Lord Byron: Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know

this video is brought to you by squarespace from  websites and online stores to marketing tools and   analytics squarespaces the all-in-one platform  to build a beautiful online presence and run your   business check out squarespace through the link  in the description below more about them in a bit mad bad and dangerous to know with these words  lady caroline lamb carved out a literary epitaph   that would last centuries written in reference  to lord byron they sum up everything that still   appeals about the brooding libertine poet george  gordon byron was young charismatic talented at the   age of just 24 he published one of the biggest  hits in the whole of english poetry becoming   famous overnight he was daring traveling the  mediterranean becoming embroiled in secret   societies and joining revolutions he was also  handsome and sexually adventurous in england he   shocked high society with his affairs with married  women while on the continent he found comfort   in the embrace of beautiful young men he was in  short the archetype of a romantic poet a decadent   bohemian aristocrat living a scandalous life  even as he produced some of the greatest poems   that the world has ever known yet there was  more to lord byron than this simple portrait   would suggest beneath the dashing exterior lurked  a soul riven by insecurity plagued with body image   problems and capable of treating his family  in the most appalling way imaginable awful   and wonderful both hero and villain this is the  life of lord byron literature's original bad boy for nearly all his adult life lord byron was  gripped with an unhealthy fear that he would   one day go mad rather than the affected pose of  a laosh aristocrat this worry was very real the   fear that came from deep within the poet's  heart after all with the parents he had had   it's perhaps a wonder that he had any sanity at  all born gordon george byron on the 22nd january   1788 the future poet was the product of a match  maid somewhere in the ninth circle of hell his   father was a dissolute drunk known as mad jack  who gambled all of his wife's money away before   fleeing abroad while she was pregnant as a result  byron's mother gave birth to him completely alone   in a rented room driven near bankruptcy by the  man she married not that katherine gordon was   exactly a model parent herself moody aggressive  and capable of staggering cruelty the boy's mother   would swing between smothering him with love and  belittling his disability byron had been born with   a withered right leg that caused constant pain  and left him horribly self-conscious but rather   than accept her boy for who he was his mother used  this self-consciousness as a weapon in her darker   mood catherine would zero in on the boy's leg  calling him lame brat or her limping devil while   her casual cruelty would give her son lifelong  hang-ups as an adult he'd wear special boots   designed to hide his disability they also turned  him into someone capable of matching his mother's   put-downs seizing upon her weight the child byron  would scream back that she was as fat as a sow   he began blaming her for his condition chalking  his painful leg up to catherine's insistence on   wearing a corset while pregnant all in all then  it was a miserable life the pair lived shut   off from the world in gentile poverty swinging  between toxic arguments and painful codependency   incredibly this wasn't even the worst  of it in 1791 when byron was only three   mad jek died in france his last act was to  pass all of his debts onto his young son   mad jagbeyer and everybody her dad so deadbeat  was still talking about how crappy he was 230   years later despite his father's feelings though  byron would always consider him a free spirited   adventurer but then given how awful his home  life was perhaps his young brain simply needed   the escapism in 1797 catherine hired a strict  calvinist named mary gray as her son's nurse sadly   gray was one of those christians who used religion  not as a way to reflect and better themselves but   rather as a way to browbeat others violent and  drunken she liked to hit the boy telling him how   sinful and wretched he was far worse than the  physical abuse though was the sexual abuse when   the boy was either nine or ten the age varies in  different versions mary gray began grooming him   culminating in a sustained sexual assault in her  bed it took two years for the boy to block up   the courage to tell anyone but even then there  was no great reckoning gray was dismissed from   the family's employ and simply vanished from the  pages of history yet the hurt she caused didn't   vanish with her in his later life lord byron would  become as we'll soon see capable of breathtaking   acts of cruelty towards his lovers especially when  they were female as bad as his behavior becomes   though just bear in mind this dreadful childhood  growing up in a household filled with both mental   and sexual abuse its remarkable byron didn't  turn out any worse than he actually did   it was the 21st of may 1798 when the family's  fortunes suddenly turned that day byron's great   uncle the guy so villain as he was simply called  the wicked lord died having outlived all his heirs   with no one else to take it byron got his great  uncle's aristocratic title more gratifying though   was the second part of his inheritance newstead  abbey a gossip pile badly in need of repair   newstead was the archetypal great country home  young byron fell in love with the place enchanted   by its vast corridors and crumbling walls sure he  had to rent a doubt to a 23 year