaker 1: and this made me so angry. She's the mother of six,
Speaker 1: which is not the part that made me angry. But
Speaker 1: Byron shares Caroline's letters with Lady Oxford, so yeah, reading
Speaker 1: the excess letters, and then even lets her respond to
Speaker 1: some of them and sign her initials at the bottom,
Speaker 1: which of course devastates or Caroline back home and he's
Speaker 1: taking up with Lady Francis Webster, and around this time
Speaker 1: probably also starting a love affair with his half sister Augusta,
Speaker 1: who is married to Colonel George Lee, and some say
Speaker 1: that her child, Elizabeth Maddoorali, is really Lord Byron's. So
Speaker 1: during this he's writing all of these gloomy tales like
Speaker 1: the cours Fair and the jour Um, these sort of
Speaker 1: oriental um I guess escapes for him for his reckless
Speaker 1: love life and what to do when you're having too
Speaker 1: many affairs and you don't know what to do. Get married,
Speaker 1: straight and narrow and go ahead and get married. It's
Speaker 1: gonna work out really well. Maybe you can sense the sarcasm.
Speaker 1: The person he decides to marry is Lady Caroline Land's cousin,
Speaker 1: Annabella Millbank, who is absolutely nothing like him. He could
Speaker 1: not have picked someone more understuded to him if he tried.
Speaker 1: She loves math and she fancies herself, yes I have.
Speaker 1: She likes math and morals and um. They get married
Speaker 1: and things aren't good from the start. There's this sort
Speaker 1: of bad Elman too, and Byron is a superstitious man,
Speaker 1: so he really doesn't like this. He gives her a
Speaker 1: wedding ring that was his mother's and it's too big,
Speaker 1: so she ties it with a black ribbon, and um,
Speaker 1: he's horrified by this and makes her take it off,
Speaker 1: and he's also He also thinks he's spotted the Black
Speaker 1: Friar of Newston, his ancestral home, a month before the wedding,
Speaker 1: and the black Friar is supposed to portend bad luck
Speaker 1: for the house Byron, and things just get even more bizarre.
Speaker 1: Lady Byron has their daughter, his only legitimate child, Augusta
Speaker 1: Aida and sister seen which I don't know about that,
Speaker 1: and apparently he paced the hallways all night with loaded
Speaker 1: guns when they were getting married, and when they have
Speaker 1: the baby does something even weirder. He smashes bottles with
Speaker 1: a poker while she's being born, which I just saw
Speaker 1: that like alone, there was no explanation for it. Um,
Speaker 1: So I don't know what was going through Byron's mind
Speaker 1: during his marriage, but the two were not a good
Speaker 1: match now and Annabella leaves sixteen months after they're married,
Speaker 1: and then accuses him not only of incest with his
Speaker 1: half sister Augusta and mistreatment, but also of annally raping
Speaker 1: her two days after she had the baby. So his
Speaker 1: reputation is officially shot. The shot that's too much for
Speaker 1: Um for his British public to accept, so he goes
Speaker 1: abroad in April eighteen sixteen, actually endever to return to England,
Speaker 1: so self imposed exile starts in Switzerland and the Hobhouse
Speaker 1: comes with him for the very beginning, and this is
Speaker 1: when if you listen to our podcast. He ends up
Speaker 1: in a ghost writing competition which Mary Shelley gets Frankenstein
Speaker 1: out of, and also takes up with Claire Claremont, who
Speaker 1: he had actually started an affair with in England. She um,
Speaker 1: you want to say she followed him. She actually goes
Speaker 1: ahead of him, knowing he'll he'll be there soon enough. Um.
Speaker 1: He really has a low opinion of Claire Claremont. He
Speaker 1: calls her a foolish girl. In a letter to a sister.
Speaker 1: He basically makes it sound like he couldn't avoid her.
Speaker 1: She was so into him there was nothing he could do,
Speaker 1: which is ridiculous because this didn't keep him from sleeping
Speaker 1: with her and conceiving a child with her, who is
Speaker 1: born when they leave in January eighteen seventeen. She's born Alba,
Speaker 1: and later her name is changed to Allegra, which is
Speaker 1: always kind of a strange thing to do, but I
Speaker 1: thinks so too, and her life is so sad. Things
Speaker 1: don't go well for little Allegra. He says he will
Speaker 1: not give Claire Claremont money to raise the child, which
Speaker 1: he could easily have done he had the money to
Speaker 1: do that. Then it probably has to do with his
Speaker 1: low opinion of her. Yeah, so he's just not going
Speaker 1: to do that. He doesn't trust her, so instead he
Speaker 1: takes custody and he won't tell Claire anything about her,
Speaker 1: and then he ends handing her off to a bunch
Speaker 1: of other people, and she ends up any convent school
Speaker 1: where she dies at age five, and no one visited her,
Speaker 1: but not even her parents. So sad story there, and
Speaker 1: another example of Byron's cruelty with women, which will be
Speaker 1: a running theme for a little while. So at the
Speaker 1: end of this Faithful Summer where Frankenstein is written and
Speaker 1: um Claire is pregnant, the Shelleys leave for England and
Speaker 1: Claire has her baby and Byron and hop House leeve
Speaker 1: for Italy, and this is my favorite part of my notes.
Speaker 1: They see a triple guillotining and they climb onto the
Speaker 1: roof of St. Peter's gun sights again at any and
Speaker 1: they're really but they had a great time. And Cophouse
Speaker 1: wrote all about it in his diary, and Byron really
Speaker 1: trumps up his life during this period. Um in his
Speaker 1: letters to his friends he claims that he has made
Speaker 1: love to a hundred or more women during Carnival of
Speaker 1: eighteen seventeen. But if you think about the context this,
Speaker 1: this is a bad time for Byron Um because of
Speaker 1: his familial estrangement and his bad reputation, his growing debt.
Speaker 1: If he was in that much debt as a minor,
Speaker 1: imagine how bad it's gotten. Um. So he's trying to
Speaker 1: make things seem better than they really are, and he
Speaker 1: takes up with a woman named Marianna Segatti, who's his
Speaker 1: landlord's wife, and then later he moves on to Margarita Kanye,
Speaker 1: a baker's wife who he refers to as the gentle Tigress,
Speaker 1: a detail I really liked. And those aren't the only
Speaker 1: affairs that are going on, as being Byron, there are plenty,
Speaker 1: but Newstead Abby is sold in eighteen eighteen, and that's
Speaker 1: looking for a buggers for several years. He initially didn't
Speaker 1: want to part with it, but finally is convinced that
Speaker 1: it's the only way he can he can make it.
Speaker 1: And he also writes the fourth canto of Child Harold
Speaker 1: at about this time and Bepo, which is more of
Speaker 1: a it's less of this gloomy sort of oriental epic style,
Speaker 1: and which marks a change in his writing for a while,
Speaker 1: and it sets him up for writing his most famous work,
Speaker 1: which I keep thinking is Don Juan, and Sarah keeps
Speaker 1: insisting because of the rhyme scheme, was Don Juan. That's
Speaker 1: what I learned Don Juan, because he sets up the
Speaker 1: rhymes in the poem so that you're forced to mispronounce
Speaker 1: the foreign words. So I may just have shown myself
Speaker 1: as the worst English major ever. I apologize to my
Speaker 1: college professors. But he has a lot more fun writing
Speaker 1: this one than he does with his earlier work, and
Speaker 1: like a lot of his earlier works, it has thinly
Speaker 1: disguised people from his life. The the mother in the poem,
Speaker 1: Donna Anaz, is a complete, a complete shadow for Annabella,
Speaker 1: his wife. He even writes in short, she was a
Speaker 1: walking calculation. Uh, somebody who's really smart and clever, but
Speaker 1: that's kind of presented in a bad, a bad way.
Speaker 1: And he also talks about a quarrel between a husband
Speaker 1: and wife in the work and all the nosy people
Speaker 1: who think they understand what the problem was, but they
Speaker 1: don't really know what they're talking about. I guess he's
Speaker 1: conceived of himself by this time as being very misunderstood.
Speaker 1: And he's really an editor's worst nightmare too. Since Sarah
Speaker 1: and I are editors, we took a lot of them,
Speaker 1: we empathize with this position. Yeah. In a letter to
Speaker 1: John Murray, who was the publisher of the first two cantos,
Speaker 1: he writes that I will have none of your damned
Speaker 1: cutting and slashing. So oh I would I would really
Speaker 1: hate to get I would really hate to get something
Speaker 1: like that from one of my writers. That's when we
Speaker 1: go downstairs and buy some peanut butter Eminem's. But around
Speaker 1: the same time, also Byron has gained a lot of weight,
Speaker 1: which Sarah, you said you remember to hearing I had
Speaker 1: always learned in English that he battled with his weight
Speaker 1: for his whole life and would yo yo diet. And
Speaker 1: I didn't see a lot on that except that kid
Speaker 1: gained a lot during this time and that he was
Speaker 1: a pretty pudgy little kid. So if you know any
Speaker 1: more about that, please email us at History Podcast at
Speaker 1: how staff works dot com. We'd love to hear more
Speaker 1: about it. She also meets Countess Teresa Gamba guicci Olie,
Speaker 1: who is either seventeen or nineteen. We've come across a
Speaker 1: couple of different pages, but she's married to an older
Speaker 1: count sixty year old, and she's young and beautiful, and
Speaker 1: she loves Byron deeply and knew him intimately, and she
Speaker 1: thinks she understands him like no one else. She believes
Speaker 1: he's a good man and he's misunderstood and has somehow
Speaker 1: incurred this terrible reputation. I don't think it occurred to
Speaker 1: her that maybe she just saw one side of him
Speaker 1: and everyone saw the other sides. But she writes a
Speaker 1: book called Lord Byron's Life in Italy to vindicate him,
Speaker 1: and he becomes her cavalier servant, which is a gentleman
Speaker 1: in waiting, but basically it's a socially accepted lover. Uh.