old baron to pay   off the family's debt but it was still a step up  there were other positive changes happening around   this time too shortly after inheriting newstead  byron met his cousin margaret parker for the first   time beautiful and enchanting she knocked young  byron off his feet it was thanks to this meeting   that the boy sat down and wrote his first piece  of poetry but these twin beams of sunshine were   just a quick respite from the endless black skies  of byron's early life in 1801 the boy was sent to   study at harrow an elite boarding school that was  also a hotbed of bullying the other boy seized on   byron's disability torturing him over his withered  leg and his weight yup his weight as he got older   byron had fleshed out but rather than accept this  the accumulating fat instilled in him an eating   disorder he began eating starvation amounts of  food fighting off his hunger with tobacco until   his death he'd yo-yo in weight between freakishly  thin and noticeably obese nor was food the only   hangout that byron was developing some biographers  have suggested that byram was seduced around this   time by the baron renting newstead an experience  that seems to have left him angry and confused yet   if byron was messed up after his first homosexual  encounter the feeling wouldn't last by the time   he entered cambridge in 1805 byron was already  aware that he had romantic feelings for both   men and women it was at university that he met his  first love a choir boy two years his junior called   john edelston according to byron he loved the boy  with a violent though pure love and passion with   many scholars taking the pure part to mean his  attraction was unrequited certainly this would fit   the later pattern in the poet's life of falling  for beautiful straight boys that he couldn't have   this wasn't like lusting after a straight friend  today homosexuality in early 19th century england   wasn't just illegal but it was punishable by death  when byron wrote love poetry about edelston he was   forced to invent a female name to hide the truth  still it wouldn't be love poetry whether directed   at men or at women that would make byron's name  but a literary cat fight come 1806 baron had run   out of cash abandoning cambridge for london he  borrowed money from his estranged half-sister   augusta to make ends meet while there he began  compiling his early poems finally publishing   them in 1807 as hours of idleness sadly a better  title might have been great big piles of poo the   press were merciless with the 21 year old's  verse the edinburgh review gleefully took a   hatchet to the book portraying bayern and some  talentless hack who didn't know his villanelle   from his ass it was a nightmare review the sort of  write-up that would put most off writing for life   instead the review wound up being byron's making  rather than abandon poetry the poet went on the   attack over the winter of 1808 to 1809 byron  composed what was basically a diss track so   epic it makes ice cubes no vaseline look like  something by vanilla ice known as english bards   and scotch reviewers the poem attacked not just  the edinburgh review but also pretty much every   major poet in england it was poisonous angry  impertinent it was also brilliant suddenly   lord byron could no longer be dismissed to some  rich idiot the snarling cynical genius of infamy   had arrived now just before we continue with  today's video let me tell you about our fantastic   sponsor squarespace two simple things maybe you've  got an idea for a website or a business or a   youtube channel or a podcast something like that  knocking around in your mind well two the only   way to find out whether that's worth doing is to  get it out into the world and that can be daunting   because it's always scary to go and pursue new  things but not knowing how to set up a website   is no excuse there are no excuses available with  squarespace squarespace allows you to create a   powerful website for whatever you want to do  sell something online yes set up a store with   squarespace you want to do a podcast to start a  youtube channel well i mean you'll do the youtube   channel on youtube but you'll want a website to  complement it and if you've got a podcast well yes   put it on squarespace it all starts on squarespace  with a beautiful template that you can customize   to your heart's content or you can start from  scratch or just move over from an existing domain   making everything super easy to manage and  once you've gone through the customization   process there's no updates there's no  patches there's no technical nonsense   to deal with and squarespace also handles all  that websitey stuff podcasts like i said but   also mailiness social integrations member areas  and so much more head to squarespace.com for a   free trial and when you're ready to launch go  to squarespace.com forward slash biographics   to save 10 off your first purchase of a  website or a domain and back to today's video the summer of 1809 saw byron and his friend  john hop house depart england for a grand   tour around the mediterranean in itself this  wasn't unusual the grand tour was simply part   of a wealthy englishman's upbringing in this  era what was unusual though was byron's main   motivation from his letters at the time it's  clear that he mostly wanted a guilt-free way to   seduce a metric heck ton of boys across greece  and albania the young lord fell in and out of   love with countless dashing young men reveling in  how open the mediterranean societies were about   homosexuality in england he wrote with evident  delight the vices in fashion are whoring and   drinking in turkey sodomy and smoking but while  this turkish style was perfect for an attractive   young bisexual guy byron wasn't just thinking  with his dick he could also see around him the   greeks and albanians chafing under the rule of  the decaying ottoman empire their desire for   liberation preyed on his mind and that  in case you somehow missed it is what we   call foreshadowing still oppressed greeks or no  oppressed greeks byron's thoughts at this time   were mostly occupied with his writing the critical  success of english bards had triggered a creative   hot streak as he and hobhouse traveled to places  like malta portugal and spain that creative energy   began to get focused on a big project one  that would apply byron's developing cynical   style to places that it visited child harold's  pilgrimage was a work that would become a pillar   of european romanticism following a world-weary  narrator on his mediterranean travels it was   moody contemplative decadent and utterly ahead  of its time in fact it was so cutting edge that   byron initially refused to publish it thinking  it would cause a scandal it was only thanks to   tragedy that the perm ever saw the light of day  in 1811 byron returned to england to be informed   that his mother was gravely ill although he  raced from london to newstead he was too late   by the time he arrived catherine gordon was dead  despite their difficult relationship his mother's   death nearly broke byron at first he went into  isolation when that didn't help his mood he went   on a violent spree of seduction forcing himself  on the abbey serving girls desperate to pull   himself back from the brink his friends pushed  him into working on child harold the purr grumbled   then agreed then threw himself into the writing  it was a decision that would change everything   the release of child harald's first two kantos in  march 1812 was perhaps the biggest literary event   of the regency era remember when gangnam star  took over the entire planet back in 2012 with   a speed that would never seen before well that  was child harold two centuries earlier albeit   with less funky dancing the prince run sold out  in three days as barron himself later said i awoke   one morning and found myself famous what followed  was an era of byron mania suddenly every club in   london wanted him as a member society hostesses  were begging him to entertain at their parties   it helped that the poem's narrator was clearly  modeled on byron rather than just another writer   those who invited him were getting something  far more interesting a character and byron   was nothing if not a character with his studied  good looks quick tongue and hint of the devil   byron was for the regency what oscar wilde would  be for the late victorian era after the long   pious slog of george the third's reign britain  was changing in byron had finally found a poet   who embodied that change he is really the  only topic almost of every conversation the   duchess of devonshire wrote the men jealous  of him the women of each other indeed society   women were mad for byron they wrote him by  the hundreds begging for a lock of his hair   but they were too late by the spring of  1812 byron only had eyes for one person   lady carolyn lamb unfortunately this new obsession  would wind up a disaster for both of them in later life byron would recall the years 1812  to 1815 as his reign when he was in his prime   and adored across london but you could just  as easily call them the years of dangerous   relationships in quick succession byron was to  get involved with three women one it destroy   another he'd be destroyed by and the third would  be an exercise in mutual destruction it was into   this latter category that lady caron and lamb fell  slender androgynous and unable to give the tiniest   crap what society thought of her lamb should have  been the perfect match for byron for a few months   she was the two had a wild and kinky affair  with bayern encouraging her to cross-dress and   engaging in scandalous love-making with him it was  lamb who famously wrote the byron was mad bad and   dangerous to know yet in reality those words  were far better suited to her by the fall of   1812 byron becomes so freaked out by lam's  erratic behavior that he broke off their   affair by a letter the next time they bumped into  each other at a ball lamb smashed a glass and   started cutting her arms in front of him a scene  that destroyed her social standing still for all   byron may have damaged her catherine lamb would at  least have her revenge the same can't be said for   the poet's next love annabelle milbank was lamb's  cousin a down-to-earth mathematician who was a far   cry from wild child caroline she and byron struck  up her friendly correspondence at first with   few romantic overtures as lamb snidely noted byron  would never be able to pull with a woman who went   to church punctually understood statistics and  had a bad figure but at some point in 1813 things   changed byron wrote to anabella suggesting  marriage for reasons that are still unknown   one theory is that he wanted a wife to deflect  suspicion about his ongoing gay affairs another is   well we'll come to that in a minute for now we'll  note that annabella turned byron down only to have   a change of heart in 1814 and tell him he could  ask again byron didn't hesitate the pair wed in   january 1815 and from the get-go it was clear that  this was a more cursed match than even that of   mad jack and katherine gordon byron seemed to find  alabella loathsome in some undefined way the night   they married he was found wandering about with a  loaded pistol muttering about blowing his brains   