Speaker 1: He rents an apartment from her and her husband, where
Speaker 1: Byron the animal lover, I'm going to stick to that side,
Speaker 1: not to the shooting and the eagle shooting. Um. He
Speaker 1: installs ten horses, eight dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an
Speaker 1: eagle and unshocked one, a crow and a falcon um.
Speaker 1: And eventually Tres and her husband separate. But um, it's
Speaker 1: Byron and Tress relationship is not affected by that. He
Speaker 1: actually gets pretty close to her family, her father and brother,
Speaker 1: who are members of the secret society, the Carbonari, which
Speaker 1: has the aim to free Italy from Austrian rule. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting that this English lord gets this in through
Speaker 1: his Italian lover and the secret society. But he is
Speaker 1: really into it in his I sort of feel like
Speaker 1: his early interest in politics, which fall by the wayside,
Speaker 1: is rekindled by this. It grows much stronger. At this point,
Speaker 1: it seems like he's put not that he's not still
Speaker 1: sleeping with other people, but a little bit of that.
Speaker 1: The frenetic pace has slowed, and he's getting much more
Speaker 1: interested in what else he could do. Yeah, and his
Speaker 1: relationship with Teresa is more like a marriage than anything else.
Speaker 1: He's had, so at this time, he's hanging out a
Speaker 1: little bit more with Shelley and they go to a
Speaker 1: villa by the sea with s a s Lee Hunt,
Speaker 1: and they start working on this radical journal called The Liberal.
Speaker 1: And this is really the only big thing we found
Speaker 1: about during his life during this period, during this period,
Speaker 1: maybe because he's actually got a relatively calm life during
Speaker 1: this period, um, but this is when Shelley drowns, and Um,
Speaker 1: Byron keeps on working with Lee Hunt on The Liberal,
Speaker 1: even though he becomes less and less in stood in it.
Speaker 1: But he moves from working on this journal The Liberal
Speaker 1: to getting involved in the cause of Greece in their
Speaker 1: war for independence. And some have said that he would
Speaker 1: have been the King of Greece if things had actually
Speaker 1: gone through. As a bold claim. It is a very
Speaker 1: bold claim, but you know, I'm willing to think that
Speaker 1: he could do it. And around the same time, he
Speaker 1: meets a guy named Lucas Calendard Sanos I'm positive and
Speaker 1: not pronouncing that correctly, who was part of his little
Speaker 1: ragtag army that Byron had gotten together in this Greek
Speaker 1: liberation thing. And he adored him, but his love was unrequited.
Speaker 1: And Lucas was with him when he died, which was
Speaker 1: at age what thirty six, thirty six or thirty seven.
Speaker 1: Byron was very very much committed to the Greek cause
Speaker 1: against the Turks. He loaned his money, he commanded a
Speaker 1: personal brigade of soldiers. Um he was. He was pretty
Speaker 1: brave and a Greek hero. And Byron contracted his fatal
Speaker 1: illness when he was in route to a Greek campaign.
Speaker 1: He gets rheumatic fever by April and he dies on
Speaker 1: Easter Sunday in eighteen twenty four, and his memoirs were
Speaker 1: burned by Thomas Moore. And I wish, I wish, wish,
Speaker 1: wish they were still around because I loved People always
Speaker 1: have to burn the memoirs. They don't want you to
Speaker 1: know their secret. And Byron it wasn't very clear if
Speaker 1: he wanted to be buried where he died or go
Speaker 1: back to England. But regardless of his wishes, he was
Speaker 1: sent back to England and buried at Newstead. What you
Speaker 1: have to tell the dog story, which you told me.
Speaker 1: He when he was a young man, he initially set
Speaker 1: up a pact for his favorite dog, Boatswain, who had
Speaker 1: died of rabies and an old man who who worked
Speaker 1: worked the grounds to all be buried together. And later
Speaker 1: when the old man was asked about it, he was like, well,
Speaker 1: if if Lord Byron is going to be here, okay,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure I want to be buried alone
Speaker 1: with the dog. So none of that happened. The dog
Speaker 1: is buried outside Lord Byron in the crypt. So now
Speaker 1: you know that you can make packs with people about
Speaker 1: where you'd like to be buried. Random people in your
Speaker 1: life is interested in it, apparently, And well, we don't
Speaker 1: have any poetry articles on the site to interest you.
Speaker 1: We do have several articles on bears. Since Byron liked bears,
Speaker 1: we're going to send you to those instead. We suggest
Speaker 1: you search for Bear on the home page at www
Speaker 1: dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
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Speaker 1: to check out the stuff you missed in history Glass
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