out he taunted his new wife with hints of gay love  affairs openly seduced an actress while anabella   was pregnant with his child but the biggest issue  of all was also byron's third great love of this   period augusta the daughter of mad jack augusta  was byron's half-sister a married respectable ish   woman we briefly introduced loaning him money two  chapters back when they reconnected in 1813 though   the pair no longer wanted to be just siblings they  wanted to be lovers now it's important to point   out that no definitive proof exists of byron in  augusta's incestual relationship that being said   there are so many red flags that take it together  they become a giant semaphore signal screaming   warning this is gross this is the other theory  behind byron's ill-advised marriage that he needed   to throw people off the center of his affair  with his half-sister but if that's the case it   failed mainly because byron himself kept dropping  hints to annabella about it by this time their   marriage was beyond repair byron was being cruel  to his heavily pregnant wife smashing bottles and   firing pistols to keep her from getting to sleep  at night things finally culminated in december   of 1815. on the 10th annabella gave birth to  their daughter ada byron better known to history   as the pioneering programmer ada lovelace no way  how did i feel like i must know that that's crazy   i feel like i did know that damn i  mean i must have made a video about it   that's crazy two days later while she was still  recovering byron allegedly entered the room   and sodomized her we say allegedly because  as with much of lord byron's private life   it's unknown what was really true and what  were just rumors concocted by his enemies   either way annabella fled with their daughter  just a month later not long after rumors began   doing the rounds of domestic violence and abuse  within their marriage yet it was the other rumors   that would annihilate byron's reputation aware  the winds were shifting against the poet carolyn   lam began spreading her own stories about byron  of incest of homosexual lovers in no time at all   these tales would turn byron from the darling of  english society into a desperate wounded exile back when byron was on his grand tour a  proto-police force known as the bow street   runners had raided london's white swan pub the  target had been the gay man who gathered there in   the trials that followed six were sentenced to the  stocks and another two were hanged their official   crime was sodomy and it triggered a crackdown  so violent that not even someone as wealthy   as byron could escape it when the accusations of  incest homosexuality and sodomy broke against him   byron transformed overnight into a walking target  his friends feared he'd be lynched in the streets   so the poet did the only thing he could he ran  on april 25 1816 lord byron boarded a ship for   the european mainland although he traveled in  style not just taking his personal physician john   polidori but also a pet monkey and peacock there  was no getting over the sadness of the occasion   the departure of the boat from dover marked the  last time byron would ever see his home country   from a literary perspective though this exile  was the best thing that could have ever happened   shunned by society byron now began working harder  than ever writing with an anger that pushed his   poems to new heights it would be while on  this creative streak that he made his most   important artistic friendship back in england  one of byron's many lovers had been 18 year old   claire claremont when she heard that he was going  to spend part of his exile in geneva she pushed   her stepsister mary wollstonecraft godwin and  mary's fiancee to travel there with her and so it   was that the future mary shelly and her lover the  struggling romantic poet percy by she shelley came   to be in switzerland at the perfect time to meet  lord byron we say perfect because the friendship   the three struck up transformed literary history  it was byron's suggestion that they all tell   ghost stories while reigned in one night and  that led to mary shelley write in frankenstein as   well as polidori creating the modern vampire novel  percy shelly and byron meanwhile inspired one   another both saw a great outpouring of work  during their time together work that would   redefine english poetry sadly things were nowhere  near so positive for claire claremont that summer   in geneva byron seduced her knocked her up and  then got bored of her and encouraged her to   return to england that claire gave birth to their  daughter clara allegra byron it was the beginning   of a nightmare byron's treatment of claire and  allegra remains one of the biggest black marks   against him a mixture of cruelty and callous  indifference that still stomach churning to   hear first he sent for allegra telling claire  that he could provide a better life for her   only to quickly get bored of the child and pass  her off onto friends he then blocked claire from   having any contact with her refusing to reply to  her pitiful letters begging for news he started   referring to allegra as that brat and claiming she  wasn't his before finally dumping her in convent   she died there at the age of five unloved and  only visited by percy shelley on her deathbed she   begged to see her father and the poet never came  at the same time as his daughter was enduring her   short and miserable childhood byron was settling  into a new life in italy and beginning work on his   masterpiece don juan is a satirical epic drenched  in sex and scandal both far richer and far darker   than anything byron had yet attempted partially  a sustained send-up of multiple nations it was   both an enormous success back in england and  also so scandalous that his publisher refused   to put his name on it but while don juan would go  down in history as his most lasting achievement   it wasn't a literature that byron would dedicate  what remained of his life but to revolution by 1820 byron was getting restless while writing  epic poetry in an ancient city whilst also having   an affair with a beautiful italian countess would  probably be enough excitement for most of us byron   felt something lacking he thought about traveling  to south america then still fighting its wars   of independence or maybe returning to england to  lead a revolution in sure byron was searching for   something more than just art for some meaningful  romantic cause to dedicate his life to fortunately   1820s europe was awash with romantic causes that  year the secret carbonari societies of italy began   a series of uprisings against austrian rule that  countess byron was seeing countess teresa guccioli   well her brother was a member of the carbonari  through him byron joined italy's fight for   freedom and unification something he called  a grand object the very poetry of politics   sadly the uprisings were quickly beaten back  byron and the countess's family fled romantic   dreams of revolution unfulfilled yet italian  unification wasn't the only great cause going   in early 1821 greece exploded in revolt  against his ottoman occupiers in no time at   all societies sympathetic to the greek cause were  flourishing across europe in england the london   greek committee sprang up determined to help one  of its members happened to be byron's old friend   john hobhouse the guide accompanied byron on his  grand tour all to aware of his pal's fondness for   greece hobau suggested they sound the poet out  about helping maybe hobhouse was expecting money   maybe just support for their cause what he  got was a military commander when he heard   the proposal byron declared he'd sail for greece  immediately using ten thousand pounds of his own   money he paid to improve the greek navy and fund  a small mercenary force that would operate under   his command on the vayner side he also paid  for an absurd greek costume to wear and had   himself painted in it looking heroic but while  byram was certainly a poser he was also actually   a guy who did stuff in august 1823 he set sail  for the heart of the war yet despite his dreams   he'd never see action incapable of knowing he was  now in the last few months of his life byron spent   the rest of the summer and all of autumn on the  island of catalonia making contacts for the coming   campaign he also fell in love with the last time  with a straight greek chap called lucas challenger   sanos who politely refused the older man's amorous  advances it was only in early 1824 that byron   actually arrived in miss alongi to join the forces  of prince alexander mavrocordatos at first it   seemed to be the beginning of something big byron  as the wealthy foreign celebrity who joined their   cause got a hugely enthusiastic reception from  the greeks the rest of january was spent making   military plans for when the bad weather finally  let up in the end though byron would never see any   of these plans through in a poetic world we'd now  tell you that byron died in battle enjoying the   hero's death that he so clearly craved but that's  not the world we live in in this world byron's   health nosedive that spring following a convulsion  although he tried to relax and recover things only   got worse until on the rainy morning of april the  10th 1824 the poet was stricken with fever his   physicians tried draining his blood a cure that  made things worse before long byron was delirious   slipping in and out of dreams in which he was  spit about augusta finally on april the 19th he   was heard to mutter i want to sleep now then with  those words he died the news of byron's passing   age just 36 spread quickly across greece where  it became a rallying cry for battle it took far   longer to reach his homeland people in london only  heard the news about a month later at which time   the entire city plunged into shock byron might  have been a scandalous even despised figure but   he was also a mega star one of those people you  can't imagine ever dying until they actually do   when his body was returned from greece against his  wishes crowds lined the street to pay their last   respects to say goodbye to the poet who defined  an entire era with 200 years of hindsight we can   now see that byron's legacy was even longer  lasting than anyone could have imagined today   he's likely the best-known english poet after  shakespeare his influence visible across   multiple generations characters like heathcliff  public icons like oscar wilde even rock stars   all owe a debt of gratitude to byron's work and  life of course nowadays we're more likely to be   turned off by byron's dark side by his treatment  of loved ones and his many casual cruelties even   so there's no denying that he remains a towering  figure a pioneer not just in literature but in   revolutionary politics lgbt history and more  the man may have died but the romantic byronic   myth lives on so i really hope you found  this video interesting if you did please do   hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to  subscribe and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Biographics

Views: 221,477

Keywords: biographics, biography, biographies, people, famous people, simon whistler

Id: A7ryPFQExsI

Length: 25min 12sec (1512 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 08 2021